The world wasn't exactly desperate for yet another film noir DVD box set, but here we are, with an inspired seven-film retrospective, Film Noir Collector's Edition, out this week courtesy of Chicago-based Questar Entertainment, who are better known for PBS and nonfiction releases. No matter that five of these films were also released in a 2004 Questar box, Killer Classics, or that the scant bonus features are all boilerplate, or that each of these prints looks like it's been gathering mildew in a Universal broom closet for the last five decades; when more than a half-dozen minor masterpieces reenter the marketplace, however unceremoniously, these complaints seem trivial.

This dully named Collector's Edition is notable for containing two unsung films by noir masters Orson Welles and Fritz Lang (The Stranger and Scarlet Street, respectively), and the legendarily slapdash, under-seen masterpiece Detour, but these aren't the only pleasures on display. The film noir style's elasticity is seen in full effect: tense wrong-man chase sequences in D.O.A.; small-town grand guignol in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers; treacherous femmes fatales in Scarlet Street and Killer Bait; and political paranoia in The Stranger and Suddenly, featuring Frank Sinatra as a would-be presidential assassin who takes a family hostage. Here are 720 minutes of chain smoking and bourbon guzzling, botched murders, and doomed romance, and if these films lack the kinetic cinematography and silky-smoky ambience of the most legendary noir, there are enough noteworthy actors—Kirk Douglas, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson, Edmund O'Brien, Sterling Hayden, Lizabeth Scott, Welles, Sinatra—and crackling scripts for this collection to be considered exemplary. An artistic movement's true value is perhaps best appreciated not in its greatest achievements, but in its more humble, formulaic successes, and these seven movies therefore testify to the aesthetic tenets and lasting impact of film noir. Continue Reading »