on 2/13/2023, 8:31 pm
Here's my post from 3+ years ago about Nora Fiore and her assignation with the devil...as in THE DEVIL THUMBS A RIDE. Nora, who goes by the handle of "The Nitrate Diva," has been something of an up-and-comer for awhile now (writing several articles for the NC e-zine in the years sine we first linked to her essay on the menace of Lawrence Tierney), but she seems to have stalled in recent months: a move to Substack last fall has been dormant since Thanksgiving, and all of her other social media accounts seem to have come to a sudden halt on Christmas Day. It's something of a mystery...
Arguably the most talented film writer under 30 in the blogosphere, Nora Fiore is just beginning to acquire the mannerisms that will bring her either fame or misfortune. Like many in the thrall of film noir, she needs to find a way past embroidering on the basics, but the chops for that are still intact and have not been ground into place as with other, older writers.
The comparison of DETOUR and DEVIL THUMBS that percolates through this essay is a useful one, not just for standard-issue noir crit--it also shows how the outliers in American noir (aka the ham-fisted extremities) are what drive (and stunt) the conversation. Tierney may be more potently evil in DEVIL, with its simplistic setup/payoff, but he is more convincingly put into context in the still riveting (and Top 50 all-time noir) BORN TO KILL, which gives him a "love-match" (Claire Trevor) that's akin to playing tennis with hand grenades. 
Hoping that the Nitrate Diva hasn't met up with a real-life fate analogous
to what happened to poor Carol at the hands of that hitch-hiking DEVIL...
But of course we can understand why the non-hard-*ss female would be scared (but ever so slightly enticed) by Tierney's DEVIL-ry; hell, he even gives his fellow males the willies.
But to give Tierney his due, methinks the ND needs to visit the FEMALE JUNGLE...
...and let's hope that this is not literally what happened, and that we'll have a Nitrate Diva sighting again soon. There is an audio commentary track credited to her for the UK blu-ray release of James Whale's THE KISS BEFORE THE MIRROR (1933) that is coming out next month, but that's the only sign of her existence since Xmas. As noted above, very misterioso...
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