馬路天使 (Street Angel)

Director: Yuan Muzhi
Year: 1937
Run-time: 1 hr 31 min

- A couple sources claim this film was inspired by Frank Borzage. I've always thought that the left wing Chinese melodramas that have appeared so far bear close kinship to Borzage, even though they weren't explicitly romantic in the same way, so it didn't surprise me to see a film that may have been more directly inspired. Thus it surprised me that Street Angel is quite often very funny in a physical way, although it does veer towards tragedy at the end (in a way that felt a little forced to me). It even has musical scenes with our list's appearance of a bouncing ball (that goes right-to-left to match the Chinese subtitles). It's a strange film to be sure, and very different from its Chinese forerunners. But I do really like the characters, and the odd frenetic pacing makes for something exciting and different.

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The Big Sleep

Director: Howard Hawks Year: 1946 While The Maltese Falcon cares deeply about its plot, which ends up pretty simple if very well-paced, The Big Sleep revels in its complexity, is extremely difficult to follow, even if it ultimately cares much more about its characters than most "puzzle films". This film clearly had a big influence on Inherent Vice. I'm not sure I love it - my wife got so confused she couldn't keep watching - but I think there's certainly a lot more to it than most of the noirs we've seen so far. Bacall is excellent, and Bogart is just perfect. I would certainly watch it again to see how it holds up now that I have a better idea of what's going on.

The Docks of New York

Director: Josef von Sternberg Year: 1928 Run-time: 1 hr 16 min Source: Youtube Silent films were certainly on their way out in 1928, at least if you were an American studio director who's not Chaplin or Keaton, and this was one of those little gems that went largely unseen due to that transition. It feels a bit like both a proto-noir and a proto-gangster film, but neither of those labels quite fit. It's actually an effective, unconventional romance film, something that starts out cynical but ends up very sweet. I enjoyed the film more than I thought I would, but with this entry in the list, I can't help but notice the big American studio system of the mid-century is falling into place, with Keaton now making films like The Cameraman for MGM (a studio which would ultimately ruin his career), and this film released by the newly renamed Paramount Pictures. Along with it, the rough edges are getting smoothed down a little bit. Certainly, the standards in...

Le Quai des brumes (Port Of Shadows)

Director: Marcel Carné Year: 1938 Run-time: 1 hr 31 min - This is the first of two Carné films on the list from 1938. We haven't talked much about French poetic realism, the style pioneered by Pepe le Moko (also starring Jean Gabin), but this is where that style heavily overlaps with what would become film noir (Wikipedia claims this was one of the first films to be called as such). The tropes of noir are so heavily associated with post-war depression and malaise that it's pretty shocking to see these same tropes show up before the war - the French government agreed, and even banned this film for a time as not representative of the French spirit. It's an excellent film, though. From my perspective, both of these early Carné works show clear ties to the Marseilles trilogy - this one, because of the persistent theme of the sea as a place for escape and loss of identity. - I am much more in love with the French acting style of the 30's than I am...

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