The Best of Film Noir - page 2

13 November 2008

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Closer inspection reveals the decrepit property to be inhabited by grandiose former silent movie goddess Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), and her zombie-like manservant Max (Erich von Stroheim). Upon hearing that he's a writer, the lonely but still wealthy woman offers to pay him generously to stay at the house and work on her "comeback" script on the life of Salome.

Although spooked by the people and the surroundings, in desperate straits, Joe takes the job, little suspecting the madness of the netherworld he's entered. Wilder's merciless portrait of the dangers of a profession that trades in fantasy cagily couples the cynical amorality of the never-was with the near-psychotic narcissism of the has-been to reveal the vacuity of wealth and the transience of fame.

Starring William Holden and Gloria Swanson the film opened to great critical acclaim was nominated for eleven Academy Awards and won three including Best Writing, Story and Screenplay for Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder and D.M. Marshman Jr.

The Big Sleep

Film noir The Big Sleep, which was directed by Hawks, and was the second pairing of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in 1946, and the second film by Bogart to appear in our little stroll down film noir lane.

Private Eye Philip Marlowe (Bogart) is hired by wealthy socialite Vivian Sternwood to look into the trouble cased by her younger sister Carmen. He follows a trail of murder, pornography, nightclub rogues and the spoiled rich.

Since its release in 1946 The Big Sleep has become a cinematic classic cementing Bacall and Bogart as an on-screen acting force. In 1997, the U.S. Library of Congress deemed this film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and preserved to the National Film Registry.

Out of the Past

Out of the Past is the last film in our look at some of the best film noir pictures released in 1947 and starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer and Kirk Douglas.

Mitchum stars as existential antihero Jeff Markham, a retired private detective with a shady past who is hoping for a fresh start with a new name, a new love, and a new job running a small gas station in a rural California town.

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