The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)

The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) is a Hollywood-based flashback-told drama of hubris and mania in film production, of betrayal and ambition and which shines a harsh critical light on the lives and careers of the producers of the era, and earlier, notably looking at David O. Selznick, or maybe not since he did not sue Metro about it, and maybe it was Daryl F. Zanuck, or Val Lewton or Orson Wells, and a five Academy Award winning ironic homage to Hollywood showing fragmentary multiple POV the ruthless eighteen-year rise and fall of a tyrannical, manipulative Hollywood movie tycoon, directed by Vincente Minelli and Starring Kirk Douglas, Lana Turner, Barry Sullivan, Walter Pidgeon, Dick Powell, Gloria Grahame, Paul Stewart and Leo G. Carroll.

Temptation (1946)

Temptation (1946) is a shady lady femme fatale scheming wife and marital infidelity historical flashback and voiceover lousy Egyptologically obsessed husband brooding jealous and lust based on a play film noir murder melodrama starring Merle Oberon, Paul Lukas, George Brent and Charles Korvin.

The Strange Door (1951)

The Strange Door (1951) is a Joseph Pevney directed grand guignol gothic melodrama historical horror film noir women as chattels fantasy escapist historical nonsensical sensational portraits in film noir captive family member and psychopathic historical baron combination chiller-costume melodrama tale of madness, greed, insanity, revenge and loving heroism, starring Charles Laughton, Boris Karloff, Sally Forrest and Richard Stapley, based on the short story The Sire de Maletroit's Door by Robert Louis Stevenson, and sometimes rolling with the alternative title of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Door (1951).

The Man in the Net (1959)

The Man in the Net (1959) is a disappearing suburban wife lousy husband and beautiful young alcoholic missus versus artist versus conformity versus suburbia versus a nasty cop and an angry mob and crazy Connecticut manhunt for a framed and accused husband with assistance form children mystery thriller late late classic era film noir which makes a virtue of an avuncular, painterly but less engaged every year Alan Ladd, starring Carolyn Jones and Charles McGraw in a noir which has so many classic psychological tones that one would argue that had this script been filmed in 1949 or 1939, the resultant noir would have been prototypically excellent, as opposed what it is, a fully toned late period weirdismal reflection of of realism.

Blackmail (1929)

Blackmail (1929) is an Alfred Hitchcock 1920s police procedural attempted rape and murder in self defence classic British film noir hit sound movie production based on a play and brutally blackly comic cinematic late dip towards higher modernism in the form and its technical prowess as it entered the 1930s, and this film which is clear evidence of the Hitchcockian it is also at its height horrific.

Apologies if the film noir canon is to be legally formatted in the 1920s, the thought is not tuned into the key features of the style, so it is unusual to call it a classic, and yet unanimous support from the Film Noir Board in fact classify it, classicify it if you can, that is the verdict.

La Chienne (1931)

La Chienne (1931) is a French poetic realist film de pur génie puppet show de la vie misery of faked identities, Jean Renoir-noir Paris night-time street scenes murder and fated descent into tramping bummery, all round classique de poetic realism, classic film noir, and ardent ancient treasury of la cinematique-du-crime, in which a dupe is duped by a couple of unsympathetic street denizens of poverty struck human villainy wherein all you own are your clothes and your cigarettes, while also satirising the middle and business merchant class, and the art class, with its mendicant conclusion and historic remaking by Fritz Lang in the equally immortal and immoral bum-quest to the bottom that is Scarlet Street (1945)

The Uninvited (1944)

The Ray Milland Season Advances at a Crawl

The Uninvited (1944) is a supernatural clifftop haunted house, Cornish clifftop haunted house paranoid woman writer as hero portraits in noir gothic horror ghost chiller love and romance drama with a dog shot by Lewis Allen and starring Ray Milland, Gail Russell, Ruth Hussey, Donald Crisp, Alan Napier, and Cornelia Otis Skinner.

Few films of the 1940s reach the uncanny stillness and dignified unease as well as the fantastic silliness and dignified quease of The Uninvited (1944). 

Cry of the Werewolf (1944)

Cry of the Werewolf (1944) is a she-wolf werewolf cry of the Alsatian forties Romany-defacing uberwald supernatural proto horror lady lycanthrope darkened corridors-style thriller from the golden era of the classic film noir period of the silver screen, and although no noir to speak of, the crossover themes, designs and elements of the forties horror style and canon is so film noir adjacent that someone must appeal to the strain of horror to full understand the high standards of the film noir of the day, and it stars Nina Foch and Fritz Leiber, and was directed by Henry Levin.

Everything that we are seeing on these silver sets is a product of the formation of cinema, and the sets are the full epic of the era, hand built for thrills and lighting.

Portrait of Jennie (1948)

Portrait of Jennie (1948) is a supernatural romantic drama artist-as-hero sepia black and white and at the same time technicolor David O. Selznick in the tradition of quality vehicle for Jennifer Jones magical and strange high-value and purified mystical love movie mad hard upon the crest of the film noir wave and so shares not a few virtues with that immortal form, the noir, the form by which it shall today be judged.

For it is a film not necessary of noir, but yet does look to the most over stylised elements of our favourite film language, in fantasy and in shadow.

The Two Mrs Carrolls (1947)

The Two Mrs Carrolls (1947) is a lousy husband paranoid woman blackmail murder and poison mystery manor house art and intrigue infidelity and obsession Mark Hellinger portraits of women in noir film noir starring Barbara Stanwyck, Humphrey Bogart, Alexis Smith and Nigel Bruce.

You might imagine that this melange of mild madness and misty focused love and lust has often been misapprehended as an ungainly hybrid of overwrought melodrama and tepid suspense. Such assessments have become axiomatic, yet they do not withstand close inspection. 

Though the film remains aesthetically uneven, it exerts a strange and unrelenting fascination, anchored by peculiar tonal shifts and grotesque exaggerations that reveal, rather than obscure, its psychological acuity.

House of Strangers (1949)

House of Strangers (1951) is a corporate crime Italian-American family drama revenge and rags to riches corruption film noir with fragments of boxing noir and courtroom noir included, which stars Edward G. Robinson as a patriarch in a family of boys who can't sort their succession planning.

Richard Conte is the star of the show and its his story we follow as he smoothly and suavely negotiates this house of would-be strangers, acting as his own father's attorney in the courtroom and beyond, convinced that his rich and domineering banker of a dad is innocent of making his fortune on the backs of the misery of others.

This misery is present as usury, played out by character actor Tito Vuolo, the man who became the stand-by Italian American in many a film noir.

Vicki (1953)

Vicki (1953) is a modelling-business murder mystery flashback violent cop remake of the earlier classic film noir I Wake Up Screaming (1941).

Richard Boone is terrific as the violent cop with a terrific hunch, found peeping, creeping, never sleeping, punching and shouting and best of all, and in the most aggravating urban New York big city cop style of noir, just deciding that a person is guilty - in this case merely from a photograph - and then simply beating them and shouting at them and others too if that's what ti takes, beating and shouting repeatedly until the case is closed.

Vicki is the ambitious young model making her way, and somehow not forgiven for her pushiness and willingness to mould the truth to her amorality, from time to time. She pays for this upfront, and is murdered, a murdered glamour girl in an uncaring city. 

The Secret Of The Whistler (1946)

The Secret Of The Whistler (1946) is an infidelity lousy husband greed and murder noir tale from The Whistler series, starring Richard Dix and Leslie Brooks, directed by George Sherman.

A wealthy wife suspects her artist husband's affair with his model. He poisons his wife for inheritance but faces unexpected consequences after her death. A thriller exploring greed, betrayal, and the consequences of criminal actions.

Of all the serial movie concepts, icons, characters and themes, from the earliest moments of serialisation through the incredible eras of the 1930s and 1940s which developed the serial movie, the absolute prototypes of the infinite tankerloads of television shows we have created since 1960, through what are now generations of streaming services, the absolute origin of these is the movie serial, and of those serials none is no more noir than The Whistler.

Dead Man's Eyes (1944)

Dead Man's Eyes (1944) is a horror thriller artist-goes-blind murder love triangle film noir from the Inner Sanctum series of the 1940s, starring Lon Chaney Jr and Jean Parker.

Fairly silly and not universally enjoyed, Dead Man's Eyes (1944) is a basic production to say the least, and is fairly static in terms of its acting and direction, and so quite easy to see why it is not so widely enjoyed as other films noir might still be.

Indeed, for a love triangle picture it is even hard to imagine any of the characters having any true feeling for each other, but then in a cinematic landscape where nothing makes total sense, then nothing particularly matters either.

Hollywood Story (1951)

Hollywood Story (1951) is a motion picture industry noir killer thriller historic Hollywood mystery drama starring Richard Conte and Julie Adams, Richard Egan, Henry Hull, Fred Clark and Jim Backus, a high host of noir talent.

The murder in Hollywood trope usually takes a film noir twist and usually with a bit of fun. If it ain't In a Lonely Place it will be elsewhere.

Directed by William Castle, Hollywood Story (1951) takes us on a captivating journey through the glitz and shadows of old Hollywood. In a kind of film noir style, with curiosity and nostalgic tableau. Starring Richard Conte and Julie Adams, this American mystery film weaves a tale of ambition, murder, and intrigue.

The Locket (1946)

The Locket (1946) is a noir of nested narratives — a kleptomaniac paranoid psychoanalytic flashback within a flashback film noir which unravels one woman's secret life and haunted past. 

This psychological thriller  directed by John Brahm stars Laraine Day, Brian Aherne, Robert Mitchum, and Gene Raymond, and was released by RKO Pictures. 

The film is based on a screenplay by Sheridan Gibney and adapted from "What Nancy Wanted" by Norma Barzman, wife of later-blacklisted writer Ben Barzman. 

The set up is an interrupted wedding, the stuff of nightmares. John Willis (Gene Raymond) is about to marry bride to be Nancy (Laraine Day), but a man named Harry Blair (Brian Aherne) crashes the wedding. 

Laura (1944)

Laura (1944) is a classic murder mystery web of love film noir drama of meagre and unhealthy male obsession directed by Otto Preminger, starring Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb and Vincent Price.

The premise of the story is that three men are fixated on the one woman, Laura Hunt, and as the story starts we visit one of those men — Waldo Lydecker, played by Clifton Webb — in the company of another of them, the young cop Mark McPherson, played by Dana Andrews.

The classic film noir flashback structure allows for a multitude of mystery and nonstandard storytelling, much of this confused by the fact that Waldo Lydecker is a brittle and caustic storyteller in himself — he is a famous columnist and aside from the power that he wields — typing his sometimes vitriolic and career-ending columns for his bathtub — he is in fact a weaver of tales himself and as such should not be trusted.

The Unsuspected (1947)

The Unsuspected (1947) is a multiply textured mystery and suspense film noir starring Claude Rains as a handsome patriarchal radio show presenter, who specialises in true crime. For film noir — it's a way of life.

Technology and murder combine in The Unsuspected in the form of Claude Rains' own master studio where he engineers as much evil as he does family entertainment, with his hi-tech equipment.

Victor Grandison (Claude Rains) plays a character more embedded in crime than most, and hosts a murder mystery radio show. 

Gaslight (1944)

Gaslight (1944) is an historical psychological and ever topical film noir drama by George Cukor, starring Ingrid Bergman, and based on a play by writer Patrick Hamilton.

While an engaging and massively popular item of historical drama, Gaslight (1944) is probably most remarkable as a cultural point of reference for the denominalisation of its title — to become the term 'gaslighting' — an aspect of psychological abuse generally within couples such as this — an abusive and controlling male.

To serve it its proper definition and coinage, gaslighting proper is a form of psychological abuse in which a person or group causes someone to question their own sanity, memories, or perception of reality. And this is, to quote the film's period poster: (the) strange drama of a captive sweetheart!

People who experience gaslighting will feel confused, anxious, or as though they cannot trust themselves, exactly as Ingrid Bergman portrays in this movie.

Scarlet Street (1945)

Scarlet Street is a 1945 film noir, directed by Fritz Lang, and is one of what you may call Lang's dream film noirs.

The dream film noir is a heady and difficult combination, and was almost exclusively the creation of Fritz Lang, who employed psychology and hidden impulse very well in his work, and did so brilliantly in The Ministry of Fear, with its dream Nazis, and most successfully of all in The Woman in the Window. (1944).

The same applies to many of Fritz Lang's films, such as The Secret Beyond the Door (1947).

Fritz Lang was born to this. Lang was born to mix the heady visuals of the new cinema with the relatively recent findings of psychoanalytic theory. All this amounts to in practice, and in film noir, are dark desires, so-called because they are both illicit and unknown.

Often in film noir, a man seeks to escape domesticity, while at the same time in film noir, a woman often feels trapped by it, subjugated by the commercial forces that were fast growing the world about her.