Tag: Robert Mitchum
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What Really Makes a Film Noir? The Noir Rorschach Test
Let’s be clear: film noir isn’t a genre. Westerns, war movies and horror films are all genre pictures with motifs that signal the kind of film you’re watching. But noir isn’t as easy to spot. There are noir cliches — shadows cast by venetian blinds, voice-over narrations by weary, defeated perps and fall guys, and…
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Southern Noir: Where Crime Becomes Inheritance
Noir is usually mapped onto cities — Los Angeles, New York, Chicago — places where corruption hides in plain sight. But move the genre south and something shifts. Crime doesn’t disappear; it festers. Institutions weaken, religion distorts, and violence becomes intimate rather than anonymous. Gothic Noir in Steamy Climates ‘Christmas Holiday’ (1944)Audiences expecting a wholesome…
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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 acting badly overseas . 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.…
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Crime tourists, Part I: Yanks behaving badly in foreign lands
Orson Welles, ‘The Third Man’ (1949). By Paul Parcellin Film noir loves morally sketchy locales — the kind of places where law and order is on life support and police can be manipulated like a vending machine. Like America’s Wild West, post-war Europe and Asia’s rubble strewn roadways were a magnet for drifters, bootleggers, grifters…
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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 Night of the Hunter’: Babes in the Woods Face Evil
I first saw “The Night of the Hunter” (1955) 20-plus years ago and walked away impressed but not particularly in love with the movie, and having said that I know what many of you are thinking: Heresy! I have no real excuse for my initial reaction. The Charles Laughton directed drama, the only film he…
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Gumshoe Noir: White Knights, Reluctant Heroes, Rotten Apples
Private eyes, those lone rangers who traverse bleak urban landscapes, are romanticized in books, radio dramas and movies as upholders of right and wrong. They do the dirty work that the cops can’t or won’t touch. Often hired by those who are monied, corrupt, or both, they’re the go-to guys when it comes to cleaning…
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When Mitchum’s Jail Time Cemented His Bad Boy Image
A lot of red flags should go up when Dr. Jeff Cameron (Robert Mitchum) meets Margo Lannington (Faith Domergue). But she’s a real dish and this is noir, so naturally he ignores the many warning signposts screaming at him that he’s about to drive over a cliff. Margo is an emergency room case whom Jeff…