Tag: 1940s
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‘La Main du Diable’ is a Nightmare
‘La Main du Diable’ was made during an especially dark moment in France’s history.
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Whirlpool
On ‘Christmas Holiday’ and ‘The Locket.’
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‘Murder, He Says’ is Morbidly Funny
‘Murder, He Says’ is a kind of companion piece to ‘Arsenic and Old Lace.’
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‘Stranger on the Third Floor’ Wouldn’t Amount to Much Without Peter Lorre
‘Stranger on the Third Floor’ is also frequently touted as the very first film-noir movie on account of its story and visual style.
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‘Gaslight’: Bad Love
This movie lays out a specific, common kind of torment that until then had not been so concisely asserted in the popular imagination.
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‘Brute Force’ is Best At Its Weariest
Which is to say when disgust at the prison-industrial complex is at its barest.
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‘My Name is Julia Ross’ Packs a Punch
‘My Name is Julia Ross’ is a multidimensional movie title.
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‘The Beast with Five Fingers’: Look, One Hand!
To watch or read a whodunit is to know, with certainty, that the conclusion of its story will come with the unmasking of someone (or someones) as a villain. The fun of ‘The Beast With Five Fingers’ is the muddying of the cliché.
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It Would Almost Be Impolite Not to Be Enchanted by ‘A Matter of Life and Death’
On Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1946 masterpiece.
Peterson Reviews 