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Under Capricorn (1949) is an Alfred Hitchcock brooding moral historical sinister housekeeper and class conflict romance outback ranch nine to ten minute tracking shot paranoid women and gaslighting and past catching up with you alcohol themed antipodean love triangle drama classic color film noir farewell to the forties tale of the masochistic extremes of marital fidelity and a gloomy amalgam of shared guilt abjured desire complete with a drugged drink starring Ingrid Bergman, Jospeh Cotten, Cecil Parker, Michael Wilding, Margaret Leighton (as Milly, Flusky's scheming housekeeper), Denis O'Dea as Mr Corrigan, Jack Watling and Harcourt Williams.
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The Man With a Cloak (1951) is a talky and confined gloomy New York gothic mansion genre-less melodrama Poe-posturing old New York style historical murder, deception and drunken curmudgeon paranoid girl poetic justice and wicked housekeeper style twist and turning film noir yarn which plays a special riff with classic literary gothic Americana, and which stars Barbara Stanwyck and Joseph Cotten, wow, and is Poe-infested raven wavin bed-ridden dying uncle of fortune and handsome literary low lifes at the bar and on the streets, with Leslie Caron, Louis Calhern, Jim Backus, and Margaret Wycherly.
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It is a rocky period in history and it is a question indeed as to whether I Shot Jesse James (1949) might categorically qualify for either the western noir or the historical noir designation, for weirdly in effect it is both.
Edgar G. Ulmer's Bluebeard (1944) exists as an eerie artefact of Poverty Row filmmaking, elevated by its German Expressionist cinematography and the morbid charisma of John Carradine. The film, produced by the minuscule PRC (Producers Releasing Corporation), manages to overcome the material limitations of its budget through a meticulously cultivated atmosphere of gloom and psychological torment.
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The comforting narrative of women in captivity, makes the writing so much clearer. There is noir sensibility, and feminist undercurrents, barely squeaking beneath the weight of the production, and adaptation as a moribund style of movie.
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Starring Gene Kelly as a hero for the good of the new country, and an immigrant who much in the style of the later Michael Corleone, vows a vengeance on the Black Hand gang that killed his father.
The historical aspect is accurate as it goes, and most notably there are scenes of pubic speaking during which the existence of the Black Hand is denied completely, something that was common to the phenomenon.
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The women's movies of film noir, the overlapping themes of gaslighting men and paranoid women, and old houses and a stripped back gothic that retains none of the deep psychology but has everyone in the extremist of states all of the time, these women's movies are troped to the core with such material as is found in So Evil My Love (1948).
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The dead do not rest on Mark Robson's island. In Isle of the Dead (1945), what begins as a contemplation on the duties of command and the sanctity of reason unravels into a vision of mental collapse, buried trauma, and spiritual unease.
The film, produced by Val Lewton and directed by Robson, engages its viewers in a paradox: its imagery evokes stillness, isolation, stasis, and yet its emotional and thematic resonances never cease to convulse.
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For oddity and oddity alone the first scene of this spectacular cast of hundreds of extras spectacular festacular magicianical historical Francophile tale of society ambition and absolute Welles-ian pride of personality leading to a hubris-driven fall, has for no apparent reason other than the whimsie or the dandification of the reels, an entretemps between Dumas Snr played with bold waggery by Berry Kroeger, and Dumas Jnr, played with gentle ungruffery by the normally gruffed up Raymond Burr.
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No monstrous modes of action herein but something that seems to prefigure the British Hammer films of the later 1950s and the 1960s, with a village horror kind of vaudevillian villain most mild torture and cruelty, with visions of captivity dominating the viewers delivered palette of ideas.
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Alfred Hitchcock’s oeuvre is rife with complex and often tyrannical parental figures. This recurring motif not only shapes his narratives but also deepens the psychological tension in his films.
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These two visionaries of the mid-century were brought together by Alexander Korda to make this World War I spy thriller novel of the same title by Joseph Storer Clouston into a film.
Powell and Pressburger eventually made over 20 films during the course of their partnership.
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Presumably one could tune in as many have done in order to see Lugosi and Karloff playing a scene together, which certainly happens within and is worth the wait.
Elsewhere Scotland provides some proper atmosphere and the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle are re-created well given the restraints of a typical studio.
There are a few other Scottish travesties to enjoy, and one of the rarest within The Body Snatcher (1945) is the murdering of the dog Greyfriar's Bobby, much beloved of every soul in both Hollywood, and in Scotland. To see wee Bobbie smashed and disposed of with a shovel is an awesome and horrific sight.
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The late 1950s brought black-and-white television to new heights, with The Untouchables exemplifying the era’s gritty appeal and plunge into endless tropery, some of which started right here. Known for its violence, the show stirred controversy in its day, with its portrayal of mob brutality and intense confrontations between law enforcement and the Chicago crime syndicates.
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