Dragnet Boulevard

Movies made in 1950 act like they discovered grim.
Dragnet Boulevard, dank film noir: an ostentatiously neurotic hymn

to grinding existential clichés of despair: rabid Robert Ryan – he
with badgered Barbara Stanwyck flee in black-and-white spite: Irony

all undertaken in an undertaker’s accents: laid on with a trowel.
Wipe their rank sweat off with Fred MacMurray’s towel.

Let it moan and groan on, though,
on Turner Classic Movies’ show:

post-war sociology – or art – or crap,
it makes a lulling background to a nap.


 
 
 
 
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