By David in TN
Friday, March 9, 2018 at 12:08:00 A.M. EST
TCM's Film Noir of the Week has slightly changed their format. They now have a showing at Midnight ET Saturday night and again at the old time of 10 a.m. ET Sunday morning.
This week's noir is Stranger on the Third Floor (1940). This is considered the first Film Noir by many. Peter Lorre has a brief but memorable role.
On Saturday night, March 10, TCM shows two John Payne noir films, Kansas City Confidential (1952) at 8 p.m. ET and The Crooked Way (1949) at 10 p.m. ET. The aforementioned Stranger on the Third Floor runs at Midnight ET, repeating at 10 a.m. ET Sunday.
Kansas City Confidential is a well-known noir with Payne's character framed for a holdup by a gang led by a crooked cop. The Crooked Way has a common trope of the time, a World War II veteran with amnesia stumbling around Los Angeles, a crook before his war service, who doesn't know what he did.
3 comments:
Thanks for the info.I look forward to watching good old film noir.
TCM has declared this March Elizabeth Taylor month. On Tuesday, March 13, at 5 pm ET, TCM shows Conspirator (1949).
Robert Taylor, in a suave villain role, plays a British officer who is secretly a Communist agent. There were a lot of these in real life, by the way. Philby, Burgess, etc.
Elizabeth Taylor (still in her teens) is Robert Taylor's new bride. When she finds out her husband is a commie, she angrily rebukes him, a sign of the strong anti-communist feeling of the time.
TCM's Film Noir of the week for Saturday, March 17, at Midnight ET, is Crossfire (1947). It stars RKO's two big guns, Robert Mitchum and Robert Ryan, with Robert Young as a police detective.
Robert Ryan is a psychopathic bigot (a characterization he had a patent on) who beats a stranger to death because he was Jewish and tries to pin it on a fellow soldier.
Gloria Grahame is a taxi dancer who helps the innocent suspect.
Edward Dmytryk directs from a novel by Richard Brooks. In the novel the victim was a homosexual.
Crossfire repeats at 10 am ET Sunday, March 18.
On Sunday night, March 18, at 8 pm ET, TCM has Madigan (1968), starring Richard Widmark and Henry Fonda. Madigan was filmed, I read, in the summer of 1967 partly on location in Spanish Harlem. At times the crew was threatened by local street thugs.
Widmark and Harry Guardino are veteran detectives who lose a suspect in embarrassing fashion. Fonda is the NYPD Commissioner who disapproves of Madigan. Inger Stevens is Madigan's unhappy wife.
Madigan is based on a novel, The Commissioner, in which Fonda's character is the major story line. In the novel, the psycho bad guy is a Puerto Rican. In the film, he's a Czech, played by Steven Inhat.
There is a subplot in which a black "community leader's" son is busted for sex with underage girls and claims "police brutality." Sound familiar?
After Madigan at 10 pm ET, TCM shows Charley Varrick (1973). Walter Matthau plays a small time robber who inadvertently heists a bank with mob money.
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