Fragments of Noir: February 2019

Thursday, 28 February 2019

A Sacred Space

Boxing inhabits a sacred space predating civilisation ; or, to use D.H Lawrence's phrase, before God was love. If it suggests a savage ceremony or a rite of atonement, it also suggests the futility of such gestures.

Joyce Carol Oates

On Boxing

1987

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Stanley Kubrick

More Undercover

Odessa File

Missing

Hangmen Also Die

Cambridge Spies

Valkyrie

Operation Finale

Spy Who Came in from the Cold

Armee Des Ombres

Mr Arkadin

Riphagen

Black Book

Flame and Citron

The Debt

The Kremlin Letter

Charlotte Gray

The Conversation

Operation Valkyrie (2004)

Wednesday, 27 February 2019

More Ted Croner

http://www.howardgreenberg.com/artists/ted-croner

Through the Mill

If you want the thrill of love

I've been through the mill of love

Old love, new love

Every love but true love

Love for Sale

(Porter)

Ella Fitgerald

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George Gross

Tuesday, 26 February 2019

The Flip Side

Film Noir is the flip side of the all-American success story. It's about people who realize that following a program will never get them what they crave. So they cross the line, commit a crime and reap the consequences. Or, they're tales about seemingly innocent people tortured by paranoia and ass-kicked by fate. Either way, they depict a world that's merciless and unforgiving.

Eddie Muller

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Out of the Past
1947

Noise and the Chance

Dust when it was dry, mud when it was raining. Swearing, steaming, sweating, scheming bribing, bellowing, cheating, the carny went it's way. It came like a pillar of fire by night, bringing excitment and new things into the drowsy towns - lights and noise and the chance to win an indian blanket, to ride on the ferris wheel, to see the wild man who fondles those reptiles as a mother would fondle her babes.

William Lindsay Gresham
Nightmare Alley
1946

https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/535277-nightmare-alley

Monday, 25 February 2019

Dahlia Never Dies

A pretty social girl, Short dated often but seldom seriously. She was not known as a drinker, despite the El Paseo incident, and worked regularly as a theatre usher, cashier and waitress.

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Her final year morphed toward parasitic behaviour. She mooched meals, rides, housing and money. She had excellent radar for picking nice people who would be sympathetic to the sad story about her fiance's death.

excerpt from

The Black Dahlia Never Dies

Gretchen Wenner

Santa Barbara Independent - June 2018

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Elizabeth Short

Sept 1943

https://www.independent.com/news/2018/jun/07/black-dahlia-never-dies/