Category: Lobby

Cinematic Cities: The Shanghai Night

The Goddess (1934)

The Goddess (Shen nu – China 1934)
Director Yonggang Wu | DP Hong Weilie

One of the masterpieces of the silent cinema starring the legendary Chinese actress Ruan Lingyu,  is a fatalistic story of entrapment and futility, which presages French poetic realism. The film is a profound and mesmerising critique of greed and bourgeois hypocrisy, set against the tender counterpoint of the bond between mother and child.  The streets of Shanghai are a glittering purgatory. The fallen woman walks the dark streets of oppression and shame. Trapped and struggling, loving and kind, a prostitute and an angel, she soars with wings of  joy for a brief instant above the sordid infamy of vanity, exploitation, and deprivation. A woman’s anguished bid for freedom is a revolutionary act.  The whore and the mother the existential  heroine made flesh.

Cinematic Cities: Okinawa Noir

Stray Dog - Kurosawa - 1949

Stray Dog (aka Nora inu) 1949
Director Akira Kurosawa | DP Asakazu Nakai

Akira Kurosawa’s 10th film directly inspired by Jules Dassin’s The Naked City (1948), explores the nether world of post-WW2 Japan in a story that parallels the American noir theme of the returning soldier’s re-integration into civilian society. The different responses of two men to a chance event underlie the story of pursuit tempered by empathy, and the realisation that the pursuer could as easily have been the pursued. Full Review.

Noir Digest: Noir City 2010

Noir City 2010

Red Light (1949)

San Francisco’s NOIR CITY 8 film noir series returns to San Francisco’s Castro Theatre January 22-31 2010. The full program is here.

Movies not on DVD on the program:

FLY BY NIGHT (1942) Dir. Robert Siodmak
DEPORTED (1950) Dir. Robert Siodmak
CRY DANGER (1951) Dir. Robert Parrish, newly restored
THE MOB (1951) Dir. Robert Parish
THE GANGSTER (1947) Dir. Gordon Wiles
HE RAN ALL THE WAY (1951) Dir. John Berry
ONE GIRLS’ CONFESSION (1953) Dir. Hugo Haas
WOMEN’S PRISON (1955) Lewis Seiler
RED LIGHT (1949) Dir. Roy Del Ruth
WALK A CROOKED MILE (1948) Dir. Gordon Douglas
SLATTERY’S HURRICANE (1949) Dir. Andr? de Toth
INSIDE JOB (1946) Dir. Jean Yarbrough
HUMAN DESIRE (1954) Dir. Fritz Lang
ESCAPE IN THE FOG (1945) Dir. Budd Boetticher
  • FLY BY NIGHT (1942) Dir. Robert Siodmak
  • DEPORTED (1950) Dir. Robert Siodmak
  • CRY DANGER (1951) Dir. Robert Parrish, newly restored
  • THE MOB (1951) Dir. Robert Parish
  • THE GANGSTER (1947) Dir. Gordon Wiles
  • HE RAN ALL THE WAY (1951) Dir. John Berry
  • ONE GIRLS’ CONFESSION (1953) Dir. Hugo Haas
  • WOMEN’S PRISON (1955) Lewis Seiler
  • RED LIGHT (1949) Dir. Roy Del Ruth
  • WALK A CROOKED MILE (1948) Dir. Gordon Douglas
  • SLATTERY’S HURRICANE (1949) Dir. Andr? de Toth
  • INSIDE JOB (1946) Dir. Jean Yarbrough
  • HUMAN DESIRE (1954) Dir. Fritz Lang
  • ESCAPE IN THE FOG (1945) Dir. Budd Boetticher

Columbia Noir DVD Set

The Sniper

Columbia Pictures Film Noir Classics, Vol. 1 a new noir collectors DVD set has just been released. The films in the set:

  • The Big Heat
  • 5 Against the House
  • The Lineup
  • Murder by Contract
  • The Sniper

The special features include commentaries by Michael Man, Martin Scorsese, Christopher Nolan, Eddie Muller, and James Ellroy.

Cinematic Cities: Las Vegas Shakedown

La Vegas Shakedown (1955)

Las Vegas Shakedown (1955)
“PUSHOVERS…They tried to escape their destiny, but the odds were against them!
GUNSELS…Trigger-happy, they believed in making every bullet count…it might be their last!“

Cinematic Cities: Chicago City Noir

Call Northside 777 (1948)

Call Northside 777 (1948)
Director Henry Hathaway | DP Joe MacDonald

Newspaper noir…

Cinematic Cities: Mean Ol’ Frisco

The Sniper (1952) San Francisco

The Sniper (1952)
Director Edward Dmytryk | DP Burnett Guffey
The pathology and anger of a sharp-shooting psychopath on a killing-spree explored with chilling veracity.

Cinematic Cities: Japan Noir

Endless Desire (Hateshinaki yokubo 1958 Japan)

Endless Desire (Hateshinaki yokubo 1958 Japan)
Director Shohei Imamura | DP Joji Ohara

Dark satire on greed punished by relentless fate. Bravura direction and cinematography, with hip 50s jazz score.

New Edition of The Film Noir Encyclopedia Slated for April 2010

The Encyclopedia of Film Noir 2010

A long overdue fourth edition of  Film Noir: An Encyclopaedic Reference to the American Style co-edited by Alain Silver, Elizabeth Ward, James Ursini, and Robert Porfirio (3rd Edition 1992) is slated for April 2010 and can be pre-ordered for US$26.40 from Amazon. This classic reference has been completely revised, expanded, redesigned, and retitled The Film Noir Encyclopedia.

I have found the third edition an invaluable reference on American film noir and neo-noir, though the authors’ insistence that film noir is a purely US phenomenon leaves some large gaps.  Alain Silver’s reviews are superior to those of the other editors and can be wonderfully enlightening. I hope two common weaknesses in the previous editions, significant errors in plot outlines and pedestrian and over-blown reviews by some co-editors, will be remedied in the new edition.

A dead man walking…

Man With a Horn (1950)

“These city streets are poison. You walk and walk and they take you down. Down and out, a scrap of yesterday’s news swept into and out of the gutter by malevolent fate a dirty wind. You had all the angles tight. All settled. But that suitcase breaks open and those pretty dreams are strewn on the pavement just rags defiled by the grime under your shoes. She said she was with you. When was it? Yesterday or a thousand dead years gone? Stilettos as sharp as a flick-knife and as dangerous. Those eyes were not mysterious only jade cunning. She lied as she connived as she made love. You sap! You bought it and retail! My last cigarette. Inhale the smoke and numb the pain. Prove that you are still breathing. It’s dark and it’s cold, the streets slick with the last shower. Pull down your hat, turn up your coat collar, no-one knows you behind a week’s growth of beard. The concrete is jarring, every sorry bone in your body aches, your stomach growls, and your head spins. I need a shot. Down to my last dollar. The fur in your mouth is choking you. Bad times. Old times. Is it now or yesterday, or is it forever? A dead man walking.”