Ghost of the Detective #3

Le Cercle Rouge

Crossfire

        My car was pulled off the highway, not far from where the ranch road turned off. I had cut across a field to the road and was walking quickly now. My eyes glanced up from time to time, unable to keep from looking at the huge star-dotted sky overhead. The lights of the city wash out so many of the stars. When you get a chance to see the real thing you need to take advantage of it.

Fort Worth Nights

James Reasoner

2012

Training Day 

Bullitt

In Cold Blood

Zodiac

Year of the Dragon

Gorky Park

Lift to the Scaffold

Chinatown

End of the Affair

One Way Ticket

         The night train, speeding your way to darkness. You won't get there so quick, not by natural means. You buy your ticket and you climb on board. That ticket costs everything you have. It's just one-way. It takes you speeding into the night, and leaves you there. It's the night train.

Night Train
Martin Amis
1997

top image

Fred Lyon

San Francisco

1947

Chicago Theater Hopper

Nighthawks 1942 Edward Hopper

            A series of scenes on stage titled 'The Hopper Project' set between midnight and dawn and inspired by Edward Hopper's nighttime masterpiece painting. In Brooklyn and set against such a haunting background as Nighthawks this was an atmospheric ensemble-written work conceived by Jen Ellison with a lonely jazz soundtrack which was put on back in 2010 at Chicago's Storefront theater.

Hopper's sketch for Night Windows

All Blues

                                         Some blues are sad
                                         But some are glad
                                         Dark-sad or bright-glad
                                         They're all blues
                                         All shades, all hues, all blues

                                         The color of colors
                                         The blues are more than a color
                                         They're a moan of pain
                                         A taste of strife
                                         And a sad refrain

All Blues
(Davis/ O. Brown Jr)
Ernestine Anderson

image
Walker Evans 
New York 1928  

3 Reasons - Criterion collection Part 2

Saint of the Loser

            The hunchback in the Frankford elevated, selling newspapers and glaring at his customers as though they were enemies. The seven-foot giant sandwiched between advertising signs stating that Max the clothier fitted all sizes. And an immaculately dressed drunk politely ejected from a mid-town bar. And a platinum blonde who didn't look where she was going and bumped into a shipping clerk, who dropped his packages and gazed wearily at the sky.

David Goodis
Tender Sin
1952

image
Vivian Maier

Find Some Meaning

                     To live is to suffer. To survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

Friedrich Nietzsche

image
Middle Men
2009

On Set #4

12 Angry Men

The Hustler

One-eyed Jacks

Shockproof

Rope

Raging Bull

Sunset Boulevard

More Costume Noir

Reign of Terror (aka Black Book)

   Is it period style Noir of some historical description ? A depiction of trust and betrayal dressed up in robes and buckles.

Bedlam

Gaslight

Othello

Devil and Daniel Webster

The Lodger

Beauty and the Beast

Seventh Seal

Richard III

Macbeth

All Ghosts

        We are all ghosts of yesterday, and the phantom of tomorrow awaits us alike in sunshine or in shadow, dimly perceived at times, never entirely lost.

Daphne Du Maurier

image
Unknown

Play It As It Lay

           That day i quit the human race. The only legitimate work i've done since has always been with an illegitimate purpose in mind. If that was the way it was, i'd play it as it lay.

The Name of the Game is Death
Dan J. Marlowe
1962

image
Gyorgy Kepes

They Will Not Follow You

                            Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you
                            Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you
                            The vagabond who's rapping at your door
                            Standing in the clothes that you once wore
                            Strike another match, go start anew
                            And it's all over now baby blue

It's All Over Now Baby Blue
( Dylan )
Bob Dylan

image
L.A Confidential
1997

Lee Balterman