Tag: classic film
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‘Scarlet Street’ at 80: Flirtations with a femme fatale can often lead to trouble — and sometimes murder
At her service. Joan Bennett, Edward G. Robinson, ‘Scarlet Street’ (1945). Contains spoilers When “Scarlet Street” premiered 80 years ago this month it was not uniformly praised by critics, and several cities outright banned it due to its dark content. The film hinted at such taboo topics as sex out of wedlock and prostitution, and…
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‘They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?’: A Tinseltown Allegory that Ends Unhappily Ever After
Michael Sarrazin, Jane Fonda, ‘They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?’ Harrowing Tale of Dance Marathons and the Depression-Era Downtrodden. But Those Marathons Remind Us of Something Else — the Studio System at its Most Heartless Contains spoilers By Paul Parcellin “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They” is a noir tragedy about exploitation of the desperate and beleaguered…
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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
“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.…