We’re nearing the one-year anniversary of director Jules Dassin’s death and his films, as ever, have been on my mind lately. It was last March 31st when Dassin died at the age of 96, a survivor of the film industry’s schizophrenic ups and downs. At the time, I was compelled to lay a little wreath [...]

(This was supposed to accompany a review of the new DVD release, but Universal didn’t send me a copy. I wrote it after a theatrical screening a few weeks ago, and there’s no reason to let a few hours of writing go to waste.)
It’s either to Orson Welles’ credit or the result of a contrarian [...]

If film noir had an official sport it would be boxing. Black and white cinematography perfectly captures the sweat and grit of two men pounding their gloved fists into each other’s raw skin. Raging Bull isn’t a film noir, but it accomplishes the visual doom of a fight without the use of color, as does [...]

You know you’re in for a bit of “social enlightenment” when a prologue comes up even before the studio logo. In the case of The Sniper, Edward Dmytryk’s 1952 return from the Hollywood blacklist, the viewer is promised a “man whose enemy was womankind.” In several ways, this is a novel approach. Here we have [...]

Richard Fleischer’s 1955 CinemaScope extravaganza Violent Saturday isn’t the small town film noir I was led to believe, but its dual climaxes certainly live up to the noir-appropriate title. I might more aptly characterize the film as some odd noir-melodrama hybrid, Stahl or Sirk via John Sturges maybe. Violent Saturday reminded me especially of Bad [...]

(There are a lot of spoilers here, more than I usually include.)
Late in Lewis Gilbert’s The Good Die Young, Miles “Rave” Ravenscourt, expertly played by Laurence Harvey, opines that the men of the film’s title perish in war while the surviving soldiers are, in my words, sort of like sediment shifting to the bottom of [...]

 
“This boy…and this girl…were never properly introduced to the world we live in…”

Two weeks ago, the director Nicholas Ray had a very good couple of days on DVD. July 30 saw one of his finest films, Bigger Than Life, released in the UK by the BFI, a superb edition highlighted by Ed Buscombe’s commentary [...]

Four viewings of movies designated as film noir in a 24-hour period and the only side effects I seem to have are the almost uncontrollable desires to rob a bank and get mixed up with a woman who’s no good for me. It’ll pass, I’m sure. The new Warner Bros. Film Noir Classic Collection Vol. [...]

In the Criterion Collection’s monthly newsletter, they ask a prominent figure associated with a previously released title to compose a list of ten favorite selections among the Criterion catalog. Even though it was just released this past week, I know for certain that I would choose their Ace in the Hole DVD if that question [...]

I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.

I can’t even pretend to feign objectivity when discussing Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place. I think it’s one of the most exquisite, fascinating films to ever come from Hollywood. [...]