Fragments of Noir: 2025

Saturday, 13 December 2025

To Other People

We never get accustomed to being less important to other people than they are to us.

Graham Greene
The Third Man
1949

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Der Dritte Mann Annika Siems

Friday, 12 December 2025

Thursday, 11 December 2025

I can entertain the proposition that life is a metaphor for boxing - for one of those bouts that go on and on, round following round, jabs, missed punches, clinches, nothing determined, again the bell and again you and your opponent so evenly matched it's impossible to see your opponent is you ......

Joyce Carol Oates

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George Luks

Wednesday, 10 December 2025

The Biblical Rain

What designates Glengarry Glen Ross as an atypical Noir is it's commitment to defining characteristics of Noir as opposed to the tropes we've come to moreso associate it with. The film is pervasive in Noir aesthestics, from the biblical rain and neon lights that decorate the first half to the nihilistic characters and desolate stakes that catapult everything towards a fatalistic conclusion. These facets alone can already be considered derivative of Film Noir, but it goes even further to solidify it's basis in the conventions of the style. The magic of Film Noir comes from the struggle of telling brutal mystery stories through the limitations of the Hollywood Hays Code, which prevented of the violence and sex that was the entire selling point to begin with. Thus, Film Noir relied on a lot of implication and double entendre to slip past the censors, propagating the mystery element further and increasing the allure to a magnetic level.