Hopperesque

Hopperesque

Friday 30 November 2012

Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death


         I could go through the motions with no trouble, but once i was alone the truth inescapably emerged causing me to slump at the desk like an unused marionette. I had no real interest in what i was doing, no real interest in anything. I spent the time thinking about my wall.

Kinds of Love, Kinds of death
Tucker Coe
1966

image reblogged from
Violent World of Parker

Wednesday 28 November 2012

A Lost Cause


          Like most others i was a seeker, a mover, a malcontent, and at times a stupid hellraiser. I was never idle long enough to do much thinking but i felt somehow that some of us were making real progress, that we had taken an honest road and that the best of us would inevitably make it over the top. At the same time i felt that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves along on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles - a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other- that kept me going.

Hunter S. Thompson

image
reblogged from Blue Electric Room

Tuesday 27 November 2012

Armee Des Ombres


As i have said a few times there are a number of great movies which to me are Noirs in disguise and apart from Treasure of the Sierra Madre this is probably the best.










Monday 26 November 2012

Too Long at the Fair


         Well i don't know who made the highway
         I guess that's just my pride
         But i have heard the prince of darkness
         On his charger ride


Too Long at the Fair
(Joel Zoss)
Bonnie Raitt
1972

image
George Zimbel
woman at bar, 
Bourbon st, New Orleans

Sunday 25 November 2012

Classic Fragments 11 - Harry Lime


           The scene where Orson Welles emerges from the darkened doorway in the cobbled streets of post- war Vienna evokes almost everything that Noir stands for.

                                          https://cinephiliabeyond.org/the-third-man/

Saturday 24 November 2012

The Flitcraft Parable


         The life he knew was a clear orderly sane responsible affair. Now a falling beam had shown him that fundamentally that life was none of these things. He, the good citizen-husband-father, could be wiped out between the office and restaurant by the accident of a falling beam. He knew that men die at haphazard like that and live only while blind chance spared them. It was not primarily the injustice that disturbed him, he accepted that after the first shock. What disturbed him was the discovery that in sensibly ordering his affairs he had gotten out of step, and not into step with life.

from
The Maltese Falcon
Dashiell Hammett
1930

image 
Denise Puchol
reblogged from Vintagecool

Friday 23 November 2012

John Ford

The Fugitive
Long Voyage Home
Gideon's Day
Grapes of Wrath
The Informer

        We all know that Ford specialized in Westerns and adventures set in War but he occasionally dipped his toe into the Noirish look with cinematographers such as Greg Toland and Gabriel Figueroa who gave him that stylish shadowy look on The Fugitive and Long Voyage Home in particular. But unlike Hitchcock and Kurosawa, those other big names in cinema history, he never attempted a straight Noir movie.

The Fugitive

Long Voyage Home

Thursday 22 November 2012

Blood Money



       I always play Russian roulette in my head
       It's seventeen black and twenty-nine red
       How far from the gutter, how far from the pew
       I'll always remember to forget about you

       A good man is hard to find
       Only strangers sleep in my bed
       My favourite words are good-bye
       And my favourite colour is red


A Good Man is Hard to Find
(Waits/ Brennan)
Tom Waits 2002

from Blood Money 

Wednesday 21 November 2012

Robert Krasker

Third Man

Odd Man Out

Brief Encounter

Quiet American

The Criminal

Fall of the Roman Empire

Henry V

Tuesday 20 November 2012

Tender Noir


         One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual. There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes the size of a pin-prick, but wounds still. The marks of suffering are more comparable to the loss of a finger, or the sight of an eye. We may not miss them, either, for one minute in a year. But if we should there is nothing could be done about it.

Tender is the Night
F. Scott Fitzgerald
1934

image
Esther Bubley
Third Avenue 1951

Monday 19 November 2012

The Nickel Ride


                                 Only seen clips of this so far but for early 70s Neo-Noirs it looks as if it has captured the mood at least of Eddie Coyle and maybe the gritty L.A appeal of say Hickey and Boggs .



Sunday 18 November 2012

Surf Noir #2


           He could see that now for the first time it was not only Ellen Tucker he pursued. It was himself as well. He stared out the window, across the small yard, toward the ragged skyline of Huntingdon Beach hearing once more in the dark recesss of his own mind the high electric whine of those neon letters above the Club Tahiti.

Tapping the Source
Kem Nunn
1984

Saturday 17 November 2012

Enigma of Noir


        If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character ................ Would you slow down ? Or speed up ?

Chuck Palahnuick
Invisible Monsters
1999

image
The Third Man

Friday 16 November 2012

Classic Fragments10- The Short Con


Mamet's seminal Neo Noir House of Games from 1987 was his debut feature and skillfully depicts the world of hustlers and con-men.

Thursday 15 November 2012

Existential Noir


        He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate ; to marry, to give up the game, to drag his death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked. No one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no good or evil unless he thought them into being.

Jean Paul Sartre

image
Moments- Lartigue
reblogged from Hobnob-Noir

Wednesday 14 November 2012

Boris Kauffman

Twelve Angry Men

Baby Doll

The Brotherhood

The Fugitive Kind

The Pawnbroker


On the Waterfront