Yogi's Movie Consumption Blog

A private detective is sent to search for the runaway daughter of a rich LA ex-actress and stumbles over an intricate web of lies. What I like so much in film noir is that there is a certain quirkiness to the motivation of the protagonist. With Night Moves being classified as a Neo-Noir, I thought it might be interesting to map the journey of the main character throughout the movie. There is no dramatic irony in this film. We know exactly what the character knows at all time. He is in every scene of the film. But we get to know him quite a bit over the course of the story. Short description of Harry Moseby: A former football player, now working as a struggling private detective, has problems of confronting family problems. He cannot cope with his cheating wife, or talk to his estranged father. On the other hands he tries to "fix" or "break" families professionally. He only mentions his football career in terms of losing a game, so he mus...

Professor Rankin, a teacher in a small town in Connecticut marries the daughter of a Supreme Court Justice. She has no idea that the man she loves has a very sinister past. There is something comically surreal about the whole plot. Although the film shows some signs of a typical film-noir, it is more a political satire on post-war America. Undercover war crime agents hunting Nazi sleepers is a rather blunt set-up and many of the actions in the film verge on the ridiculous. When the 'bad guy' is finally uncovered, Welles' character goes through an inconsistent zigzag of confiding the truth to his wife, and at the same time lying to her. On the other hand he is a amateurish murderer with very weak planning ahead for such an allegedly super-smart war crime architect. His escape attempts towards are lame and stupid - packing a bag or hiding in his favorite spot in the church tower when the whole town is searching for him. I can understand why Welles didn't like th...

Three prison escapees invade a family's home where they wait for the getaway cash to arrive. But the money courier is arrested and the family members try to the thwart the plans of the fugitives where ever they can. Apart from being another very nice script taken on by Wyler, this is not a typical film-noir. It has a very straight ending, and it was not nail-biting suspense that sat me through the last third. Although Bogart was quite a surprise playing a heavy, devoid of moral whatsoever and the cast was  impressive, there was something artificial about the story. Most interesting aspect of the film is the caricature it draws of a "perfect family" in the 50s. This family, especially the father, Mr. Hilliard, has everything that Bogart's character wants and despises at the same time. A nice, boring job, nice, boring home, with a nice and boring wife, a clueless kid and and an adolescent teenager dating a even more boring guy in a sports car. It is hard to te...

The has-been columnist Eddie is hired by a boxing racketeer as a press agent, to jumpstart an Argentinian boxer's career through fixed fights. But Eddie gets into a dilemma when he realizes that the boxers are treated like cattle by the racketeers and one opponent dies. Bogart and Steiger are the highlights of this films - Steiger steals the show in the scenes where he tries to convince Eddie, Eddie's wife or Toro the boxer by being the impassioned salesman. His delivery makes his arguments sound somewhat honest, even though his character has just cooked them up on the fly. Why the wife is still in the story I didn't understand. I didn't feel her arguments were persuasive and generally the encounters between her and Eddie felt cold and casual. She represents some moral force, but so does Art - Eddie's assistant from the old days, now a TV celebrity - in a much more convincing way. The two characters could have been melted into one to heighten Eddie'...

An ambitious night-club hustler tries to make it big by setting up his own wrestling show. But his incessant cheating and the ruling mob make his plans fall apart. Only his faithful girl stays at his side. Widmark plays a very convincing small-timer, and he gets to show off - at one or two moments he's quite over the top, but still enjoyable. He manages to keep the character likeable, somewhere in between childish naivete and ruthless egomaniac. His character, Fabian, runs into trouble with pretty much everyone in a pretty small universe of the London underworld. Favorite scenes: The wrestling match between the two brutes is amazing to watch, especially knowing that whatever the outcome might be, Fabian would have had it. Another great scene is the exchange between Fabian and the night club owner that he tried to con out of money. (Actually, he is the only one, Fabian didn't con) - Best use of a drumkit in a scene, ever. Good script to look at.

The small-town hooligan Dix is hired for a jewel heist. But the plans of the mastermind Riedenschneider fall apart one after the other, until all Dix has left to run for is his own life. Sterling Hayden's character is an outwardly-hardened but human farmer that tries to return to his farm that his family lost some years ago. But also the other figures are quite interesting: the corrupt lawyer who plays cards with his sick wife and keeps an expensive blonde somewhere. Although not perfectly balanced, at some points the guilt he felt in front of his unsuspecting wife were tangible. Also the commissioner and the detective were not without flaws, even small roles had interesting little scenes. Should re-read the script.

This is a story about a straight, even dull guy with a overwhelming fetish for gunswho  falls in love with a no-good woman that coaxes him into committing robberies. It turns out to be a nice Bonnie-and-Clyde variation. The first part felt heavy-handed and slow. Using a courtroom scene with witnesses, arguing for the lead character's noble character felt strange. Annie's motivation for pushing her husband to a career in crime is thinly explained, although she was the more interesting character in the film. Favorite scene: While her husband robs a bank in the background, Annie chats pointlessly to a policeman standing in front. It is not clear to me why she tries to grab his attention. Great sets: The meat packaging company has some nice shots of hanging meat. Is that the earliest film to use this type of location?

A writer marries a beautiful woman, who turns out to be a controlling sociopath. I really liked the story idea, and how the layers of "acceptable" behaviour are peeled one by one from the beautiful wife. Maybe if I had a harder time accepting that she really is that kind of self-indulging, egocentric and jealous woman, she turns out to be might have made the film way more exciting. The film uses flashback technique to brace the actual story, but that didn't work quite well for me. Also, I think that the murder of the little boy in the lake could have been more haunting. Maybe Hitchcock should have treated this script - it would have made great sense within his own oeuvre. Still there remain myriads of things in this film that I love. Foremost, the absolutely stunning photography, the colors, the nature, the sea. Everything looks really beautiful and the colors are breathtaking. Tierney is a must see, possibly one of the most authentic 40s beauty ideal  I can think...

A man has a car breakdown in his hometown and visits the love of his youth, just to stir up a whole lot of murderous trouble. Although an accident sets the story in motion it is the back story that unfolds during the telling of this noir that makes the dire ending  unavoidable. Maybe slightly different from the classical Chandler noir in terms that the protagonist somehow gets away - although not exactly in a good way. Although some of the scenes felt a bit stagey here and there the film was quite gripping and managed to let me dive into the corrupt world that seems to permeate most of the district, fabulously represented by Kirk Douglas, whose weak nature makes him the perfect nature for a cynic and alcoholic official with a grasp of power.

A hitchhiker is picked up by death and then picks up his personal tormenting devil. The plot looked fairly straightforward, but the magic of this gem is that the story strand convolutes until it tightens into a strangling gordic knot - which is pretty much exactly what happens towards the end. The flashback structure are very noir-ish, so was the plot - everything straight down, right from the beginning. I really rooted for the guy to get out of this situation, but every time he takes a decision it actually gets worse - so in the end I was just hoping he might die and get relieved. Most striking was the jaw-dropping performance of Ann Savage. She pops out about a mile and her character is rendered so immensely unlikeable that I wondered that she has not been called the godmother of a new type of acting school (maybe she was?) This is definitively a film worth studying again. Its shortness does nothing to diminish the impact and it is rich on details.

An unhappily married cashier and hobby painter is led to support a would-be mistress and her secret lover and resorts to stealing. This movie still lingers on with many memorable scenes. The awkward rencontre in the cafe with his would-be mistress, the bizarre naivete of Robinson's characters which transcends beautifully to the pictures and the harrowing ending where the poor painter is haunted by a remorseless guilt. I 'm surprised that the 40s would give a director leeway to simply steer pass the obvious happy end into such deep waters as Lang does here pretty effortlessly. Things that caught my eye were the interesting set-up of the apartment. The "drawing room" is elevated in one part of the flat, where as the bedroom is "way down somewhere" on the other side. Lang went into great lengths to explain the architecture and geography (it is quite important for some of the film's most important scenes) Robinson is wonderful, but so are all the oth...

An ex-pilot finds his wife being unfaithful to him when he returns from war, and not soon after is accused of having killed her. There are some great moments in this film, that I still vividly remember: The arrival of the hoodwinked husband at his "welcome" party. The scenes of his brain-injured combat buddy and obviously one or two images of Veronica Lake. The end was a bit of a let-down, feeling a bit staged and contrived. I also got confused by the fact that the police guy suddenly became "in charge of it all" - it sort of became a Poirot shtick. In essence, the ending is completely useless. I do prefer Gun for Hire to this one, although it wasn't bad or boring. Maybe the Ladd's character was just a bit more poignantly interpreted - here he is just a tad too much of a good guy, although I could easily take to his cause.

 A contract killer meets a beautiful girl on his futile attempt to outrun the law. Obviously, there's a lot more story to the movie than can be written in one short line. Although the movie gets great reviews, I didn't manage to find a way into the story. But it had all the hallmarks - an anti-hero, Veronica Lake, and it's downwards from the first shot on. I felt that there were too many accidents (sitting next to each other on the train, etc) which made the story quite fantasy-like. A bit more straight drama would have been nice. The most interesting part is Alan Ladd's lead. His portrayal of the killer is quite multi-layered. Maybe the script tried to help him just a bit too much, by having him "save the cat" and "spare the kid". Anyway, he's a bad man with a good heart - and I am actually not quite sure if that was responsible for his downfall. The story to me felt more like the grinding of the cosmic cogs, and by the way crushing the ma...

 A reckless murderer seduces a naive heiress when her adopted sister falls for his brutal charms and tries to manipulate him. Although the plot is a bit convoluted - and I have indeed forgotten most of it - the characters were extremely memorable in all their bold and rottenness. I enjoyed Tiereney and Trevor both equally, and they both had it coming, I guess. Although there is the happy ending obligatoire I felt that there was a silent agreement between director and the audience (me) that it was just tagged on to comply with some unseen movie force - it's not real and the story actually sinks into an ocean of evil and the bad triumph. Esther Howard, Walther Slezak, and Elisha Cook are just as enjoyable in the smaller roles and those details make the film much more enjoyable as it is already. As I was not really too familiar with Tierney it was amusing to learn that he mostly played variations on this role up to Tarantino's Reservoir dogs. Worth re-watching if just for...

Philip Marlowe is hired by the ex-convict Moose Malloy to find his vanished bride. This story has become quite a classic for me, as I've heard the BBC version quite so often. There are some differences with the film version towards the end, but by and large both renditions seem really close. This seems to have been John Paxton's (screenwriter) big break. Nevertheless, I spent quite some effort trying to keep up with some of the more surprising twists in this sinister tale. I was positively surprised by Dick Powell's performance. I didn't know him before, but his version of Marlowe was full of ambivalence. I've read the behind-the-scene story that the studio and director were strongly opposed to him playing the hard-boiled detective, but I think it is a great role for him. (Chandler seems to have agreed) The first scene of the film with the interrogation by the police officer had very impressive imagery. Many sinister shadows and the lamp as a blinding spot i...

A jewel heist goes well but every one of the gangsters has a weak spot - for one its women, for another its his family. Two things are worth intense studying in this film: the extreme dryness and distance of the violent characters with each other for one. There is an undefinable politeness between the characters, even they oppose each other to death. I also loved how the criminals are entangled in something like a very middle-class private life, and that they go to work their job like any other occupation. Even when they kill each other it happens as a sort of duty they are forced to perform for higher powers. The actual break-in is a long and very suspenseful, totally silent sequence. Especially the humorful elements such as the unfolding umbrella and the comical use of the fire extinguisher left a great impression.

With all means a single mother tries to win the love of her daughter, giving up everything. A very well constructed films with a long flashback bracing the actual story, that Joan Crawford tells at the police station. I deeply hated the Veda character, in my opinion one of the top evil baddies I have seen in a long time. (Maybe the boy in Au hasard, balthasar was even worse?) It didn't appear to be a "film noir" to me, because the character I rooted most for (the mother) might finally get what she deserves: peace. Joan Crawfords acting is amazing and I could really feel her love for her daughter coming out of the screen. In her all-giving love she might be a doomed soul, so there is no hope for her anyway. Also the rest of the cast was extremely well placed and worked perfectly - I believed every one of them. I just realized that Crawford wears a huge bunch of different costumes through that film.

A police mole tries to befriend a crazy mother-dependent gangster after a brutal train robbery. I did find the evolution of the plot not very convincing as Cagney's character goes from extremely suspicious and brutal to a very trusting guy (at least towards his new cell mate - the police informer). Everything is explained, and the death of Cagney's mother might add vulnerability to his situation but it still felt a little bit conceived to me. The actors themselves were extremely interesting to watch, I especially liked the mother. Another thing that caught my attention was the brutality of the main gangster and how it was dealt with on the screen. It got past censorship more or less uncut I guess, but the events had a very "modern violence" feel to them. The scene with the hot steam in the beginning was very interesting as it led even more depth to the ruthlessness of the gangster, serving little else. Also the showdown with the explosions was quite impressive...

 A homicide detective tries to solve the murder of a young career woman when the victim suddenly appears before him - alive and well. The story is very interesting, but the trope of a guy falling asleep in his chair and dreaming the whole story has been played out so many times in exactly this way, that I thought the latter half of the picture being a dream. I am not totally sure if Preminger did play with that or if this type of trick was already common back then. There is also a strange shift of character. We begin with Waldo's voice-over, but we completely lose his perspective during the film. In Sunset Boulevard, that has worked better, where in consequence the dead man still owns his voice-(over).

A detective is hired by a shady rich man to find his girlfriend and falls in love with her. The story felt very much like a blueprint for the typical film-noir. The detective falls for the girl he's trying to hunt or pin down and goes to all sorts of lengths to protect her from perceived evil. The first part of the film is a pretty long flashback but then it continues in story present, which was quite surprising for me. A lot of important decisions hinge on being at the right place at the right time (ie wrong) and there are one or two moments where I felt that randomness did overtake a bit. Mitchum and Douglas are incredibly impressive, the other characters are not completely one-dimensional but the film is simply too short to give them a lot of time to delve into character. Especially Greer should have gotten more screen time to get more evil out of her character, I felt.