Tag: crime film
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His Chilling Story Points Toward a Covert Murderer
(Warning: Spoilers Ahead) By his own account, Al Roberts, the unlucky hitchhiker in “Detour” (1945), is fated to aimlessly wander the streets of America until police catch up with him. When they do, he’ll likely hang for two murders. It’s one of noir’s most familiar and definitive stories: an average man, through no fault of…
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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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‘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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‘Pale Flower’: Gambling dens, yakuza and a mysterious woman who lives on the edge
“Pale Flower” It’s clear from the start that Masahiro Shinoda’s “Pale Flower” isn’t your typical yakuza picture — the kind that’s simmered in the Japanese underworld’s intricate codes of conduct, with a lead character who agonizes over prickly themes such as honor and loyalty. “Pale Flower” covers the same slice of society as other yakuza…
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‘Out of the Past’: 13 Signs that Jane Greer will Destroy You
‘Out of the Past’ (1947) You can’t say that Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum) had no way of knowing what he was in for. A shamus ought to be able to see things that a civilian would miss, even when he’s dazzled by the gorgeous and perfidious Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer). How inevitable was it that…
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‘The Long Good Friday’: The British Gangster Classic That Predicted the Future
Mobster’s World Blown to Bits in an Easter Wave of Terror Contains spoilers ‘The Long Good Friday’ (1980) As Good Friday approaches it’s fitting that we look at one of the slender number of crime films set on the holiest of Christian holy days. In filmdom, the connection between religious rites and acts of criminal…
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When Gangsters Collide with the Dark Side: 65 Mobbed Up Films Noir
Gangster films were already a cinematic staple when a new kind of crime film began to emerge in the early 1940s. Films noir captured the popular imagination for a couple of decades after World War II. While some of the post war films are about mobsters, they’re different in tone from 1930s gangster films. Warner…
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Dreams of a comfortable life in the suburbs can lead a man to murder
“I want to be a contractor,” announces Claude (Vince Edwards), a determined, 30ish guy in the middle of an unusual kind of job interview at the start of “Murder by Contract” (1958). The shot cuts to an abrupt closeup as he utters those words, emphasizing that this is a turning point in his life, the…
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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…