Out of the Past: Investigating Film Noir
Each film noir weaves its own yarn of longing, corruption, and fateful decisions. In each episode of this podcast series, Clute and Edwards investigate one noir or neo-noir in detail. Following various threads of inquiry, they attempt to unravel the vast canvas of noir. More info at www.noircast.net
- Update frequency
- every 19 days
- Average duration
- 39 minutes
- Episodes
- 63
- Years Active
- 2004 - 2015
Episode 35: Pickup on South Street
Sam Fuller's 1953 "Pickup on South Street" leaves open important questions that Elia Kazan's "On the Waterfront" will feel compelled to answer, and Fuller's film has a more timeless quality as a resu…
00:36:14 |
Fri 11 May 2007
Episode 34: The Strange Love of Martha Ivers
Van Heflin, Barbara Stanwyck, Kirk Douglas and Lizabeth Scott all turn in stellar performances in this 1946 gem. For much of its running time the film lacks many of the visual hallmarks of the noir s…
00:35:17 |
Sun 01 Apr 2007
Episode 33: Hollywoodland
Recently, several Hollywood films, including HOLLYWOODLAND, have revisited traumatic events of the 1940's and 1950's. This new film cycle begs several questions--chief among them, why do the malaise …
00:43:35 |
Fri 02 Mar 2007
Episode 32: Kiss Me Deadly
The 1955 film "Kiss Me Deadly" makes telling changes to Mickey Spillane's 1952 source novel. What was a story of greed and social corruption becomes an allegory of Cold War hysteria. Plot and charact…
00:40:06 |
Fri 02 Feb 2007
Noircast Special 1: Kill Me Like You Mean It
The "Noircast Special" allows Clute and Edwards to address topics of interest to listeners of "Out Of The Past" and "Behind The Black Mask." This inaugural episode features a roundtable discussion wi…
00:40:04 |
Fri 26 Jan 2007
Episode 31: Touch of Evil
Orson Welles's 1958 "Touch of Evil" is considered the last film noir of the classic period. Clute and Edwards investigate why it deserves this designation, arguing that it uses the conventions of noi…
00:33:29 |
Tue 02 Jan 2007
Episode 30: The Postman Always Rings Twice and The Man Who Wasn't There
In this double-feature podcast, Clute and Edwards investigate Tay Garnett's 1946 "The Postman Always Rings Twice" and the Coen brothers' 2001 "The Man Who Wasn't There"--considering their merits as f…
01:14:08 |
Sat 02 Dec 2006
Episode 29: Detour
Edgar G. Ulmer's 1945 film "Detour" is commonly lauded as a B-noir that overcame production limitations with artful minimalism. In this context, instances of obtrusive lighting and camerawork are vie…
00:41:25 |
Wed 01 Nov 2006
Episode 28: The Black Dahlia
In the murder of Elizabeth Short, novelist James Ellroy found a means to grieve over the rape and murder of his own mother. In the novel THE BLACK DAHLIA Betty is at once a symbol of the post-war era…
00:31:53 |
Mon 02 Oct 2006
Episode 27: D.O.A.
Did noir die in 1950? As a filmic style, certainly not; many of the most daring visual and narrative experiments of the classic period date from 1951-1958. However, 1950 seems to mark a dramatic tr…
00:34:40 |
Sat 02 Sep 2006
Episode 26: Murder, My Sweet
Dick Powell was cast as Philip Marlowe in the 1945 film "Murder, My Sweet." Was it a stroke of genius to allow a song and dance man to reinvent himself in this role, or the desecration of a literary …
00:31:52 |
Fri 30 Jun 2006
Episode 25: He Walked By Night
This film deserves its reputation as an important early police procedural and precursor to the television series "Dragnet," but does not deserve to be viewed reductively--as only that. Anthony Mann's…
00:35:52 |
Thu 15 Jun 2006
Episode 24: Chinatown
Robert Towne's screenplay for the 1974 film "Chinatown" tells an original story, but a story whose scope, intrigue, characters, pacing, and style owe a great debt to the work of Raymond Chandler. Th…
00:34:39 |
Thu 01 Jun 2006
Episode 23: On the Waterfront
Elia Kazan might have broken the Hollywood Blacklist. Instead, when HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) asked him to name names, he sang like a canary. His actions ended many careers, and b…
00:36:37 |
Mon 15 May 2006
Episode 22: Good Night, and Good Luck
As America intoned the mantra "Communism," fear became its religion and McCarthy its high priest. George Clooney's "Good Night, and Good Luck" investigates Edward R. Murrow's brave act of voicing di…
00:33:24 |
Mon 01 May 2006
Episode 21: Sunset Blvd.
The most famous texts of any canon are rarely the most typical; rather, they push the limits. The fame of Billy Wilder's 1950 masterwork "Sunset Boulevard" is of this problematic sort. The film plays…
00:30:35 |
Sat 15 Apr 2006
Episode 20: Reservoir Dogs
Kubrick's "The Killing" weaves the narrative threads of each character's story into the complex yarn of a heist. Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs" ties references to numerous films into a dense knot. Th…
00:36:39 |
Sat 01 Apr 2006
Episode 19: The Killing
Stanley Kubrick and Quentin Tarantino both launched their careers by updating the noir tradition. In the first episode of a two-part comparative analysis, Clute and Edwards demonstrate how Kubrick's…
00:35:05 |
Wed 15 Mar 2006
Episode 18: The Set-Up
As crisp and fluid as a boxer's footwork, Robert Wise's editing turns a lightweight script into the heavy-hitting drama "The Set Up." Art Cohn's screenplay is a very Hollywood adaptation of a 1928 p…
00:30:41 |
Wed 01 Mar 2006
Episode 17: Gun Crazy
What good is it to be a sharpshooter when there's no war on? If you want to understand the sense of impotence and angst that defined the postwar generation, "Gun Crazy" is a case study. With a deft…
00:42:14 |
Wed 15 Feb 2006
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