PopCult Reviews

Out of the Past (1947)
Written by Daniel Mainwaring
Directed by Jacques Tourneur

RKO Pictures was once one of the big Hollywood studios, and now it’s gone. Radio businessman David Sarnoff and his company RCA merged with a theater chain and film booking company to form this all-in-one studio. They were always considered makers of low-budget fare, but that didn’t stop RKO from making its mark on cinema. Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers’ song and dance career bloomed at the studio, and Katharine Hepburn saw her first screen success at RKO. The studio was the home of Val Lewton’s innovative horror experiments like Cat People. RKO’s most well-known productions are still King Kong and Citizen Kane, pictures that have created ripples through world cinema today. They produced It’s A Wonderful Life and even much of Walt Disney’s early work. After a series of takeovers and buyouts, the company’s body of work lies mainly under the control of Warner Discovery. Out of the Past is a standout of their many influential pictures due to its perfect encapsulation of so much of the film noir tropes. 

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)
Written by Harry Ruskin and Niven Busch
Directed by Tay Garnett

The Postman Always Rings Twice is one of the great archetypal noir stories. It shares some elements with the equally iconic Double Indemnity. However, this film’s setting and the intentionally tortuous way it lets its characters double back on their decisions turns it into a knife that slowly drives its way between our ribs. Both were based on the novels of James M. Cain, who also wrote Mildred Pierce. He came from journalism and penned many editorials, which he would later explain were written as a character rather than himself. That first-person confessional style became a crucial part of his novels, the noir protagonist who has come to the end of his rope and reflects on the events that got him to this tragic point. The Postman Always Rings Twice serves as Cain’s grandest statement in the noir genre, pulling together all his strengths to deliver a harrowing story.

The Killers (1946)
Written by Anthony Veiller, John Huston, and Richard Brooks
Directed by Robert Sidomak

Ernest Hemingway is not a name we often associate with noir & crime literature. The short story this film is based on isn’t necessarily a piece of noir fiction, either. That piece makes up only the opening sequence of this film, which expands significantly on the central character through extensive flashbacks. Up to this point, Hemingway had been vocal about how much he disliked Hollywood’s adaptations of his work. However, The Killers stood out as one that garnered his praise. Many people liked it, leading to four Oscar nominations, including Best Director and Best Film Editing. The film’s director was a German man who fled Hitler’s Nazi regime after propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels leveled an attack on one of the filmmaker’s pictures. The Killers is a film that is a tragic examination of masculinity, all coming from men who suffered extensively under the social expectations of what sort of men they could be.