Down these mean streets, a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. (more…)
Tag: Film Noir
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House of Strangers (1949)
Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Written by Philip Yordan (screenplay), Joseph L. Mankiewicz (rewrite, uncredited), & Jerome Weidman (novel)
Starring Edward G. Robinson, Susan Hayward, Richard Conte, & Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.“As nasty a nest of vipers as ever you’re likely to see outside of a gangster picture or maybe a jungle film . . .”[1]
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1,319 words
A few years back—let us say, forty—some TV boffins decided there was a perfect and archetypal Christmas film that must be broadcast every Yuletide season. And that film was the disturbing and surreal It’s a Wonderful Life with James Stewart. A downer-fable about failure and suicide, it flopped resoundingly with critics and public alike when it came out in 1946. Director Frank Capra himself counted it among his least favorite efforts. Personally I’ve never met anyone who really likes the movie. (more…)
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2,774 words
Origins & Evolution of the Gothic in Film
The gothic is a quintessentially European aesthetic. Moreover, it pertains and appeals more specifically to those of North-West European descent and is to be found in various modes and tropes throughout North-West European culture and contrasts with the Classicism of Southern Europe. Gothic as a term was first applied to medieval art and particularly architecture by Renaissance critics in similar propagandist fashion to how the term Dark Ages was also used to describe the period following the collapse of the Roman Empire. (more…)