Showing posts with label Snow Noir. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Snow Noir. Show all posts

The Servant (1963)

The Servant (1963) is a Joseph Losey classic British film noir and classic film noir powerplay domestic psychological class structure descent into anarchy and manipulative homme fatale style upper class versus lower class classy Limey nervy upstairs downstairs thriller of deceit and overt and latent sexual frustration and erotic guilt and loss of control and bisexual class hatred and manifestation of male self hatred starring James Fox, Dirk Bogarde (as Hugo Barrett), Sarah Miles, Wendy Craig, Catherine Lacey, Richard Vernon, Patrick Magee, Harold Pinter LOL, Dorothy Bromiley as girl outside Phone Box — great scene that — Johnny Dankworth — and as another fine musical treat — Davy Graham as himself. Happen to be a fan.

The Outcasts of Poker Flat (1952)

The Outcasts of Poker Flat (1952) is a claustrophobic snowbound cabin of fear and paranoia home invasion moral siege frontier angry local mob western film noir directed by Joseph M. Newman and starring Anne Baxter and Dale Robertson with a screenplay based on a short story of the same name by Bret Harte, a story indeed which and that in fact has indeed been brought to film at least five times, including in 1919 with Harry Carey and in 1937 with Preston Foster, oh yeah, snow noir, western noir.

Cash on Demand (1961)

Cash on Demand (1961) is a Limey Christmas home invasion based on a play heist telephone claustrophobic encounter and minimal set design Quentin Lawrence paranoia threat and snow and rather low key film noir, starring Peter Cushing as a signature performance fastidious bank manager put under pressure to rob his own safe under pressure from a caddish caper style gentleman's thief, and as such very almost adheres to the theatrical Aristotelian unities.

Track of the Cat (1954)

Track of the Cat (1954) is a snow-bound William A. Wellman squabblin family revenge against an animal existential and yet pathos laden wild panther ravaging bold moral allegory psychological western with a slight tendency to be classed as part film noir, part adventure, part melodrama, a part western and part ethical fable, starring Robert Mitchum, Teresa Wright, Diana Lynn, Tab Hunter, Beulah Bondi, Philip Tonge, William Hopper and Carl Switzer as Joe Sam, a case of a non-Indigenous actor performing an Indigenous role, as such a racial impersonation of Native American, or more specifically speaking, the colonial representational practice commonly referred to as redface.

The Invisible Man (1933)

The Invisible Man (1933) is a mad scientist science fiction invisibility-themed Universal horror classic monsters franchise series franchise commencement classic of pre-Code cinema, horror, formative science fiction adventure and escapade drama adaptation of a classic grotesque romance novel from the late 1890s, speculating on the individual and social ramifications of a crazed and powerful narrative fantasy of invisibility.

In a crummy British village populated by simple superstitious beer loving vaudevillians there is a sudden and genuine spooking as dramatic imagery blasts across the snow stormed screen and a demanding and aristocratic stranger in wrap appears as some kind of local uber mensch among the peasants, settling himself in an inn in one of the best openings in cinema, one of the best of the 1930s, one of the best of all decades indeed.

The Secret of Convict Lake (1951)

The Secret of Convict Lake (1951)
is a pressure cooker ensemble cast prison break snow-bound gang on the run innocent-man-accused Western movie with film noir tendencies aplenty and a few side comments too on the social roles of men and women, as such relate to heroism, homesteading and justice.

The 1951 Western The Secret of Convict Lake emerges as a unique entry in the genre, distinguished by its noir-inflected atmosphere and an unusually strong female presence. 

Directed by Michael Gordon, the film tells the story of a group of escaped convicts who, after enduring a harrowing journey through the snow-covered Sierra Nevadas, stumble upon a remote settlement populated solely by women. 

A Woman's Face (1941)

A Woman's Face (1941) is a fantastical hard-luck-lady flashback courtroom film noir blackmail tale of gender expectation, bitterness and plastic surgery.

One of several plastic surgery miracle movies made in the era, it seemed like the trope and myth of the plastic surgeon and face exchange being ideal narrative material on the big screen.

Most meaningfully and in the terms of the noir universe these are Dark Passage (1947), Black Dragons (1942), Nora Prentiss (1947), Stolen Face (1952), G-Men Never Forget (1948), Dead End (1937), The Second Face (1950), It Happened in Hollywood (1935), and then She Demons (1958) a strangely far out genre find, Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), and with The Raven (1935), that might be enough for now, although others will materialise, that is certain.

Murder Is My Beat (1955)

Murder Is My Beat (1955) is a cheapo classic class act Edgar G. Ulmer snow-time sleazy cop uh oh detective and sleazy dame thanks for the company, now it's time to take a little ride, who do you think you are film noir from the back annals of the lost lots of the dark style.

Even as it checked out and evolved into the new riffs of the 1960s and the miracle cop movies of the seventies did elect to emulate its own hey day with pictures like Murder Is My Beat (1955) which seems stuck to 1940s noir tropes in an almost nostalgic manner, as if the picture craved to be made in 1945 and not in 1955.

Patsy Flint as the voiceover tells us, has a hard little package with a cunning brain sharpened by constant grinding against the world. And is that kind of snapping theatrical flat wobbling noir, with its amazing snow-scene surprise, one of the best snow noirs on the block.

It's a frankly exciting story right on the ridge of peril, and with noir merit to spare. It slips in all types and travails, including "I'd seen enough killing in the Pacific," as the noir hero makes weary work in his suit and coat through the worst snow drift in film noir.