Tag: Burt Lancaster
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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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Crime tourists, Part II: Americans clash with the underworld in foreign lands
DeForest Kelley, Cameron Mitchell, Robert Ryan, (unidentified), Robert Stack, ‘House of Bamboo’ (1955). We’ve already talked about films with Americans overseas acting badly. It seems that whenever a region is beset by war, a pack of jackals descends on the still twitching carcass of civilization to devour whatever meat is left on its bones. In…
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‘The Killers’: A much loved noir that’s the spitting image of another American classic
“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 on the life of William Randolph Hearst. It’s like comparing…
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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.…