Those Wonderful People Out There In The Dark

Send us Fan Mail Nice little film noir survey you got here --- be a shame if something happened to it… If you’ll indulge us, we’re going to swing for the fences a bit this month and try to tie up three threads in noir. The first is that some gee goes against the mob, usually a cop. But, and second --- it’s got to be a cop who’s not as straight as an arrow, he (always he) has to have a bend to him --- to be as nihilistic as the mob he knocks up against. Finally, playing havoc with the ba...

Send us Fan Mail If there’s a mainstay in the structure of a film noir, it might be the tension between the protagonist --- the gee, the mug, the sucker --- and the femme fatale. The male led around by his nose, or his whatever, down the road to his doom, or his prison cell, or to a long walk down a deserted, dark highway. She inevitably does him wrong --- sometimes willfully, at other times simply because she wants --- freedom, or money, or to get away and up from under. The femme employs he...

Send us Fan Mail In most film noir, you may be able to pick out a teaspoon of nobility in even the most nihilistic, rotten protagonist --- they’re in the situation because of their attraction to someone, or due to desperation, or the breaks are against them. Or sometimes, because of the structure of the world around them. From this season’s own short list, witness the hard luck of Al in Detour as his ride is killed falling out of a car. Bart can’t leave Laurie and her homicidal tendencies beh...

Send us Fan Mail Our Noirvember pod on The Big Sleep had me ooohhhing and aaahhhing about the talent that brought the film to life in front of and behind the camera. As we enter the classic period of noir in America, we’re going to look at a film that has some of the most impactful and prolific noir actors ever assembled, with just as talented a production team as in Sleep. For your holiday enjoyment by the crackling fire, we bring you the noir based on a very short Ernest Hemingway story, 19...

Send us Fan Mail Exit Scary Season, hello Noirvember and back to film noir in earnest! We’re leaving behind the subgenre of crazy kids on the run and into more established noir territory --- the private detective story. And do we have a great one for our entrance! Among the first pre-wave of classic film noir released in the US after WWII, it’s 1946’s The Big Sleep. Packed with talent in front of and behind the camera, packed with confusion by one of the hallmark authors of the hard – boiled ...

Send us Fan Mail As the last four years, it’s time for our annual salute to Scary Season on the pod --- a little film nosh to whet your appetite for the fun of Halloween ahead. Last season we went down one of the paths of the classic Universal Pictures lineup of horror films, with the foundational Dracula. This season, we’re headed down another path of classics from the golden days of Universal, but the third in the series of this particular horror group. Not the film Frankenstein, not Bride ...

Send us Fan Mail We’re plowing ahead five years from last month’s pod subject but staying in the low – rent, “B” picture roots of film noir, with just a bit more polish, a little more class (because of a slightly larger budget). While last month’s Detour sticks with you, it’s because of its rough edges and the kick-in-the-gut noirness of the fated fall of the protagonist (as well as the hyper – meanness of the femme fatale --- Ann Savage indeed!). This month, we look at a film that has an inc...

Send us Fan Mail No producer or director of the 40s and 50s set out to make a film noir. They were simply trying to put together a film that would entertain and turn a profit, dammit! During the 40s and early 50s, TV was a non-entity or a new, expensive element in entertainment --- there was no competition for the 25 cents someone spent every week going to the movies. Consequently, the output of Hollywood was prodigious and many films noir, if not viewed through a modern lens, were simply “B”...

Send us Fan Mail The A-bomb had contributed to this soft reign of terror. It had also fired a period of excitement and fertility in the neglected field of science fiction. Before WWII, sci-fi in film was widespread, with examples such as Lang’s hallmark Metropolis, Things To Come, the silent 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, The Lost World, and serials populated by Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. The war had shifted the focus, to combat and military films, propaganda, home-front boosterism, and esc...

Send us Fan Mail Last month, we waltzed through mid – 19th Century Italy. Today, we jump forward a half – century --- royalty continues its decline, the middle – class and powerful industrial leaders are ascendant in Europe. It’s a new century and the dawn of a new, perhaps golden era. But is it? Where still a force, European royalty is having its last hurrah in controlling lands far beyond their borders through vicious policies of imperialism. A minor Prince in Germany (who calls himself the...

Send us Fan Mail Visconti has been seen in this season as the director of the searing, accusatory film of the interdependence of the industrial class with the Nazis in Germany, The Damned. But where did this European industrial class arise, when Europe was still saddled with an immense set of royalty that began with kings and queens and spread its fingers into every aspect of the lives in their respective nations or nation-states until almost 1920? How was the transfer of power and wealth fro...

Send us Fan Mail As with Django, Corbucci wrote the film with his brother Bruno, as well as Vittoriano Petrilli and Mario Amendola. He’d been deeply influenced by the recent assassinations of Che Guevara, Cuban revolutionary who had tried to spark a Communist overthrow of Bolivia, and the US’ Malcolm X, a one-time Nation of Islam leader converted to the Muslim faith and killed at a speaking engagement. As the end of the 60s approached, Corbucci felt that the era of progressive political actio...

Send us Fan Mail There’s a small set of seasons that lurk after the best of winter, but before spring is in the air. You’re emerging from the wonders of a White Christmas (TM) --- those beautiful, light, star-filled dustings of a snowfall, so picturesque. Then slogging into the wet, deep, and ongoing snowfalls that you shovel every day. And then --- worse! --- the melting of that semi-season into the wet, drippy, soggy next phase --- the season of mud. Both the slogging snow and mud seasons a...

Send us Fan Mail Last season we walked through an admittedly unscientific list of the greatest character actors in recent memory --- all men and mostly known for roles as so-called bad men. But we made the promise to rebalance the favor in this season --- so here it is --- an honor roll that by definition only women fill; the femmes fatale. The direct translation is the fatal women, but above all, a female character played in predominately film noir. Part of the atmosphere, darkness, nihilism...

Send us Fan Mail It would still prove to be the American Century, but now it was overshadowed by the threat of the atom’s power. Air raid shelters were built in public buildings. Families dug and poured concrete in their backyards to construct personal bomb shelters. Food was stocked, with water, batteries, Bibles, bunk beds and lawn chairs. The US government produced films on how to survive an atomic war, and what our duties as citizens were in that event. Don’t believe me? Find the document...

Send us Fan Mail Nosferatu 1922’s reputation grew down the years, especially among film lovers. One of these was German master director Werner Herzog. As the 70s ended, Herzog determined that he wanted to remake the film --- an homage to what he felt was the greatest film ever to come from Germany. In Season 1 of the pod, we’ve looked at the scope of Herzog’s work, and up close at one of his most moving films, Fitzcarraldo. Herzog is well-known for his capture of humans surviving under trying...

Send us Fan Mail For Scary Season 2024, we’re harkening back to a founding film in the genre of horror. In this era of the 21st Century, fans of horror are rich in the types of film they view to give themselves the creeps --- body horror, slasher films, psychological fear, the supernatural. But a film had to be the forerunner for Hollywood and the rest of the world to understand that the public wanted to be scared for their 25 cents (in 1931, probably now more like $25 --- Junior Mints includ...

Send us Fan Mail Doesn’t seem like much of a bargain. An uber-being shows and coincidentally knows what you want --- merely sign away your post-existence --- usually in blood, that might be a clue! But repeatedly, people actually sign away their souls --- in the form of their pride, their morality, their sense of worth, friendships, family. Come on --- it’s an allegory! But what a tale! Why does it occur in the stories and representations of numerous cultures, religions, and nations? Perhaps ...

Send us Fan Mail The middle and lower classes, so-called, ultimately flocked to the message of fascism, not just in Germany but even earlier, in Italy in the ‘20s under Mussolini. For a class of people who had little or less than in the past, who felt powerless, the allure of fascism was intense and compelling. But what of the intellectual class, of the already powerful capitalist members of society, what of the artists for whom fascism might lead to straited circumstances and censorship? How...

Send us Fan Mail It’s the end of season one, or cycle one, or Earth one, whatever you want to call it, for the pod… We wanted to end the season on something special and this film is just so --- a veritable treasure chest of recognizable and quotable lines for film fans. Tight as a drum, unfolding an incredibly well-written story in less than two hours, with a cast of three memorable headliners and fantastic support. It’s definitely noir, though some reviewers characterize it as black comedy a...