Seduction, sensationalism and the Femme Fatale in American Film Noir

Film Noir is often regarded as a quintessentially American genre defined by enduring Hollywood classics such as The Postman Always Rings Twice, Murder My Sweet  and Double Indemnity and the glamorous stars they created. Characterised by sharp, unembellished dialogue and punctuated with slang and sexual innuendo, the genre eschewed the constraints of respectable literary sources and instead took inspiration from the disreputable popular crime fiction of the day.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: Delusion and Distortion in 1920s Germany

The 1920 silent horror classic, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, embodies many of the artistic achievements of the golden age of German Expressionist cinema. At the heart of this short-lived movement was a sense of the importance of conveying emotion and subjective psychological states rather than objective reality. Influenced by psychology, the earliest filmmakers used the new medium of cinema as a visual expression of the mind, designed to mirror the discontinuity and disorder of the individual thought process. It is this rejection of psychological realism that lends the films of this period such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu (1922) and The Golem (1920) a surreal, dreamlike quality. In the 1920s, distortion, asymmetry and non-linear narratives became the hallmark of German Expressionist cinema.

Movie of the Week: Beasts of the Southern Wild

Directorial debuts can be hit-and-miss but Benh Zeitlin’s spellbinding Beasts of the Southern Wild demonstrates a natural flair and originality rare amongst even the most established of directors. Beasts of the Southern Wild unfolds like a fairytale, in which the heroine Hushpuppy (played by the outstanding Quvenzhané Wallis), a six-year-old girl living with her father in an impoverished Cajun community known as the ‘Bathtub’, faces danger, tragedy and a treacherous journey of self-discovery.

Reel life terror: Horror and hysteria at the movies

Rumour, hearsay and gossip have long been friends of the film marketing machine. Whether it’s stories about on-set romances, banned scenes or ‘cursed’ sets, it goes without saying that the more a film is discussed prior to release  (preferably with a high degree of polarised opinion) the easier it is to market and distribute  to an eager and receptive audience. Marketing people would be using words like “viral” at this point to explain the mysterious attraction of a film that is talked about precisely because it is being talked about.

Universal Horror: How fear came to the movies

Bela Lugosi pounces in Dracula (1931)

The 1930s were a watershed era for cinema, defined by seismic change on screen and beyond; from the dawn of the ‘talkies’ to the Great Depression and rise of Totalitarian regimes in Europe, which fuelled an influx of fresh talent to Hollywood. One of the greatest beneficiaries of the new ‘talkies’ was the horror picture. Synchronised sound provided a multitude of opportunities to shock, excite and terrify so it is unsurprising that this period gave birth to some of the most enduring villains and monsters in cinematic history, in horror classics like Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), The Invisible Man (1933) and The Mummy (1933). Many of these works came from Universal Pictures a second-tier studio that came to shape the horror genre, casting glamorous damsels in distress and suave, charming villains while pushing creative and technological boundaries.