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Noir

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Charade. Frank Miller, Batman et le choc des civilisations. Le Monde.fr | • Mis à jour le | Par Soren Seelow Pour les amateurs de comics, le dessinateur et scénariste Frank Miller est un héros. Il a déringardisé Daredevil, l'avocat-justicier aveugle de Marvel, a inventé la série Sin City, qu'il a portée à l'écran, et fait entrer Batman dans le XXIe siècle. C'est sous son crayon, dans la série The Dark Knight Returns (1986), que Bruce Wayne troque ses gants mauves, sa panoplie de bat-gadgets et les "whizz bam" contre l'uniforme sombre du justicier gothique, ambigu et violent. Le genre est renouvelé : les super-héros vont les uns après les autres quitter leurs collants kitsch pour entrer dans la catégorie BD pour adultes. Artisan vénéré de la renaissance des comics, Frank Miller est pourtant un personnage contesté, que ses plus fidèles lecteurs ont parfois du mal à suivre.

"J'entends souvent les gens se demander pourquoi nous avons attaqué l'Irak, par exemple. Frank Miller n'a pas sa langue, ni son stylo, dans sa poche. A Fresh Look Back at Jean-Luc Godard’s ‘Breathless' The Big Sleep. First released in 1946 and now being revived for selected screenings around the country and an extended run at the National Film Theatre, The Big Sleep is a film of infinite interest.

In its famously knowing trailer, Humphrey Bogart walks into the Hollywood Public Library and asks for "a good mystery like The Maltese Falcon". A librarian gives him a copy of what is misleadingly described as "Raymond Chandler's latest", adding: "What a picture that'll make! " Well, it did, and the result can be approached from a number of distinct and complementary directions. First, it's a Warner Brothers production, made at the height of Hollywood's big studio era and announced by Warner's logo, which looks like a federal badge of social responsibility.

Jack L Warner, who'd headed the studio since the early 1920s, determined what films were made, how and by whom, their cost and which contract performers appeared in them; their smart, stocky, wisecracking heroes looked a lot like Warner himself. A bout de Bogart. Lauren Bacall. The apartment is cavernous, on a high floor of the Dakota, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Huge windows overlook Central Park, 30 feet above the tree line, with the grand residential buildings of Fifth Avenue in the distance. My meetings with Lauren Bacall, who is 86, are at three P.M. in the winter, so the light is silvery blue in the wood-trimmed parlor, where Bacall has set the scene for our sessions.

A tall wooden chair, for her, is positioned in the center of the room, near a low, white-and-green-upholstered club chair, for me. A single lamp burns in a distant corner. She is dressed, every time, in a black shirt, black pants, and black orthopedic shoes. She always has with her Sophie, an excitable papillon, and what she refers to as “my friend,” her aluminum walker, with tennis balls on its feet. The “fucking fracture that I’ve got on the hip” is the result of a bathroom fall a few months back, a frustrating how-do-you-do after a life of near-perfect health. The Prettiest Usher. Free Film Noir Movies.

During the 1940s and 50s, Hollywood entered a “noir” period, producing riveting films based on hard-boiled fiction. These films were set in dark locations and shot in a black & white aesthetic that fit like a glove. Hardened men wore fedoras and forever smoked cigarettes. Women played the femme fatale role brilliantly. Love was the surest way to death. All of these elements figured into what Roger Ebert calls “the most American film genre” in his short Guide to Film Noir. For more free films, please visit our big collection of Free Movies Online.

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