Gary Dennis’ New York City Movie Place

“There are eight million stories in the Naked City . . .” goes the phrase. It was used in closing narration for the television show of the same name. It is also the theme of this movie, the final one produced by Mark Hellinger. The idea is simple. Take a murder story from the headlines […]

This is THE text book film noir. It is the standard by which all others were made and measured up to. I know that this is a bold statement and borderline crazy but all “film noirs” leading up to this picture are funneled into this picture. The femme fatal in the extreme […]

During the war, World War two that is, Dick Powell shed his Busby Berkley young male lead sheen and got butch and manly. The transformation seemed to happen overnight. Playing Philip Marlow certainly helped create his new image. No more shuffling off to Buffalo.
This is an adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s Farewell […]

I know that this is a long post but I do not want to cut it. Back in the mid late 1980’s when I first began working at Movie Place,we had a customer who knew of my longtime obsession with Robert Mitchum. Nothing wrong with that. This customer had also been the […]

This was the fourth and final film pairing Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall and it is great. Frank McCloud (Humphrey Bogart) travels to a run-down hotel on Key Largo to visit the family of a friend who died bravely in his unit during WW II. His friend’s widow, Nora (Lauren Bacall) and wheelchair bound father, […]

The picture stars Fredric March (in a role originally intended for Spencer Tracy) as a not such a pushover middleaged uppermiddle class business man who’s home is invaded and family held hostage by a gang of escaped convicts. Humprey Bogart in a role originated by Paul Newman on Broadway shines in his last tough guy […]

This is a nice little thriller with great direction from Ted Tetzlaff. Mr. Tetzlaff was a cinematographer who had over a hundred pictures, starting back in the silent era, to his credit. His last job as cinematographer was in 1946 when he gave Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious that special look. The story is by writer Cornell […]