While it can be fun to talk to critics who spend their time keeping up with contemporary cinema, Peter is glad to bring on Imogen Sara Smith, who has always dived into cinema's past worlds. The author of Buster Keaton: The Persistence of Comedy and In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City talks about her initial love of film via the Great Stoneface, her desire to write long in order to thoroughly engage with a topic, and her love of Pre-Code's subversive pleasures. The two also dive deeply into the many ends and odds of the strange cycle of film noir, engaging with questions of genre, psychology, and some underrated hits, before ending with one of noir's canonical masterpieces: Nicholas Ray's In A Lonely Place, a film so brutal in its depiction of love by being at first so intoxicating.
0:00-1:24 Opening
2:15-5:12 Establishing Shots - In The Mouth of Madness
5:28-10:18 Listener Feedback
11:03-1:12:57 Deep Focus - Imogen Sara Smith
1:13:56-1:36:45 Double Exposure - In A Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray)
1:36:47-1:39:19 Close / Outtake
Purchase Imogen's two books - In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City and Buster Keaton: The Persistence of Comedy. Read her work at Bright Lights Film Journal, Moving Image Source, Alt Screen, and The Examiner.
