![\"scarlet\"](\"http:\/\/johnknoerle.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/scarlet.png\")
\n<\/a>\u201cScarlet Street\u201d<\/strong> \u2013 (1945) Edgar G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, Dan Duryea, directed by Fritz Lang. Same stars and director as 1944\u2019s \u201cWoman in the Window\u201d but the chasm in tone and character highlights the difference between standard crime melodrama and film noir. In the earlier flick Robinson is meek and somewhat na\u00efve but in \u201cScarlet Street\u201d he\u2019s a plain fool. Bennett is a saucy flirt in \u201cWoman in the Window\u201d but flat-out wicked in \u201cScarlet Street.\u201d And Dan Duryea here is as despicable as only Dan Duryea can be.<\/p>\n
Fave line, Bennett, repeated in eerie voiceovers: \u201cJeepers, I love you Johnny.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fave line, Bendix, going ballistic at the hot jazz on the jukebox: \u201cThey\u2019re playin\u2019 dat monkey music again!\u201d<\/p>\n Fave line, Bogart: “I was born when you kissed me. I died when you left me. I lived a few weeks while you loved me.”<\/p>\n Fave line, Dana Andrews, when asked if he\u2019d ever been in love: \u201cDame got a fox fur outta me once.\u201d<\/p>\n This story of crusading cop Cornel Wilde versus cunning mobster Richard Conte is one of the last of the breed. Brian Donleavy plays a down-on-his-luck hood who wears a big speaker around his neck as a hearing aid, and which figures famously in his demise. A plot-challenged B film, but a damn good lookin\u2019 one!<\/p>\n Fave line: \u201cShoots me with my own gun. That\u2019s what gets me.\u201d<\/p>\n He succeeds only too well. She’s on the eve of deserting him for Hollywood when someone kills her. Frankie teams up with the dead girl\u2019s sister (Grable) to track down the killer.<\/p>\n Victor Mature and Betty Grable, who make no one\u2019s list of Hollywood\u2019s great thespians, nonetheless have great chemistry.<\/p>\n Fave line, Mature, to the cop who\u2019s hounding him: \u201cMust be a great life. Kinda like a garbage man, only with people.\u201d<\/p>\n Stars Kirk Douglas and Jan Sterling, directed by Billy Wilder, his first film project where he enjoyed complete control.<\/p>\n The film was originally panned as too nasty but has enjoyed a critical renaissance in recent years. In 2007 Roger Ebert wrote of Kirk Douglas\u2019 performance, \u201cIt’s as right-now as a sharpened knife.”<\/p>\n Fave line, one of the best of all time, Jan Sterling: \u201cI never pray. Kneeling bags my nylons.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"dahlia\"](\"http:\/\/johnknoerle.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/dahlia.png\")
\n<\/a>\u201cThe Blue Dahlia\u201d<\/strong> \u2013 (1946) Penned by Raymond Chandler, starring Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake and Bill Bendix as a returning GI with a steel plate in his head. Ladd returns from his service overseas to find his wife has fallen in with a fast crowd. Chandler wrote it as they shot and allegedly polished off a case of Scotch, with round-the-clock nurses in attendance, in order to get the script done on deadline. The original draft had brain-damaged Bendix as the heavy but the Pentagon objected.<\/p>\n![\"lonely\"](\"http:\/\/johnknoerle.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/lonely.png\")
\n<\/a>\u201cIn a Lonely Place\u201d<\/strong> \u2013 (1950) Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame, what a combo, good as Bogie and Bacall. Bogart plays a down-on-his-luck screenwriter with anger management issues. Directed by Nicholas Ray, whose marriage to Grahame was coming apart at the time. That tension, and disillusionment, is clearly reflected in this dark and powerful film.<\/p>\n![\"laura\"](\"http:\/\/johnknoerle.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/laura.png\")
\n<\/a>\u201cLaura\u201d<\/strong> \u2013 (1944) Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb, and Vincent Price as a Southern gigolo. Directed by Otto Preminger. Detective Andrews falls in love with the portrait of the gorgeous, murdered Tierney. A four-star flick, though purists would say it\u2019s not a true noir since Gene Tierney\u2019s Laura is not a femme fatale. Won an Oscar for cinematography.<\/p>\n![\"combo\"](\"http:\/\/johnknoerle.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/combo.png\")
\n<\/a>\u201cThe Big Combo\u201d<\/strong> \u2013 (1955) America\u2019s romance with film noir was nearing an end. Black and white film was soon to be obsolete, and the family-focused 50s weren\u2019t fertile ground for cynicism and mordant humor.<\/p>\n![\"wakeup\"](\"http:\/\/johnknoerle.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/wakeup.png\")
\n<\/a>\u201cI Wake Up Screaming\u201d<\/strong> \u2013 (1941) Stars Victor Mature and Betty Grable in a rare serious role. Promoter Frankie Christopher, being grilled by police in the murder of a model, recalls in flashback: Meeting her as a waitress, trying to parlay her beauty into social acceptance and a lucrative career.<\/p>\n![\"ace\"](\"http:\/\/johnknoerle.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/ace.png\")
\n<\/a>\u201cAce in the Hole\u201d<\/strong> \u2013 (1951) About a struggling newspaper reporter exploiting the story of a man trapped in a cave. Cynical to the gills.<\/p>\n
![\"nightmare\"](\"http:\/\/johnknoerle.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/nightmare.png\")