Tipping My Fedora

For this special Christmas episode, Sergio is joined by Scott K Ratner for an in-depth look at Dashiell Hammett's novel The Thin Man. We also consider the series of six movies it spawned, all of them starring William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles and Skippy as their pet Terrier, Asta. Here's a full list of the films in the series:

The Nick and Nora Charles Screwball Mystery Movies

1. The Thin Man (1934)
2. After the ...

Sergio is joined by Luke Deckard and Matthew Booth, the hosts of the excellent Mean Streets podcast (https://meanstreetspodcast.podbean.com/) to find out what their top 10 Film Noir remakes are. The films under discussion include (in chronological order) are:

1. THE MALTESE FALCON (1941)
2. THE KILLERS (1964)
3. FAREWELL MY LOVELY (1975)
4. THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE (1981)
5. NO WAY OUT (1987)
6. NARROW MARGIN (1990)
7. CAPE FEAR (1991)
8. THE T...

It's 40 years since Alan Plater's mellow comedy thriller THE BEIDERBECKE AFFAIR (1985), starring James Bolam and Barbara Flynn, first appeared on TV. Sergio is joined by Plater expert James Leggott to discuss the original serial and it's two sequels, THE BEIDERBECKE TAPES (1987) and THE BEIDERBECKE CONNECTION (1988).

Dr James Leggott is Head of School, Design Arts and Creative Industries, at the Northumbria University. For more in...

Sergio is joined by Vincent M. Gaine of Lancaster University to discuss Michael Mann's hitman neo-noir, Collateral, starring Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx and Jada Pinkett Smith. A thriller made on the cutting edge of digital cinema of 2004, this in-depth exploration of the film will look at the new technology used to make it, how it sits within Mann's filmography - and why Sergio really has a problem with Tom Cruise's wig in the film.

D...

Brad Friedman is back to talk about  Hitchcock's 1940s Noir thrillers with Sergio! This time they discuss the romantic whodunit, SPELLBOUND (1945), the spy drama NOTORIOUS (1946) and the real-time suspense thriller, ROPE (1948).

Brad blogs about Golden Age mystery books and movies at Ah Sweet Mystery: https://ahsweetmystery.com/

To read "The House of Dr Edwardes" by Francis Beeding, the basis for SPELLBOUND, click here: https://fr...

Special guest Jonathan Rigby joins Sergio to discuss WOMEN OF TWILIGHT (1952), the film adaptation of Sylvia Rayman's 1951 groundbreaking all-female play.

Jonathan Rigby has been writing about films for over 30 years now - and has been an actor for even longer. He is the author of several books on horror cinema, including English Gothic, American Gothic and Euro Gothic - with American Gothic 2 on the way – and Studies in Terror, a...

The Fedora podcast is one year old today. And it's also my birthday! To celebrate, my awesome buddy Professor Stacey Abbott (who also just had her birthday) makes a very welcome return visit to Fedora. This time we get together to celebrate the John Wick series starring the mighty Keanu Reeves.

Please note, we pretty much spoil every single one of the films.

[This episode is being re-presented to correct an earlier technical proble...

Today we launch headlong into the erotic thriller genre with a very deep dive into the 1992 box office smash, Basic Instinct. Starring Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone, written by Joe Eszterhas and directed by Paul Verhoeven, this gaudy and controversial Neo Noir has many strong links to Hitchcock's Vertigo. To discuss this film and more, Sergio is joined by very special guest, Rebecca McCallum.

N.B. The podcast, recorded in Februa...

James Harrison of Film Noir UK joins Sergio to preview the 2025 Film Noir Fest, which is taking place from 31 October to 2 November at the Plaza Cinema in Weston-Super-Mare. This year's theme is heist movies and highlights include screenings of:

Kubrick's KILLER'S KISS (1955) and THE KILLING (1956), Huston's THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (1950), Siodmak's CRISS CROSS (1949), Dassin's RIFIFI (1955) and Tarantino's RESERVOIR DOGS (1992).  

Ther...

Sergio is joined by blogger Aidan Brack, of Mysteries Ahoy, for an in-depth look at Akira Kurosawa's classic 1963 suspense thriller, High and Low. This seems like the perfect time to look back at the film with the release of Spike Lee's remake, Highest 2 Lowest, starring Denzel Washington.

Adapted from King's Ransom - the tenth volume in Ed McBain's series of police procedurals featuring the cops of the 87th Precinct - Sergio and A...

Following on from the first part last week, Sergio and Sheldon Hall reunite for a second bout of Film Noir scepticism. How well does Sergio stand up to Sheldon's stinging and relentless criticism?

The genres being considered include Westerns, Horror, Science Fiction and the work of Alfred Hitchcock. 

To listen to the first part of the podcast, visit:

• Apple buff.ly/wDl4xnB
• Spotify buff.ly/34bRrLu
• YouTube buff.ly/QyLHaCo

...

At the beginning of every podcast, Sergio asks his guests to give their definition of Film Noir, a notoriously difficult assignment. This week, in the first of a two-part episode, Dr Sheldon Hall, long-time friend to Sergio and the podcast, picks holes in the host's own attempts to define the term. 

They consider two genres, screwball comedy and the gangster movie, and look to see how well they overlap with Film Noir, along with th...

The 1988 live action and animation hybrid, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, can certainly lay claim to being the most unusual Film Noir yet featured on Tipping My Fedora. A 1940s murder mystery set in a parallel universe in which humans and cartoons co-exist, it was a huge gamble for the studio and its director, Robert Zemeckis, hot off the success of the first Back to the Future movie. The gamble paid off however, both critically and at t...

The great film composer and songwriter David Shire turns 88 today. To celebrate, I am joined by film music historian John Leman Riley to look at some of Shire's classic 1970s Neo-Noir music scores, including:

THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE (Sargent, 1974)

THE CONVERSATION (Coppola, 1974)

FAREWELL, MY LOVELY (Richards, 1975)

ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (Pakula, 1976)

For more information about the life and work of David Shire, plea...

Film and music historian John Leman Riley is back and joins me for a discussion of some of the great Neo-Noir scores composed by Ennio Morricone, Michael Small and Jerry Goldsmith.

In this episode we focus on four great films and their soundtracks:

THE SICILIAN CLAN (Verneuil, 1969) - music by Ennio Morricone

THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE (Argento, 1970) - music by Ennio Morricone

KLUTE (Pakula, 1971) - music by Michael Small

C...

Sergio is joined today by podcast buddy Brad Friedman to discuss two of Alfred Hitchcock's first engagements with American Film Noir: the Gothic romance Rebecca (1940) and the dark small-town psycho-thriller, Shadow of a Doubt (1943).   

Brad blogs about Golden Age mystery books and movies at Ah Sweet Mystery: https://ahsweetmystery.com/

Spoiler alert: the plots for both these films, including their respective endings, are explore...

Boxing features in more Hollywood movies than any other sport - and this was certainly true in the era of classic Film Noir. Where does this fascination come from - and how have Noir boxing movies rung the changes over the decades?

Sergio is joined by Steve Hunt, host of the superb Boxing Movie Podcast and author of the new book, Heavyweight Title Fights of the 1980s: A Complete History. Together they look at five of Steve's favour...

Will the real "Mr Arkadin" please stand up?

For the podcast's first foray into audio noir, we tip our hat to Orson Welles - whose birthday it was this past week - and look at the strange case of his noir maudit, MR ARKADIN. Also released as CONFIDENTIAL REPORT, we will consider the many iterations of the film (following in the path of Jonathan Rosenbaum's seminal essay, The Seven Arkadins, first published in Film Comment magazine i...

David Fincher's seminal neo-noir thriller SEVEN is now thirty years old. A surprise commercial success and critical hit, this dark, powerful, densely-layered and genuinely scary and challenging thriller proved to be a hugely influential Neo-noir.

And then, there was that box ...

To celebrate, Sergio is joined by Dr Laura Mee, Principal Lecturer in Film and Television at the University of Hertfordshire. She primarily researches hor...