Film Noir is a universe based around mystery, the femme fatale, and the detective. Sex, lies and murder is the seductive tone that created the visually stimulating art form of cinema that began in the 1940s with The Maltese Falcon.
The film is considered the first real noir that starred Mary Astor and Humphrey Bogart and set off a chain of mainstream hits of films including Double Indemnity; Mildred Pierce; The Postman Always Rings Twice and The Third Man.
The Faces of Noir: Studio Portraits Featuring the Silver Screen Stars Ava Gardner, Humphrey Bogart & Rita Hayworth
The genre ‘Noir’ was coined by French critic Nino Frank and would define the cat-and-mouse murder mystery era of film with memorable fiendish crooks, stylish bombshells, and deadly characters who set the silver screen alight for two decades.
Films that have stood the test of time with style and substance include Alfred Hitchcock’s...
The film is considered the first real noir that starred Mary Astor and Humphrey Bogart and set off a chain of mainstream hits of films including Double Indemnity; Mildred Pierce; The Postman Always Rings Twice and The Third Man.
The Faces of Noir: Studio Portraits Featuring the Silver Screen Stars Ava Gardner, Humphrey Bogart & Rita Hayworth
The genre ‘Noir’ was coined by French critic Nino Frank and would define the cat-and-mouse murder mystery era of film with memorable fiendish crooks, stylish bombshells, and deadly characters who set the silver screen alight for two decades.
Films that have stood the test of time with style and substance include Alfred Hitchcock’s...
- 11/29/2022
- by Robert Lang
- Deadline Film + TV
Film noir represents the illusive charm of black and white cinema and of its stars that graced the silver screen in its glory years in the 40s and 50s.
Film Noir meaning “black film” in french coined by the critic Nino Frank in 1946, defined an era of stylish visually moody black-and-white crime mysteries. The plot of the film could be told in one dramatic photo promoting the central figure either portraying the private investigator, grifter and the elusive femme fatale. The images are always bold and the use of lighting and shadows created a noir universe that invites you into an erotic and scandalous world of deceit and conspiracy.
Robert Coburn, Ernest Bachrach, and A.L. “Whitey” Schafer’s portraits captured the A-list superstars Robert Mitchum, Barbara Stanwyck, Rita Hayworth, Orson Welles, Humphrey Bogart to the character actors of the period Gale Sondergaard, Delores del Rio and George Raft who...
Film Noir meaning “black film” in french coined by the critic Nino Frank in 1946, defined an era of stylish visually moody black-and-white crime mysteries. The plot of the film could be told in one dramatic photo promoting the central figure either portraying the private investigator, grifter and the elusive femme fatale. The images are always bold and the use of lighting and shadows created a noir universe that invites you into an erotic and scandalous world of deceit and conspiracy.
Robert Coburn, Ernest Bachrach, and A.L. “Whitey” Schafer’s portraits captured the A-list superstars Robert Mitchum, Barbara Stanwyck, Rita Hayworth, Orson Welles, Humphrey Bogart to the character actors of the period Gale Sondergaard, Delores del Rio and George Raft who...
- 11/23/2022
- by Robert Lang
- Deadline Film + TV
Film noir is a story of migration and its uncertainties. The genre made its way from France in the crime novels of Marcel Duhamel via the term Série noire, then smuggled itself into the United States in the mid-1940s, first used by Nino Frank to undress the battered pulp of Dashiell Hammett. It was pilfered again by other writers to describe the influx of post-wwii films that were bathed in expressionistic and literal darkness, following disoriented protagonists and their futile searches for an American Dream that was little more than a bear trap.
Continue reading ‘Life Is Cheap… But Toilet Paper Is Expensive’ Review: Wayne Wang’s Hong Kong Noir Dazzles In New Director’s Cut & Restoration at The Playlist.
Continue reading ‘Life Is Cheap… But Toilet Paper Is Expensive’ Review: Wayne Wang’s Hong Kong Noir Dazzles In New Director’s Cut & Restoration at The Playlist.
- 9/30/2022
- by Kyle Turner
- The Playlist
The Notebook Primer introduces readers to some of the most important figures, films, genres, and movements in film history. Above: Detour “The Americans made [film noir] and then the French invented it.”—Marc VernetIn a world of uncertainty, where the lines between good and bad are routinely blurred and peril lurks behind every hesitant corner, film noir had—and still has—a spellbinding way of cutting through the banalities of ordinary existence. Noir tarnishes the superficial sheen of domestic stability, peace and prosperity, and the naïve, sanguine euphoria of one’s best-laid plans. It revels in a realm of desperation, despair, and dread, leading audiences down long, lonely streets and engineering an entertaining and engaging descent into humanity’s dark side. While there remains some question about what defines film noir, and even more debate concerning whether or not the form is a genre or a movement (or something of the two...
- 8/27/2020
- MUBI
Jean-Pierre Melville in his own film, Two Men in Manhattan“A man isn't tiny or giant enough to defeat anything”—Yukio MishimaA voracious cinephile in his early youth, Jean-Pierre Grumbach's daily intake of films was interrupted by the Second World War when he enlisted in the Ffl (Forces Français Libres) and adopted the nom de guerre by which he's still known to these days: Jean-Pierre Melville. A tribute to his literary hero, Hermann Melville, and his novel Pierre: or the Ambiguities, the director would have his name officially changed after the war. The latter was to shape and inform many of his films and arguably all of his world-view, characterized by a sort of ethical cynicism where anti-fascism is understood as a moral duty rather than an act of heroic courage. Profoundly anti-rhetoric and filled with a terse dignity, his films about the Resistance, Army of Shadows (1969) above all,...
- 5/1/2017
- MUBI
Director Louis Malle is typically remembered by the average American for his English language films. Specifically, Atlantic City (1980), starring Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon, earned Malle an Oscar nomination for best director and My Dinner with Andre (1981) recently served as the intertextual inspiration for an episode "Community" (2009-). Yet, his first feature film, the French noir Elevator to the Gallows (Ascenseur pour l'échafaud, 1958), is a beautiful juxtaposition of American and French culture: a film noir starring the beautiful Jeanne Moreau and haunted by an improvised Miles Davis score. I've spent the past two summers at Pajiba providing retrospectives of film noir. In 2009, I counted down five of my favorite noirs of the classical period. Last summer, I re-visited noir from the perspective in its most self-reflexive stage, neo-noir. This summer, beginning with this review, I'll be looking at the international side of film noir.
Noir is often thought of as a profoundly American cultural product,...
Noir is often thought of as a profoundly American cultural product,...
- 5/25/2011
- by Drew Morton
Humphrey Bogart's Philip Marlowe is tough without a gun and lethal with a wisecrack in this irresistible rerelease
First released in 1946 and now being revived for selected screenings around the country and an extended run at the National Film Theatre, The Big Sleep is a film of infinite interest. In its famously knowing trailer, Humphrey Bogart walks into the Hollywood Public Library and asks for "a good mystery like The Maltese Falcon". A librarian gives him a copy of what is misleadingly described as "Raymond Chandler's latest", adding: "What a picture that'll make!" Well, it did, and the result can be approached from a number of distinct and complementary directions.
First, it's a Warner Brothers production, made at the height of Hollywood's big studio era and announced by Warner's logo, which looks like a federal badge of social responsibility. Jack L Warner, who'd headed the studio since the early 1920s,...
First released in 1946 and now being revived for selected screenings around the country and an extended run at the National Film Theatre, The Big Sleep is a film of infinite interest. In its famously knowing trailer, Humphrey Bogart walks into the Hollywood Public Library and asks for "a good mystery like The Maltese Falcon". A librarian gives him a copy of what is misleadingly described as "Raymond Chandler's latest", adding: "What a picture that'll make!" Well, it did, and the result can be approached from a number of distinct and complementary directions.
First, it's a Warner Brothers production, made at the height of Hollywood's big studio era and announced by Warner's logo, which looks like a federal badge of social responsibility. Jack L Warner, who'd headed the studio since the early 1920s,...
- 1/2/2011
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
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