Tag: Ann Savage
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In Noir, Life Insurance Appeals to Profit-Minded Killers
Few noir plots are as coldly logical as insurance murder. Unlike inheritance killings, which require wealth, insurance turns death into an accessible commodity. It democratizes murder. Movie gangsters who kill often say it’s strictly business, nothing personal. But with insurance fraudsters, it’s typically a family affair, and it’s always deeply personal. Here are some noirs…
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Pure noir exposes crime films’ darkest, most pessimistic core
Noir comes in a number of hybrid varieties, including gangster films, heists, police procedurals and private detective stories. But some noirs don’t use standard crime film types as their foundation. Pure noirs, told from the point of view of characters who are neither career criminals nor law enforcers, plainly reveal the genre’s darkest tenets: that…
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Kings of the Road: Noir’s Alienated, Disenchanted Drifters
Film noir is full of cheap hotel rooms, train stations, roadside diners, filling stations, bus depots — places that transients inhabit while on their way somewhere, or perhaps rambling toward nowhere in particular. A compulsive desire to take to the highways is part of the American psyche, frequently rhapsodized in popular culture as the restless…