Tag: Barbara Stanwyck
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The Suburban Jungle: When Noir Bled Out of the City
Many American films noir of the early 1940s were anchored to big cities — Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York. So were a number of returning World War II GIs. As veterans reentered civilian life and began migrating away from urban centers to newly developing byways of suburbia, noir followed. Away from shadowy alleyways and…
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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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Off the Hook: A bedridden heiress glimpses the face of doom in ‘Sorry, Wrong Number’
‘Sorry, Wrong Number’ (1948) Barbara Stanwyck plays Leona Stevenson, a woman markedly dissimilar to Stanwyck’s cold blooded Phyllis Dietrichson of “Double Indemnity” four years before. Leona is no femme fatale — she’s a femme in jeopardy. That alone ought to make us feel sympathy for her, but she’s a hard one to warm up to.…
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Could You Repeat That? — 36 Noirs That Unfold In Flashbacks
Is that film you’re watching a noir? Here’s one semi-reliable way to tell: Look for flashbacks. In noir, flashbacks show us the stuff that gets characters into the mess that they are in, and are no doubt trying to wriggle out of. Did that someone betray a spouse, steal from an employer or send another…
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Is It or Isn’t It? Does “Clash by Night” Make the Cut as Noir?
“Clash by Night” has the look and feel of noir, but not everyone thinks of it that way. It stars Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Ryan, two giants of the shadowy crime dramas of the 1940s and ‘50s that define those dark films. Some might say they make the perfect brooding noir couple. If that’s not…
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Murderous Couples: ‘Body Heat,’ vs. ‘Double Indemnity’
After I moved to L.A. in 2008 I got together with a Meetup group that was going to see a screening of “Double Indemnity” (1944) at the ArcLight Theater in Hollywood. I was chomping at the bit in anticipation of watching one of my all-time favorite films with a group of cinema enthusiasts. I pictured…
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Ripped From the Headlines: True Crime Inspired Film Noir
It’s no wonder that Hollywood in the 1940s and ’50s scooped up lurid true crime stories and made hard-hitting, gritty dramas out of them. Following the war, the public’s appetite for rough textured tales could not be surpassed. Cold, savage murders that bled off the front page of tabloid scandal sheets was the stuff that…
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‘Double Indemnity’: Two On a Conveyor Belt Toward Doom
In “Double Indemnity” (1944), housewife Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) seduces insurance salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) and gets him to kill her husband. She’s after a big payout from a policy that Neff sold him under false pretenses. It’s a classic noir — maybe THE classic noir. The story’s got all the right stuff —…