on 7/3/2023, 5:02 am, in reply to "Re: Strong month of programming at Criterion Channel for July features British noir"
Mike had some fairly serious health issues, and I'm sad to say that it's not a sure bet that he's still with us. Given his penchant for deep dives into the material, I think we would probably have seen some kind of follow-up work from him that delved into other less known areas of noir. One of these days (in the not-too-distant future!) I'll try to remedy that for French noir, an area that we might have expected Mike to tackle after his British noir book.
I don't think you'll need to be quite that self-protective regarding YIELD TO THE NIGHT (aka BLONDE SINNER). Here are the IMDB ratings for the films in Imogen's series set side-by-side with the Keaney assessments, suggesting that Mike's low ranking for it is just an outlier.
Green for Danger **** (7.4)
It Always Rains On Sunday *** (7.1)
Odd Man Out **** 1/2 (7.6)
Obsession *** (7.4)
The Small Back Room *** 1/2 (7.1)
Night and the City **** 1/2 (7.9)
The Woman In Question *** (6.8)
Pool Of London *** (7.1)
Yield to the Night * 1/2 (ouch) (7.1)
Hell Drivers *** 1/2 (7.2)
Time Without Pity *** 1/2 (6.8)
All Night Long *** (7.1)
British noir has proven to be the hardest sub-area in the field to purvey to American audiences; despite the high quality that's often on display even in its "B" pictures, it seems to suffer inordinately from its "quota quickie" stigma and that makes it very difficult to go beyond the classics in terms of public exhibition.
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