Film Noir DVD & VHS


CHUCK'S (semi-annual) MONTHLY SPECIALS (In Dark City, time is subjective!)

#1 The Work of Robert Siodmak

Siodmak could be thought of as the premier director of the classic noir era. This of course like everything film noir, would be debated but several historical points add to this idea. For one, his noir work was mostly created in the 1940's when atmosphere was still King. Visual styling was and remains to this day a stereotypical feature most often identified first, when both novices and noirheads flash thoughts of film noir. Using visual elements from the Mystery and Horror genres , these early noirs

		certainly are typical of the shadowy - low key lit world of Siodmak's vision. Secondly, his American film noir career started at Universal a studio which at the time, had a firm handle on all things "Creepy". Universal wasn't afraid to go over the top with any panic related subjects and his first film noir 'Phantom Lady' has some creepy moments i.e. Cliff the Drummer. 'Lady' was sandwiched between 'Son of Dracula' and 'Cobra Woman' in Siodmak's workload. All three films exist in a dreamlike world, an important element for the Noir syndrome to be effective. So Universal was an excellent point of departure for a director making films still waiting to be classified as film noir.
Chance, geography and family history play an important role in the development of our featured noir director. Robert Siodmak was born American, but as a child moved with his family to Germany, where during the late 1920's he entered the German cinema along side Edgar G. Ulmer and other émigré directors. Roots man, Roots! ,..you can not talk about film noir and it's early influences without paying homage to the German Cinema. Siodmak was at the right place at the right time for

developing that style that we now know as film noir. Then the most notorious hit-man of all time Adolph Hitler rose to power and Siodmak was forced to escape Germany where he moved to France and made several films. In 1939 he arrived in Hollywood, worked at Paramount for awhile and then settled at Universal Pictures.
His early experience in the German Cinema, the horrors of what was happening in Germany and being at the right studio in the early 1940's all contribute to the career of a brilliant director. Perhaps being born American gave him a insiders cultural intuition that the other Eastern European émigré directors had to develop. No matter, from Phantom Lady (1944) to Criss Cross (1949) in five short years Robert Siodmak gave us a few quintessential noirs.


Phantom Lady (1944) [Director] Christmas Holiday (1944) [Director] The Suspect (1944) [Director] Conflict (1945) [Writer] The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (1945) [Director]	The Spiral Staircase (1946) [Director] The Killers (1946) [Director] The Dark Mirror (1946) [Director] Cry of the City (1948) [Director] Criss Cross (1949) [Director] The File on Thelma Jordon (1950) [Director]
Titles link to IMDb for plots and crews
MONTHLY SPECIAL: Thanks to that Blackboard regular Henley "The Bold One"
( he's the only one with the guts to tell Dark Marc to get off his butt!! ) ........... TAKE ANY 3 ABOVE TITLES FOR $28.00 INCLUDING SHIPPING (dvd or vhs) TAKE ANY 4 ABOVE TITLES FOR $37.00 INCLUDING SHIPPING (dvd or vhs) ANY 7 ABOVE TITLES $ 50.00 SHIPPING IS FREE
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All cities have their secrets, but none are so dark as San Francisco's, the city that Ambrose Bierce famously described as "a point upon a map of fog." With its reputation as a shadowy land of easy vice and hard virtue, San Francisco provided the ideal setting for many of the greatest film noirs, from classics like The Maltese Falcon and Dark Passage to obscure treasures like Woman on the Run and D.O.A., and neo-noirs like Point Blank and The Conversation. In this guide to more than forty film noirs and the locations where they were shot, readers visit the Mission Dolores cemetery, where James Stewart spies Kim Novak visiting Carlotta’s grave in Vertigo; the Steinhart Aquarium, where Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth rendezvous in The Lady from Shanghai; and Kezar Stadium, where Clint Eastwood, in Dirty Harry, captures the serial killer, Scorpio, in a blaze of ghastly white light. ..... Nathaniel Rich

Reviews

San Francisco Noir is a rare book that lets you step into a dream. The dream is film—all the seductive phantoms of film noir that have haunted us for decades—and by discovering so carefully and describing so memorably the loci of all these fantasies, Nathaniel Rich has written a fascinating work of criticism disguised as a guided tour around a great city. He puts you right in the middle of some wonderful movies—and what better travel book could there be?

— Martin Scorsese

San Francisco Noir is a guidebook that works on two levels: as a survey of important genre landmarks in the eponymous city and, more important, as a smart, highly readable critical overview of some of the most interesting movies in the noir tradition. With this book Nathaniel Rich establishes himself as a film critic and historian to be reckoned with.

— Richard Schickel

Nathaniel Rich's smart, incisive, and inclusive book will appeal to lovers of film noir—and of San Francisco—all around the country. A wonderful guidebook to that city's cinematic netherworld, it makes you want to get lost in the films even as you find your way through the city.

— Nicholas Christopher, author of Somewhere in the Night: Film Noir and the American City


		SPECIAL: Get 'San Francisco Noir ' & any 3 movies featured in the book $38.00