Peter Strempel’s film noir reviews, some of which are lengthy essays on the genre itself.

This Gun for Hire (1942)
Not the noir some claim, but an outstanding hybrid with a powerful performance from Ladd and impressive mises en scène.
Peter Strempel’s film noir reviews, some of which are lengthy essays on the genre itself.
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.
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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