Okay, I’m borrowing the tag from Turner Classic Movies,
which aired a two-month long look at film noir in the summer of 1999, which was
an excellent survey of this “subgenre”. Since it doesn’t look like TCM will be
repeating this anytime soon, I thought I would co-opt their tag and re-use it
to discuss five film noir classics that have not already been reviewed on this
blog. Five films that I enjoy and think anyone interested in film noir should
be sure to check out.
Now, since film noir is not a standard genre, say like
westerns, gangster, romance and drama, it gets applied sometimes haphazardly to
gangster films like LITTLE CAESAR (1931) and THE ROARING TWENTIES (1939),
Westerns like STAGECOACH (1939) and WINCHESTER ’73 (1950) and even comedies
like ARSENIC AND OLD LACE (1944) and UNFAITHFULLY YOURS (1948). While these are
all good films and display some of the characteristics that a film noir has,
they would not be considered film noir for the purposes of this blog.
For me the genre or subgenre falls under a certain time
period. It is definitely the 1940s and 50s and usually post World War II, since
it was this era that brought about such ideals as the American Dream. Film Noir
is about exploiting the underside of that dream and not necessarily as a
nightmare either. The films are dark and usually black and white, which only
emphasizes the darkness. Film Noir literally translates to mean dark or black
film.
While there may be gangster or underworld figures involved these aren’t
gangster movies. They are really about one or two people working to find a way
out of a bleak situation they find themselves in. They are not necessarily
blameless for their circumstance, but they will do whatever it takes to get out
of it, lie, cheat and even murder.
The five films I would like to review as part of this
summer of darkness are:
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