Gerald Peary: American Film Noir Poll (1940–1959) on Facebook 6 July – 3 August, 2021

Billy Wilder: Double Indemnity (US 1944), based on the tale (1936) by James M. Cain, screenplay by Raymond Chandler. Scene deleted: the claims adjuster Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson) witnesses his protégé Walter Neff (Fred McMurray) enter the gas chamber.

Billy Wilder: Double Indemnity (US 1944), based on the tale (1936) by James M. Cain, screenplay by Raymond Chandler. Scene deleted: the claims adjuster Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson) witnesses his protégé Walter Neff (Fred McMurray) executed in the gas chamber.

Gerald Peary, 3 August 2021:

"Thanks to 145 voters in 14 countries including film critics, cinema historians, filmmakers, academics, and knowledgeable fans for participating in my Facebook contest for the Best of American Film Noir, 1940-1959. The winner on 94 ballots is Billy Wilder's masterful Double Indemnity, beating out two atmospheric cult classics, Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past (87 ballots) and Orson Welles' Touch of Evil (81). All power to the "B" movie: Detour 5th and Gun Crazy 9th. What happened to Hitchcock, with Shadow of a Doubt buried at 19th, Strangers on a Train at 21st? The top 20:

1. Double Indemnity (94 votes)
2. Out of the Past (87)
3. Touch of Evil (81)
4. Kiss Me Deadly (61)
5. Detour (59)
6. In a Lonely Place (57)
7. The Big Heat (52)
8. The Big Sleep (50)
9. Gun Crazy (41)
10. The Killing (40)
11. The Maltese Falcon (39)
12. The Asphalt Jungle (34)
13. Pickup on South Street (33)
14. Scarlet Street and The Killers (26)
16. Force of Evil (25)
17. Sunset Boulevard (24)
18. Criss Cross (22)
19. Shadow of a Doubt and Lady from Shanghai (21)"

Antti Alanen: My Film Noir Top Ten:

This Gun for Hire (1942)
The Seventh Victim (1943)
Double Indemnity (1944)
Phantom Lady (1944)
Gilda (1946)
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)
Out of the Past (1947)
Caught (1949)
Criss Cross (1949)
In a Lonely Place (1950)
    It would be easier to create a top ten list of films noirs of 1946, 1947, 1948...
    Gerald Peary: "Thanks for doing what was not easy."

AA: Making lists for Gerald Peary was a summer pastime, but there was a lively discussion on the definition of film noir and the origins of the term on Gerald's page. The term was minted by Nino Frank in Paris in 1946, and the first book was Raymond Borde and Étienne Chaumeton's Panorama du film noir américain in 1955. Inspired by this debate, I finally read that book for the first time. The term was apparently established in Anglophone discourse in 1970 by Raymond Durgnat. 

There are many definitions of film noir, all valid and rewarding. As for me, this chain inspired me to define it for myself anew. I copy some of my remarks in Gerald Peary's Facebook chain here:

Noir: "The streets were dark with something more than night" (Raymond Chandler).

"For me, noir has a sense of cosmic agony. It acknowledges death in metaphysical terms, and has affinities with the Orphic lineage of poetry: a quest into the underworld, the femmes fatales being the maenads. There is a transcendent dimension. The peculiar existential dread was probably inspired by the awareness of Nazi terror conducted by citizens who appear perfectly harmless. In addition to the other criteria detailed by Gerald."

"I don't know if this is a commonplace to say, but for me, a (the?) keyword to film noir is the Holocaust. It started in 1941, and the premiere of The Maltese Falcon was in October 1941. There is a general sense of an unfathomable evil and a gravity of a completely different order in film noir than in the crime films made before 1941. It is a different Weltanschauung, a different cosmology, a different metaphysics. It is a subtext, of course, but a profound one."

"That said, some noir directors also discussed Nazi Germany directly, such as Farrow (The Hitler Gang), Zinnemann (The Seventh Cross, The Search) and De Toth (None Shall Escape). Some even documented it (Fuller: Falkenau) or advised on documentaries (Wilder, Hitchcock). An interesting parallel is Melville: the Resistance veteran whose cycle of crime films mirror his Resistance film trilogy, particularly L'Armée des ombres."

"Of course also Fritz Lang created a Resistance series of films: Man Hunt (my favourite), Hangmen Also Die!, Ministry of Fear, Cloak and Dagger and American Guerrilla in the Philippines."

On the recommendation of Imogen Sara Smith I'm now reading James Naremore's book More Than Night. Its discussion of Double Indemnity includes the deleted ending with Walter Neff's execution in the gas chamber, witnessed by his senior colleague Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson)..

I agree with Borde and Chaumeton in seeing film noir from the viewpoint of surrealism. These films are dream plays. They have affinities with dreamwork, including displacement (Verschiebung). Films noirs were powerful in a dream mode, open to many interpretations; subversive, ambiguous and incoherent in many ways. For me, essential in the genesis of film noir was an awareness of the Holocaust that made the streets dark with something more than night.

VOTERS:

Anthony Mann, Glenn Kenny, Paul Byrnes, Garen Daly, Tanja Bresan, Jan Lumholdt, Andrew Luria, Paul Brenner, Lewis Klahr, Larry Knapp, John Powers, Jessica Rosner, John Anderson, Joseph McBride, David Reeder, Allan Arkush, A. S. Hamrah, Eric Martin, Eric Werthman, Brad Stevens, Michael Atkinson, Mike White, Patrick McGilligan, Peter Keough, Derek Lam, Joe Ebbinger, Stephen Rebello, Christian Monggaard, Liam Lacey, Nat Chediak, Steve Ellman, Al J. Meyer, Elliot Lavine, Mike Maggiore, Anne Thompson, Dmitry Martov, Laurent Vachaud, Murray Neilse Stone, Reid Rosefelt, Rick Winston, Larry Gross, John Ned, Alex Simon, Douglas Brode, Richard Herskowitz, Mark Goldblatt
   
Michael Sragow, David Ansen, Larry Jackson, Jim Beaver, Chris Fujiwara, Nat Segaloff, Geoff Pevere, Adrian Danks, Peg Aloi, Barbara Bernstein, Jim Healy, Stephen Winer, Steven Pope, Louis Alvarez, Chale Nafus, Daniel Moore, Steve Fagin, Howard A. Rodman, Carol Summers, Susan Wloszczyna, Lyn Vaus, Eddie Cockrell, Diane Waldman, Godfrey Cheshire, Gabe Klinger, Steven Fagan, Louis Goldberg, Dean Michael Kuehn, Carl Rollyson, Dennis Fischer, Patricia Gruben, John F. Davis, Reece Beckett, Alan Zweig, Matthew Sorrento, Garner Simmons, Gene Seymour, Carrie Rickey, Howard Gelman, Jerry Carlson, David D'Arcy, Sean Axmaker, Terrence Rafferty, Jack Vermee, Hadley Obodiac, Mike Bowes, Brecht Andersch
   
Axel Kuschevatzky, Tim Miller, Anand Venigalla, Desson Thomson, Evelyn Rosenthal, Drew Todd, Peter Kemp, Richard Brody, Chris Morris, Jayne Loader, David Sterritt, Andy Klein, Tom Brueggemann, Maurie Alioff, Larry Karaszewski, Antti Alanen, Geoff Andrew, Rob Ribera, John Paizs, Tim Jackson, Rahul Hamid, Greg Klymkiw's TFC – The Film Corner, Jack Miller, Paul Mollica, Jay Atkinson, Barry Marshall, Kevin Stoehr, Maitland McDonagh, Dennis Delaney, Paul Sherman, John Hall, Paul Schrader, Scott Braid, Tom Meek, Mike Downey, Danny Peary, Stephanie Piro, Ken Eisner, Steve Elworth, Dante Del Corso, John Kaufman, Peter Lynch, Paul Buhle, Preston Gralla, Dror Izhar, Adrian Martin, Matt Hanson, Tony Joe Stemme