Tag: John Garfield
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New York noir: 20 films that explore the big city’s dark corners
John Garfield, Thomas Gomez, ‘Force of Evil’ (1948). It might not come as news to you that noirs set in New York City look a lot different from the ones taking place in Los Angeles. The City of Angels is a sun bleached sprawl of low buildings between the ocean and desert. New York is…
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Kings of the Road: Noir’s Alienated, Disenchanted Drifters
Film noir is full of cheap hotel rooms, train stations, roadside diners, filling stations, bus depots — places that transients inhabit while on their way somewhere, or perhaps rambling toward nowhere in particular. A compulsive desire to take to the highways is part of the American psyche, frequently rhapsodized in popular culture as the restless…
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Knockout Punch Noir: The Raw-Boned Fight Game
You’d be hard pressed to find a sport more noir-like than professional boxing. It’s got all of the elements of noir rolled into a savage athletic competition whose object is to knock an opponent unconscious and perhaps spill his blood. Boxing brings with it the stench of mobsters, illegal gambling, fixed fights, disabling violence and…
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Ripped From the Headlines II: True Crime that Inspired Noir
As you’ve probably gathered by now, the 1940s and ’50s saw a bumper crop of sensational tales ready-made for the screen. It was an era when Hollywood greedily harvested stories from news tabloids’ front pages. In the last post, we looked at noirs that were inspired by true crime stories, and here’s a second helping…