By David in TN
tuesday, may 30, 2023 at 12:44:00 a.m. edt
The Fallen Sparrow isn’t all that good. Maureen O’Hara looks great and John Garfield gave his usual performance but the story (to me) isn’t believable or engrossing.
It’s another case of Eddie Muller’s mediocre selections. In his Intro, Eddie complained the film was called a “spy story” when released in 1943. Eddie Muller didn’t invent the term “Film Noir,” but through his hosting at TCM has probably done more than anyone to popularize the term.
In the 40s and 50s, these films were called “crime stories” and “mystery films” by the studios, critics, and public.
N.S.: To underscore what David wrote, when I was a kid, the newspaper and TV Guide listings never said, “Film Noir.” And during my days as a university student in West Germany, each such picture was simply called a "krimi" (crime movie), when shown on TV.
What a waste of talent this one was; Julie Garfinkle (Garfield) never phoned it in, and he was surrounded by top talent.
Presumably the descriptions "Crime" and "Horror" were frowned upon at the time (they were BANNED from comic books when the censorship hammer came down in the 1950's!) -TV GUIDE used the tag "melodrama" for those movies, and I fell in love with the word at a young age from seeing it in the listings. -RM
ReplyDeleteHow many of these types of films(noirs) NOT been seen on Eddie Mueller's show?Are some not available or has he shown most of them?
ReplyDelete--GRA
Has TCM shown this one? I thought it was excellent- and it's a genuine "noir." It's PD, so there are a lot of poor copies online- this version seemed the best of the lot to me. https://archive.org/details/please_murder_me_ipod -RM
ReplyDeleteAnon, tuesday, may 30, 2023 at 11:33:00 p.m. edt
ReplyDeleteThanks, but they've already pulled it.
I checked again, it's there! There are fuzzier copies on YouTube as well. -RM
ReplyDeleteThanks again, RM. It works now.
ReplyDelete