More Bad Cops

Internal Affairs

The Prowler

          A constant recurring theme in all Noir eras : the corrupt cop(s) on downward spiral.

Touch of Evil

Reservoir Dogs

Serpico

Kansas City Confidential

Cop Land

Underworld U.S.A

L.A Confidential

Sweet Smell of Success

Killer Inside Me

Romeo is Bleeding

One Broken Promise at a Time

        Lonesome's a whole other thing. Incurable. Terminal. A hole in your heart you could drive a semi truck through. So big and so deep that no amount of money or whiskey or pussy or dope in the whole goddam world can fill it up because you dug it yourself and your digging it still, one lie, one disappointment and one broken promise at a time.

I'll Never Get Out of this World Alive
Steve Earle
2011

image
Andreas Feininger

Classic fragments1 - Killing of Freddie Bauer

The killing of the Freddie Bauer character in Abraham Polonsky's Force of Evil which is definitely one of the most stylishly choreographed murder scenes from  all of Classic Noir.

Simone Signoret

Western Noir

Directed in 1948 by Robert Wise (The Set-Up, Odds Against Tommorow) Blood on the Moon is a fusion of western and Noir about a corrupt west, shot by Nick Musuraca and lead role played by Mitchum.

How's it Gonna End

He had three whole dollars
A worn out car
And a wife who was
Leaving for good
Life's made of trouble
Worry pain and struggle
She wrote goodbye in
The dust on the hood

How's it Gonna End
Tom Waits
2004

photo Alex Prager

Val Kilmer

Salton Sea
Spartan
Bad Lieutenant- Port of Call New Orleans
Heat
Kill me Again
Thunderheart

My Dark Places

              Ellroy photographed when sleeping rough and burglarizing rich homes in his beloved native L.A and his mother's photo as a nurse leading up to the time in his childhood when she was brutally murderdered. Both these times are portrayed in the excellent non-fictional My Dark Places.

Eric White #2

Night Game

Then the night turned cold
Colder than the moon
The stars were white as bones
The stadium was old
Older than the screams
Older than the teams


Night Games
Paul Simon

Mojave Noir

      A long dusty parade route of fraternal lodges, cheap motels and cross streets with names that beckon - North Star and Lupine and Ocotillo- The front yards with pit-bulls that tell you to forget about it. Then there's the town itself split in half by the age old conflict of violence and beauty.

      Carrying us into the empty white heat of the Mojave, as we meet and come to know the modern nomads who turn to the west for salvation only to be devoured by it's false promise.

www.deannestillman.com

Code of Noir

       A man is given but one right at birth : to choose his own death. But if he chooses because he's weary of his own life, then his entire existence has been without meaning.

Deuxiemme Souffle
opening epigram
Jean Pierre Melville
1962