The film noir "era" (for want of a better term) was a particularly juicy period in Hollywood's history; not least because it saw the flourishing of an enormous pool of talent - much of it European. But noir also lives in that murky grey area between Right and Wrong, at a time when the Hollywood censorship codes made very little allowance for ambiguity. The Hays Office (and their spiritual soulmates, the Legion of Decency) had very restrictive ideas about morality and ethics, which is one of the reasons why "Noir" protagonists always seem to have the primal forces of Reality itself working against them. In a very real sense, they inhabit a world that does not permit moral shades of grey. The censorship of films throughout the Hays Office era was fuelled partly by fear . The Powers That Be were terrified that mainstream American society was constantly under threat from The Other, and eternal vigilance was needed to protect us from them . The Stranger , which I sc...
Do you remember the scene in King Kong (1933) when little Fay Wray was trapped in the hand of the mighty ape? Slowly, he begins to peel away her clothing as she struggles in vain. More curious than lustful, Kong strips away layer after layer of her garments, holding them up to his nose before discarding them and turning back to his little blonde plaything. Fay Wray is of course convinced (as are we, presumably) that she is about to meet A Fate Worse Than Death, but no, Kong halts his exploration before he gets too close to any excessively naughty bits. He does tickle her a couple of times, and he sniffs his fingers, the big pervert. They are then attacked by a Pterodactyl. If you don't recall any of this, it might be because the entire scene was cut by the censors in 1938, and wasn't properly restored until 2005 (along with a few other choice moments). King Kong , like so many other films of the early 30s, had been deemed "objectionable" by the Legion of Decency, and...
I don't like geniuses. They're dangerous. A man abler than his brothers insults them by implication. He must not aspire to any virtue which cannot be shared. -Ellsworth Toohey in The Fountainhead *** Dash: You always say 'Do your best', but you don't really mean it. Why can't I do the best that I can do? Helen: Right now, honey, the world just wants us to fit in, and to fit in, we gotta be like everyone else. Dash: But Dad always said our powers were nothing to be ashamed of, our powers made us special. Helen: Everyone's special, Dash. Dash: [muttering] Which is another way of saying no one is. -Dashiel and Helen Parr in The Incredibles *** The 1950s was a period when the Comic Book industry found itself under attack. A psychiatrist named Frederic Wertham had published a highly influential book entitled Seduction of the Innocent in which he claimed (in great detail) that comic books were directly responsible for the perceived rise in juvenile delinquen...
There's Dark cinema and there's dark cinema. The term Film Noir was originally applied to American cinema in 1946, and seems to have been used by two French film critics at more or less the same time. The critic Nico Frank described a recent batch of American imports as "belong[ing] to what used to be called the detective film genre, but which would now be better termed the crime, or, even better yet, the "crime psychology film." Fellow critic Jean-Pierre Chartier was less charitable in his take on the subject, condemning what he called Film Noir's "pessimism and disgust for humanity." It is Chartier's take on Noir that feels most relevant to this week's film, although personally I would challenge the value judgement implied by his attacks. One of the characteristics of the "dark cinema" of this era was that it didn't necessarily need to have anything to do with crime. Or sex. It's possible to have a Very Bad Day for enti...
Movie Nights at the Victoria Park Baptist Church And so life goes on. Some of you may remember that our film series in early 2020 was rudely interrupted by a Global Pandemic. The subsequent year and a half has been, well... You know things are pretty bad when you find yourself wondering if there is a plural for "Apocalypse". But at any rate, here we are ( Apocalypses? Apocali? That's going to bother you now, isn't it?) facing the prospect of attempting to pick up the pieces of Civilisation - assuming of course we don't go into another Lockdown first. ( Apocalyae? Apocalim? ) Movie-going, like so many communal activities, has taken a severe hit during the Pandemic, and I'm willing to hazard a guess that most of the films you have watched over the last eighteen months have been from the comfort of home, with, at most, a family member or two. But watching a film like this: ....isn't really the same as watching a film like this : Sadly we don't quite...
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