film noir

DVD of the Week: Kiss Me Deadly

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Now film noir is by definition dark and cynical, but 1955’s Kiss Me Deadly is downright pissed off and nasty.  Ralph Meeker stars as LA private eye Mike Hammer in this delightfully lowbrow film noir, based on a Mickey Spillane novel.  Much of the fun comes from the menacing nuclear glow of the briefcase that is the film’s MacGuffin.

On his indieWIRE blog, Peter Bogdanovich writes that Robert Aldrich hated Spillane’s pulp so much that he concluded the screenplay with nuclear annihilation.

In the subversive 1984 cult classic Repo Man, the glowing briefcase reappears in the truck of a repossessed sedan.

The Criterion Collection has just released its DVD of Kiss Me Deadly.

DVD of the Week: Carancho

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Here’s one of my Best Movies of 2011 – So Far.

Well, they have ambulance chasers in Argentina, too, and that seamy world is the setting for this dark and violent noirish thriller.  Ricardo Darin (The Secrets of Their Eyes, Nine Queens) stars as a suspended lawyer running insurance scams.    (I think of Darin as the Argentine Joe Mantegna.)  Set in the gloom of urban nighttime emergency rooms and funeral homes, it’s a love story between the lawyer and an equally troubled doctor (Martina Gusman), nestled into a crime thriller.

The story is as cynical and dark as it comes.  The handheld camera keeps it out of the noir category, but the story is as hard-bitten as Kiss Me Deadly or any of the really nasty noirs. The violence is realistic, and there’s lots of it – I had never seen anyone beaten to death with a file drawer before.  If you like dark and edgy (and I do), this is the film for you.

Carancho: seamy and steamy

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Well, they have ambulance chasers in Argentina, too, and that seamy world is the setting for this dark and violent noirish thriller.  Ricardo Darin (The Secrets of Their Eyes, Nine Queens) stars as a suspended lawyer running insurance scams.    (I think of Darin as the Argentine Joe Mantegna.)  Set in the gloom of urban nighttime emergency rooms and funeral homes, it’s a love story between the lawyer and an equally troubled doctor (Martina Gusman), nestled into a crime thriller.

The story is as cynical and dark as it comes.  The handheld camera keeps it out of the noir category, but the story is as hard-bitten as Kiss Me Deadly or any of the really nasty noirs. The violence is realistic, and there’s lots of it – I had never seen anyone beaten to death with a file drawer before.  If you like dark and edgy (and I do), this is the film for you.

DVD of the Week: Le Cercle Rouge

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Can a French 1970 color film that stars cool guys like Alain Delon and Yves Montand qualify as film noir?  You bet, especially when written and directed by a master of noir like Jean-Pierre Melville (Bob le Flambeur, Le Doulos, Le Samourai).

A thief gets out of prison, immediately robs his former crime boss and goes on the run.  An escaped murderer stows away in the trunk of his car.  Now they are both on the run from a very cynical and driven cop – as well as from the  gangsters.    They hire a dissolute former cop and try to pull off a heist.  The honest cop who is chasing them squeezes a shady nightclub owner to betray them.

There’s a chase and shootings and a heist that takes up the final 30 minutes, but Le Cercle Rouge is not about the action.  It’s about the nature of these characters, guys who live by their own codes.  They know what they’re gonna do, and they don’t need to think about why.  There’s minimal dialogue, and they look and act really cool for all 140 minutes.

Criterion has just released Le Cercle Rouge on DVD.  Take a look.  Here’s the trailer in French.