Fragments of Noir: May 2024

Saturday 18 May 2024

You Always Pay

I didn't know that costs accrue. I didn't know that you always pay for what you suppress.

My Dark Places
James Ellroy
1996
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Dark_Places_(book)

Friday 17 May 2024

Rear Window

Rear Window
Alfred Hitchcock
1954

https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2012/jul/25/my-favourite-hitchcock-rear-window

Won't Help You

The cigarettes you light, one after another, won't help you forget her.

Frank Sinatra

image
Bob Willoughby
Sinatra

Thursday 16 May 2024

Even Bad Luck is Some Kind of Luck #130

Angel Heart

Ace in the Hole

Vertigo

Asphalt Jungle

Body Heat

The Big Combo

Babylon Berlin

To Have and Have Not

Cercle Rouge

Sweet Smell of Success

Chinatown

Seventh Victim

Slam Dance

The Set Up

They Shoot Horses Don't They

Naked City

The Conformist

Ministry of Fear

Se7en

Devil in a Blue Dress

Mildred Pierce (1945)

Illustrious Corpses

Killing of a Chinese Bookie

Le Trou

Last Seduction

The Hitch-Hiker

Postman Always Rings Twice (1981)

Reservoir Dogs

Night of the Hunter

Le Samourai

Wednesday 15 May 2024

Anxiety is the Dizzines

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

Soren Kierkegaard

image
Esther Bubley

Tuesday 14 May 2024

The moment Bowie is gunned down by the police, the story ends. What happens next is only a story of light and shadow. Keechie, reading the farewell note he left her, gets up, possibly seeing the onlookers offscreen. Four shots for that simple movement, with very slight angle and lighting changes. Is it love, mourning, sadness, a requiem, defiance ? Putting it into words doesn't make a difference. At the final fade-out, the lights are lowered on camera, with her face plunged into darkness and only her hair backlit.

They Live by Night ; Dream Journey
Bernard Eisenschitz
Criterion.com
2017

image
Stephane Oiry

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/4654-they-live-by-night-dream-journey