"Film Noir" - 70 anos

Robert Siodmak’s THE KILLERS–a definitive film noir–premiered 70 years ago today, on August 28, 1946. The script, by Anthony Veiller (and, uncredited, John Huston and Richard Brooks) begins with a faithful evocation of Ernest Hemingway’s short story, then veers wildly into a flashback structure more convoluted than anything else in classic noir. The film grabs you from the shadowy opening shot of the two killers approaching the diner, accompanied by Miklós Rózsa's ominous four-note theme (which would be borrowed five years later for television’s DRAGNET). Starring Burt Lancaster (his debut) as the fall guy and Ava Gardner as one of cinema’s great femme fatales, and with magnificent cinematography by Elwood (Woody) Bredell, THE KILLERS was selected for the National Film Registry in 2008.

The film noir genre generally refers to mystery and crime dramas produced from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Movies of this genre were characteristically shot in black and white, and featured stories involving femmes fatales, doomed heroes or anti-heroes, and tough, cynical detectives.The term film noir, French for "black film" (literal) or "dark film" (closer meaning),[1] first applied to Hollywood films by French criticNino Frank in 1946, was unrecognized by most American film industry professionals of that era.[2] Cinema historians and critics defined the category retrospectively. Before the notion was widely adopted in the 1970s, many of the classic films noir[a] were referred to as "melodramas". Whether film noir qualifies as a distinct genre is a matter of ongoing debate among scholars.