Peter Strempel’s essays on cinema, and film reviews.
The Vietnam War (2017): I
Brilliant, arresting, insightful, the Burns-Novick documentary is a masterpiece of propaganda not entirely negatively defined.
Film
The Vietnam War (2017): II
The second part of my commentary on the arresting, brilliant Burns-Novick documentary.
The Vietnam War (2017): III
The third part of my commentary on the arresting, brilliant Burns-Novick documentary.
The Vietnam War (2017): IV
The fourth and final part of my commentary on the arresting, brilliant Burns-Novick documentary, The Vietnam War.
Dark Passage (1947) as locus of film noir
Dark Passage is an extended metaphor for the anti-communist witch-hunting in the USA during the 1940s and ’50s.
The Deadly Affair (1966)
Deadly Affair is a prurient adaptation of John Le Carre’s first novel, Call for the Dead.
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1963, 1965)
Both the Le Carre novel and the film offer an indelibly bleak vision of Dante’s ninth circle, set as Cold War espionage fiction.
The Key Largo hypothesis: Brooks and Huston set the noir context
My hypothesis that Huston’s Key Largo defined and limited the territory of film noir as exclusively American and subtly ‘New Deal’ political.
Kansas City Confidential (1951)
Phil Karlson’s 1951 hardboiled story of betrayal and corruption makes Kansas City Confidential a much underrated film noir.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
The film came close to equaling the intention of the novel and the much earlier BBC adaptation.
The Killers (1946)
Less Hemingway than Huston, the film is a landmark for Hellinger and Siodmak.
Murder, My Sweet (1945)
A worthy Chandler adaptation, and transition for Dick Powell from pretty boy to film tough guy.
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
The film in which Humphrey Bogart made the hard-boiled detective persona his own.
The English Patient (1996)
Beautifully observed and photographed, the story created in me a deep yearning for the innocence and privilege of the world these characters inhabited.
The Godfather (1972)
Michael Corleone is cast as the Nietzschean Übermensch, rejecting the conventions of his times, seizing his opportunities, ruthlessly destroying his enemies.