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Author
Summary
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title
Flourishing in the United States during the 1940s and 50s, the bleak, violent genre of filmmaking known as film noir reflected the attitudes of writers and auteur directors influenced by the events of the turbulent mid-twentieth century. Films such as Force of Evil, Night and the City, Double Indemnity, Laura, The Big Heat, The Killers, Kiss Me Deadly and, more recently, Chinatown and The Grifters are indelibly...
Appears on list
Summary
With its singular focus on the very best portrait photography of the 1940s and 1950s Hollywood film noir era, every page of this coffee-table volume is rich in brooding atmosphere. The portraits gathered here, of actors such as Rita Hayworth, Orson Welles, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Gene Tierney, Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, Jack Palance, Joan Crawford and Richard Widmark, were taken by premier studio...
3) The Stranger
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An investigator from the War Crimes Commission travels to Connecticut to find an infamous Nazi.
5) Quicksand
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After borrowing $20 from his employer's cash register, an auto mechanic is plunged into a series of increasingly disastrous circumstances which rapidly spiral out of his control.
6) Smash Up
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Angie Evans, fast-rising nightclub singer, interrupts her career to marry struggling songwriter Ken Conway. When Ken lucks into a career as chart-topping radio crooner, Angie is forced into idle luxury which proves her downfall. Her potential alcoholism burgeons and Ken remains clueless concerning his responsibility for her problems.
9) The Killing
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With fascinating detail, Stanley Kubrick lays bare the intricate inner-planning of a racetrack heist by a deadly mastermind (Sterling Hayden) and his crew. Co-stars Coleen Gray.
11) Sunset Boulevard
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Gloria Swanson, as Norma Desmond, an aging silent-film queen, and William Holden, as the struggling young screenwriter who is held in thrall by her madness, created two of the screen's most memorable characters in "Sunset Boulevard." Winner of three Academy Awards®, director Billy Wilder's powerful orchestration of the bizarre tale is a true cinematic classic. From the unforgettable opening sequence -- a body found floating in a decayed mansion's...
12) Scarlet Street
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The quintessential Film Noir - all the elements of corruption, sex, winners and losers. Edward G Robinson plays an amateur painter who protects a young woman. He is in a mid-life crisis and befriends a younger woman and convinces her he has a fortune. Her boyfriend convinces her to try and con him out of the money with disastrous results.
13) True Confessions
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Two of the finest actors of our time, Robert De Niro and Robert Duvall, star in this must-see tale of two brothers set on a collision course as the result of a brutal murder in 1940s Los Angeles.
Series
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Martin Scorsese’s contribution to the Century of Cinema series is a fascinating exploration of some of the landmarks of American cinema, as well as some of its lesser known byways. Under chapter headings such as The Director’s Dilemma or The Director as Iconoclast, Scorsese analyses the work of filmmakers as diverse as DW Griffith, FW Murnau, Sam Fuller and John Cassavetes. This is no academic history, but a declaration of passion for cinema from...