“Stick around. You make it all so nice and sad”: Fatalism and Fantasy in Robert Siodmak’s Criss Cross (1949) Alexia Kannas April 2023 CTEQ Annotations on Film Robert Siodmak’s Criss Cross (1949) stands as one of the most bleakly romantic and fatalistic films noir of the classical era. In it, Burt Lancaster plays Steve Thompson, an armoured-car driver who comes home t...
Branded to Kill (Seijun Suzuki, 1967) Alexia Kannas March 2017 Love Letters: 1967 Existential Dread and the Smell of Boiling Rice: A Love Letter to Branded to Kill (Seijun Suzuki, 1967) Hanada Goro (Shishido Joe), Tokyo’s “No. 3 assassin”, walks into a bar; his wife orders a double black la...
No Place Like Home: The Late-Modern World of the Italian giallo Film Alexia Kannas July 2013 Uncategorized In the final shot of Dario Argento’s Profondo Rosso (Deep Red, 1975), the amateur detective/jazz pianist Marcus Daly (David Hemmings) stares icily at his own reflection in a pool of still-warm blood. The killer...
Simple Acts of Annihilation: La Dolce Morte: Vernacular Cinema and the Italian Giallo Film by Mikel J. Koven Alexia Kannas August 2007 Book Reviews What is an Italian giallo film? Mikel J. Koven’s latest book La Dolce Morte: Vernacular Cinema and the Italian Giallo Film attempts to illuminate this under-appreciated cultural phenomenon and is in fact the fi...
