settima

filmnoir

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

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

Strangers on a Train (Alfred Hitchcock, 1951)

May

16

doubles

Strangers on a Train (1951)

Guy Haines (Farley Granger) and Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker), two strangers on a train. DP: Robert Burks.

“I still think it would be wonderful to have a man love you so much he'd kill for you.”

Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick, 1957)

April 20

20

oysters

Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster) pulling Sidney Falco's (Tony Curtis) tie over cocktails and oysters. DP: James Wong Howe.

“I'd hate to take a bite outta you. You're a cookie full of arsenic.”

– J.J. Hunsecker