settima

FilmNoir

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

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

13号待避線より その護送車を狙え ['Jūsangō taihisen' yori: Sono gosōsha o nerae / Aim at the Police Van] (Seijun Suzuki, 1960)

Aug

5

Fujiya popcorn

13号待避線より その護送車を狙え (1960)

Teenage girls eating Fujiya popcorn while singing along to rock 'n roll on the jukebox in cool cool Shinjuku [新宿区]. DP: Shigeyoshi Mine.

Bunny Lake Is Missing (Otto Preminger, 1965)

Aug

4

junket

Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965)

Two women – one young (Carol Lynley), one older (Lucie Mannheim) – in a school's kitchen. The older woman handling the food says “But when it looks like junket, it is junket.“. DP: Denys N. Coop.

”'Junket is junket,' I said, and 'no matter what you do with it, it still tastes like swill and swallows like slime.'”

– school cook

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

On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954)

Jul

28

liquor

On the Waterfront (1954)

Edie Doyle (Eva Marie Saint) apprehensively sips liquor with Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) in attendance. DPs: Boris Kaufman & James Wong Howe.

“You know this city's full of hawks? That's a fact. They hang around on the top of the big hotels. And they spot a pigeon in the park. Right down on him.”

– Terry Malloy

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 Big Combo (Joseph H. Lewis, 1955)

Jun

24

spaghetti

The Big Combo (1955)

A man in a bathrobe (Ted de Corsia) lifts undrained, slightly overcooked spaghetti from a white enamel pan onto a plate. The overcookedness may be caused by this movie's horrible horrible AI “restoration”. DP: John Alton.

“I couldn't swallow any more salami.”

– Mingo

Caged (John Cromwell, 1950)

Jun

20

prison chow

Caged (1950)

The girls eating their grub. It'd be Marie Allen's (Eleanor Parker) first of many. DP: Carl E. Guthrie.

“What I'd give for a sink full of dirty dish.”

– Millie