Archive for the 'Film Noir' Category
Eldridge Cleaver and fellow African revolutionaries in Algiers, meeting during the Pan-African Cultural Festival. My favorite of his diatribes: “F*@# Queen Victoria to her bones!”
Klein works the Helvetica credits, as per usual, here hurtling at us, in ELDRIDGE CLEAVER, BLACK PANTHER (1970).
And as much as Cleaver likes to talk, this guy, below, doesn’t want to. See the ringing telephone that gleams menacingly in the extreme foreground? SHE PLAYED WITH FIRE (1957) and this one may have helped her do it.
Another gem from the PFA series Tea and Larceny: Classic British Crime Films, IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY (1947), a deliciously dreary and multi-faceted account of a wet Sunday in Bethnall Green, London.
Three thugs having a spot of tea at a cart in the rain.
The bratty daughter removing her transparent mac in her parents’ grotty kitchen.
No, Jimmy, your butt certainly does NOT look fat in those swim trunks.
I MET A MURDERER (1939) barely made it out of the silent era, with all those dramatic close-ups, overwrought orchestral crescendoes, and awkward edits. Plus, the leading lady’s eyebrows were about tweezed out of existence. (I know, I’m overly obsessed with eyebrow fashion through the ages.) But she did call their car “Auntie” and James Mason’s character shot his wife because she shot his border collie. Fair enough.
Oh, yeah, there was another movie in this double bill:
Even three-strip Technicolor couldn’t save this. When the lights went up, one of the PFA regulars loudly pronounced it a “stinker.”
FOOTSTEPS IN THE FOG (1955).
When a pissy Raymond Burr throws a bowlful of flaming spirits at his ladyfriend, the RAW DEAL (1948) gets flambéed!
Maybe Babs Stanwyck wouldn’t have NO MAN OF HER OWN (1950) if her makeup artist didn’t insist on clowning up her upper lip! But you better believe that trying on another woman’s wedding ring is bad luck—did you see how those two pregnant gals got tumble-dried in their train carriage? An implausibly delightful (or delightfully implausible) little lady film noir.