TWO SECONDS to Noirville

Is Two Seconds (Mervyn LeRoy, 1932) the first American noir? I’ve read some historians who trace American film noir as far back as Josef von Sternberg’s Underworld (1927). But Underworld, with its light-hearted gangster protagonist, is a veritable romp compared to the unrelenting descent into darkness that is Two Seconds. Two Seconds is a showcase [...]