“‘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…”
“‘Human Desire’ points a hopeful, if naïve, way forward for men returning home from war.”
“In both ‘T-Men’ and ‘Raw Deal,’ Alton and Mann take what is already a heightened genre and somehow intensify its formal qualities.”
“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 Series by Angelica Jade Bastién
A Weekly Column on Love and Erotica in Cinema by Justine A. Smith
