In Nevada
I began to think of the future, which couldn’t have been brighter if I’d embroidered it with neon lights.
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Category Archives: 40s
They Drive By Night (Raoul Walsh, 1940)
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
For half of the film are taut, elegant economies of balance, justice, trade, and love.
Then,
Off the road, the narrative entangles itself in obsession, murder, insanity.
A finer point beneath these intrigues: A fleet of refrigerated dairy trucks and the promise of a contract with the federal government replace, finally, the brash, rambling [...]
Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947)
Thursday, February 5, 2009
I sat there in the afternoons and drank beer.
I used to sit there, half-asleep, with a beer, in the darkness.
Only that music from the movie next door kept jarring me awake.”
Duel in the Sun (King Vidor, 1946)
Monday, September 29, 2008
Midway through, the wires snap: the “good son” (Cotten) takes a moral stand against his father and is forced to leave; the same evening, the “bad son” (Peck) takes advantage of Pearl (Jones), whom the “good son” loves, leading to this serrated alternation of singles:
“Something is being decided. A breeze of emotion underlines the mouth [...]
He Walked by Night (Anthony Mann, 1948)
Friday, September 12, 2008
. . . the smoke rises in a spiral from the cigarette, then suddenly it breaks up; its trajectory becomes chaotic, random. This moment, when laminar or smooth flow dissolves into nonlaminar flow, can’t be predicted or determined, and neither can the pattern of dispersal be foretold . [...]
The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940)
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
At the heart and halfway point of this romantic comedy is a devastating image: a model ship bouncing on the gentle waves of a swimming pool.
A wedding gift from Dexter (Cary Grant) to his soon-to-be remarried ex, Tracy (Katherine Hepburn), it bears the name “True Love” and is modeled to scale on the boat in [...]
Black Narcissus (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1947)
Friday, August 29, 2008
“I told you it was no place to put a nunnery. There’s something in the atmosphere that makes everything exaggerated.”
Black Narcissus (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1947)
Friday, August 29, 2008
Quick, exacting whip pans appear often, not simply moving from A to B but tracing complex interrelations, the opposing ends like a shot and countershot between which we see separate elements strung together.
Here, an extremely condensed example: the whirs of red (shirt, blood), the cold blue windows, the off-white habits and walls, the brown of the [...]
I Know Where I’m Going! (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1945)
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
On a first or second viewing, it’s often hard to keep pace with Powell and Pressburger, the blitz of visual and acoustic information, the elegant choreography of action and the equally complex dialogue.
I Know Where I’m Going! takes off in a sprint. In the opening credits — where titles appear grafted onto physical objects in [...]
Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock, 1946)
Friday, August 8, 2008
Two connected moments regarding Ingrid Bergman’s face:
1) On the plane from Miami to Rio, Cary Grant informs Bergman that her father has committed suicide. Clearly shaken, Bergman pauses in close-up before describing, briefly and assuredly, her feelings of nostalgia and relief. Her final thought: “I don’t have to hate him anymore, or myself.” [...]