“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.”
“‘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.”
“In ‘Human Desire,’ the train tracks carry its hero into the sunny paradise of the American Dream, not the depths of noir’s endless night.”
In the Vague Visages Writers’ Room on Facebook, freelancers were asked to comment about their favorite film noir moments in celebration of #Noirvember.
“In both ‘T-Men’ and ‘Raw Deal,’ Alton and Mann take what is already a heightened genre and somehow intensify its formal qualities.”
Interview by Demi Kampakis
“Movies aren’t neutral vessels that we can stuff with our cultural baggage.”
“In regards to modern day politics, ‘Cat People’ captures the anti-immigration fervor of the 2016 American presidential campaign and election.”
“While Lang never fully embraced socialist principles over the course of his career, he always seemed to have a violent distaste for the men who stood on the shoulders of those who were less fortunate, knowing full well that social class does not correlate a strong moral conscious.”
“The film has an unusually conservative vibe for a noir, maintaining that the status quo may be boring but criminality has nothing to offer — not even carnal thrills.”
A Weekly Column on Love and Erotica in Cinema by Justine A. Smith
A Weekly Column on Love and Erotica in Cinema by Justine A. Smith
“Ida Lupino may have thought of herself as a poor man’s Don Siegel as a director and Bette Davis as an actress, but I think that’s far from true.”
“‘In a Lonely Place’ finds Nicholas Ray still the relative newcomer to the Hollywood studio scene, yet he is already displaying subversive evidence of instilling in his work representative preoccupations.”
“There will be unrequited love and monstrous desires amongst these essays.”
A Series by Angelica Jade Bastién
“‘Gilda’ is one of the great examples of onscreen masochism.”
An Essay by Phuong Le