Noir Images - Laura

Based on how Otto Preminger placed his camera, do you think the clock has something to do with the plot?

Noir Images - Lady in the Lake

One of the things Philip Marlowe is always doing is getting beat up. And when you have a first-person camera perspective, that means you get beat up to. In this film, it's usually by Lt. DeGarmo (Lloyd Nolan).

Noir Images - The Red House (1947)

Sometimes a little lighting can make all the difference.

Check out this single shot where Edward G Robinson goes from obsessing about the past to living in it with a neat switch of the light. The light low and to his right is ominous and keeps half his head in shadow, while the light high and to his left is almost like warm sunshine beating down on his face.

Noir Images - Dead Reckoning

Lizabeth Scott is the female lead in this film, the object of the dead man's desire and the woman that Humphrey Bogart falls for. In this scene where she's introduced she's asked to sing a song. She's in the spotlight while the rest of the room is shaded, yet her mouth remains an empty maw of darkness. Can you believe anything that comes from it?

Noir Images

I think I figured out a way to do screen captures (Thanks, Dan). If this turns out okay, it may be a regular thing.

This is an image from DEAD RECKONING (1947). Bogie here is straddling the line between good and evil, as evidenced by the lighting putting half of his face in shadow, while the half still in the light is stricken with fear at being caught with a dead body in his hotel room.