Camera in the Head I’m an enthusiast of film, the kind of film that uses the uniquely cinematic qualities of the medium. From time to time, I see a non-cinematic film which I like. This is one such. By non-cinematic, I mean that the film is not more than play. Film adds only a few… Continue reading The Big Sleep (1946)
Tag: f1946
Films released in 1946
Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
Slow Meditation on Observation This treacly story hides some masterful filmmaking. Film is all about observation, except the observed usually contrive to make the observer feel unobtrusive. During this period, intelligent filmmakers were playing with the form so that often films were not only engineered observations but the matter of the movie itself was about… Continue reading Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
Appointment with Crime (1946)
Hands Off For me, noir is a very specific form. It is as pervasive and important an invention as Jazz. The thing that distinguishes it is a main character who is put through the wringer in circumstances that would never occur if there were not us ghosts watching and manipulating reality. It had a long… Continue reading Appointment with Crime (1946)
The Dark Mirror (1946)
Her Sister Rose An actor’s challenge is when they are required to create their own mob, create the tension they are to hold. I’ve just seen a few “multiple people in one body” type films. Here we have something different: one actress playing two characters, exact twins. One is a murderer, we discover early in… Continue reading The Dark Mirror (1946)
Dressed to Kill (1946)
A Sad Goodbye These Basil Rathbone Holmes movies are a wonder. They deviate so far from the stories in intent, they offend. Yet at the same time, they were important to the redefinition of the British wartime character. They were not important at all in the scheme of evolution that defined the detective genre. They… Continue reading Dressed to Kill (1946)