Classic Film Noir At Twentieth Century Fox
Fox Noir: Welcome to the world of the femme fatale and multiple flashbacks. Otto Preminger’s “Laura” with Clifton Webb is the crown jewel. And Gene Tierney.
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Category: Film Noir
The Maltese Falcon (1941) Queer Film A-
Performances to savor. Mary Astor does a superb turn as Bridget O’Shaughnessy, a Celtic Tiger avant la lettre!
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Cat People (1942) Queer Film B+
The finest achievement of producer Val Lewton’s legendary RKO horror cycle, Cat People (1942) occupies a foundational place in queer film history because it mobilizes horror not as spectacle but as a grammar of deviance, repression, and embodied otherness.
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The Uninvited (1944) Queer Film B-
The 1944 movie is still entertaining. Victor Young’s haunting theme was transformed into the song “Stella by Starlight,” with lyrics by Ned Washington.
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Laura (1944) Queer Film A+
“Laura” is one of the classic film noirs. Gene Tierney is born and Clifton Webb becomes a star in his fifties. Haunting Raksin score.
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Double Indemnity (1944) Queer Film A+
“Double Indemnity” is the best of the three great film noirs of 1944, the others being “Laura” and “The Woman in the Window”. The three leads are superb as is Wilder’s direction.
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Murder My Sweet (1944) Queer Film. B+
Powell is in excellent company, and he acquits himself admirably. He also gets props for being the first to play Marlowe.
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Mildred Pierce (1945) Queer Film A+
Brilliantly filmed in high Germanic style by a cadre of Hungarian, German and Viennese émigrés—Curtiz, production designer Anton Grot and composer Max Steiner, in addition to Southern California natives cinematographer Ernest Haller and art director George James Hopkins—Mildred Pierce is one of the great noirs of the 1940s.
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Gilda (1946) Queer Film (A)
“Gilda”: Rita Hayworth’s star-making performance, directed by Charles Vidor, with cinematography by Rudolph Mate and Jack Cole’s choreography.
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The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) Queer Film A-
Stanwyck gives one of her most controlled, lethal performances, and Douglas’s debut is astonishing – he plays Walter as a man who has been dying for years, a man whose entire identity is built around Martha.
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Notorious (1946) Hitchcock A+
The term “MacGuffin” originated with writer Angus MacPhail and was popularized by Alfred Hitchcock. The MacGuffin in “Notorious” is the Uranium.
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Brute Force (1947) Queer Film B+
“Brute Force”: Our homosexual is interested in art and music. Hume Cronyn, a consummate actor, plays him to the hilt.
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Nightmare Alley (1947) Film Noir – Forget About the Remake! (A)
Working with master cinematographer Lee Garmes, director Edmund Goulding produced one of the GREAT film noirs, a genre he had never worked in before and would never work in again.
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Sunset Boulevard (1950) Queer Film A+
Sunset Boulevard is a queer film not because of representation but because of sensibility, structure, and performance style — the same way All About Eve, Mildred Pierce, Imitation of Life, and The Red Shoes are queer. Norma Desmond is the archetype of queer camp: her theatrical excess, her self-mythologizing, her diva worship and her performance as identity.
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In a Lonely Place (1950) Queer Film (A)
Bogart is superb, but it is Gloria Grahame who is the revelation – this is widely considered to be the finest performance of her career and she is sensational. As Laurel, she brings a weary, deeply nuanced vulnerability that perfectly balances Bogart’s aggressive volatility.
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Niagara (1953) Film Noir A-
The buildup to Monroe’s superstardom started here. The magnificent widescreen technicolor cinematography is by Joseph MacDonald.
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The Big Combo (1955) Queer Film B-
“The Big Combo” features a gay couple (played by Earl Holliman and Lee Van Cleef) whose chosen profession also adds to their fascination and their sexiness.
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Les Diaboliques (1955) Queer Film A-
By late 1956, it had become the highest-grossing French film released in the United States. It is also one of the most successful queer films of all time since, although queer coded, something is clearly going on between Christina and Nicole!
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Touch of Evil (1958) Queer Film A+
Yes, that is Mercedes McCambridge as an unnamed lesbian gang leader getting her kicks while watching Janet Leigh getting roughed up in “A Touch of Evil.”
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Chinatown (1974) Polanski’s Noir Masterpiece A+
Polanski captured the FEEL of LA better than anyone before or sense. Jack Nicholson gives his greatest performance as private dick J. J. ” Jake” Gittes.
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Farewell My Lovely (1975) Queer Film A-
One of those rare instances where the remake is marginally better than the original, Farewell My Lovely not only keeps the original title of Raymond Chandler’s novel but is also more faithful to the book’s spirit.
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