Customer Reviews

Hard Boiled: Great Lines from Classic Noir Films

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The book hit me like a cold, hard slap in the face.

The book is handsome and filled with all kinds of noir lines and photos. It's very funny. After reading it, it made me go online and search for these great B&W jems on tape.

"Hard-Boiled: Great Lines from Classic Noir Films" contains over 300 quotable lines of dialogue from nearly 150 crime films released between 1932 and 1964. As you might infer from such a lengthy time period, the lines are not all from strictly "noir" films. "Casablanca", "The Lost Weekend", and even "The Thin Man" are represented. After an introduction by Lee Server, the lines are organized alphabetically by film. So it's easy to find the line you seek if you know the film but not if you are looking for lines by theme. There is an index of actors, directors, and writers in the back of the book as well as an index of first lines -so if you remember how your favorite quote begins, you can find out how it ends. Both indexes are useful tools if you can't remember the name of the film or if you are interested in a particular artist's contributions to hard-boiled repartee.

"Hard-Boiled"'s shortcomings are that it misses many memorable, deliciously blunt quotes, misquotes a few, includes a lot that is not film noir, and attributes the dialogue awkwardly. The book's strength is its attractive presentation. "Hard-Boiled" is a 8"x8 ¾" almost square paperback. It's pages are slick and glossy, ideal for reproducing photographs. Amid the quotes, there are 38 still photos from noir films and 28 lobby cards, black-and-white and color, from small prints to some that take up more than a page. The photos are all captioned. My pet peeve is that the quotes are attributed to the actors, followed by the characters' name and description in parentheses. This makes it difficult to tell who is saying what and why, which detracts from the pleasure and ease of reading the quotes. Oddly, the captions for the photographs do the opposite: The character name is always first, followed by the actor's name in parentheses.

"Hard-Boiled" is certainly a handsome volume. And the artist and first line indexes are valuable additions. A more recent collection of film noir lines is Charles Pappas' "It's a Bitter Little World". Inevitably, it also includes a lot that isn't film noir and omits some quotes that I wish were included. It covers film noir and neo-noir 1940-2004 and is organized by theme and decade (and indexed by film). I think the format that Pappas uses for dialogue is easier to read, but there are no glossy photos. Both books have their own merits.

All of the best lines from the great "film noir" classics are here. There's a line to cover just about every subject, and you can amaze, amuse or astound your friends by using these quotes in everyday conversation. And, in the process, you can discover some pretty great films, as well--there's a lot of gems in here, and not just big ones like "The Maltese Falcon" or "The Big Sleep." Check da others out--you'll be glad ya did!

If you love this genre or are trying to write something in the hard-boiled style this is a great resource to help you catch on to the style of the era. It was a time when men were men and women were "dolls," "skirts" or "dames."