“It’s a month to give thanks for cigarettes and chiaroscuro lighting, for sardonic voice-overs and unhappy endings, for doomed detectives and frisky femme fatales. November is “Noirvember” at the Brattle Theatre and the Coolidge Corner Theatre, with both venues celebrating some of the most stylish and cynical crime pictures ever made. If you like watching hard-boiled, heartbroken guys getting played for patsies in smoky rooms with ceiling fans and Venetian blinds, these next few weeks are an embarrassment of riches, with a total of 20 terrific noirs screening between the two cinemas.” – Sean Burns, WBUR/The ARTery
“Adjective no less than noun, noir is darkness visible on a screen: not a formula or set of rules, but a style, a tone, an attitude, a sensibility, a certain look, or looks. At a time when American movies were morally four square, noir was the closest Hollywood let itself get to behavioral slipperiness. The genre added together German Expressionist camera angles, Universal horror movie lighting schemes, B-movie nerve, and a serious helping of postwar anxiety to arrive at something pretty irresistible.” – Mark Feeney, The Boston Globe