Blood on the Moon - (Reel West) by Alan K Rode (Paperback)

About the Book

"Of those movies categorized as "Noir Westerns" by writers and historians, Blood on the Moon is at the top of the list. Produced during the height of the post-World War II film noir movement, the picture transplanted the dark urban environs of the city into the western iconography. Instead of being framed in a Monument Valley sunset, Robert Mitchum's lone horseman opens the picture as a solitary figure in a dark rainstorm as the Arizona trail replicates the rain slicked streets of Los Angeles. Mitchum's existentialist character of Jim Garry is at odds with the traditional Western hero. Labeled as a "loose rider," he possesses nothing but a borrowed cattleman's outfit. Garry's loyalties shift during his sojourn in an alienist domain where things are assuredly not what they initially seem. The chiaroscuro lighting during the claustrophobic interior scenes and those at nighttime (comprising nearly half the film) depict isolated faces bathed in a stream of light against a black background. Blood on the Moon is a classic western immersed in the film noir netherworld of double crosses, government corruption, shabby barrooms, gun toting goons and romantic betrayals. Blood on the Moon was the first" A" picture directed by thirty-four-year-old Robert Wise (The Set Up, The Day the Earth Stood Still, I Want to Live, Odds Against Tomorrow, West Side Story, The Sound of Music, The Sand Pebbles)"--

Book Synopsis

Of the movies that writers and historians call "Noir Westerns," none is more celebrated than 1948's Blood on the Moon. The comingling of the Western genre and the noir style crystalized in this extraordinary film, in turn influencing Westerns in the 1950s to become darker and more psychological. Produced during the height of the post-World War II film noir movement, Blood on the Moon is a classic Western immersed in the film noir netherworld of double crosses, government corruption, shabby barrooms, gun-toting goons, and romantic betrayals. With this volume, biographer and noir expert Alan K. Rode brings the film to life for a new generation of readers and film lovers.

Review Quotes

"Alan K. Rode is just about the perfect writer for the Reel West series, with biographies of noir standout Charles McGraw and legendary director Michael Curtiz. Almost every sentence, especially in the beginning of Mr. Rode's book, is packed with the Hollywood history that bears upon Blood on the Moon. In such a short compass, we have it all: the development of Westerns, gangster pictures, and film noir as well as the writers, directors, technicians, and studio heads--in this case the loony Howard Hughes."--Carl Rollyson, the New York Sun

"A first-rate look at an undervalued movie that represents a noted Western author (Luke Short), a talented screenwriter (Lillie Hayward), a director who was just coming into his own (Robert Wise), and a star on the ascendence (Robert Mitchum). Alan K. Rode gives us the story behind the story onscreen."--Leonard Maltin, author of Leonard Maltin's Classic Movie Guide