The Big Noirvember 2025
Prompt 24: Watch a noir with a full sentence for a title

This was a dark one. Some of the story definitely got lost in the subtitle translation, but I was still able to follow it.

A handsome young mechanic with a wandering eye falls for an older wealthy married woman. A lot of trust issues ensue, & this is a noir film, so…

I appreciated how plot points which would have been veiled if this was made in America, were presented much more directly in the Norwegian film. And the older woman appeared as a viable partner for the mechanic, & was not exhibited as a middle aged parody (as she would have been reduced to in…

Spoilers ahead.

The debut film from Edith Carlmar, Norway's first female director, Death is a Caress is a noirish drama that displays considerable technique, even as its narrative is less impressive and coherent. Opening with a familiar, promising story — wealthy, married woman aggressively pursues much younger, working class man; banging ensues — the film fires on all cylinders right away, full of potential, sleazy intrigue and slightly kinky sex. Very quickly, however, it gets bogged down in its own storytelling, as things between Erik (Claus Wiese) and Sonja (Bjørg Riiser-Larsen) begin to develop.

From the start, Sonja was arrogant and presumptuous, a woman widely known to have a number of younger paramours who was simply in search of her…

Director Edith Carlmar‘s bleak noir Death is a Caress describes a disturbingly toxic relationship. 

Erik Hague (Claus Wiese) is an auto mechanic with a young, lovely and devoted fiancé named Marit (Eva Burgh). They’re in love and planning their future together. But one day wealthy and attractive older woman Sonja Rentoft (Bjørg Riiser-Larsen) shows up at his shop to have her car worked on and stats making moves on him. She’s persuasive and her money helps. Before long they’re conducting a torrid affair that leads to the destruction of Erik’s relationship. Eventually she seduces him into marriage, makes him a kept man… and promptly becomes alternately disengaged and abusive towards him. In an interesting gender stereotype inversion Erik blames himself…

“I believe we have to play the cards we are dealt in life.”
“Are you saying our actions are predetermined?”
“No. I mean… it is what we learn and experience in life that influences our choices later on. Both when we think we’re acting out of free will and when we do something without thinking.”

What's more noir than the unavoidability of fate for a toxic relationship?

I wonder if I'm the first viewer of Edith Carlmar's moody drama - the first solo director credit for a woman on a Norwegian feature film - to see similarities with the 90s erotic thriller In the Heat of Passion (I always knew that my cinematic studies would come in useful!): hunky mechanic…

Kicks off like a James M. Cain story: a rugged mechanic in police custody narrating via flashback his red-hot affair with a rich man's wife. But the illicit twosome doesn't conspire to murder the husband, as you might expect genre to dictate; instead, the wife gets her divorce, and they marry. The second half of the movie becomes the story of what follows a red-hot affair when it cools down to room temperature. Turns out class barriers are a lot tougher to surmount when you're no longer rutting nonstop beneath a film of sweat. Full of resentment and alcohol, the lovers become two shitty people trying to salvage their shitty relationship. Very proto-Fassbinder! (Proto-"Uptown Girl," too.)

This was Edith Carlmar's…

“I must say, a lot in this story sounds implausible.”

Edith Carlmar’s Death Is a Caress opens with Erik Hague (Claus Wiese) consulting with his solicitor, so we know something untoward has occurred but not what. As the narrative unfolds in flashback, we see that Erik, a garage mechanic, has a lovely girl-nest-door fiancée, Marit (Eva Bergh), but when the wealthy, married Sonja Rentoft (Bjorg Riiser-Larsen) begins making advances, Erik is helpless. Men are such weaklings. We begin to have an idea of what is to come.

Death Is a Caress is an unusual noir since most of it takes place in sunny daylight. But that Scandinavian sun can be a bitch, as Stellan Skarsgard can attest. If only Erik…

1st Edith Carlmar

A film that feels far more neurotic than passionate, especially in its female lead, Sonja, an older wealthy woman who pursues and marries a young mechanic, Erik. Bjørg Riiser-Larsen’s performance radiates a twitchy paranoia, obsessed with picking apart her new boy toy so that she can pursue a substitute, one she can impose her wealth and will on. It’s the latter half of a cycle that operates on unhealthy and intense connection to give a dopamine kick she’s craving, right down to the fights and attention-seeking appeals to the police. To be clear, Erik is a stiff, unpleasant man who loads dumps the blame at his absent wife’s feet by the film’s end after he STRANGLES HER;…

“I’ve always feared it would come to this.”

Thin and inconsequential. Intriguing from a historical perspective (Norway’s first woman director and considering how noir shifts in other geographical contexts. This film you get a flash of the lead’s dick briefly. That’s an extra half
star.) I appreciate the eroticism and ideas within the film but it doesn’t work as well as it should. 

The film takes noir and uses the feel of the genre to portray a doomed romance. But the female lead’s mood swings, jealousy, and embittered reactions don’t track. I couldn’t get a handle on her actions or who she was. The acting is middling, which doesn’t help matters. There is no center of gravity with characterization in…

This is one of those films where the reputation almost arrives before the film does. Norway’s first film noir
—Edith Carlmar’s debut—still spoken of as one of the great landmarks in Norwegian cinema. I completely understand why. There’s so much here to admire,
and a lot of it feels surprisingly bold for 1949.
And yet—it’s one of those films I respect more than I truly love. I never fully lock into it emotionally, even while I can clearly see how special it is.

Carlmar sets the tone immediately. Sirens, police, a man being led in—you already feel that something has gone wrong long before you know what. From there it unfolds like a confession, with desire, class, guilt and doom…

“One day closer to death…”

A fatalistic erotic thriller that subverts as many noir tropes as it embraces. Our femme fatale is a beautiful older woman, but hardly styled like the sexy sirens we’re used to. She pursues handsome mechanic Erik, and soon enough he leaves his pretty, bland fiancée for a toxic affair: they’re clearly drawn to each other, but also play mind games for dominance in the relationship. Maybe they’re only compatible sexually, which the camera lustily implies without interference from that pesky Hays Code. It’s not explicit (save for a brief shot where you can see Erik’s dick when he’s doing morning stretches), but the way he picks her up and throws her on the bed has…