settima

FilmNoir

Killer's Kiss (Stanley Kubrick, 1955)

Oct

25

Fri

Killer's Kiss (1955)

An already worn-out poster for “another great bout” between Davey Gordon and Kid Rodriguez. DP: Stanley Kubrick.

“It's crazy how you can get yourself in a mess sometimes and not even be able to think about it with any sense, and yet, not be able to think about anything else. You get so you're no good for anything or anybody. Maybe it begins by taking life too serious. Anyway, I think that's the way it began for me, just before my fight with Rodriguez three days ago…”

– Davy Gordon

La donna del lago [The Lady of the Lake / The Possessed] (Luigi Bazzoni + Franco Rossellini, 1965)

Oct

25

La donna del lago (1965)

Tilde (Virna Lisi) caressing a man's hand, resting on her shoulder, with her cheek. DP: Leonida Barboni.

Until November 20.

A Canterbury Tale (Michael Powell + Emeric Pressburger, 1944)

Aug

27

A Canterbury Tale (1944)

Alison (Sheila Sim) looking out over the rolling hills of Kent with the Canterbury Cathedral somewhere out there. DP: Erwin Hillier.

“Well, there are more ways than one of getting close to your ancestors. Follow the old road, and as you walk, think of them and of the old England. They climbed Chillingbourne Hill, just as you. They sweated and paused for breath just as you did today. And when you see the bluebells in the spring and the wild thyme, and the broom and the heather, you're only seeing what their eyes saw. You ford the same rivers. The same birds are singing. When you lie flat on your back and rest, and watch the clouds sailing, as I often do, you're so close to those other people, that you can hear the thrumming of the hoofs of their horses, and the sound of the wheels on the road, and their laughter and talk, and the music of the instruments they carried. And when I turn the bend in the road, where they too saw the towers of Canterbury, I feel I've only to turn my head, to see them on the road behind me.”

– Thomas Colpeper, JP

颱風圏の女 [Taifuken no onna / The Woman in the Typhoon Area] (Hideo Ōba, 1948)

Aug

23

Taifuken no onna (1948)

Pirate moll Kuriko Sato (Setsuko Hara) (via). DP: Hiroyuki Nagaoka.

Celebrating International Talk like a Pirate Day*: a [favourite] pirate film.

 

* International Talk like a Pirate Day takes place on September 19.

The Beast with Five Fingers (Robert Florey, 1946)

Aug

15

The Beast with Five Fingers (1946)

Hilary Cummins (Peter Lorre). DP: Wesley Anderson.

“Eight bones has the carpus, five the metacarpus, fourteen the phlanges, all in all, all in all, twenty-seven all in all. Abracadabra.”

– Donald Arlington

The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1947)

Aug

9

The Lady from Shanghai (1947)

Elsa Bannister (Rita Hayworth) and husband Arthur Bannister (Everett Sloane) in the dizzying modernist finale. DP: Charles Lawton Jr..

“You need more than luck in Shanghai.”

– Elsa Bannister

Night Has a Thousand Eyes (John Farrow, 1948)

Aug

3

Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948)

Mentalist John Triton (Edward G. Robinson, middle) and two of his conspirators. DP: John F. Seitz.

A continuity error later on in the movie makes it August 4.

“I'd become a sort of a reverse zombie. I was living in a world already dead, and I alone knowing it.”

– John Triton

The Killers (Robert Siodmak, 1946)

Jul

20

1940

spoiler warning: click to toggle image The Killers (1946)

The July 21 headline. DP: Elwood Bredell.

“Don't ask a dying man to lie his soul into Hell.”

– Lt. Sam Lubinsky

D.O.A. [Dead on Arrival] (Rudolph Maté, 1949)

Jul

18

D.O.A. (1949)

A man's hand signs a car rental contract dated July 18. DP: Ernest Laszlo.

“You knew who I was when I came here today. But you were surprised to see me alive, weren't you? But I'm not alive, Mrs. Philips. Sure, I can stand here and talk to you. I can breathe and I can move. But I'm not alive. Because I did take that poison, and nothing can save me.”

– Frank Bigelow

The Life Magazine displayed at the San Francisco newspaper stand where Frank Bigelow stops is the issue of September 12, 1949, with Yugoslavia's leader Marshal Josip Broz Tito on the cover.

野良犬 [Nora inu / Stray Dog] (Akira Kurosawa, 1949)

Jul

14

Nora inu (1949)

A sweaty man in uniform drinks from a water fountain like a dog (via). DP: Asakazu Nakai.

Someone enjoys a drink or beverage*

“On the bus, the air was so thick, he felt woozy. A wailing infant shook with tears and the woman beside him reeked with the stink of cheap perfume.”

– narrator

On a sweltering summer day, Detective's Murakami's Colt gets stolen on a crowded bus. He must delve deep into the sticky sweaty seedy underbelly of Tokyo to retrieve it.