This 1950 film noir classic is a masterpiece of style and a blast of cinematic ecstasy on a budget barely bigger than a B movie.
Category: film noir
‘Beat Girl’ – British teen rebellion on Criterion Channel
This 1960 rock and roll rebellion melodrama is a British teen exploitation picture set in the seedy underbelly of Soho and set to a growling score.
‘Klute’ with Jane Fonda on Criterion Channel
The film is named for Donald Sutherland’s character but Alan Pakula’s stark, alienated neo-noir, is remembered for Jane Fonda’s Oscar-winning performance.
‘Ace in the Hole’ – newspaper noir on Amazon Prime and Criterion Channel
Billy Wilder is the American cinema’s most famous cynic, but nothing in his career is as scathing as this noir-tinged newspaper drama, an indictment of the American media circus.
![TITLE: SUNSET BOULEVARD PERS: VON STROHEIM, ERICH / SWANSON, GLORIA YEAR: 1950 DIR: WILDER, BILLY REF: SUN025AL CREDIT: [ THE KOBAL COLLECTION / PARAMOUNT ]](https://i2.wp.com/streamondemandathome.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Sunset-Blvd.jpeg?fit=230%2C178&ssl=1)
‘Sunset Boulevard’ on Amazon Prime and Criterion Channel
William Holden and Gloria Swanson star in this Gothic Hollywood noir, the darkest of Hollywood’s self-portraits, directed by Billy Wilder.
‘Le Doulos’ – the French criminal code on Criterion Channel
Jean-Paul Belmondo stars as the smiling underworld informer in Jean-Pierre Melville’s cool, often cruel classic French noir.
‘Key Largo’ with Bogie and Bacall on HBO Max
Film noir hits the tropics in John Huston’s 1948 thriller set in the midst of a Florida Hurricane. Edward G. Robinson, Lionel Barrymore, and Claire Trevor costar.
John Huston’s ‘The Asphalt Jungle’ on Criterion Channel
The Asphalt Jungle (1950) is one of John Huston’s rare forays into the genre that would later be called film noir. His first, The Maltese Falcon (1941), helped set the template of the private eye noir. Ten years later, working from an adaptation of the caper novel by W.R. Burnett scripted in collaboration with the […]
Last chance: David Lynch’s ‘Mulholland Dr.’ on HBO Max
Mulholland Dr. (2001) – David Lynch pulled a near magic trick in what can only be an exercise in creative rewriting and re-conception. Taking an open ended TV pilot rejected by the networks, he added 45 minutes and created closure in a weird, mystical logic that, in its unique Lynchian way, makes a twisted emotional […]
‘Brick’- High school noir on Criterion Channel
Brick (2005), the debut feature from Star Trek: The Last Jedi filmmaker Rian Johnson, puts the collected works of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett in a blender with a jigger of teenage melodrama and pours it into a high school mold. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays things so close to his chest that he’s almost unreadable as […]