Category: crime film
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Danger Lurks in the Seedy World of Film Noir Carnivals
Tyrone Power, ‘Nightmare Alley’ (1947) T raveling carnivals are supposed to roll into town and deliver family entertainment — tacky, corny stuff that kids adore: amusements, games of skill, sideshow acts and cotton candy. They bring with them a whiff of nostalgia and remind oldsters of more innocent times. But in film noir, carnivals are…
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Red Scare Noir: Communists on the Waterfront
Janis Carter, John Agar and Thomas Gomez in ‘The Woman on Pier 13’ (1949). ‘The Woman on Pier 13’ (1949) When the Berlin Wall went up in 1961, my first-grade teacher, Miss Berzetz, marched into the classroom and scared the bejesus out of us. To hear her tell it, this was the end of life…
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You Only Live Once: Outlaws on the Road
Sylvia Sidney and Henry Fonda in ‘You Only Live Once.’ D irector Fritz Lang’s masterpiece of German cinema, “M” (1931), delves into the murky waters of criminality with an assuredness that few films of that era can match. A frantic search is on for a serial killer who murders children, resulting in an uptick in…
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A SIMMERING ‘RAW DEAL’ IS COOKED TO PERFECTION
From left, Pat Cameron (Claire Trevor), Ann Martin (Marsha Hunt) and Joe Sullivan (Dennis O’Keefe) in ‘Raw Deal’ (1948).Be forewarned, there are many SPOILERS contained below. In film noir, it’s unusual for the femme fatale to act as narrator. But in “Raw Deal,” the dilemmas of conscience are seen through the eyes of the morally challenged…
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Crime Writer Ripped Hitch for ‘Flabby Mass of Clichés’
Farley Granger and Robert Walker in ‘Strangers on a Train.’ Alfred Hitchcock at work. A number of celebrated writers have had tortured relationships with Hollywood. Take Raymond Chandler, the writer whose work is closely associated with Los Angeles (he detested the city), and whose crime fiction elevated the genre to an art form. Chandler…
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Tarantino’s Twists and Turns Add Up Perfectly
Vincent, left, and Jules settle a score. Some may quibble with “Pulp Fiction”’s herky jerky storyline. It dodges back and forth from the past to the present without warning. The trouble is, at first it’s challenging to figure out exactly what is happening in the present and what took place in the past. You have…
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It Took Two Directors to Tell the Murder, Inc. Story
Humphrey Bogart as Dist. Atty. Martin Ferguson “The Enforcer” is one of the lesser appreciated Bogart films, but it deserves more attention than it gets. Granted, it’s no “Maltese Falcon.” It would be a tall order equaling “Falcon” director John Huston’s artistry. But “Enforcer” directors Bretaigne Windust and Raoul Walsh (uncredited) pull off an impressive…
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This Scarface is in Chicago, Not Miami
Living dangerously, Tony Camonte muscles in on his boss’s girlfriend. “Scarface” (1932) is one of the seminal American gangster films of the 1930s, along with “Little Caesar,” “The Roaring Twenties” and “The Public Enemy.” Each one tells the story of a gangster’s rise in the bootlegging business and his assent to the top of a powerful…
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‘The Crimson Kimono’: Big Crime in Little Tokyo
Tawdry newspaper headlines bark out plot twists in ‘The Crimson Kimono’ (1959). Director, producer and writer Samuel Fuller photographs the streets of downtown L.A. stunningly in “The Crimson Kimono,“ a film that’s part mystery, part love triangle and part travelogue. We get to see the downtown exteriors, particularly Little Tokyo as it looked in 1959,…
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Crime Erupts Under the Streets of L.A.
Much of “He Walked by Night” is held together with the loose thread of documentary-style film-making. But those parts are no match or the last 20 minutes or so of the film that prowls the lower reaches of the city. Richard Basehart is the killer who terrorizes L.A. and can’t be stopped. Few have ever…