The film noir movies Scarlett Johansson considers personal favourites
Throughout her brilliant career as a movie actor, Scarlett Johansson has naturally appeared in most cinematic genres on offer. From independent dramas and big-budget blockbusters to romantic comedies and superhero films, to say that the New York City-born actor has traversed the wide cinematic landscape would be something of an understatement.
After appearing in a number of child and teenage roles in her youth, Johansson made the successful leap to more mature portrayals and came to particular attention through her stunning performance in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation, from which point in her career, she never looked back.
Over the following years, Johansson has racked up an impressive back catalogue of movies, including Vicky Cristina Barcelona, The Prestige, Black Widow, Her, Under the Skin, Marriage Story and Jojo Rabbit. With two Academy Award nominations to her name so far, Johansson’s career isn’t said and done just yet; rather, it’s likely that she has decades of acting brilliance ahead of her.
Of course, like any brilliant actor worth their salt, Johansson has a deep and personal love for the cinematic medium itself. In fact, Johansson appeared to have particular admiration for the world of film noir, which refers to the highly stylised, German Expressionism-indebted crime dramas of Hollywood that largely occurred in the 1940s and 1950s.
In 2008, Johansson appeared in the neo-noir superhero movie The Spirit, written and directed by Frank Miller and also starring Gabriel Macht, Eva Mendes, Sarah Paulson and Samuel L Jackson. Based on the comic strip of the same name by Will Eisner, The Spirit had a noir sensibility and aesthetic at its core, something that Johansson thankfully knew a thing or two about.
Speaking with Movies, the actor once noted, “I’ve enjoyed The Third Man, The Maltese Falcon and White Heat. There were so many wonderful movies about that time, and I can’t list them all. But the truth is that I feel the noir qualities of this film are really great stylistic choices. And which we owe to film noir style.”
The Third Man is the 1949 film noir directed by Carol Reed, written by Graham Greene, and starring Joseph Cotton, Alida Valli, Orson Welles and Trevor Howard. Cotton plays an American writer who agrees to take on a job with his friend in Vienna, but when he learns that he has died, he looks into his passing whilst falling in love with his friend’s girlfriend.
Eight years previously, 1941’s The Maltese Falcon had arrived on screen, directed and written by John Huston. Starring Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet and Mary Astor, the film tells of a San Francisco private eye who looks into a case surrounding three hopeful thieves of a jewel-laden falcon statue.
The same year that The Third Man was released, another of Johansson’s favourite noirs was also on offer for the first time. Directed by Raoul Walsh and starring James Cagney and Virginia Mayo, White Heat tells of a gang leader who attempts to lead a chemical plant payroll heist and is widely considered one of the greatest gangster movies of all time,
Sure, film noir is not the first movie genre we think of when it comes to Scarlett Johansson, but the truth is that she has a deep love for the black-and-white crime dramas of the 1940s, the kind of which undoubtedly influenced her performance in Frank Miller’s The Spirit.
