The Big Picture Magazine
A bleak, dark detective story that taps into noir, Claude Sautet’s Max et les ferrailleurs (1971) is more than a “policier” film. It draws two fine character studies: Michel Piccoli’s Max, a former judge converted into a cop, and Romy Schneider’s Lily, a prostitute linked to a gang of hard-luck, two-time crooks whom Max wants […]
Rebel Without a Cause (1955) was the film that gave the confused and alienated teenager an identity. But before James Dean burst onto the screen as sensitive high-school misfit Jim Stark in his Lee blue jeans, white t-shirt and red windbreaker, becoming the embodiment of a generation and cementing his image as cool rebel, another […]
As the clocks turn back and the weather turns cold, I turn back to my favourite genre, film noir, transforming “Noirvember” into one of my favourite months. Joseph H. Lewis’ Gun Crazy (1950) came after two other noir couple-on-the-run films, Fritz Lang’s You Only Live Once (1937) and Nicholas Ray’s They Live by Night (1949). […]
On a little island in the Canaries with very rocky terrain that in times past made communication very difficult in the absence of modern day technology, the locals invented a whistling language, a whistled version of Spanish, “El Silbo”, that is still being used today. That was the idea where Corneliu Porumboiu’s latest film originated. […]
Human Desire (1954), directed by Fritz Lang “It seems that Jean Renoir and Fritz Lang had in common a taste for the same theme: an old husband, a young wife, a lover (La chienne, La bête humaine, The Woman on the Beach for Renoir; Scarlet Street, The Woman in the Window, Human Desire for Lang). […]
One of film noir’s defining actors, Gloria Grahame gave her femme fatale characters a raw, vulnerable sensuality. She was not simply pretty. Her glamour and sexuality hid surprising, unexpected emotional registers. Her bad girls were human. Her characters were smart, daring, warm. I can never quite figure out Gloria Grahame on screen. Isn’t this one […]
In terms of film history, Snow Trail (Ginrei no hate) is worth looking at simply because it marks the screen debut of Toshirō Mifune. The unusual setting of this gangster film, directed by Senkichi Taniguchi and co-written by Akira Kurosawa, is another significant aspect. The hunt for the criminals takes place not in an urban […]
Summer is optimistic by nature. So am I. Maybe that’s why noir is my favourite film genre. Harking back to the past. The sensual, fatalistic bleakness. The subtle tone and mood. The quotable lines that float up into your consciousness and stick. The morally ambiguous hero, alienated from society, charismatic yet flawed, charting a course […]
Style. This is a key argument in Le Samouraï. We are first introduced to Jef Costello, the main character, in his austere, dark, bare room. Fully dressed, he is lying stiffly on the bed and starts puffing on a cigarette. After a while, he gets up and, before going out, puts on his trench coat and fedora […]