What's the best film to use to get a higher contrast/grain in developing for black and white photography?

An example would be like Anton Corbijn's work.

Tri-X, Tri-X, Tri-X. Anton Corbijn uses it with a Leica M rangefinder.

This is the combo I have used for a while:

http://flickr.com/photos/aperture64/1699...

Even though film use has declined, there is a lot of information on the topic on the Web, try using it.

The grain you get will be a combination of the film grain itself, the developer used and how you process the film.

Some developers are intended to reduce the amount of apparent grain (called reducing developers), so, first thing, you don't want to use one of them. I haven't kept up with film, so you will have to check what developers are still available and how they act on the film.

The final factor is what paper you print on. Paper comes in various grades, with the larger numbers being more contrasty. This will enhance any grain in the neg. Also, glossy paper will show the grain better.

Choose the film with the largest grain size that will capture the dynamic (brightness range) you want of the subject, select your developer, process to get the most grain, and pick the paper that produces the print you want. You can actually look up the grain size of various films - the larger the better for you.

Vance

Generally speaking the lower the film speed the higher the contrast and finer the grain. Litho films are at the lowest end ranging up through Panatomic-X (still pretty high contrast), Plus-X to Tri-X. But if you under-expose and over-develop Tri-X and then print on a very hard paper (grade 4 or 5) you get both contrasty and grainy. Experiment. Shoot several short rolls of the same scene containing good range of tones at half stop intervals then develop one at correct time then next at plus 50% and next at plus 100%.
I have also gotten some good results from under-exposed Tri-X with an inter-negative on litho film, but that's super high contrast.

Anything rated at ASA 400 or higher. Using a colour film printed monochrome also works.