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2 days ago · From "Sunset Boulevard" to "The Reckless Moment" to "Leave Her to Heaven," the best film noir movies of all time are visions of a universally known truth, but one not always spoken out...
Film noir (/ n w ɑːr /; French: [film nwaʁ]) is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylized Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and motivations. The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of American film noir.
Apr 6, 2024 · These films, often shot in stark black and white, paint a grim picture of a post-war society, exploring moral conflicts through characters caught in the fray of social upheaval.
- House of Bamboo
- Stolen Death
- Brighton Rock
- One False Move
- Caught
- While The City Sleeps
- The American Friend
- The Postman Always Rings Twice
- The Asphalt Jungle
- The Killers
House of Bamboo wants to be a lush, romantic CinemaScope thriller and a Samuel Fuller movie at once. The director’s admirers will recognize those aims as almost genetically contradictory, as Fuller thrives on bold, often vitally threadbare aesthetics that suggest the visual embodiment of a tabloid headline. Indeed, Fuller’s best films don’t have mu...
Echoes of German Expressionism abound in Nyrki Tapiovaara’s tough-minded, class-conscious Stolen Death, an early Nordic noir about gun-smuggling Finnish revolutionaries opposing the Russians occupying their country in the early 20th century. Tapiovaara’s unique blend of off-kilter compositions, unconventional camera angles, foreboding high-contrast...
One of the more terrifyingly amoral, sociopathic villains in all of noir, Richard Attenborough’s Pinky is at 17 already a slave to his nihilism. Consumed by a seemingly bottomless abyss of anger, paranoia, and, in typical Graham Greene fashion, Catholic guilt, Pinky hides behind a mostly stoic visage, teasing out a smile only when he’s trying to wi...
Released days after the 1992 Los Angeles riots, One False Move offers a particularly prescient reflection of regional division and segregation still powerfully evident in Donald Trump’s America. It sees violence as the common denominator between blue and red states, a casual fact of life that cannot be stopped no matter your ethnicity or background...
Max Ophüls’s Caught offers an intense corrective to the clichés of the American noir, particularly the perception of a woman as a predatory other who pulls all the strings, leading men downward toward a doom for which they often bear implicatively little personal responsibility. Right out of the gate, Leonora Eames (Barbara Bel Geddes) is understoo...
From his Weimar films all the way through his Hollywood productions, Fritz Lang evinced a deep suspicion of any and all institutions of authority. Alongside Ace in the Hole and Sweet Smell of Success, While the City Sleeps is the most cynical and piercing of noirs to place journalism in its crosshairs. The film’s killer is a by-the-numbers figure w...
Loosely based on Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley’s Game, The American Friend wears its love of the United States and its cinematic lineage on its sleeve. From its engagement with genre tropes (particularly noir), to its tangibly grimy urban backdrops, to its archetypal hero/villain dramatic dichotomy, there’s no mistaking the film’s American influence....
The Postman Always Rings Twice is a simple, deliciously depraved film. Based on the James M. Cain novel, the story concerns a feckless drifter (John Garfield) who at a roadside inn crosses paths with the owner’s beautiful and dissatisfied wife (Lana Turner), a woman his match in both sexual appetite and sociopathy. United in lust and a general disd...
The Asphalt Jungle could be understood as a hardening of John Huston’s directorial vision, breaking away from Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon and any greater conquest of cool for pathetic men whose minds have gone rotten from being left on the slab for too long. Dix (Sterling Hayden) is first seen woozily stumbling into a diner, which is apt given ...
Ernest Hemingway’s 1927 short story “The Killers” is a marvel of implication and showing rather than telling. Robert Siodmak’s adaptation opens with a beat-for-beat adaptation of the story that neatly functions as a self-contained short, elegantly alluding to the oppression that’s evident in the nooks and crannies of a lunch counter’s interiors, wh...
Jul 24, 2024 · Notable examples include Brighton Rock (1947) and The Third Man (1949). Italy: Italian neorealism intersected with noir sensibilities in films like Bitter Rice (1949), which depicted poverty and social injustice. Germany: Post-war German films often explored guilt and trauma, echoing noir themes.
Jan 15, 2024 · In this comprehensive guide, I will dive deeper into the world of film noir by exploring its origins, key characteristics, the use of lights and shadows, the role of women, its impact on cinema, and its influence on modern media. Let's get started.
Film noir emerged in the early 1940s as a distinctive style within American cinema, marked by its dark, moody aesthetics and cynical narratives. Noir films often delve into psychological depth, examining the inner turmoil and motivations of their characters.
