Budd Bottiecher's Behind Locked Doors (1948)
Books
They stopped making noir movies over 60 years ago, but the books on film noir keep on coming. A slew of new titles will be published before year’s end:
Gloria Grahame, Bad Girl of Film Noir: The Complete Career
Robert J. Lentz
Binding: Paperback
Release Date: July 5th, 2011
In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City
Imogen Sara Smith
Binding: Paperback
Release Date: July 5th, 2011
The Maltese Touch of Evil: Film Noir and Potential Criticism (Interfaces: Studies in Visual Culture)
Richard L. Edwards & Shannon Clute
Binding: Paperback
Release Date: December 13th, 2011
What Is Film Noir?
William Park
Binding: Hardcover
Release Date: September 16th, 2011
Movies
Noirs I have recently watched – those marked with an * be added to my list of essential noirs (!):
Des gens sans importance (People of No Importance – France 1956)
French fatalism meets neo-realism in a tragic story of working-class life. A long-haul trucker falls for an aimless young waitress from a road-side café. Great acting from Jean Gabin and the earthy Françoise Arnoul. 4½ stars
Senza pietà (Without Pity – Italy 1948) *
Black GI and a local girl on the skids in a doomed love triangle cannot escape tragic entrapment. Compelling neo-realist melodrama with a decidedly noir denouement. 4½ stars
Riso Amaro (Bitter Rice – Italy 1949)
Classic neo-realist socialist melodrama. Homme-fatale destroys a passionate innocent. A bad girl is redeemed and homme-fatale meets a gruesome noir end in an abattoir. 5 stars
Guele d’Amour (Ladykiller – France 1937) *
A fatalistic tale of amour-fou fuelled by a callous femme-fatale. Hunk Jean Gabin and the luminous Mireille Balin star. Looks decades ahead its time. 4½ stars
Klute (1971) *
Alan J. Pakula’s signature reworking of classic noir motifs in a masterly study of urban paranoia and alienation. Jane Fonda earned an Oscar for her brilliant portrayal of articulate b-girl the target of mystery psychopath. 5 stars
Behind Locked Doors (1948)
An entertaining Bud Bottiecher b-movie. PI Richard Carlson enters a sanatorium undercover to flush out a crook. A feast of metaphors for Bottiecher aficionados and good entertainment for the rest of us. Moody lensing from Guy Roe (Railroaded!, Trapped Armored Car Robbery, The Sound of Fury). 3½ stars
