"Blade Runner" (Director's Cut, 1992): Ridley Scott's seminal sci-fi noir was a rather cut-and-dried affair when first released in 1982. Yet that all changed when he revisited the film for 1992's "Director's Cut," which immediately became the definitive version of the film. While its most obvious alteration was the removal of Harrison Ford's awkward narration, the inclusion of a sequence in which Ford's cyborg-hunting cop Deckard dreams of a unicorn — especially when matched with an existing closing moment involving origami — famously intimates that the detective himself might, in fact, be a machine.
"Mulholland Drive" (2001): David Lynch's neo-noir Hollywood satire is a deliriously surreal head trip about an aspiring actress (Naomi Watts) who arrives in L.A. and, alongside a beautiful amnesiac (Laura Harring), finds herself at the center of a twisty-turny mystery. As per usual, Lynch's film is a non-linear tumble down the rabbit hole, and ends with a flurry of what's-going-on action that, like the best ambiguous finales, leaves one trying to untangle its knotty enigmas even after it's over.
Source: www.esquire.com
Jean-Pierre Chartier – the other French critic who used the term “film noir” – wrote 'Americans Also Make Noir Films for La Révue du Cinéma' in November of 1946. In that article he discusses three films: “Murder My Sweet,” “Double Indemnity” and “The Lost Weekend.” Here we have one of the legendary postwar French critics specifically citing “The Lost Weekend” as a “noir” and yet this film has been ignored by the noirists. In the pantheon of American so-called film noirs, “The Lost Weekend” could be known as “The Lost Noir.”
“The Lost Weekend” isn’t listed in 'Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference of the American Style'. In 'A Panorama of American Film Noir,' Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton mention “The Lost Weekend” as “having been classified, somewhat superficially, as belonging to the noir genre, doubtless because of the hospital scenes and the description of delirium tremens. Strangeness and crime, however, were absent from it, and the psychology of the drunk offered one of the most classic examples there are of the all-powerfulness of a rudimentary desire.”
On “The Lost Weekend,” Chartier writes, “The impressions of insanity, of a senseless void, left by the drama of a young man in the grip of singular addiction, makes ‘The Lost Weekend’ one of the most depressing films I have ever seen. Certainly a charming young lady helps our alcoholic hero sober up and permits the film to end with a kiss. But the impression of extreme despair persists despite this upbeat ending.” While Chartier noticed the kiss, he should have been watching the gun. Near the end of the film, the alcoholic – who has swapped the woman’s coat for a gun at a pawnshop – has the gun in the bathroom sink where he was going to blow his brains out.
The coat is not a minor item. It symbolizes their relationship. At the end of the film he doesn’t give the gun to the woman to retrieve the coat. He puts the gun in his pocket. And there it stays.
And there it will stay because he’s doomed. It’s only a matter of time and he knows it. And if the audience is paying attention, they know it too. There is no redemption here and there is nothing ambiguous about it because he makes the choice to keep the gun and to blow his brains out and find the darkness. That “The Lost Weekend” harks back to the film noirs of poetic realism is obvious to anyone familiar with “La Bête Humaine” or “Les Bas-fonds.” Wilder insisted on shooting on location for the exterior shots in New York City, going so far as to build a box to hide the camera from pedestrians. Wilder insisted on the “realism” of the film and Don Burnam’s search for an open pawnshop on Yom Kippur – among other scenes – adds that dimension to the film.
Source: www.williamahearn.com
Nick Beal’s guiding hand over Hanson’s fate is given an extra nudge from the surefooted presence of Audrey Totter, who plays a prostitute who is circling the drain when she encounters the icy Ray Milland character one fog-bound night. Soon ensconced in a surreally plush apartment, Beal reveals that he knows all about her sorry history. Swathed in ermine with her name embroidered inside it, the blowsy blonde asks Beal if she has to commit murder to earn all this, to which he replies, “No, reform work. At a boys club.” Totter, who has described her experience on this film as among the best experiences of her career, described the film as one designed “to stimulate your imagination.”
Audrey Totter, who described the often difficult director John Farrow as “very good” thought her co-star Ray Milland as “ so sweet. He was great in that part. He was very impressive as the devil in modern times. He was so suave and smooth, but dangerous. He was a very good actor.” Totter, who is quite beguiling and touching in her degradation and her worldly exaltation, apparently loved the movie, though she felt that the original title -“The Dark Circle”- suited it better than the criminal implications evoked by "Alias Nick Beal."
Source: moviemorlocks.com
Ray Milland's marital existence has been as turbulent as his screen career. Married to Marina Muriel Weber, his connubial life has run from moments of ecstatic joy to the depths of utter despair and unhappiness. Ray is subject to temperamental fits, he runs hot and cold. The Millands have separated three times. It's never [been] a separation over waning love. The Millands are mad about each other, proving the old bromidic line about 'true love never runs smooth.' All dramatic actors at one time or another, when interviewed, will admit that they would like to play 'Hamlet.' Ray is different - When I asked him what sort of part he would like to do next he said: 'Death Takes a Holiday.' -Milton Mohr for Screenland magazine, 1947
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