Foster on Film

The Noir world is like ours, except the dialog is wittier, the shadows are deeper, the sins are darker, and the prize, be it treasure or the truth of human nature, is more magnificent.  You don’t get more magnificent than the Maltese falcon.

One of the standard Swashbuckler plots has the hero masquerading as a fop as he rights wrongs and wins the maiden, and no film did it better than The Mark of Zorro. While not as beautiful or as witty or as lyrical as other films on this list, I think it may be the most

It’s not the mystery, or the emotional impact, or the philosophical theme that make this film a pleasure, as it has none of those. It’s the humor. This is a movie to laugh at (not with), and occasionally just to stare at in disbelief.

The joy of this film comes from listening. Ronald Colman’s voice is nearly an institution; add in the voices of Douglas Fairbanks Jr., C. Aubrey Smith, Raymond Massey, and David Niven and the picture becomes almost unnecessary.

Scaramouche comes at the end of the golden age of Swashbucklers. Westerns were still clinging to the simplistic good vs. evil morality, but for Swashbucklers the charm was waning. Add that pretty much everything that could be done with the genre had been done, and it’s not surprising that its time was over. Still, it

There’s not much new in The Sea Hawk, but then there’s not much wrong either. This is Captain Blood, all grown up. Everyone had worked in the genre and knew exactly what to do, and did it well.

There is a rule about corpses not telling stories due to being dead. But all rules can be broken, and only a corpse could recount this gothic tale of a silent star stuck in the past and a man who sells his soul a bit too cheaply.

In 1958, Film Noir was no longer original. Either by design (like Sunset Blvd.) or by mistake (like  Touch of Evil) Noirs had been reduced to parodies. And this parody documents the fall of Orson Welles. Few have fallen farther.