His affair with his partner's wife and his cowardly impulse to dispatch his secretary to inform her of her husband's death, along with a variety of decisions that reflect a serious moral ambivalence, illuminate a man with a black bird over his shoul Continue Reading...
Maltese Falcon Dashiell Hammett's 1930 detective novel The Maltese Falcon has become an iconic text in American literature, not just as the source of the classic film noir starring Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade, but in itself as a work of fiction tha Continue Reading...
Film Review: The Maltese Falcon Director John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon features the actor Humphrey Bogart in one of his iconic starring roles as the hardboiled detective Sam Spade. The film is an adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s book Continue Reading...
Spade and Philip Marlowe comparison Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe Although Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe have been portrayed by Humphrey Bogart in the cinematic versions of The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep, respectively, each portrayal is a pola Continue Reading...
Male Without Female In the classic films of the 1940s and 1950s, filmmakers tended to use very strict representations of gender in their characters. Women could be either virgins or tramps and men could be either heroes or villains. There was very l Continue Reading...
Spade walking down to examine a murder makes use of shadows as well as high black-white contrast in order to convey drama and suspense. This is commonly referred to as the film noir lighting technique because it conveys a sense of mystery and danger Continue Reading...
Walter Huston's Adaptation of the Opening of the Maltese Falcon (1941) Movie. What Does it Do Well? What Does it Lack? The Maltese Falcon -- Book vs. film Whenever a film is made of a beloved novel, people are often quick to point out the discrepa Continue Reading...
Film Noir Among the various styles of producing films, it has been observed the noir style is one that has come to be recognized for its uniqueness in characterization, camera work and striking dialogue. Film Noir of the 1940s and 50s were quite wel Continue Reading...
Their methods, however -- regicide, then more murders to cover up the first one, and finally a desperate civil war in an attempt to kill the throne -- are not exactly worthy of nobility. All prophecies are eventually fulfilled; though Macbeth reigns Continue Reading...
All the while he is never in any danger because there is no risk of falling: he is simply playing at spoofing. But this is not Airplane -- a classic spoof comedy where every character, setting, and action in the film is designed to spoof airport gen Continue Reading...
Cain (afterward coupled by Mickey Spillane, Horace McCoy, and Jim Thompson) -- whose books were also recurrently tailored in films noir. In the vein of the novels, these films were set apart by a subdued atmosphere and realistic violence, and they p Continue Reading...
Gavin is able to better understand the limitations of Scottie's acrophobia as Scottie believes that Gavin is a trustworthy individual and is therefore willing to explain the limitations with which he is faced. When Gavin inquires about the extent of Continue Reading...
Film Noir / Cinema Architecture Perhaps one of the most fruitful ways in which to trace the evolution of Film Noir as a genre is to examine, from the genre's heyday to the present moment, the metamorphoses of one of film noir's most reliable tropes: Continue Reading...
Too Late for TearsAs the title of the 1948 film noir suggests, Too Late for Tears the unrepentant pursuit of ill-gotten wealth by one nobody named Jane. Jane and Alan and middle-class Americans; Alan is okay with thatJane is not. She chafes at the co Continue Reading...
In this area, meanings with their endless referrals evolve. These include meanings form discourses, as well as cultural systems of knowledge which structure beliefs, feelings, and values, i.e., ideologies. Language, in turn, produces these temporal Continue Reading...
Miller's Crossing gives the best example of the "ethics" of the crime film genre -- beginning as it does with the classic speech delivered by Giovanni Gasparo: "I'm talkin' about friendship -- I'm talkin' about character -- I'm talkin' about -- hel Continue Reading...
Big Sleep and Chinatown: Depictions of Noir in Hollywood Film noir rose to prominence in the late 1940s and was initially described as "murder with a psychological twist" (Spicer, 1). Film noir helped to introduce audiences to a new genre that had Continue Reading...
film noir movement by examining two films from the genre made at two different times within the movement. This will first mean looking at definitions of what classifies a film as noir and then looking at conventions of the movement such as: story, c Continue Reading...
movie industry in America has been controlled by some of the monolithic companies which not only provided a place for making the movies, but also made the movies themselves and then distributed it throughout the entire country. These are movie compa Continue Reading...
Paranoia, Entrapment, And the Corruption of the American Dream in Double Indemnity and Detour Film noir can be described as "murder with a psychological twist" (Spicer 1). As a genre that flourished during the 1940s, film noir came to reflect the a Continue Reading...
