Film Forum in New York City has a new repertory schedule online and the highlight seems to be four weeks of British films in the noir vein. We’re still over a month away from the start, but it’s never too early to consider what shouldn’t be missed. Only a few of these have I seen, [...]

A maniac who wears his hat tilted to the side, Richard Attenborough’s teenage thug Pinkie Brown in the Boultings’ Brighton Rock brings to mind the signature Hollywood gangsters played by Paul Muni, James Cagney, and Richard Widmark. Pinkie’s a proud, impressively attired sociopath who holds a position of some power in the local syndicate. Though [...]

The time is once again approaching for a top 50 list to stagger out of the gate, with the 1990s due for consideration in a few short weeks. Things are starting to solidify, but some holes still have to be addressed. There are also those movies that I haven’t seen since they were first released [...]

Among the actors and actresses most at home in film noir, the ideal teaming, as evidenced by the header on this site, would be Sterling Hayden and Gloria Grahame. He of the tall, strong, Scandinavian stock flecked with cool authority and she burning with a pouty sensuality that flashes a warning you won’t heed. When [...]

A few things really got my attention with the 1949 film noir Follow Me Quietly. Its director Richard Fleischer was the epitome of the solid noir director, always churning out something interesting without fully dazzling the viewer. He made short, cheap crime films for RKO like The Narrow Margin, Armored Car Robbery, and The Clay [...]

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 [...]