This Bad Feeling

           Its about a couple who feel that somewhere, just on the border of consciousness - or on the other side of that border - are bad, bad problems. But they can't bring them into the real world and deal with them. So this bad feeling is just hovering there, and the problems abstract themselves and become other things. It becomes like a bad dream. There are unfortunate things that happen to people, and this story is about that. It depicts an unfortunate occurrence, and gives you the feeling of a man in trouble. A thinking man in trouble.

David Lynch
on Lost Highway
Lynch on Lynch
1997

While I Waited

       It was about three in the morning at Mexican Joe's. A dingy lantern hanging from the unused electric chandelier cast an eerie light against the cobwebbed walls. Everything was quiet except for the snores of Joe who lay beneath the counter. I was eating hot tamales while i waited for my relief on the Mexican quarter beat.

The Car in the Mexican Quarter
Jim Thompson
1931

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DeviantArt

Even Bad Luck is Some Kind of Luck #158

Niagara

Road House (1948)

Angel Heart

He Ran All the Way

Nickel Ride

Odd Man Out

True Confessions

Elevator to the Gallows

Plein Soleil

Lady from Shanghai

Mad Men

Mildred Pierce

Vertigo

Scandal Sheet

Zodiac

Touch of Evil

Godfather

Deception (1946)

Carol

Le Cercle Rouge

Bitter Stems

The Hot Spot

Narrow Margin (1952)

Blue Ballad

 

Blue Ballad
(Pieranunzi)
Phil Woods

What's Life

      What's life without good friends.

Mona Demarkov
Romeo Is Bleeding
1993

Hopper Sketches

Seek To Comfort

         Humanity's deepest desires are to escape our ultimate fate, find our dreams and realize our greatest hopes. However, as the title suggests film noir does not seek to comfort it's audience and suggest that dreams can come true. In this dark and non-linear world, cynicism, alienation and despair are dominant. People do good things for the wrong reasons and vice versa. This is a world of insecurity and the people who live in it are not straightforward or recognizable in terms of classic narrative structures. They are broken, twisted and damaged - yet we travel with them on their doomed journeys. Their own hopes are not dissimilar to ours - security, stability, freedom and even love. But they seek it in far different ways - through graft, betrayal, crime and murder.

Paul Batters
Fatalism and Futility in Film Noir
Silverscreenclassicsblog
2018

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Odds Against Tomorrow
1959