Product Description

In the cult, crime, and noir films of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, everyone was supremely eloquent. Now contemporary fans of these classics can be equally clever with this inspired collection of more than 300 lines from nearly 150 of the greatest noir movies ever produced. Includes 71 reproductions of publicity photos, promotional posters, and film stills, many in full color.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #521772 in Books
• Published on: 1996-02-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 132 pages

Amazon.com Review
Some days--you know the kind, the kind where you can feel the heat rise off the gritty pavement and the smog is so thick you could slice it up and serve it like day-old bread--you feel the need to change your lingo. A little kick in the teeth for the dames and mugs down at the corner dive. That's when a book like Hard Boiled: Great Lines from Classic Noir Films walks in. Hard Boiled collects the snappiest, toughest, most bitter dialogue from the greats into one easy package, ready for whipping out when the opportunity strikes. Need to describe that fatal ex? Why not borrow detective Walter Brown's line from The Narrow Margin: "What kind of a dish was she? The sixty-cent special--cheap, flashy, strictly poison under the gravy." Want to make the bartender stand up and take notice? Order The Blue Dahlia's "Bourbon, straight! With a bourbon chaser!" End a relationship in style with Impact's "I'll never think of our moments together without nausea." For more tender moments, cop a line from Sudden Fear to show that special someone you care: "I'm so crazy about you I could break your bones." Or you can simply emulate the classics with Follow Me Quietly's immortal "Follow that car!" Life may be a crooked game of blackjack with no more chips left to play, but maybe you can bring in a little glimmer of something wonderful if you slide up to your favorite cannon, slip him this book, and mutter softly, "The next person that says Merry Christmas to me, I'll kill them."

Review

--Playboy March 1996
When Lauren Bacall taught Humphrey Bogart how to whistle in To Have and Have Not, she didn't blow away the competition for great one-liners. The book Hard-Boiled includes that line and more than 350 other tough, witty, and downright nasty quotes from classic noir films produced between 1940 and the early Sixties...

About the Author
Peggy Thompson is an award-winning screenwriter who writes for film, television, radio, and theater.

Saeko Usukawa is a book editor as well as a published author and poet.

Lee Server is the author of Danger Is My Business and Over My Dead Body , both published by Chronicle Books.

Customer Reviews

Hard Boiled a classic
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.

All the classics...
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!

Attractive Presentation. Format for Quotes Could Be Better.
"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.