In the classic era, Warner Brothers was the most hardboiled of the major studios. It was the home of the gangster flick and the detective movie. In short, it was the kind of place that gave steady work to a guy like Barton MacLane. MacLane just had a face you wanted to punch. On the…
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…
Every January I renew my commitment to the genre that has given me so much inspiration by attending the Noir City film festival in San Francisco, where I, along with thousands of other acolytes, are enthralled by the gorgeous cinematography, riveted by the pithy dialog, and held captive by the giant, black and white images…
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…
