Curious tale of a private eye who is hired by a villain to find his homicidal girlfriend. But the story takes a twist when he tracks her down and promptly falls in love with her.”Build my gallows high, baby”–just one of the quintessentially noir sentiments expressed by Robert Mitchum in this classic of the genre. Mitchum, in absolute prime, sleepy-eyed form, relates a complicated flashback about getting hired by gangster Kirk Douglas to find femme fatale Jane Greer. The chain of film noir elements–love, money, lies–drags Mitchum into the lower depths. Director Jacques Tourneur gets the edgy negotiations between men and women as exactly right as he gets the inky shadows of the noir landscape (even the sunlit exteriors are fraught with doubt). This is Mitchum in excelsis, with his usual laid-back cool laced with great dialogue and tragic foreshadowing. As for his co-star, James Agee immortally opined that Jane Greer “can best be described, in an ancient idiom, as a hot number.” Remade in 1984, unhappily, as Against All Odds (with Greer in a supporting role). –Robert Horton

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Terry Pratchett’s Discworld is, perhaps unsurprisingly given the game’s title, the setting for this point-and-click romp which combines the best elements of Bogart-esque private eye movies with the best-known fantasy environment in the world.

The game follows the trials and tribulations of the Discworld’s first PI as he takes on his first case–a missing persons job on behalf of a darkly mysterious female client who’s husband has gone walkies.

It’s pretty standard adventure fare with pointing and clicking aplenty as the case unravels, villains are revealed and outrageously long FMV sequences disturb the flow of the plot.

OK, so far it doesn’t sound that good, right? But perseverance is the name of the game and you won’t be able to help getting drawn further into the plot to the point where it is impossible to leave it alone. The major draw in this title is the obvious input from Pratchett himself. The characters really bring this game to life, mixing the new, such as Lewton the private eye and main character, with the old, Nobby Nobbs of the City Guard, Death and the Grim Squeaker–a hilarious character who is actually the Death of Rats.

Comedy abounds here, from the obvious to the incredibly subtle, and there is plenty going on to keep you playing for quite a while.

At the end of the day, this is more suited to the Discworld fan then to someone looking idly around for an adventure game to fill in a couple of hours, but with its budget price thanks to an Infogrames re-release, Discworld Noir is a good purchase. –James Gordon

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Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall made screen history together more than once, but they were never more popular than in this 1946 adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s novel, directed by Howard Hawks (To Have and Have Not). Bogart plays private eye Philip Marlowe, who is hired by a wealthy socialite (Bacall) to look into troubles stirred up by her wild, young sister (Martha Vickers). Legendarily complicated (so much so that even Chandler had trouble following the plot), the film is nonetheless hugely entertaining and atmospheric, an electrifying plunge into the exotica of detective fiction. William Faulkner wrote the screenplay. –Tom Keogh

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Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall made screen history together more than once, but they were never more popular than in this 1946 adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s novel, directed by Howard Hawks (To Have and Have Not). Bogart plays private eye Philip Marlowe, who is hired by a wealthy socialite (Bacall) to look into troubles stirred up by her wild, young sister (Martha Vickers). Legendarily complicated (so much so that even Chandler had trouble following the plot), the film is nonetheless hugely entertaining and atmospheric, an electrifying plunge into the exotica of detective fiction. William Faulkner wrote the screenplay. –Tom Keogh

The Big Sleep [VHS] [1946]

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Product Description
The laconic private eye…the corrupt cop…the heist that goes wrong…the Femme Fatale with the rich husband and dim lover – all are trademark characters of the movement known as film noir, that elusive mixture of stark lighting and even starker emotions. Noir explores the dark side of post-war society – gangsters, hoodlums, prostitutes and killers – and showed how it corrupted the good and the beautiful. Many of these films are now touchstones of what we regard as ‘classic’ Hollywood – The Maltese Falcon(1941), The Big Sleep(1946), Double Indemnity(1944) and The Postman Always Rings Twice(1946). This Pocket Essential charts the progression of the noir style as a vehicle for film-makers who wanted to record the darkness at the heart of American society as it emerged from World War into Cold War. As well as an introductory essay on the origins of Film Noir, this Pocket Essential discusses all the classics from the heyday of the movement in detail and includes a handy reference section for readers who want to know more.

Film Noir – The Pocket Essential Guide

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Amazon.co.uk Review
Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall made screen history together more than once, but they were never more popular than in this 1946 adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s novel, directed by Howard Hawks (To Have and Have Not). Bogart plays private eye Philip Marlowe, who is hired by a wealthy socialite (Bacall) to look into troubles stirred up by her wild, young sister (Martha Vickers). Legendarily complicated (so much so that even Chandler had trouble following the plot), the film is nonetheless hugely entertaining and atmospheric, an electrifying plunge into the exotica of detective fiction. William Faulkner wrote the screenplay. –Tom Keogh

The Big Sleep

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Amazon.co.uk Review
Terry Pratchett’s Discworld is, perhaps unsurprisingly given the game’s title, the setting for this point-and-click romp which combines the best elements of Bogart-esque private eye movies with the best-known fantasy environment in the world.

The game follows the trials and tribulations of the Discworld’s first PI as he takes on his first case–a missing persons job on behalf of a darkly mysterious female client who’s husband has gone walkies.

It’s pretty standard adventure fare with pointing and clicking aplenty as the case unravels, villains are revealed and outrageously long FMV sequences disturb the flow of the plot.

OK, so far it doesn’t sound that good, right? But perseverance is the name of the game and you won’t be able to help getting drawn further into the plot to the point where it is impossible to leave it alone. The major draw in this title is the obvious input from Pratchett himself. The characters really bring this game to life, mixing the new, such as Lewton the private eye and main character, with the old, Nobby Nobbs of the City Guard, Death and the Grim Squeaker–a hilarious character who is actually the Death of Rats.

Comedy abounds here, from the obvious to the incredibly subtle, and there is plenty going on to keep you playing for quite a while.

At the end of the day, this is more suited to the Discworld fan then to someone looking idly around for an adventure game to fill in a couple of hours, but with its budget price thanks to an Infogrames re-release, Discworld Noir is a good purchase. –James Gordon

Discworld Noir

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Amazon.co.uk Review
Roman Polanski’s brooding film noir exposes the darkest side of the land of sunshine, the Los Angeles of the 1930s, where power is the only currency–and the only real thing worth buying. Jack Nicholson is J J Gittes, a private eye in the Chandler mould, who during a routine straying-spouse investigation finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into a jigsaw puzzle of clues and corruption. The glamorous Evelyn Mulwray (a dazzling Faye Dunaway) and her titanic father, Noah Cross (John Huston), are at the black-hole centre of this tale of treachery, incest and political bribery. The crackling, hard-bitten script by Robert Towne won a well-deserved Oscar, and the muted colour cinematography makes the goings-on seem both bleak and impossibly vibrant. Polanski himself has a brief, memorable cameo as the thug who tangles with Nicholson’s nose. Chinatown is one of the greatest, most completely satisfying crime films of all time. –Anne HurleyAmazon.co.uk Review
Roman Polanski’s brooding film noir exposes the darkest side of the land of sunshine, the Los Angeles of the 1930s, where power is the only currency–and the only real thing worth buying. Jack Nicholson is JJ Gittes, a private eye in the Chandler mould, who during a routine straying-spouse investigation finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into a jigsaw puzzle of clues and corruption. The glamorous Evelyn Mulwray (a dazzling Faye Dunaway) and her titanic father, Noah Cross (John Huston), are at the black-hole centre of this tale of treachery, incest, and political bribery. The crackling, hard-bitten script by Robert Towne won a well-deserved Oscar, and the muted colour cinematography makes the goings-on seem both bleak and impossibly vibrant. Polanski himself has a brief, memorable cameo as the thug who tangles with Nicholson’s nose. One of the greatest, most completely satisfying crime films of all time. –Anne Hurley, Amazon.com

Chinatown

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Amazon.co.uk Review
This original and hippest version of Shaft cruised onto cinema screens in 1971. John Shaft (Richard Roundtree) is an African-American private eye who has a rocky relationship with cops, an even rockier one with Harlem gangsters, and a healthy sex life. The script finds Shaft tracking down the kidnapped daughter of a black mobster, but the pleasure of the film is the sum of its attitude, Roundtree’s uncompromising performance, and the thrilling, Oscar-winning score by Isaac Hayes. Director Gordon Parks (The Learning Tree) seems fond of certain detective genre cliché (e.g., the hero walking into his low-rent office and finding a hood waiting to talk with him), but he and Roundtree make those moments their own. Shaft produced a couple of sequels, a follow-up television series, and a remake starring Samuel L Jackson, but none had the impact this movie did. –Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

Shaft

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