This year film noir turns 70. While there had been some intermittent films leading up to the birth of the classic noir, in 1944 the dahlia bloomed with six key films: Double Indemnity, Laura, Murder My Sweet, Phantom Lady, When Strangers Marry, and The Woman In the Window. In these films you have many of…
It’s a good thing Double Indemnity, Billy Wilder’s classic noir of desire–for lust, money and revenge–was made in 1944, because it wouldn’t get made today. Not because it still isn’t a great movie–it is. But because thanks to the obdurate, formulaic rules that studio execs and their coverage readers swear by nowadays, (incanted like the…
When you’re a teenager, there’s nothing like discovering a new writer or a new movie director – new to you, that is. The experience has a powerful, magical quality to it,one that you can easily spend the rest of your life trying to recapture. When I look back to that time in my own life…
