Leader:  Don Melander

Fridays | October 8 – November 12 | 10 AM – Noon

Some of these classic noir films of the 1940s were film adaptations of such great noir novelists as Dashiell Hammet, Raymond Chandler, and James M. Cain. The movies we are going to discuss are the following: Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon; the often televised Double Indemnity; John Paxton and Chandler’s Murder, My Sweet; Chandler’s The Big Sleep and The Blue Dahlia; Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice, remade in color in 1981, by Bob Rafelson, starring Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange; David Mainwaring’s Out of the Past; Kenneth Fearing’s The Big Clock, an especially good adaptation; Matthew Bright’s Gun Crazy; and W.R. Burnett’s The Asphalt Jungle.

Films, usually found on Netflix or Amazon Prime, are viewed on your own prior to Friday discussions.

Don Melander often makes reference to films in his teaching of literature. Since 2010 he has also taught a Communications course on movies and film directors. Although he has no formal training in film, he has been ‘reading’ serious films as serious literature since 1958.