Category: Crime Movie
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Crime tourists, Part I: Yanks behaving badly in foreign lands
Orson Welles, ‘The Third Man’ (1949). By Paul Parcellin Film noir loves morally sketchy locales — the kind of places where law and order is on life support and police can be manipulated like a vending machine. Like America’s Wild West, post-war Europe and Asia’s rubble strewn roadways were a magnet for drifters, bootleggers, grifters…
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Mark Stevens: his quartet of searing films noir still light up screens today
Lucille Ball, Mark Stevens, ‘The Dark Corner’ (1946). By Paul Parcellin Mark Stevens made a string of taut crime dramas in the 1940s and ’50s that still resonate today. He acted in dozens of films, from westerns, war pictures to musicals and comedies, and directed two of his self-produced noirs as well as some hardboiled…
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‘The Killers’: A much loved noir that’s the spitting image of another American classic
Ava Gardner, Burt Lancaster, ‘The Killers’ (1946). By Paul Parcellin “The Killers” (1946) Some say “The Killers” is the “Citizen Kane” of noir, but how can that be? One is a beloved noir, the story behind a brutal murder of a washed up prizefighter. The other, a fictional biography of a media tycoon, loosely based…
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Off the Hook: A bedridden heiress glimpses the face of doom in ‘Sorry, Wrong Number’
Barbara Stanwyck, ‘Sorry, Wrong Number’ (1948). Crossed phone lines deliver chilling news to a woman stranded in her apartment. Post war prosperity, women’s position in society go under the microscope Contains some spoilers By Paul Parcellin ‘Sorry, Wrong Number’ (1948) Barbara Stanwyck plays Leona Stevenson, a woman distinctly different from cold blooded Phyllis Dietrichson, whom…
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Headshrinker Noir: 10 Films With Mind Games, Crime
Ingrid Bergman, “Spellbound” (1945). From Dedicated Healers to Evil Control Freaks, Noir Psychiatrists Want to Pick Your Brain By Paul Parcellin Do all psychiatrists intentionally drive their patients insane and force them to commit awful crimes? In real life it’s unlikely … probably. But in film noir it’s a 50-50 bet. Not that all noir…
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D.O.A.: Small Town Man Visits Big City, Murder Follows
Frank Gerstle, Edmond O’Brien, “D.O.A.” (1949). The doctor delivers some astonishingly bad news. Frank Bigelow needs to find the truth,but he’s driven by a deeper motivation By Paul Parcellin When you think of noir, it’s probably not 18th century British author Samuel Johnson who first springs to mind. But his most famous quote really nails the…
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Amnesia Noir: 30 Films Worth Remembering
Alan Ladd, William Bendix, “The Blue Dahlia” (1946). When Returning War VetsSuffer Memory Blackouts,Murder is Often Afoot By Paul Parcellin Total amnesia, the kind that wipes out memories like a damp sponge on a chalkboard, probably happens more often in movies and television than in real life. Rare as it may be, it’s a frequent…
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How a Real-Life Prison Sentence Added Another Dimension to Mitchum’s Performance as a Woozy Doctor on the Run in a Nightmarish Flight From Justice
Robert Mitchum, “Where Danger Lives” (1950). By Paul Parcellin This article contains spoilers A lot of red flags should go up when Dr. Jeff Cameron (Robert Mitchum) meets Margo Lannington (Faith Domergue). But she’s a real dish and this is noir, so naturally he ignores the many warning signposts screaming at him that he’s about…
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Ripped From the Headlines, Part III: True Stories About Dangerous Characters, Corrupt Officials and Gangs of Criminals Who Hold the Public at Bay
John Dall, Peggy Cummins, “Gun Crazy” (1950). By Paul Parcellin It only takes a couple of desperate, determined outsiders with a gun to start a crime wave. At times, a single perpetrator can do the work of two — or more. That’s what happens in several of the films based on true stories that make…
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Ripped From the Headlines, Part II: A Feast of Murder, Robbery and Exploitation
Cecil Kellaway, John Garfield, Lana Turner, “The Postman Always Rings Twice” (1946). By Paul Parcellin As you’ve probably gathered by now, the 1940s and ’50s saw a bumper crop of sensational tales ready-made for the screen. It was an era when Hollywood greedily harvested stories from news tabloids’ front pages. In the last post, we…