film-noir

Review: Grand Central Murder

bryancyr film-noir , , , ,

grand_central_murder_ver2_xlg

Grand Central Murder is a film-noir from 1942.  This movie is based on a Sue MacVeigh book and though I’ve never read it, I think this story has more in common with Sherlock Holmes then Phillip Marlowe.  Though this seems to not be a true noir in story the filming is very noir.  The opening scenes visual is one of the coolest in noir. The rest of the movie uses shadows in a very artistic way.  S. Sylvan Simon is the director and looked to me like he showed some promise in the genre but he directed 34 films and it looks like almost all of them except for this one, was comedy and family films.  To bad I would love to see his style in more dark films like this.

Our P.I. detective is played by Van Heflin and is pretty entertaining in this part.  Patricia Dane is the beautiful gold digger that is in the center of the investigation.  There is a long cast of characters that at times are a little hard to keep track of.  This movie has not been rated much in IMDb and is currently at a 6.6, with only 453 people rating it.  I caught this on Turner Classic Movies and it may be hard to find on DVD, but it is available.  It may be worth the effort to find if you are a hard-core noir fan.

Review: I Became a Criminal or They Made Me a Fugitive

bryancyr film-noir , , , ,

23914_They-Made-1

I Became a Criminal or how it was named on TCM, They Made Me a Fugitive is a film-noir from Britain in 1947.  The one thing that surprised me about this film is its violence towards women, with two scenes where women were beaten by men.  I didn’t really see if this was a controversy or not, but I can’t image in 1947 it not being controversial.  Trevor Howard stars and had a long career as an actor.  The surprise for me was Sally Gray, I did a little research on her and she had a nervous breakdown and took 5 years off not long before she made this film.  She also only made a few more films after this.  Hollywood did come calling, no surprise, she seems very talented and was a beautiful actress, but decided to leave show business and married.  She stayed married to her husband until his death at 100 years old, so maybe she made the right decision for herself.  The other actress that stood out to me is Mary Merrall, she played the old lady that keeps all the gangsters in line.  She did this with some of the best lines in the movie and was a character I would have liked to see more of, and her background story.  This is a good classic film-noir, worth checking out.

Review of Sweet Smell of Success

bryancyr film-noir , , ,

sweet-smell-of-success-20

I finally got a chance to see this classic film-noir and the wait was worth it.  This is a very cool movie that has all the things that make a film-noir so amazing.  I have to say this has some of the best dialog of any movie ever.

“If you’re funny, Walter, I’m a pretzel! Drop dead!”

“Don’t remove the gangplank, Sidney – you may wanna get back onboard.”

“That’s fish four days old. I won’t buy it!”

and of course the most famous line:

“I’d hate to take a bite outta you. You’re a cookie full of arsenic.”

There is many more great lines in this movie, I could list another 100 and not cover them all.  I can see why this made a few Empire Magazine top 100 lists.  The reason I was so excited to see this film was Burt Lancaster, he is one of my favorite actors and his performance was great as the evil J.J., but Tony Curtis really surprised me and took over this film.

This movie had a lot of controversy when it came out.  It was based on Walter Winchell, a famous columnist in New York City with lots of pull.  Though this film changes Winchell’s daughter for J.J.’s sister, the story is based on some true events.  Winchell was still a powerful man in media when this was made, making it a risk to make.  Burt Lancaster produced this himself to get it made.  This was also Curtis’s first real acting challenge and showed his talent(before this he was thought of more as a pretty face and not a serious actor).  This also was a different role for Lancaster where he was essentially a bad guy, this went against his normal hero role in the film.  It ended up helping his career as well because it showed he had more sides to his acting talents then people thought.  Thank you Turner Classic Movies for still showing these great movies, most of these are not at our local DVD store.  If you haven’t seen this one put it on your Netflix Queue you will not be disappointed.

Review of Black Widow

bryancyr film-noir, Movie , , , , , ,

Black Widow is the first classic film-noir that I have seen that is in color.  Usually film-noir from this era is in black and white and lends to the over all atmosphere of the movie.  Color worked for me in this movie, the New York skyline looked amazing and felt like one of the characters.  Ginger Rodgers plays a successful actress and shows why she really was a great actress in this part.  Really liked Van Heflin as our main man and George Raft is always cool with his amazing voice and dialog.  This currently only has a 6.8 rating on IMDb, but has only a little over 1000 ratings.  I think if your a fan of the genre you will really enjoy it.  If you’ve seen it comment below with what you thought of this film.

Black_Widow_1954