Not even Jimmy Cagney can save Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1950) from a deserved obscurity. In this over-rated picture Cagney is a vicious hood getting established in a new town after a violent prison break. The absurd plot moves at a glacial pace, and would almost work as a parody if it wasn’t for the brutal [...]
No colors anymore I want them to turn black Electric stars on main street No moonlight A desert wilderness of concrete and steel Sphinx cars abandoned relics of broken dreams gravestones for lost souls
Part of the fun of having an interest in old movies is discovering an obscure title. Full Confession is so obscure that I could find only one frame and a lobby card on the Web, and no posters. It is not on DVD and while TCM has the movie in its catalog, it is not [...]
“I don’t do much business with preachers” Ray Milland is Lucifer, alias Nick Beal ‘Agent’, who, with the help of b-girl Audrey Totter goes shopping for the soul of honest DA and aspiring governer Thomas Mitchell. Add to the mix smart direction from John Farrow, a killer script from Jonathon Latimer, superb noir lensing by [...]
And there were boulevards that seemed boring at first, but were not, boulevards where the sunflower shells were so thoroughly mixed with the dust-grey sand that they could not be swept away; where the pissoir, in the form of a slightly raised, partially open scroll, gave off such a smell that it made one’s eyes [...]
For Else Stoned, immaculate Siren for a delicious purgatory a wanton butterfly she flutters wings that beckon to a bed of lurid bliss She mopes she languishes she swoons she formulates a trajectory to the stars from the milky way of her bosom to the glistening ivory of her ice cold thighs A gambit for [...]
The noir city in all its desperate foreboding: a dancing sign flashes in an angel’s face. An angel innocent and afraid yet ventures into the seething labyrinth with a stranger, her husband, running from capture into the city of entrapment. You trust no-one, fear the worst, and blunder from one dead-end into another. Dark faces [...]
When Strangers Marry (aka Betrayed 1944) King Bros/Monogram 67 mins Director: William Castle Cinematography: Ira Morgan Score: Dimitri Tiomkin “as When Strangers Marry illustrates, it is precisely through the triggering of sensations that film noir speaks most eloquently. A mode of signification that privileges connotation over the denotative, cause-and-effect logic of linear narrative, the highly-wrought [...]
In this early Jean Renoir film with a magically delicious femme-noir and a brilliant car chase at night, were sewn the seeds of French poetic realism that flourished later in the 30s in the films of Marcel Carné and others. La Nuit de Carrefour is a largely faithful adaption of Georges Simenon’s gloomy pulp policier [...]
I stayed in San Francisco a week and had the beatest time of my life… I stopped, frozen with ecstasy on the sidewalk. I looked down Market Street. I didn’t know whether it was that or Canal Street in New Orleans: it led to water, ambiguous, universal water, just as 42nd Street, New York, leads [...]
Not Dark Yet Shadows are falling and I’ve been here all day It’s too hot to sleep, time is running away Feel like my soul has turned into steel I’ve still got the scars that the sun didn’t heal There’s not even room enough to be anywhere It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there [...]
Cry Danger, a Dick Powell vehicle from RKO, is a flaccid affair with no tension and labored humor. Powell plays ‘Rocky’ Malloy, a guy with a past just released from a life stretch after 5 years in the can, thanks to the better-late-than-never testimony of a vet with a wooden leg and a drink problem. [...]
The great Edward G. Robinson is the hard-boiled editor of a big-city tabloid. The owner of the paper comes up with the idea of boosting circulation by pursuing a lurid expose on the fate of a woman convicted of a crime of passion 10 years earlier, with tragic consequences. Directed by the distinguished Mervyn LeRoy, [...]
Shanghai 2010
The City. Hive, Web, or severed insect mound. All citizens heirs of the same royal parent. The caged beast, the holy center, a garden in the midst of the city. “See Naples & die.” Jump ship. Rats, sailors & death. So many wild pigeons. Animals ripe w/ new diseases. “There is only one disease and [...]
The Fountainhead (1948) The Breaking Point (1950)
Foggy night in New Bedford Massachusetts January 1941 Jack Delano – US Office of War Information
It got darker. I thought; and thought in my mind moved with a kind of sluggish stealthiness, as if it was being watched by bitter and sadistic eyes. I thought of dead eyes looking at a moonless sky, with black blood at the corners of the mouths beneath them. I thought of nasty old women [...]Just got this rave review from the MovieMan0283: “[a] fool who writes bad reviews”.
Rita Hayworth was a huge and glamorous sex symbol made most famous by the film Gilda. She was an incredible dancer with Spanish blood and raised amongst dancers. 
Jan Sterling was an American brought up in London and trained on the stage there. In her teens she returned to New York and played on Broadway, usually as an upper crust British young lady. 
Though Ava Gardner has been in many other types of films, this ravishing beauty has only been in a couple that can be considered film noir.