In an interview on Film Noir

100 Film Noirs.

Notably academic, as you’d expect from BFI Publishing, but this differs from the others in this selection in that it takes into account the fact that film noir as a genre has influenced films in France, Japan, Germany, Mexico and India, so there is welcome inclusion of films other than the classics, showing how diverse the influence is.

Which are the top films noirs?

I think you’d have to say The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice. In many of these films we encounter the slightly gullible hero seduced into committing a murder. Fred MacMurray should have spotted the ankle bracelet on Barbara Stanwyck in the supermarket – it clearly gave her away as a dangerous sexual force. I think that is the aspect of them that is not very liberated. Even in Body Heat Kathleen Turner is just a modern version of Barbara Stanwyck who wears less underwear. The difference is that the early films gave just a hint of what was going on in the bedroom – The Big Sleep does that very cannily. There’s that famous conversation between Bogart and Bacall about riding, where she says it depends who’s in the saddle. The audience got the metaphor but by the time of Body Heat we’ve got to see William Hurt and Kathleen Turner actually having sex. That’s a problem, because by hinting at sexual passion, which the 1940s movies did, you could make it more powerful. On the other hand, modern film noir is more specifically about sexual frenzy.