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Showing posts with label Theremin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Theremin. Show all posts
The Red House (1947)
Count the Hours (1953)
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Count the Hours (1953) is a small town innocent man accused of murder courtroom crusading lawyer death row psychopath home invasion theramin scored Don Siegel rural paranoia and persecution film noir with Macdonald Carey, Teresa Wright, John Craven, Dolores Moran and wow — they got Jack Elam.
It Came From Outer Space (1953)
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It Came From Outer Space (1953) is a rock-slinging 3-D alien invasion science fiction shapeshifter blobby monster movie, which dabbles heavily in the film noir themes of paranoia and social threat.
In its day It Came From Outer Space probably had the 3-D thing as its main selling point, although the whole suburban desert lifestyle is a fascinating vision of Americana in and of itself.
Desert wires carry communications, and the desert man has a wife and a pipe and a telescope in the yard. in the lonesome old desolate west there is a great new threat.
This all-American science fiction horror film, notable for being the first to use the 3D process from Universal-International, was produced by William Alland and directed by Jack Arnold. Starring Richard Carlson and Barbara Rush, it also features actors Charles Drake, Joe Sawyer, and Russell Johnson. Contrary to some claims, the script is based on Ray Bradbury’s original film treatment titled The Meteor, rather than a published short story.
The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951)
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The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951) is the quintessential high quality high concept high tension classic Hollywood 1950's science-fiction presentation.
The nascent and sudden re-invention of the science fiction film in the 1950s does inevitably draw on film noir style when need be.
And although the themes are of a universal and global nature, not quite the subjective and local tendency in film noir, there are still film techniques and themes aplenty which crossover between the film noir of its day and the science fiction.
Directed by Robert Wise The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951) is spritely, earnest, playful, philosophical, funny, serious and has distinct Bernhard Hermann music, as well as the most irresistible use of the theremin in film history.
Spellbound (1945)
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Spellbound (1945) is an Alfred Hitchcock romantic psychological amnesia thriller with a noir nuance that cannot be denied.
In some senses an outlier in the body of Alfred Hitchcock's own work, and not entirely styled in the mode of a more traditional or acceptable example of film noir, Spellbound does carry with it key noir themes of amnesia and psychoanalysis, and is as much a thriller as it is a psychological mystery.
Most of Spellbound's power comes as a romance story — always a strength with Alfred Hitchcock, who was as much a master of amour as he was of suspense.
Spellbound follows a psychoanalyst who falls in love with the new head of the Vermont hospital in which she works, only to find that he is an imposter suffering dissociative amnesia, and potentially, a murderer.
Impact (1949)
Impact (1949) is a film noir classic of confusion, plot twists, identity and love and follows the mishaps and fateful fortunes of industrialist Walter Williams, played by Brian Donlevy.
What makes Impact an impactful film noir as opposed to a plain old drama, is the twisted plot around the successful industrialist's marriage.
As grouchy as an old bear, his wife sits around at home, the very epitome of the scheming wife, out for what she can get, and of course plotting murder.
A marriage made of monogrammed shirts and pyjamas is helpful for plots like this. Much is made of the bizarre accidentals which lead poor Walter Williams from the heights of success to the lows of small-town isolation, such as the odd device of the domestic assistant Su Lin (played by Anna May Wong) overhearing what she thinks is a threat, when in fact it's a husband larking around with his wife.
The duplicitous wife in Impact (1949) is here writ heavy in the form of Helen Walker, who plays the Irene Williams, the lady behind the plot to kill. Like a good deal of solid noir, Impact is a marriage fantasy, the likes of which 1940s film noir specialised in.
By this we demonstrate a wife who is so ill-suited that she is planning your murder, and a wannabe love that turns up out of nowhere, already embodying the American dream, and valuing love above cash - a perpetual dilemma.
The Lost Weekend (1945)
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The Lost Weekend (1945) by Billy Wilder, and starring Ray Milland as writer Don Birnam, and starring alcohol as itself, perfectly in character as a marvellous and demonic fixe-fatale, is a low-key and visionary tale of alcoholic failure, and as such uniquely emotional and modern, for the 1940s.
The Lost Weekend is also a landmark in film noir and a high station in Hollywood history, being among other things the winner of a Best Picture Oscar . . . in fact The Best Picture Oscar, in fact, and there may be little more significant when assessing the history of one style, genre or cinema
This Best Picture Oscar was a deserved win for many reasons, and that included morality which always plays a part in this decision, each year, no matter what the style of picture.
It was a deserved win for the modernity and humanity of The Lost Weekend, which is a film that does not dazzle so much as invite the viewer on a slow and focused ride to the bottom. There is no complexity other than in the acting, and even the script does not veer, even when it surprises with its hidden bottles of rye and constant feeling of domestic and internal desperation.
The Lost Weekend is still a film noir however. Even though there is no murder, there is above all else a psychological horror which in cinematic terms could only find its feet in film noir in the 1940s.