Word: noire
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...miserably at craps, the atmosphere changes to one which is highly stylized and starkly black-and-white. The beauty of this film is the way in which it blends those two textures, morally as well as visually, into a witty and seamless union of French style and American film noir...
...offset curbs, sinking streets and chipped cement steps in Hollister testify to the fault's ornery nature. To appreciate its sheer power, a trip to Almaden's Cienega Winery ten miles to the south is instructive. From afar, nothing seems amiss: manicured vines growing Cabernet, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes sweep to the base of the Gabilan Mountains. Up close, the scene is not so idyllic: the San Andreas splits the winery building like a conveyor belt. On the North American plate, employees are playing basketball. Across the road, on the Pacific plate, there is a seminar...
...Neill (Jack Nicholson)--who has an affair with Bryant when Reed is at a convention--the raging, messy confessional speech he so obviously needs; and so O'Neill puts it in a letter which we never see. They keep Nicholson brooding in the shadows like a character in film noir, relying on our memories of his explosions in other films to know that he has it in him. Real blood-and-guts American rage and confession would expose the tasteful, arid Englishness of the Reed-Bryant quarrels and love scenes (although there's a lulu of a fight when...
...hatch, a husband dies, insurance claims are debated, friendships fray, the lovers quarrel and part explosively. And though Lawrence Kasdan's film is set in today's South Florida, its characters move through an atmosphere that suggests the confluences of decor and demeanor in a 1940s film noir...
...United States--but that was still only a small part of their business. Most of what they did was in the work of surveillance. The man you can't see in Hopper's "Nighthawks,"--the one standing just around the corner and made famous in so many noir films with his crumpled hat and his cigarette--was most likely a Pinkerton man. What made them different, and hence what made Hammett's characters different, was that the Pinkertons had a code...