“Marketing The Sleeping City to The City That Never Sleeps” by Kurt Brokaw

NONFICTION: “The Sleeping City, like so many crime dramas that labored away in the era, won’t make most noir fans’ top ten lists. But its marketing was reflective of its time, more than most noirs that started out trying to hold their theater marquees alone and ended up as the underside of drive-in double bills….”

“Noir at MoMA: Two Recollections” by Kurt Brokaw

Two favorite memories less about what was on screen and more about the audiences that were viewing them. If you’ve lived in Manhattan most of your adult life (and are reading this journal), you’ve probably watched some choice noirs at the Museum of Modern Art. These two favorite memories are less about what was on screen, and more about the audiences that were […]

“Noir Inside and Out: Two Retrospectives” by Kurt Brokaw

In The Killer Inside Me (2010), Winterbottom choreographs the brutality neat and clean; there isn’t a gasp or a clutch that isn’t in the book. Deep into Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me (2010), the indelibly accurate rendering of Jim Thompson’s most important novel, is a defining scene in an Oklahoma jailhouse. Sheriff Lou Ford […]

“Madison Avenue Noir” by Kurt Brokaw

“Madison Avenue is always putting new twists on old pretzels.” Look closely at the shootout in the rain-swept street directly above. It’s the final moments of a 1965 lost neo-noir, The Money Trap. This was the fourth and final pairing of Glenn Ford and Rita Hayworth, who made three better known movies (Gilda, Affair in Trinidad, The Loves […]