Richard Corliss on the World of Cornell Woolrich

La Mariée était en noir (1968 The Bride Wore Black)

Woolrich not only dislodged the detective from his traditional pedestal — as the solver of the puzzle, the good guy who nabs the bad guy, the knight on the mean streets, the arbiter of ethics, the reader’s surrogate whose very presence is a guarantee of narrative clarity and the restoration of order in the chaotic world of crime — but challenged the very notions of hero and quest. Now the hero could be the villain, or the dupe; the quest itself could prove to be deranged, as the moral moorings of standard detective fiction fall away. That dark view was reflected in the humid nightscapes of film noir cinematography, just as Woolrich’s tilt of perspective was mirrored in the movies’ oblique camera angles and paranoid worldview.

Back in December 2003 Richard Corliss published a two-part article on the life and works of Cornell Woolrich on TimeCNN, which is a fascinating introduction to the life and fiction of this seminal noir writer:

• That Old Feeling: Woolrich’s World
• That Old Feeling: Fear Noir