I had an enormous amount of fun watching and talking about all the Giallos on the Criterion Channel last year, so I thought it would be fun to do another series like that.
Today is thh start Noirvember, which brings together one of my favorite film genres with my favorite season. To celebrate, the Criterion Channel has put together what they are calling Blackout Noir. These are film noirs in which the main character has blacked out due to too much drink, amnesia, or some other thing, and awakens to find something terrible has happened. Or, as they put it:
Among the most agonizingly intense films in the history of film noir are those that adopt the point of view of characters tormented by amnesia, memory holes, and drunken blackouts, leaving them to grasp in the dark in search of an often terrifying truth. Waking up unexpectedly in a stranger’s bed is one thing . . . putting on your coat to leave and discovering a bloodstain on it is another…
I was going to be watching lots of film noirs this month anyway, so I thought it would be fun to watch and review all of these films. I’ve actually not seen most of these films, so that should be doubly fun.
Here’s the full list:
The Blue Gardenia (1953)
Black Angel (1946)
Blackout (1954)
Guilty Bystander (1950)
Framed (1947)
In a Lonely Place (1950)
Crossfire (1947)
Deadline by Dawn (1946)
themidnightcafe.org 