In an earlier post, I listed 10 films about ‘Good Spies.’ Now I want to take on their opposite. Let’s call them ‘Bad Spies.’ The focus is on Early Espionage, so all but two of the films are about World War II. Whether British or American, the work reflects the mores and conflicts of the times, revolving around wartime enemies and sexual stereotypes. Here are 8 films for you … [Read more...] about 8 Films Featuring Bad Spies
Movies
10 Films About Good Spies: Early Espionage
Good Spies A good spy is usually a trained government agent from either the US or Great Britain. The few who are civilians work for their home country or act on their own. According to the film noir file, if acting alone, they are one of the following nationalities: Chinese, Czech, Dutch, French, Norwegian, Polish, or Russian. The qualities of a good spy include strong people … [Read more...] about 10 Films About Good Spies: Early Espionage
Join Us for an Early Espionage/Spy Noir Summer
I hope you’ll join us this summer for a 2-month-long deep dive into Early Espionage/Spy Noir. We’ll begin on Tuesday, July 2, with an emphasis on Good Spies. For a quick start, take a look at Five Graves to Cairo (1943) on Internet Archive and Eyes in the Night (1942) on YouTube. You can watch the trailers … [Read more...] about Join Us for an Early Espionage/Spy Noir Summer
From Private Eye to Spy Noir: 8 Book-to-Film Pairings for Your Weekend Watch
In the recent post If You Like Noir You'll Like Espionage: 11 Films From the 1940s-1970s, I talked about how classic noir intersects with Cold War themes. In this post, I take that idea a bit further and give examples of how books that were adapted into film form a fascinating subgenre where paranoia, espionage, and existential dread converge. Today's stories fuse hardboiled … [Read more...] about From Private Eye to Spy Noir: 8 Book-to-Film Pairings for Your Weekend Watch
Beware the Femme Fatale!
(Written with the assistance of ChatGPT) Recently, Cold War Studies highlighted the crossover between classic noir and spy films, but the post didn’t go into a lot of detail about the kinds of characters the two genres share. Since March is Women’s History Month, I thought it would be a good time to focus on one of these types, the seductive femme fatale. The femme fatale … [Read more...] about Beware the Femme Fatale!
