Fragments of Noir

Rear Window

2012-03-05T13:32:00.000Z

Based on a Woolrich story and directed by Hitchcock in 1954, almost entirely on a one room set, it was inevitable it became a classic. James Stewart's lead character spends the movie in a wheelchair in his Greenwich Village apartment visited by his housekeeper and fiance and thinks he has witnessed some dark events amongst his neighbours in the block opposite.

I Think I'll Just Stay Here and Drink

2012-03-05T09:52:00.001Z

illustration Robert McGinnis

     Hey putting you down won't square the deal
     At least you'll know the way i feel
     Hey, take all the money in the bank
     I'll just stay here and drink

     Hey, listen close so you can hear
     That loud jukebox playing in my ear
     Ain't no woman gonna change the way i think
     I think i'll just stay here and drink

Merle Haggard
1980
(Back to the Barrooms)

Vengeance Noir

2012-03-04T17:47:00.001Z

The Killers

Blood Simple

Memento

Out of the Past

A History of Violence

The Big Heat

Thieves Highway

Point Blank

Get Carter

Lost Weekend

2012-03-03T18:47:00.000Z

The scenes of hallucination on the detox ward and elsewhere are the most disturbing. Billy Wilder's direction and Ray Milland's tortured performance with New York locations adding to the feel make it one of my ten best classic Noirs. The book on which it's based by Charles Jackson isn't quite Hardboiled enough for me although it is good quality.

Texas Wind

2012-03-02T11:20:00.000Z

I could feel the beginnings of anger and frustration inside me as i drove away. In a good percentage of missing persons cases the person is missing of his or her own free will. They leave because of anger or boredom or loneliness or just because they don't want to be where they are anymore.

Texas Wind
James Reasoner
1980

Shore Leave

2012-03-01T22:32:00.000Z

                                                Well i was pacing myself
                                                Trying to make it all last
                                                Squeezing all the life
                                                Out of a lousy two day pass
                                                And i had a cold one at the dragon
                                                With some Fillipino floorshow
                                                And talked baseball with a lieutenant
                                                Over a Singapore sling
                                                And i wondered how the same moon outside
                                                Over this Chinatown fair
                                                Could look down on Illinois
                                                And find you there

Shore Leave
Tom Waits
1983

Thinking Man's Noir

2012-02-29T23:26:00.001Z

It was as close as i ever got to cleanliness and freedom, as far as i ever got from all the people. They had jerry-built the beaches from San Diego to the Golden Gate, bulldozed super-highways through the mountains, cut down a thousand years of Redwood growth and built an urban wilderness in the desert. They couldn't touch the ocean. They poured their sewage into it but it couldn't be tainted.

Drowning Pool
Ross MacDonald
1950

Desert Noir

2012-02-28T10:37:00.003Z

Spencer Tracy's only foray into anything with a Noirish feel and the theme of an unwelcome one-armed stranger arriving in a remote desert town where the townsfolk are covering a dark secret works well for fans of Noir and also the modern Western.

Visual Fragments #3

2012-02-24T09:40:00.001Z

Chester Himes

2012-02-23T11:49:00.003Z

                                        They were standing around the kitchen table. The window looked out on 142nd street. Snow was falling on the ice-locked piles of garbage stretching like levees along the gutters as far as the eye could see.
                                                         ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

                                        Imabelle was Jackson's woman. She was a cushion-lipped , hot bodied , banana skin chick with the speckled brown eyes of a teaser and the high arched, ball-bearing hips of a natural born amante. Jackson was crazy for her as a moose for doe.

A Rage in Harlem
Chester Himes
1957

Missing Person

2012-02-22T09:31:00.000Z

It's a while since we have seen a better portrayal of an alcoholic private detective than by Michael Shannon in Noah Buschel's 2009 washed-out Noir. For me it's a shade Coenesque and even hints occasionally at Willeford humour. Amy Ryan is also great in an understated backround role and as IMDB reviewer Grady Harp says there's a missing person in most of us.

Black Coffee

2012-02-21T17:28:00.000Z

                                I'm feelin mighty lonesome
                                I haven't slept a wink
                                I walk the floor from nine to four
                                In between i drink
                                Black coffee
                                Love's a hand me down brew
                                I'll never know a sunday
                                In this weekday room

Peggy Lee
1953
(Burke/ Webster)

Mex Noir

2012-02-13T23:24:00.001Z

A 1974 mixture of modern day western from Peckinpah's original background and the pulp Noir we all love. Some reckon it is Warren Oates' best acting performance as he seeks to bring back a piece of the guy who raped the Mexican feudal lord's young daughter.

Louis Faurer

2012-02-12T20:07:00.000Z

Wanted Man

2012-02-11T11:19:00.000Z

I got sidetracked in El Paso

Stopped to get myself a map

Went the wrong way in Juarez with Juanita on my lap

Went to sleep in Shreveport

Woke up in Abilene

Wonderin' why i'm wanted at some town half way between

Wanted man in Albuquerque

Wanted man in Syracuse

Wanted man in Tallahassee

Wanted man in Baton Rouge

Wanted Man

Bob Dylan

Best Laid Plans

2012-02-10T20:00:00.000Z

A small town 1999 Noir shot around Bakersfield CA and still relatively obscure despite it's strong performances and echoes of classic Thompson/Cain style and plot. An old college buddy, a supposed rape and a dead end job lead in an inevitable direction.

Day into Night

2012-02-07T13:17:00.006Z

Another one of the best articles stumbled upon recently is Vanity Fair's Ann Douglas 2007 piece Day into Noir

Like Chandler, Woolrich posessed an insomniac's knowledge of all that is still moving after the city is officially abed, the uncanny sights and sounds urban sites give off when they become posthumous reminders of their daytime function ; the ' service station glaring with wasted light' in Chandler's 'Big Sleep' or 'the lighted oblong marking an all-night lunchroom' in Woolrich's 'The Black Curtain' . Despair gains it's cachet by it's uselessness.

Versions of Weegee's subjects turn up as extras and bit players on the peripheries of Noir......................Hostages from the ordinary world, held unawares, they watch or pass by as near or far from the action as a criminal's unconsulted consience'

Read full article www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2007/03/noirdouglas200703

Charles Beaumont

2012-02-06T23:48:00.000Z

Came Honker's trip to Slice City along about then. Our sax man got a neck-full of some of the sharpest kind of steel. So we were out one horn and you could tell. So we played a little bit too rough and the head arrangements Collins and his crew grew up to, they needed Honker's grease in the worst way.

Black Country
Charles Beaumont
1954
first published in Playboy

Chicago born writer of mostly experimental horror/fantasy and science fiction ,only occasionally something with a crime theme, Beaumont wrote the novel and screenplay for 1962's The Intruder which confronted issues of racism. He died aged only 47 and was best known as author of many Twilight Zone episodes as well as contributing a number of stories to the emerging Playboy and more established Esquire magazines.

The Intruder

Forgotten Noir

2012-02-05T20:53:00.004Z

Death of a Cyclist

It's hard to believe these Dvd's are not yet readily available to all of us.

Death of a Cyclist
Phantom Lady
Delusion
Pale Flower
The Burglar
Reign of Terror
Daybreak (1948)
The Line up
Friends of Eddie Coyle
The Kill off
Criss cross
Hangover Square
Deuxiemme Souffle
Phenix City story
Nickel Ride
Red Badge of Courage (dark themed by Huston)
Suture
Last lullaby

Daybreak ( 1948 )

Mencher Noir

2012-02-04T09:29:00.000Z

American artist Kenney Mencher's work echoes touches of Hopper and Pulp Noir as well as many other meanings.

Lots of his work on www.kenney-mencher.com

Jesus Out to Sea

2012-02-03T19:39:00.001Z

You know what death smells like ? Fish that someone has buried in a garden of night blooming flowers. Or a field mortuary during the monsoon season in a tropical country right after the generators have failed. Or the buckets that the sugar worker whores used to pour into the rain ditches behind their cribs on Sunday morning.

Jesus Out to Sea
James Lee Burke
2006

Narrowback

2012-02-02T21:37:00.001Z

On the street the pink neon offerings of 'LIQUOR' and 'TAROT CARDS' and 'BUDDY BOOTHS' burned like beacons in the dark. He would have waited down on the corner but he knew that in July at four a.m the human residue that called the streets of Times Square home was just getting it's second wind.

The Narrowback
Michael Ledwidge
1998

Michael Clayton

2012-02-01T23:26:00.002Z

Probably one of the best of the Noirish politico-thrillers in recent years. Alongwith likes of Breach and Rendition it shows corruption in positions of power and Clooney's title character wrestles with his own gambling addiction.

Darkness on the Edge of Town

2012-01-31T22:23:00.003Z

             Some folks are born into a good life
             Other folks get it anyway, anyhow
             I lost my money and i lost my wife
             Them things don't seem to matter much to me now
             Tonight i'll be on that hill cause i can't stop
             I'll be on that hill with everything i got
             Lives on the line where dreams are found and lost
             I'll be there on time and i'll pay the cost
             For wanting things that can only be found
             In the darkness on the edge of town

Darkness on the Edge of Town
Bruce Springsteen
1978

Drive

2012-01-29T23:19:00.000Z

Much later as he sat with his back against an inside wall of a Motel 6 just north of Phoenix, watching the pool of blood lap toward him, Driver would wonder whether he had made a terrible mistake. Later still of course there'd be no doubt. But for now as they say Driver is in the moment. And the moment includes this blood lapping toward him. The pressure of dawn's late light at windows and door, traffic sounds from the interstate nearby, the sound of someone weeping in the next room.

Drive
James Sallis
2006

Kafkaesque

2012-01-28T21:36:00.000Z

Kafka- Soderbergh

Was one critic right in likening Noir to a cul-de-sac of the soul.

Naked Lunch-Cronenberg

The Trial- Welles

Stranger on the Third Floor- Ingster

Don't Smoke in Bed

2012-01-23T23:37:00.002Z

                                I left a note on his dresser
                                My old wedding ring
                                With these few goodbye words
                                How can i sing
                                Goodbye old sleepy head
                                I'm packing you in like i said

                                Take care of everything
                                I'm leaving my wedding ring
                                Don't look for me
                                I'll get ahead
                                Remember darling
                                Don't smoke in bed

Don't Smoke in Bed
Peggy Lee
1948

Noir Filmgrimage

2012-01-22T20:57:00.007Z

lady from shanghai

One of best pieces i've read recently for the Noir tourist is Nick James' Falling from Nob Hill on the BFI's webpage about Noirs set in San Francisco.

www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/newsandviews/festivals/san-francisco-2011-filmgrimage.php

Rififi

2012-01-20T14:46:00.003Z

This masterpiece of Heist Noir directed by American Jules Dassin in 1955 when in blacklist exile is one of the all-time best French language Noirs even when comparing it to JP Melville's various greats. Shot on the rain soaked streets of Paris with the lead role of an ageing criminal recently released from prison. His is one of the most powerful Noir performances and Jean Servais' journey toward doom, fuelled perhaps by his off-screen alcohol problems, is all too often overlooked.

A Clean Well Lighted Place

2012-01-19T00:01:00.002Z

It was very late and everyone had left the cafe except an old man who sat in the shadow the leaves of the tree made against an electric light. In the daytime the street was dusty, but at night the dew settled the dust and the old man liked to sit late because he was deaf and now at night it was quiet and he felt the difference.

A Clean Well Lighted Place

Ernest Hemingway

1926

Winner take Nothing

Leaving Las Vegas

2012-01-18T19:10:00.003Z

Alongwith Lost Weekend probably one of the best Noir portraits of the reasons why it's best to avoid the demon drink. Directed by Mike Figgis in 1995 it's a neon soaked tragic love story of screenwriter Cage, who has moved from L.A to Vegas to allow himself 24hr access to booze, and lonely streetwalker Elizabeth Shue. The novel on which it's based by John O'Brien is even better and was described by his father as a long suicide note as O'Brien died shortly after completing it from the effects of the bottle.

Capote Noir

2012-01-17T16:15:00.000Z

He talked for an hour and twenty-five minutes- from two fifty to four fifteen- and told while Nye attempted to list them of highways and hotels, motels, rivers, towns and cities. A chorus of entwining names: Apache, El Paso, Corpus Christi, Santillo, San Luis Potosi, Acapulco, San Diego , Dallas, Omaha, Sweetwater, Stillwater, Tenville Junction, Tallahasee, Needles, Miami, Hotel Nuevo Waldorf, Somerset Hotel, Hotel Simone, Arrowhead Motel, Cherokee Motel and many many more. He gave them the name of the man in Mexico to whom he'd sold his own 1940 Chevrolet and confessed that he had stolen a newer model in Iowa.

In Cold Blood

Truman Capote

1966

After Hours Noir

2012-01-15T11:31:00.001Z

It was winter in Manhattan, falling snowflakes filled the air
The streets were covered with a film of ice
But a little simple magic that i learned about somewhere
Changed the weather all around, just within a thrice
I bought you violets for your furs, and it was spring for awhile, remember ?

Violets for your furs
Sinatra/ Billie Holliday

Just Another Love Story

2012-01-13T21:12:00.001Z

This Danish Noir from 2007 has a ferocious energy coupled with an almost absurd series of plot twists that would appeal to the Coens.

Lateshift at the Diner

2012-01-12T20:03:00.000Z

In a graveyard charade, a lateshift masquerade

And it's two for a Quarter, Dime for a dance

With Woolworth Rhinestone diamond earrings

And a sideways glance and now the register rings

Eggs and Sausage

Nighthawks at the Diner

Tom Waits

1973

Bukowski's Basement Blog

2012-01-11T16:22:00.000Z

One of the best blogs i've stumbled on recently is Anthony Venutolo's 'Bukowski's Basement'. There is a superb mix of Americana/ Pulp/Noir/ Dirty realist stuff made up of images, flash fiction and music.

www.bukowskisbasement.blogspot.com

Devil in a Blue Dress

2012-01-10T09:33:00.000Z

She had light hair coming down over her bare shoulders and high cheekbones and eyes that might have been blue if the artist got it right. After staring at her for a full minute i decided that she might be worth looking for if you could get her to smile at you that way.

Devil in a Blue Dress
Walter Mosley
1990

Friends of Eddie Coyle

2012-01-09T23:44:00.001Z

There are a few such as Elmore Leonard who think George V. Higgins' 1970 first is the best crime novel ever written and there's not much to disagree on. The book's better than the movie and the 1973 screen version is excellent.

Everything Happens to Me

2012-01-08T09:51:00.001Z

                            I make a date for golf and you can bet your life it rains
                            I try to throw a party and the guy upstairs complains
                            I guess i'll go thru life just catchin colds and missing trains
                            Everything happens to me

Everything Happens to me
Chet Baker
(Adair/Dennis)

City on the Make

2012-01-07T19:00:00.000Z

The great trains howling from track to track all night. The taut and telegraphic murmur of ten thosand city wires, drawn most cruelly against a city sky. The rush of city waters beneath the city streets. The passionate passing of the city's last El.

Never come Morning
Nelson Algren
1942

In the Valley of Elah

2012-01-06T14:53:00.002Z

I hadn't expected this 2007 military themed film to be probably one of my favourite modern Noirs of recent years when i watched it last year but the bleak storyline and powerful lead roles set out as almost a traditional detective tale give it an understated power.

Tommy Lee Jones and Charlize Thereon give it a strangely haunted feel and
Paul Haggis has been noted by many as a director to look out for.

Nobody Move

2012-01-05T11:44:00.002Z

serialization from playboy magazine

After the film it was raining, a light steady rain. Ruthless neon on the wet streets like busted candy. Eight pm, dark enough to ditch the cadillac.He drove it over to the town's tiny airport and parked and took the contents of his gym bag, the socks and underwear and toilet kit, and slipped them into Gambol's duffel and threw the gym bag into the darkness.

Nobody Move

Denis Johnson

2009

Detour

2012-01-03T14:14:00.008Z

Anyone who is a fan of real Noir already knows this movie and loves it. Everything from the low-budget set goofs and awkward plot developments add to the mystique which it has developed over the years.

Made in 1945 by Austrian director Edgar G. Ulmer in a short period of just a few days it has all the doom-laden style that many far more expensive attempts couldn't achieve to such a great degree. Geoff McNab said it embodied the 'Warped nightmarish feeling of a Kafka story' and Roger Ebert described it as the ' Guilty soul of Film Noir' adding that 'Nobody who sees it forgets it'.

Jim Thompson Noir

2012-01-01T13:52:00.010Z

Then he laughed and she laughed. And quivering with the movement of the train, the dead man seemed to laugh too.

Jim Thompson
The Getaway
1958

You can't stamp on a man's corns when he's got his feet cut off.

The Killer Inside Me
1952

I kissed her, a long hard kiss. Because baby didn't know it. But baby was dead and in a way i couldn't have loved her more.

Killer Inside Me

Best piece i've read on Thompson recently is David Geffner's 'Lost Hollywood Years'

www.moviemaker.com

Down by the River

2011-12-25T20:12:00.003Z

The thirst for knowledge is like a piece of ass you know you shouldn't chase; in the end, you chase it all the same.

Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go
George Pelecanos
1995

The Goodbye Look

2011-12-24T13:51:00.003Z

'Look if you feel you'll have to turn around and go back there i'll understand'. She added 'I can leave my body to medical science or put in an application for equal time'.

Ross MacDonald

The unasked question simmered down after awhile, and my mind hung loose in silence. The sense of living inside the case, which i sometimes used as a drug to keep me going, slowly left me.

The Goodbye Look
Ross MacDonald
1969

Noirboiled Cain

2011-12-20T17:36:00.007Z

                         Stealing a man's wife that's nothing. But stealing his car that's larceny.

                          Love; when you get fear into it, it's not love any more. It's hate.

James M. Cain

More excellent Hardboiled quotes on www.pulpjournals.wordpress.com

Louisiana Noir

2011-12-20T13:39:00.003Z

When people make a contract with the devil and give him an air-conditioned office to work in, he doesn't go back home easily.

In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead
James Lee Burke
1993

Manhattan Noir

2011-12-13T00:02:00.001Z

I spun my chair around and stared out at Times Square. The Camels spectacular on the Claridge puffed fat steam smoke rings out over the snarling traffic.The dapper gentleman on the sign, mouth frozen in a round O of perpetual surprise, was Broadway's harbinger of spring. Earlier in the week teams of scaffold-hung painters transformed the smoker's dark winter homburg and chesterfield into seersucker and panama straw, not as poetic as capistrano swallows, but it got the message across.

Falling Angel

William Hjortsberg

1978

Letters Home

2011-12-12T23:27:00.001Z

James Crumley and Gustav Hasford give us another couple of links between serving in Vietnam and becoming a writer in the Hardboiled vein.

Hasford in Vietnam

Excerpt from Gypsy Good Time

is on www.gustavhasford.com

The Lady who Shot Lee Morgan

2011-12-11T10:09:00.002Z

Jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan was murdered in the early hours of February 19th 1972 at Slugs, a jazz club in New York's East Village where his band was performing. Following an altercation between sets Morgan's 46 year old common-law wife Helen More shot him in the chest onstage, killing him within moments. He was 33 years old. Morgan had just started to get back up onstage to begin the last set when More re-entered the club, having left unnannounced earlier, and called out his name. He turned round and she shot him in the heart. Doorman Lee Holman immediately grabbed her by the wrists and wrestled the gun away from her. She then started to scream 'Baby, what have i done ?' and ran toward the stage.

An interview with Helen More years later

by Larry Reni Thomas is on

www.carolinajazzconnectionwithlarrythomas.blogspot.com

Hammett Noir

2011-12-10T01:22:00.001Z

The face she made at me was probably meant for a smile. Whatever it was, it beat me, I was afraid she'd do it again. I surrendered.

Dashiell Hammett
The Continental Op
1924

Fat City - Leonard Gardner

2011-12-09T09:28:00.005Z

Outside it was still dark.The rain that had kept Tully in the room with a fifth of whiskey and a loaf of whole-wheat bread was still falling.

The northbound Greyhound droned into Stockton's fume filled terminal, and among the passengers who filed stiffly out was a short Mexican wearing a camel's hair overcoat and pointed high-heeled yellow gaiter shoes.

Fat City
Leonard Gardner
1969

Deep Blue Sea

2011-12-08T10:09:00.001Z

For anyone who appreciates the post-war atmosphere of Brief Encounter, End of the Affair and Dance with a Stranger this new release which has no thriller element at all and contains what can only partially be descibed as a femme fatale, certainly captures the look of Britain in that era.

Post-Nam Noir

2011-12-07T12:23:00.009Z

From late sixties onwards the Post Noir era of American cinema was probably under a heavier influence of the anxieties and fears of the returning Nam veteran than the classic Noir era had previously felt and portrayed in relation to those same fears felt by WWII vets.The lack of recognition and sometimes negative reaction those returning were subjected to was also brought to light in a number of classic books such as Born on the Fourth of July, The Things they Carried, and Paco's Story. The obvious movie portrayals of how life could be 'back in the world' such as Taxi Driver, Mr Majestyk, Cutter's Way, Dead Presidents, Jacob's Ladder etc only represent a small number of those which relate in some way to a new feeling amongst those returning and spreading amongst most who knew them.

To Have and Have Not

2011-12-01T23:08:00.002Z

"Listen" i told him "Don't be so tough early in the morning. I'm sure you've cut plenty of people's throats. I haven't even had my coffee yet".

Ernest Hemingway
To Have and Have Not
1937

Thom Jones

2011-11-29T19:52:00.003Z

Jorgeson had shown me the wisdom of switching from Camels to Pall malls - they were much longer, packed a pretty good jolt, and when we snapped open our brushed chrome zippos, torched up and inhaled the first few drags, we shared the overmastering pleasure that tobacco can bring if you use it seldom and judiciously.

The Pugilist at Rest
Thom Jones
1993

Rampart

2011-11-25T19:54:00.000Z

A new bad cop Noir due for release soon and featuring Harrelson in the lead role supported by the likes of Robin Wright, Steve Buscemi and Ice Cube.

Anything co-written by James Ellroy is worth a look.

More Woolrich Noir

2011-11-24T21:40:00.001Z

I had that trapped feeling, like some sort of a poor insect that you've put inside a downturned glass, and it tries to climb up the sides, and it can't, and it can't, and it can't.

Blues of a lifetime- The Autobiography of Cornell Woolrich

Almost Blue

2011-11-16T11:56:00.005Z

Almost blue

Almost doin things we used to do

There's a girl here and she's almost you

Almost blue

Chet Baker

Almost Blue

Frank Sinatra has a cold

2011-11-15T14:53:00.002Z

If anyone doubts the link to Noir or Harboiled they should listen to his rendition of Wee Small Hours or Autumn in New York as a soundtrack.

The celebrated 1966 article for Esquire describes a morose Sinatra silently nursing a glass of bourbon and contemplating how middle age affects the successful guy.

The type of classic non fiction in this case found in mens magazines is great with some of Pete Hamill's New York stuff and also more obscure gems such as Devil Thumbs a Ride from Barry Gifford.

Mitchum Noir

2011-10-17T15:13:00.010+01:00

Most of us would rate him as one of the great Noir leads as his face fits the role of a doomed loser.

Friends of Eddie Coyle

Blood on the Moon

Crossfire

Night of the Hunter

Out of the Past (Build my Gallows High)

The Yakuza

Story of GI Joe

No Exit Noir

2011-10-14T21:25:00.005+01:00

No Exit Press is a publishing imprint which has always been a reliable source over the years of everything from Jason Starr and James Sallis all the way back to Paul Cain's 1933 Hardboiled landmark Fast One.

Willeford, Bunker and other notables in between.

They Shoot Horses Don't They ?

2011-10-09T22:44:00.003+01:00

For a moment i saw Gloria again, sitting on that bench on the pier. The bullet had just struck her on the side of the head ; the blood had not even started to flow. The flash from the pistol still lighted her face. Everything was as plain as day.

They shoot horses don't they ?
Horace McCoy
1935

Big House Noir

2011-10-02T18:56:00.016+01:00

Although not all of these examples are specifically Noir they all tell us the significance of the anti-hero's freedom.

Straight Time

Brute Force

The Prophet

The Getaway

Night of the Hunter

Dead Man Walking

The Killers

Cool Hand Luke

The Criminal

I Want to Live

Birdman of Alcatraz

Armee Des Ombres

In Cold Blood

Last Picture Show

2011-09-06T23:14:00.008+01:00

The 1971 classic directed by Peter Bogdanovich shows various lives within the uncertain atmosphere of a fading smalltown in 50s Texas. It's shot in superb black & white by Robert Surtees and has a sad and at the same time raunchy background. Many have noted the influence of the director's heroes Orson Welles and John Ford in his portrayal of the flat windswept landscapes and it's desolate appearance.

All Night Gas

2011-09-06T19:34:00.004+01:00

.................. his introduction to Hattiesburg was an all night gas station on highway 49 where a lone teenager-slash-halfwit was capturing 'pinching' bugs attracted by the bright lights and coralling them in a bucket of sand he kept inside his little glass booth, a diversion he favoured because, as he said, he liked to watch the bugs kill each other.

Double Down ; Reflections on Gambling and Loss
Frederick and Steve Barthelme
1999

New Releases

2011-09-05T19:17:00.011+01:00

Early previews of these new releases indicate they may be worth looking out for.

Gary Oldman as George Smiley

The Bleak Western

2011-08-31T14:33:00.037+01:00

We often find that Westerns, modern or traditional, have elements of darkness
and pessimism found in the Noir thriller especially, as with some of these, if the storyline is that of revenge.

Django

Comanche Station

Border Incident

Great Northfield Minnesota Raid

Ox Bow Incident

Wild Bunch

The Outrage

True Grit (2010)

Last Picture Show

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

No Country for Old Men

High Plains Drifter

Major Dundee

The Shootist

Thunderheart

Junior Bonner

Hud

Unforgiven

Eagle's Wing

Once Upon a Time in the West

Bad Day at Black Rock

Pocket Money

Matewan

One-eyed Jacks

Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

Dirty Neon

2011-08-30T22:17:00.002+01:00

Neon is 100 years old. Invented in France and first used in America around 1923 by a Los Angeles Packard car dealership. As Chris Black says on his Available in any colour blog where would Hardboiled or Noir be without it.

ALF'S BBQ Drinks Sandwiches

The sign was done in blue lights and kind of hung like a ghost there in the dripping trees. It swung and you could hear it creak. Just the sign and nothing else.

The Red Scarf

Gil Brewer

1958

Greyhound Race

2011-08-30T20:40:00.005+01:00

One dog was black as a panther and another was white with brown ticking like flung paint. There was another white, a female and smaller than the rest with a half-black face and a black spot in a shape that reminded Joe of Louisiana, south of Baton Rouge. And there was the dark silken brindle, in red silks with a white number one stitched on the sides. Joe would have paid to watch that brindle just walk, but he was down to his last twenty dollars and it was not entertainment he sought. He had to turn that twenty into something more so he was back looking at the red fawn. It was stuck in his head, somehow, that such a ramshackle dog would win the race because he didn't have anything going for him but to win. He was due. It was such thinking that lead Joe to his present state.

David Williams
Maybe in West Memphis I'll Find My Joy
from The Soundcheck & the Fury blog

More on www.davidwwilliams.blogspot.com

Gothic Noir

2011-08-30T14:29:00.017+01:00

illustration by Melissa Downing

The only film directed by Englishman Charles Laughton, Night of the Hunter is also the only one to be described as an expressionistic Gothic Noir fairytale. Based on the book by Davis Grubb it has possibly Mitchum's best ever performance as tatooed preacher Harry Powell and shot by Stanley Cortez who did the likes of Magnificent Ambersons and Shock Corridor it's haunting to say the least.

Some More Bukowski

2011-08-25T22:36:00.012+01:00

I know what a park bench is and the landlord's knock. There are only two things wrong with money; too much or too little.

Charles Bukowski

             painting by Scott Guion

                               I like to change liquor stores frequently because the clerks got to know your habits if you went in night and day and bought huge quantities. I could feel them wondering why i wasn't dead yet and it made me uncomfortable. They probably weren't thinking any such thing, but then a man gets paranoid when he has 300 hangovers a year.

Bukowski
Women
1978

More Bukowski

2011-08-19T22:11:00.007+01:00

I was sentimental about many things : .........the long nights of drinking and smoking, talking, the arguments, being told you snore, reading a newspaper alone in a sandwich joint and feeling nausea because she's now married to a dentist with an I.Q of 95, racetracks, parks, your drinking, her dancing.................

Charles Bukowski

Women 1978

If you get married they think you're finished and if you are without a woman they think you are incomplete

Charles Bukowski

Odds Against Tommorow

2011-08-17T13:33:00.007+01:00

The debate will always be whether this great 1959 movie by Robert Wise who also gave us The set up is the last Classic Noir or first of the Post Noir cycle.

Graphic Noir

2011-08-16T23:48:00.003+01:00

Tim Lane

Carlos Sampayo & Jose Munoz

More vettriano

2011-08-14T13:02:00.007+01:00

Richard Stark

2011-08-11T22:45:00.003+01:00

Parker spent two weeks on the white sand beach at Biloxi, and on a white sandy bitch named Belle, but he was restless and one day without thinking about it he checked out and sent a forwarding address to Handy McKay and moved on to New Orleans.

Rare Coin Score
Richard Stark
1967

Donald Westlake (aka Richard Stark)

Ellroy Noir

2011-08-11T13:36:00.005+01:00

            His ghosts were all women. They ran through his dreams interchangeably. The decomp off Route126. The waitress in the marina. The teenager stunned mute by rape and blunt force trauma.
           Dream logic distorted the details. Victims moved between crime scenes and displayed conflicting signs of death. They came to life sometimes. They looked older or younger or just like they did when they fell.

My Dark Places
James Ellroy
1996

Geneva Hilliker- Ellroy's Mother

College Noir

2011-08-03T22:08:00.005+01:00

The cold atmosphere of Losey's Oxford story is an experiment in British Noir using the old class system to portray family/friend betrayals.

Hardboiled Icons

2011-07-28T23:05:00.010+01:00

Dick Powell as Marlowe

Rod Taylor as McGee

It would be interesting to hear what opinion everyone has on the rumours about the new big-screen portrayals of the iconic figures of Phillip Marlowe, Travis McGee and Parker in comparison to those attempted in the past.

                                            The actors lined up for the roles are said to be Di Caprio for McGee, Clive Allen for Marlowe and Jason Statham for Paker.

                                                    Marvin as Parker

Roy DeCarava

2011-07-21T22:46:00.005+01:00

In the old days we used to like blues. And i still do. But now the kids don't lean on the piano no more unless the piano is playing off-time.

The Sweet Flypaper

Langston Hughes Roy DeCarava

1955

Heart of Saturday Night

2011-07-20T19:52:00.002+01:00

                                            Well these diamonds on my windshield
                                            And these tears from heaven
                                            Well i'm pulling into town on the interstate
                                            Got a steel train in the rain
                                            And the wind bites thru the wing
                                            And it's these late nights and this freeway flying
                                            It always makes me sing

                                           And the radio's gone off the air
                                           Gives you time to think
                                           And you hear the rumble
                                           As you fumble for a cigarette
                                           And blazing thru this midnight jungle
                                           Remember someone that you met

Tom Waits
Diamonds on my Windshield
1974

Matthew Scudder

2011-07-20T12:35:00.006+01:00

I don't know about the rest of the country but in New york more people have achieved anonymity from rent control than ever discovered it in a twelve -step program.

Lawrence Block

The Hustler

2011-07-17T20:33:00.008+01:00

..................... when the overhead fans were turned on and when Gordon the manager would play music on his radio, then the room would adopt the quality that is peculiar to the daytime life of those places which are only genuinely alive at night - the mid-morning quality of nightclubs or bars and of poolrooms everywhere- the big nearly empty room echoing the shuffling of a few feet, the occassional clinking of glass or of metal, the sounds of brooms, of wet rags, of pieces of furniture being moved around and the half-real music that comes from radios.

The Hustler
Walter Tevis 1959

Strangers on a Night Train

2011-07-15T14:38:00.027+01:00

The train, abandoned railroad station and long isolated tracks became distinctly American symbols used in the classic Film Noir as well as in Hardboiled fiction and gritty Noirish movies in general.

Strangers on a Train

Taking of Pelham 123

Narrow Margin

L'Homme du Train

Sleeping Car Murders

House of Bamboo

The Getaway

Get Carter

The train tore along with angry irregular rhythm. It was having to stop at smaller and more frequent stations where it would wait impatiently for a moment , then attack the prairie again. But progress was imperceptible. The prairie only undulated like a vast pink-tan blanket being casually shaken.

Strangers on a Train

Patricia Highsmith

1950

Le Cercle Rouge

Berlin Express

Charlotte Gray

Compartment C- Edward Hopper

Secrets in their Eyes

Brief Encounter

Bad Day at Black Rock

Double Indemnity

Vanishing Point

Night train

Bete Humaine

The Conformist

It Always Rains on Sunday

After Hours

2011-07-14T21:12:00.003+01:00

                                        All the gang has gone home
                                        Standing on the corner
                                        All alone

                                        You and me, Streetlight
                                        We'll paint the town grey
                                        Oh, we are so many lamps
                                        Who have lost our way

                                        Say goodnight America
                                        The world still loves a dreamer

                                        And all the gang has gone home
                                        And i'm standing on the corner
                                        All alone
Rickie Lee Jones
After Hours
  1979

More Hopperesque

2011-07-13T16:51:00.004+01:00

There are certain photographic images for which the description Hopperesque was invented.

New York State of Mind

2011-07-13T10:13:00.006+01:00

It was so easy living day by day

Out of touch with the rhythm and blues

But now i need a little give and take

The New York Times, The Daily News

It comes down to reality

And it's fine with me cos i've let it slide

Don't care if it's Chinatown or on Riverside

I don't have any reasons i've left them all behind

I'm in a New York state of mind

New York State of Mind

Billy Joel