“‘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…”
“In its own histrionic way, the ‘Maniac’ cycle presages a wave of reaction that would draw its power from the patriarchal fear of dispossession.”
“‘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…”
“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 both ‘T-Men’ and ‘Raw Deal,’ Alton and Mann take what is already a heightened genre and somehow intensify its formal qualities.”
“I can’t make any grand pronouncements or bold proclamations, except that I need to either learn to read program descriptions more critically or invest in a plane ticket to Montreal next July.”
Marshall Shaffer Reflects on a Full Month of FilmStruck
“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.”
“‘Destiny’ arrives at its final satisfying destination as a poetic and deeply affecting film, an ethereal meditation from a now legendary filmmaker…”
“The extraordinary world of April and the Extraordinary World is no simple one, and it’s welcome that its worldview veers away from the simplistic.”
“It’s going to be a #NoirSummer, and hopefully some of the world’s filmmakers are paying attention to the simple yet effective methods of their predecessors.”