“‘Moontide’ and ‘Port of Shadows’ offer a fascinating study into key differences in Hollywood and European filmmaking and storytelling during the 1930s and early 1940s, a time when the studio system reigned supreme…”
Detour Cast: A Vague Visages guide for every main performer and character in Edgar G. Ulmer’s 1945 film noir movie.
“In Kurosawa’s noir films, characters struggle to move beyond loss — personal, financial and national — only to find that more loss awaits them.”
“The representation of women in Film Noir is murky territory — in some ways progressive, in other ways deeply misogynistic — certainly when assessing Phyllis in ‘Double Indemnity.'”
“Otto Preminger’s ‘Where the Sidewalk Ends’ and Nicholas Ray’s ‘On Dangerous Ground’ gesture towards the difficult conditions under which police labor while turning a critical eye on the brutally violent detectives who abuse their power.”
“Channeled through science and machines, good ol’ American ‘know-how’ had helped win the war, save democracy and crush tyranny. It’s understandable that a similar story would percolate through to the small-scale conflicts of cops and criminals.”
“From the moment Ramona first appears, ‘Hustlers’ announces itself as a new addition to the neo-noir cannon — a film about bright lights in dark places.”
“Widmark offers a succession of performances in ‘Kiss of Death, ‘The Street with No Name’ and ‘Road House’ that show a young actor building, then resisting, and then reconciling his own burgeoning screen persona.”
“A sense of restlessness began to be addressed tentatively, and was confronted with increasing boldness as the decade progressed. Battles were being waged on multiple fronts of this unacknowledged war, claims were being sought from historically neglected constituents.”
“The gritty and hard-nosed film noir genre is rife with actors and directors that helped to not only change conversations about American cinema, but also the nation’s consciousness.”
“It’s telling that all of the human interactions in ‘Murder by Contract’ involve either money or business. The illusions of the profit motive and market forces have alienated Claude from his own emotions and left him broken and alone.”
“Sometimes, films set in and around Hollywood manage to capture a sense about the place that’s strange and uncanny, a place in love with its past and afraid of its future, leaving nothing but ghosts behind to haunt the hills, and to walk the empty mansions.”
“It is an under-appreciated and distinctly un-American work, due in large part to its simplicity and realism, its unconventional romantic leads, its sympathy for immigrant workers and its anti-capitalist overtones.”
“Where is our own cinema of madness?”
“‘The Blue Gardenia’ occupies a curious space inside noir. In many ways, it acts as an indirect response to many of the films that preceded it, with their icy femmes fatales…”
“As a largely disregarded noir B-side, ‘Pushover’ deliberately recalls its more famous predecessor, playing upon audience expectations of MacMurray’s screen persona to create an experience of déjà vu.”
“In ‘Pitfall’ and ‘Crime Wave,’ two seminal films bookending the classic noir cycle, director André De Toth develops a more nuanced view of marriage and the married couple.”
“Despite all its formal virtues, ‘Sweet Smell of Success’ seems to exist somewhere beyond auteurist canonization or even the traditional Hollywood studio stock.”
“Film noir is all about questioning assumptions, and several of such films that feature portraits of women do nothing less.”
“Lang’s film becomes a committed act of social justice advocacy, raging against its enforced limitation, and striving to break the formal apparatus that could often be employed to constrain Classic Hollywood cinema.”
