Peter Strempel’s film noir reviews, some of which are lengthy essays on the genre itself.
Stuart Heisler’s screen adaptation of Dashiell Hammet’s The Glass Key gives us a character study of the noir anti-hero as descended from Eve and the original sin.
Edward Dmytryk’s 1947 Crossfire courageously attacks the bigotry of antisemitism and, more subtly, homophobia, on a shoestring budget but with outstanding performances.
Laura (1944) is an entertaining murder mystery melodrama, highly acclaimed in its own time, but not really a film noir as uncritically and widely claimed today.
Not the noir some claim, but an outstanding hybrid with a powerful performance from Ladd and impressive mises en scène.
Dark Passage is an extended metaphor for the anti-communist witch-hunting in the USA during the 1940s and ’50s.
My hypothesis that Huston’s Key Largo defined and limited the territory of film noir as exclusively American and subtly ‘New Deal’ political.
Phil Karlson’s 1951 hardboiled story of betrayal and corruption makes Kansas City Confidential a much underrated film noir.
Less Hemingway than Huston, the film is a landmark for Hellinger and Siodmak.
A worthy Chandler adaptation, and transition for Dick Powell from pretty boy to film tough guy.
The film in which Humphrey Bogart made the hard-boiled detective persona his own.
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