Fourth Annual Film Noir Month!

It is June, the month of my birth, and my annual birthday present to myself on this blog is that we do a month solely devoted to my favorite cinematic genre: film noir.  I love nothing more than rapid-fire dialogue, a stack of murders & crimes piling up in every corner of the screen, a beautiful dame with a gun, and a 90-minute runtime.  This month, we're going to discuss fifteen new-to-me movies in the film noir genre, ranging from the formative (one film came even before The Maltese Falcon, which is generally considered to be the first classic film noir) all the way into the 1960's with the "neo-noir" era.

The one rule I have for this series is that we don't watch movies that I've already seen.  You'll see when I kick off tomorrow that I have seen a lot of film noir (I'll have links to all of our past articles), and those are just the films that I've reviewed on the blog (you can find a ton more on my Letterboxd account).  We do have a few classics left this year, including one major French neo-noir from the 1960's that stands out as the biggest title this season, and a couple more that would be considered B-side classics in the genre.  But by-and-large, especially given that I watch film noir year-round thanks to TCM's Noir Alley, a lot of these titles are going to be flicks that might not be as familiar to you as Double Indemnity, Laura, The Big Heat, and Touch of Evil.

But my focus this year is in large part on big names of the film noir genre, and filling in the gaps.  Actors like Barbara Stanwyck, Peter Lorre, Gloria Grahame, & Claire Trevor, all signature stars of the genre, are going to have films this season.  Cathy O'Donnell & Farley Granger, both of whom we last talked about in They Live By Night, are returning with another film noir.  And while the two of them would make two other films together, we're going to get to the final film noir collaboration between Fritz Lang, a master of the genre, and arguably his greatest muse, Joan Bennett, who together made two classics of the genre, and one forgotten picture that will feature this month.  So watch out for men lurking in the shadows, avoid anyone trying to make you an easy buck, and don't trust the curvy dame who just wandered into your office in an evening gown at 10 AM.  It's time to celebrate film noir...