Tag: crime film
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Whiteout Noir: 6 Films With Cold Blooded Crimes In Wintery Places
Winter is upon us, and in many places snow has either fallen or soon will. So it’s time to consider noirs that feature arctic blasts of frigid air and piles of the white stuff. Can’t think of any? Understandable — there aren’t a lot of them. Snowfall plays a dramatic role in a handful noirs…
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21 Cornell Woolrich Stories That Made It To the Big Screen; Plus ‘Never Open That Door’
“Never Open That Door” (1952) Blu-ray and DVD, Flicker Alley (158 minutes) A lot of movies never quite get author Cornell Woolrich’s tone right, especially the films made in Hollywood. Their forced upbeat endings just don’t do justice to the pitch black darkness of his novels and short stories. That’s not the case with the…
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Amnesia Noir: 30 Films Worth Remembering
Total amnesia, the kind that wipes out memories like a damp sponge on a chalkboard, probably happens more often in movies and television than in real life. Rare as it may be, it’s a frequent problem in cinema — some call it the common cold of film noir. Movies about battle scarred GIs returning from…
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‘The Killers’: Nagging Questions In a Haze of Gunsmoke
In both versions, sports heroes have tragic downfalls and alluring women enter the picture to offer a helping hand — it doesn’t turn out well for the wounded competitors “The Killers” (1946) Robert Siodmak (director) — “The Killers” (1964) Don Siegel (director), The Criterion Collection, [Blu-ray] Why on earth would a man facing the barrel…
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Busted But Not Broken: Greylisted Actor Made Indy Noirs
Edward G. Robinson’s testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) resulted in his being shunned by the major studios. Instead, he appeared in independently produced Poverty Row films Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema XVII [Vice Squad / Black Tuesday / Nightmare] [Blu-ray] He’s no matinee idol, but when Edward G. Robinson is…
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Disenchantment reigns supreme in a ‘City that Never Sleeps’
A cloud of failure hangs over a handful of Chicagoans whose dreary lives are about to become a lot more dramatic. In “City That Never Sleeps” a would-be ballerina, reduced to dancing in a burlesque house; an out of work actor, his face painted silver, poses as a mechanical man in the burlesque theater’s front…
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When Noir Got Into the True Crime Game — Docudramas: How True Were They?
Maybe it was the rigors of World War II that whet the public’s appetite for true crime stories in the 1940s. Returning soldiers, who saw real blood and guts on the battlefield, were less than inspired by movies based on fictional stories, or so the legend goes. They wanted a realistic view of life that…
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Feverish Dreams, Paranoia? It Must be a Cornell Woolrich Story
Kevin McCarthy, Gage Clarke, “Nightmare” (1956). When it comes to crafting stories of dread and entrapment, Cornell Woolrich stands out among his peers. His darkest work seethes with feverish, paranoid fantasies. Wrongly accused men, caged on death row or free and living under a stifling cloud of suspicion, are driven to prove their innocence. Visions…
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‘Sunset Blvd.’: A Stranger Original Opening Sequence Was Scrapped
Erich von Stroheim, William Holden, Gloria Swanson,“Sunset Boulevard” (1950). Preview audiences were left stunned, oddly amused and utterly confused At the start of “Sunset Boulevard,” hapless screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) floats face-down in a swimming pool with several bullet holes punched into his torso. He’d been the long-term houseguest of deranged former silent screen…
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In Noir, Shutter Bugs Fight and Sometimes Commit Crimes
Lighting and photographic style play an outsized role in crime dramas of all kinds, including film noir. But then there are the noirs and thrillers that put a camera in front of the camera — or to be more precise, they’re films in which a photographer and his or her pictures play a key role…