Showing posts with label Torin Thatcher. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Torin Thatcher. Show all posts

The Spy in Black (1939)

The Spy in Black (1939) is a British espionage World War One submarine and double agent spy noir, and the first collaboration between the filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. 

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.

Affair in Trinidad (1952)

Affair in Trinidad (1952) is an exotically located crypto-Nazi post-war thriller vehicle for the return of Rita Hayworth who had wowed the world in Gilda, and appears here collided once more with some of the same cast including the rough and sarcastically toned Glenn Ford and the bumbling native idiotically styled  craven lackey themed performance by Steven Geray.

It is not as bad as it sounds, and although not a classic noir nor even a noir much discussed, nor a classic of any kind of noir not even non-noir or faux-Caribbean noir, for anyone in the swing of the full film noir journey much of the usual enjoyment is found here, in both the slightly angrier than usual performance from mug in the tropics, Glenn Ford, and the constant soft-focus camera lingering on the multiply costume changed gorgeousness of Rita Hayworth.

The Fallen Idol (1948)

The Fallen Idol (1948)
is a child's-view psychological mystery Limey classic film noir thriller which delights in a great script, a fascinating and compelling story, top drawer acting from the very best of the age, and is a general talent-mix of both Carol Reed and Graham Green, both at their cinematic best.

The eyes of a child are untrained in perceiving the grey between the morality of black and white. It is on this precarious naivety of youth that Carol Reed hangs the suspense of The Fallen Idol.

Reed, in collaboration with novelist and screenwriter Graham Greene, crafted The Fallen Idol a year before their masterpiece The Third Man. While The Fallen Idol might seem to suggest adolescent growing pains, your assumptions deceive you. The film is nearly as much a noir classic as Reed's Odd Man Out and The Third Man, which bookend it in his all-too-classic none-too-shabby all-so-awesome filmography.