Criterion Collection’s new Blu-Ray edition of the 1950 film noir title The Asphalt Jungle gives me a prompt to write about what I (and many others) consider to be one of the greatest crime/suspense movies ever made. And yet, I feel a little at a loss as to how to approach this piece. I mean,…
Mary Astor once summed up what she called the five stages in the life of an actor: Who's Mary Astor? Get me Mary Astor. Get me a Mary Astor Type. Get me a young Mary Astor. Who's Mary Astor? Astor was part of the first generation of actors who more or less grew up in…
In tribute to the late Lauren Bacall, we’re looking at the four classic films she made with husband and screen partner Humphrey Bogart between 1944 and 1948: To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, Dark Passage, and Key Largo. Last week we looked at Delmer Daves’ Dark Passage. Today we’ll look at John Huston’s…
Samuel Dashiell Hammett was born in Maryland in 1894. In his early teens, he left school and worked at various jobs. Finally at age twenty-one he took a job as an operative with the Pinkerton Detective Agency. After World War I began, Hammett signed up to serve in the Motor Ambulance Service, but during the…
This year marks the 70th anniversary of the release of John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon. How do you even begin to take the measure of a masterpiece like this? It isn’t simply one of the great film noirs, it is one of the great films. The movie, of course, follows detective Sam Spade as…
