Noirvember update: why we all need to watch more international film noir
Noirvember is upon us and while we all have our favourites from the era of classic American film noir (personally, I never get tired of rewatching Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly or Edmund Goulding’s Nightmare Alley), it’s good to remember that film noir’s influence was far wider.
I have my own list of noir from various parts of the globe I plan on watching this Noirvember. But below are ten non-American movies I can heartily recommend that can be loosely categorised as film noir and which very broadly fall into the time period of classic Hollywood noir.
Some of these are streaming. Others are easy and not too expensive to acquire on DVD. A few are much harder to find, but I’ll give you a tip, YouTube is your friend here.
They Made Me a Fugitive (Great Britain, 1947)
One of a trio of early post-war British gangster films that caused a stir with censors, They Made me a Fugitive stars Trevor Howard as Clem Morgan, a demobbed Royal Air Force pilot who out of boredom joins a criminal gang headed by a flash gangster with a nasty streak, but baulks when he discovers his new employer is trafficking drugs. What I love about this film, and the aspect that attracted the most critical condemnation when it first appeared, is its depiction of the poverty and desperation of post-war British life.
The Damned (France, 1947)
Set at the end of World War II, Rene Clement’s film focuses on a group of wealthy and influential Nazi’s and their assortment of loathsome, opportunistic sympathisers and collaborators, who are fleeing Germany aboard a submarine for what they hope will be the safety of South America. There are lashings of political, psychological and sexual tension and skullduggery as the tenuous ties that bind the group together unravel.
Stray Dog (1949)
There are so many Japanese films that could be included on this list, but for my money Akira Kurosawa’s Stray Dog is one of the best. A police detective (played by a young Toshiro Mifune) loses his gun and is forced to dive into the criminal underbelly of post-war Tokyo to find it. Meanwhile the gun is being used in an increasingly serious spate of violent crimes.
The Wages of Fear (France, 1953)
Yes, William Friedkin’s Sorcerer (1977) is great, but have you clocked the 1953 French film it is based on, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear? Based on the book by Georges Arnaud, The Wages of Fear is one of the ultimate pitch black noirs, an unlikely buddy film and a devastating critique of colonialism.
The Black Vampire (Argentina, 1953)
The Black Vampire is a retelling of Fritz Lang’s 1931 classic, M. Helmed by one of Argentina’s most famous mid-century directors, Roman Vinoly Barreto, it depicts the panic that engulfs Buenos Aires as children are murdered by a paedophile. Barreto particularly focuses on a nightclub singer and mother, played by Argentina’s equivalent of Marilyn Monroe, Olga Zubarry, who is the sole eyewitness to the child killer and who fears her daughter may be the next victim.
Cairo Station (Egypt, 1958)
This was a recent discovery in the process of co-editing an upcoming non-fiction book. An early film by one of the giants of Egyptian cinema, Youssef Chahine, the action centres on a series of murders taking place around Cairo’s main train station. Against this backdrop, the film explores the obsession of a disabled newspaper seller (played by the director) with a young woman who works as a semi illegal drink seller at the station, as well as official corruption and labour unrest. A underrated gem of a noir.
Ten Seconds to Hell (Great Britain/West Germany (1959)
The is one of the harder of the films on this list to find, but well worth the effort. Robert Aldrich directs a British/West German project about two former German POWs who find work as part of a bomb disposal squad in post-war Berlin. The deadly work takes its toll until only two men are left (played by Jack Palance and Jeff Chandler), both of whom are also in love with the same woman (Martine Carol). I know this film has an American director and a largely American cast, but it was a European co-production and was filmed on location in Berlin, so I can justify its inclusion on this list. But if you want to be a pendant, then watch Helmut Käutner’s 1961 West German film Black Gravel, which I hear is excellent but have never managed to find a copy of it to watch.
Never Let Go (Great Britain, 1960)
I have seen John Guillermin’s proto-vigilante film Never Let Go several times and just love it. A put upon cosmetics salesman under economic pressure (Richard Todd) is forced to take drastic action when his car – essential to keeping his job – is stolen by a group of young toughs with links to a glitzy, vicious gangster (Peter Sellers at his venal best) and the police are, at best, inactive. A deceptively hard British noir. The ending in particular packs a real emotional punch.
Payroll (Great Britain, 1961)
Journeyman director Sidney Hayers helmed this terrifically hardboiled British heist film in which a tough criminal gang find their plan to steal a factory payroll thrown into confusion when the factory concerned hires a state of the art armoured car to carry the cash. They decide to press ahead, with disastrous consequences. An additional layer of suspense is provided by the gang’s unstable inside man, the factory’s accountant, and his scheming Euro femme fatale wife, played by veteran French actress, Francoise Prevost.
Assault on a Pay Train (Brazil, 1962)
Assault on a Pay Train had been on my radar for a while and I finally got to see as part of Melbourne Cinematheque’s recent season of Brazilian crime films of the 1960s/70s. A gang of men pull a successful payroll heist only to see things fall apart due to human greed and forces beyond their control in the slum they live in. A wonderfully innovative heist gone wrong film, incorporating a sharp take on class and race.
If you need more recommendations, this Letterboxd list is the pool of films I plan on drawing my Noirvember 2023 viewing from. I would be keen to know what international film noir you plan on watching this Noirvember.
While I have your attention, a couple of quick shout outs to two publications involving yours truly. I currently have a heist noir novel called Orphan Road out in the world. If you have not already done so, you might want to pick it up.
A sequel to my last novel, Gunshine State, Orphan Road sees my (not so) professional thief Gary Chance become involved in the murky aftermath of one of Australia’s largest heists, Melbourne’s Great Bookie Robbery. In April 1976, a well organised gang stole as much as $16 million from bookmakers in the Victoria Club, located on the second floor of a building in Queen Street in the Melbourne’s CBD. The real amount was never confirmed and the culprits, although they are known now, were never identified at the time or apprehended. As the starting point for Orphan Road I posited the question, what if a large amount of cash wasn’t the only thing stolen that day in April 1976. And then, what if Chance was engaged nearly half a century later, to try and find that other thing that was stolen.
The novel is available via Down and Out Books and all the usual platforms if you want to pick it up. The reviews so far have been very good, but there haven’t been a lot of them. So, if you have read the book and liked it, I’d appreciate you spreading the word and/or leaving a rating/review at Amazon or Goodreads.
I have a piece in issue #9 of Men’s Adventure Quarterly, edited by Bob Deis & Bill Cunningham. This magazine is an ode to the men’s adventure magazines that proliferated on mid-century American newsstands in the 1950s and 1960s. Titles such as Men, Stag and Swank, these publications combined hard hitting fiction with over the top ‘non-fiction’ exposes of various cultural obsessions, such as sex in suburbia, white slavery, black magic, crime, out of control youth, etc, and contained lavish, highly sexualised illustrations.
Issue #9 looks at the fascination in these magazines with one of nature’s deadliest predators, crocodiles. My contribution asks the question: was there such a thing as Australian men’s adventure magazines?
