I watched Jules Dassin’s Night And The City today. It’s a truly great film that stands the test of time, and I think a lot of it is down to Richard Widmark’s lead performance. Widmark has a strange kind of face; babyish and innocent, but never far from weaselly desperation - perfect for the small-time hustlers he plays in Night And The City and Pickup On South Street. He’s a noir antihero who never seems quite at home in a noir environment; a little too innocent for the brutal underworlds his characters try to navigate through. They may not inspire the audience’s sympathy, but they always inspire empathy. 
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I watched Jules Dassin’s Night And The City today. It’s a truly great film that stands the test of time, and I think a lot of it is down to Richard Widmark’s lead performance. Widmark has a strange kind of face; babyish and innocent, but never far from weaselly desperation - perfect for the small-time hustlers he plays in Night And The City and Pickup On South Street. He’s a noir antihero who never seems quite at home in a noir environment; a little too innocent for the brutal underworlds his characters try to navigate through. They may not inspire the audience’s sympathy, but they always inspire empathy. 

I watched Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly over the weekend. It’s a great noir, and contains some genuinely disturbing moments for a film made in the 1950s. The opening credits sequence alone (beginning at 1:30 in the video) sets a supremely unnerving tone for the film, as the credits creep backwards across the screen and Cloris Leachman’s panting/sobbing stays at the same level on the soundtrack. And that ending! It’s so nightmarish precisely because it’s so surreal and out-there. Just watching it, you can see the influence on so many subsequent works - from Raiders to Repo Man to Pulp Fiction. What a film.

dfordoom: Jane Greer and Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past, 1947. From Doctor Macro One of my favourite noir films ever (if not my favourite).
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dfordoom:

Jane Greer and Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past, 1947. From Doctor Macro

One of my favourite noir films ever (if not my favourite).

(via grooveland)

Source: dfordoom