She Played With Fire (1957)

She Played With Fire (1957) is a psychological Limey thriller noir sort of Brit insurance fraud melodrama mystery with widespread stiff upper lippery and confusion raining doubt on a lovely couple of paranoiacs.

She Played with Fire, also known as Fortune Is a Woman, is a captivating British-American film noir from 1957, directed by Sidney Gilliat. The film stars Jack Hawkins as Oliver Branwell, an insurance investigator who finds himself entangled in a web of arson, blackmail, and murder after a chance encounter with an old flame, Sarah Moreton, played by Arlene Dahl.

Women's Prison (1955)

Women's Prison (1955) is a high period women's prison drama film noir, with a wealth of noir talent and an outré head of steam as it tackles psychopathically sublimated sexual suppression in the form of a violent warder played by Ida Lupino.

Jan Sterling, Audrey Totter, Juanita Moore, Cleo Moore make a cell block of sass and noir dialogue, while outlandish banter and bravado make stir seem fun, although not for the mortally bullied cracked up manslaughter case of a gentle woman cast into hellish chokey, played by Phyllis Thaxter.

Howard Duff plays a pipe pokin heart throbbin prison doctor, who is deeply concerned for the welfare of in particular Phyliss Thaxter's broken form, as she is strait-jacketed, broken, and psychologically torn apart.

Death of a Salesman (1951)

Death of a Salesman (1951) is the first based on a play film adaptation of the Arthur Miller 1949 stage drama of the same name, starring Frederc March as the iconic and iconological Willy Loman, the American neveryman, the existential nothing of the coming decades in one staring suicidal staring contest with death.

Just before the film was about to be released, Arthur Miller threatened to sue Columbia Studios over the short that was to appear before Death of a Salesman. This short film, Career of a Salesman, showed what the producers believed was a more typical American salesman, and was an attempt to defuse possible accusations that Death of a Salesman was an anti-American film. Eventually, Columbia agreed to remove the 10-minute short from the film's theatrical run.

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.

The Shop at Sly Corner (1947)

The Shop at Sly Corner (1949) is a lightweight Limey mystery film noir with a pleasant historical creep factor and an antiques business setting, featuring a psychopathic Pinkie-like young shop boy on a noir rise to power over the mild mannered walrus faced character actor stylings of Oscar Homoloka

The Shop at Sly Corner is based on a play by Edward Percy, a Conservative MP, which debuted in London in May 1945 and received positive reviews, with Variety praising it as "good theatre." 

The play enjoyed a successful two-year run in London, generating a significant profit for its investors after an initial production cost of just $12,000. 

His Kind of Woman (1951)

His Kind of Woman (1951) is a Howard Hughes produced adventure comedy face transplant gambler noir with both light and heavy touches and an array of almost spoofily delivered scenes and lines which might have been suggestive of noir satire were it not for Howard Hughes failing movie policies, which always created slightly aberrant Hollywoodish features.

The story of His Kind of Woman (1951) tells of how a deported gangster's plan to re-enter the USA involves skulduggery at a Mexican resort, and gambler Dan Milner is caught in the middle. The end goal is a rather unspecified face transplant operation a variety of post-Nazi science that blends into the Hollywood fantasies of the day, unspoken and feared.

Lifeboat (1944)

Lifeboat (1944) is an Alfred Hitchcock John Steinbeck wartime drama-of-limited-setting Nazi paranoia romance with occasional noir reminiscent moments and qualities, although largely a stand alone and unique tension and romance drama of amputation and elegance, class-clashes and peril.

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock,  ce filme la the awesome and always enjoyable and atmospheric Lifeboat is a gripping American survival film based on a story by John Steinbeck. Set entirely on a lifeboat adrift in the Atlantic during World War II, the movie explores the complexities of human nature under extreme circumstances.

The film opens with the aftermath of a naval battle: a British ship and a German U-boat have sunk each other. Eight survivors from different backgrounds find themselves crammed into a lifeboat. Among them is Willi, a German U-boat crewman who is pulled aboard. 

The Night Has Eyes (1942)

The Night Has Eyes (1942) is a Limey lunar mystery old-dark-house horror quicksand post-Spanish Civil War thriller starring the man of that moment James Mason, and which has variously been known as Moonlight Madness and Terror House.

Directed by Leslie Arliss and also starring Joyce Howard, Wilfrid Lawson, Mary Clare and Tucker McGuire, it is based on the 1939 novel of the same title by Alan Kennington.

It's a tale of hidden and permanent recurrent madness, and viewers are exposed to James Mason . . . "I've made my kill for the night" he says with the placidity typical of his style  . . . murdering a monkey and then resolving himself to the firm Englishness for which he is renowned.

Eyes In The Night (1942)

Eyes In The Night (1942) is a crime and detection sleuthing espionage spy noir directed by Fred Zinnemann which features Edward Arnold as blind detective Mac MacLain, and the dog Frida, as the dog Friday.

Oddball, unusual and earnest, Eyes in the Night (1942) doesn't suffer as many of its cheapo contemporaries do from dud scripting and the ill-effects of bum-row production values.

This celluloid endeavor, which inaugurated an ill-fated B-movie detective series, featured the venerable Edward Arnold in the role of a sightless sleuth, and although the public’s tepid reception precluded the realization of subsequent instalments, super oddity and noir make good companions and this blind sleuth endeavour has a lot to say.

The Wild One (1953)

The Wild One (1953) is a classic teenage rebellion social commentary biker movie, renowned for its impact and shock, and featuring Marlon Brando as the iconic Johhny Strabler. The Wild One (1953) is in fact none other than the final word in being the classic teenage rebellion social commentary biker movie, presenting ideas for the breakaway generation to come post World War 2, a Boomer cohort that will create a division in liberal suburban democratic and generational politics and lifestyles, a splice of the 'cickle across America's brow, never to be repaired.

They boom. The bikes boom and as long as our society keeps hearing those bikes . . .

The movie captures 1950s youth rebellion and the generation gap, blending raw emotion and social commentary. Brando’s iconic performance, along with the movie's gritty portrayal of outlaw culture, cements it as a seminal work in motorcycle cinema.

House of Wax (1953)

House of Wax (1953) is a 3D remake historic horror chiller thriller non film noir blockbuster movie from the gold age of 3D cinema.

House of Wax, filmed under the working title The Wax Works, was Warner Bros.' response to the unexpected success of the 3D film Bwana Devil, which premiered in November 1952. 

Recognizing the potential of 3D technology, Warner Bros. adopted Julian and Milton Gunzburg's Natural Vision 3D system, the same system used in Bwana Devil.

 They chose to remake their 1933 Technicolor thriller, Mystery of the Wax Museum, originally based on Charles S. Belden's play The Wax Works. 

While Mystery included a newspaper subplot and was set in its release year, House of Wax, set around 1902, retained much of the original's plot and dialogue.

Hold Back Tomorrow (1955)

Hold Back Tomorrow (1955) is a serious but strange outré death row doomed couple fantasy film noir about two lost romantic souls converging in the darkest of circumstances.

In a dramatic move so odd it could only materialise in the liberally weird machination fantasies of the Hollywood machine in the death-of-film-noir period, which ranges across the five years between 1955 and 1960, a condemned man is offered the chance to have whatever he so desires, under the law, offering a crazed film premise that only a bluff and wild film noir producer in the 1950s could never refuse.

Donovan's Brain (1953)

Donovan's Brain (1953) is a body-horror exploitation mad scientist conscious disembodied brain thriller horror science fiction fantasy crime drama both embedded in and invested in and owing a debt to the film noir style.

As much an outré noir as it is a horror and as much a mad scientist romance drama as it is an exploitation shocker, Donovan's Brain retains charms far beyond its modest origins and becomes semantically more interesting with every year that passes since 1953.

Spoilers Alert the forgiving concluding moral dramatic termination and completing moral moments of this crime and weakness madness drama, does ask questions about body stealing, corpse desecration and other post-mortem brutalities which we must strangely brush aside.

Affair in Trinidad (1952)

Affair in Trinidad (1952) is an exotically located crypto-Nazi post-war thriller vehicle for the return of Rita Hayworth who had wowed the world in Gilda, and appears here collided once more with some of the same cast including the rough and sarcastically toned Glenn Ford and the bumbling native idiotically styled  craven lackey themed performance by Steven Geray.

It is not as bad as it sounds, and although not a classic noir nor even a noir much discussed, nor a classic of any kind of noir not even non-noir or faux-Caribbean noir, for anyone in the swing of the full film noir journey much of the usual enjoyment is found here, in both the slightly angrier than usual performance from mug in the tropics, Glenn Ford, and the constant soft-focus camera lingering on the multiply costume changed gorgeousness of Rita Hayworth.

The Wrong Man (1956)

The Wrong Man (1956) is a classic Alfred Hitchcock wrongfully accused man film noir movie, starring Henry Fonda as the man accused, and Vera Miles as the wife-at-home who loses her mind in the process.

One of the most moving of all classic film noir, in terms of the dramatic effect, The Wrong Man is a powerful procedural object lesson in legal terror and powerlessness, framing up the wrong guy as only Hitchcock can, and bringing deep and dangerous emotions to the tableau.

The duet of Henry Fonda and Vera Miles is well cast, and both face their demons. Unlike in many a film noir there is no slippery slope within this classic, in the sense of the wrong side of the tracks and one-false-step style noir that the style favours.

Brighton Rock (1948)

Brighton Rock (1948) is a classic limey gangland early youth violence exploitation and murder film noir, and a classic of the style, a classic of British cinema, a classic of the cinema of Graham Greene, and a ground-breaking and block-rocking belter of its day, offering some of the purest cinema of the post-war British age.

And this in a classic Graham Greene pre-war tale, a combination of multiple efforts of genius to create a quite uniquely British noir experience.

One will be warned that entire books have been written about the film of Brighton Rock (1948) and even about Richard Attenborough’s ran-sackingly riveting portrayal of Pinkie Brown. 

Borderline (1950)

Borderline (1950) is an undercover female cop narcotic smuggling romantic copper couple on the run chase caper noir starring Fred MacMurray and Claire Trevor as undercover narcotic cops on the job in Mexico, unaware that each of the other is an undercover narcotic cop on the job in Mexico.

A gentle noir, with no profound moments of existential threat, anxiety, peril nor paranoia, Borderline (1950) is an undecided film noir, capering with the caper format at times and nudging on occasion into comedy, especially as it adopts and parades a standard series of idle Mexicana, example in the made up typecast stereo of the bumbling sombrero and the old "Si senor" routine, which blocks out the light at every turn in this cheapish escapade.

Naked Alibi (1954)

Naked Alibi (1954) is a cop on the edge psycho killer chase thriller that endeavours to spill the ills of suburban America into the criminal wilds of Mexico, as an unhinged killer baker bridges the merciless and pointless gap between the normative strains of the American Dream and the animal flavours of the real world of criminal human agony.

The two tend to meet flatly in the face of the stylistically drowning form of mid 50s noir, when the residues of dramatised psychologically criminality, portrayed with such fun in the 1940s, turn to sour and serious and usually quite odd and unexplained abnormality, as the noir ideals begin to fade mid-decade.

Naked Alibi  (1954) stands as a testament to the enduring allure of film-noir, even as the genre evolved through the 1950s. The film brings together a trio that guarantees a noir masterpiece: Sterling Hayden, Gloria Grahame, and the shadowy ambiance of noir cinematography.

The Fallen Idol (1948)

The Fallen Idol (1948) is a child's-view psychological mystery Limey classic film noir thriller which delights in a great script, a fascinating and compelling story, top drawer acting from the very best of the age, and is a general talent-mix of both Carol Reed and Graham Green, both at their cinematic best.

The eyes of a child are untrained in perceiving the grey between the morality of black and white. It is on this precarious naivety of youth that Carol Reed hangs the suspense of The Fallen Idol.

Reed, in collaboration with novelist and screenwriter Graham Greene, crafted The Fallen Idol a year before their masterpiece The Third Man. While The Fallen Idol might seem to suggest adolescent growing pains, your assumptions deceive you. The film is nearly as much a noir classic as Reed's Odd Man Out and The Third Man, which bookend it in his all-too-classic none-too-shabby all-so-awesome filmography.

The Last Crooked Mile (1946)

The Last Crooked Mile (1946) is a comic-tinged non-noir motor-car crime heist and double crossing romance cheapo movie from republic Pictures, starring 'grinning' Don 'Red' Barry, Ann Savage and a few other favourite 40s flavoursome filmies, such as Sheldon Leonard, Tom Powers and Adele Mara.

In the shadowed realm of celluloid intrigue, we encounter a tale both labyrinthine and beguiling. Picture this: LLMs are writing blogs about film noir. Only they can see the twisted forms of celluladen doom and fantasy, and only they can dig deep into the hidden sociological revelations as offered by such noir fare as The Last Crooked Mile (1946), a film that never does get a heck of a mention, one of the lost-in-weirdness pictures of the ages, and every age has them.

I Was A Shoplifter (1950)

I Was A Shoplifter (1950) is a docu-noir gangland outré procedural blackmail paranoid shoplifter exploitation film noir starring Mona Freeman as a middle class lady gone awry, slipping into a ridiculous but nonetheless dangerous noir world of slippery conspiracy and dangerous wrong-side-of-the-tracks-style lessons in life.

In 1950s California, the police force tries to infiltrate and neutralize a shoplifting crime ring operating in major department stores.

I Was a Shoplifter (1950) stars Mona Freeman as Faye Burton, a judge’s daughter turned kleptomaniac, in this gripping crime drama. Scott Brady plays undercover cop Jeff Andrews, who shadows Faye as she’s forced to join a shoplifting ring led by the merciless pawnbroker Ina Perdue, portrayed by Andrea King.

Daisy Kenyon (1947)

Daisy Kenyon (1947) is a classic Otto Preminger lousy husband romantic triangle arrogant commercial artist melodrama noir-style moral wrongness feature film with Joan Crawford, Dana Andrews, and Henry Fonda.

Preminger’s sensibility clashed with the shadows. His modus operandum, like a smoke-filled room, ran counter to the polished veneer of society. Daisy Kenyon, a dame caught in the crossfire, danced on the edge of desire and danger.

The two leading men, a fedora and a military hat, did anybody write a book about the hat motif and codes and modes of symbology in noir. They had better had. Noir needs hat analysis. Hat analysis may be brought to bear in any and many a film noir, a good example we could enjoy might be Ramrod, starring Lana Turner.

Walk On The Wild Side (1962)

Walk On The Wild Side (1962) is a drifter narrative historical film noir tale of corrupt and tragic and exploitative brothel living starring Jane Fonda and Laurence Harvey, with Capucine and Barbara Stanwyck providing support and at times violent melodrama.

More than that, Walk On The Wild Side (1962) does provide a f & m buddy movie vibe, kicking off with a wandering tale of two drifters, drifting together, the young and wild and immoral Twist played by Jane Fonda, and the cool calm cowpoke character played by Laurence Harvey. 

Ramrod (1947)

Ramrod (1947) is a darkness on the range film noir western tale of bullying double crossing and rivalry from one of the style's favourite directors, André De Toth, one of the pioneers in the film noir western genre jam of the 1940s.

The permutations of film noir began to play across nightmare scenarios in the urban, criminal, historical and now western styles of story telling,.

In the shadow-draped alleys of 1947, it was not all shadow-draped alleys and the Western too felt the noir influence from time to time. This picture called Ramrod hit the silver screen, helmed by the Hungarian maestro Andre de Toth, and is now considered to be an example of cross-over style, that most amazing of constructs, the film noir western.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941)

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941) is an atmospheric horror science fiction mystery movie adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, that stars Spencer Tracy, Ingrid Bergman and Lana Turner.

While not a film noir in the conventional mode nor even much in the capacity of the subject matter and story, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941) is classic film noir inasmuch as it introduces the style within its full dramatic flow.

Yet as far as the noir, ambivalence and duality are pushed to the extremes in this cracker of a science fiction thriller, with Spencer Tracy who had been symbolising rectitude for many a cinematic year preceding. 

Kings Row (1942)

Kings Row (1942) is an epic local large-scale detailed slice of life dramatic-style tableau course-of-history melodrama, which is not film noir, and yet retains a space in the noir hall of fame, not on the wall of shame so much as on the formative features feature.

Still — in reading the all-time seminal seminar on noir, Raymonde Borde and Etienne Chaumeton's A Panorma of Amercian Film Noir (1941 - 1953), we do find that Kings Row is one of several non noir productions that rise up early in the authors' studies, as an example of the ultra-conventional being infected with the same dark currents that were hitting civil as well as cultural and criminal society — noir.

Jigsaw (1949)

Jigsaw (1949) is an unusual and at times outré mystery chase hate-group propaganda versus journalism, journalism and media film noir, starring Franchot Tone as a detecting assistant district attorney, on the scene and hunting for what might be called neo-fascists, or perhaps simply more likely, just fascists.

None of that was really truly departed for the future, after all, not even by 1949. And what is and was and what became and what now is fascism, and what the definitions of fascism are and might be, are all questions much relevant to film noir.

Jigsaw (1949) is an entertaining thriller that’s so over-the-top, you can’t help but overlook its far-fetched plot and be grateful for the fun it brings. It’s a film that’s as strange as they come.

Woman in Hiding (1950)

Woman in Hiding (1950) is a woman against the world lousy husband flashback murder and female seeker hero film noir, starring Ida Lupino as a wife on the run, escaping from a murderous marriage and finding love on the run in the form of lackadaisical magazine and cigar seller Howard Duff.

Corporate villainy also appears in this car smashin chase and hide thriller in the form of Stephen McNally playing an industry boss who is going to be appropriate screen material for the 1950s, straight outta war and into world domination, starting with mob behaviour in the boardroom.

I would seem from the Wikipedia entry on Woman in Hiding (1950) that not everybody agrees that this is a film noir. The works that are cited are the super-seminal and all-ruling guide to the subject of film noir,  Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton (2002). A Panorama of American Film Noir (1941-1953), and Ian Brookes Film Noir: A Critical Introduction. 

A Woman's Face (1941)

A Woman's Face (1941) is a fantastical hard-luck-lady flashback courtroom film noir blackmail tale of gender expectation, bitterness and plastic surgery.

One of several plastic surgery miracle movies made in the era, it seemed like the trope and myth of the plastic surgeon and face exchange being ideal narrative material on the big screen.

Most meaningfully and in the terms of the noir universe these are Dark Passage (1947), Black Dragons (1942), Nora Prentiss (1947), Stolen Face (1952), G-Men Never Forget (1948), Dead End (1937), The Second Face (1950), It Happened in Hollywood (1935), and then She Demons (1958) a strangely far out genre find, Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), and with The Raven (1935), that might be enough for now, although others will materialise, that is certain.

This Woman is Dangerous (1952)

This Woman is Dangerous (1952) is a screen-scorching lady gangster dilemma woman-based crime drama with a timely titular suggestion concerning the moral and health and safety proclivities of a gender-based social entity played by Joan Crawford.

A slightly peculiar air of crime fantasy permeates this oddly composed domesticated film noir.

This Woman Is Dangerous is a classic 1952 film noir and crime drama produced by Warner Bros. The movie features Joan Crawford, David Brian, and Dennis Morgan, and tells the story of a woman involved with the criminal underworld who faces the challenge of losing her sight. 

The screenplay, crafted by Geoffrey Homes and George Worthing Yates, draws from a narrative by Bernard Girard. Felix E. Feist directed the film, with Robert Sisk serving as producer.

Sudden Fear (1952)

Sudden Fear (1952) is a paranoid woman psychological stalking thriller film noir from the golden age of sinister and romantic wife's suspicion of her husband pictures.

Ever since Suspicion indeed, on the one hand, and Rebecca on the other, volumes of reel of film have told the tales of the paranoid woman of the era, she is the very sight of the times and the very words sudden fear themselves may be used to describe noir itself, it's attack vogue, it's play in the dark nature, the insuring lustre of stars on the screen, reworking in this case the themes, of suspicion, and the key player in the play of death is a dictating machine, a media within the media.

Flamingo Road (1949)

Flamingo Road (1949) is a woman against the world Southern local bully class-status drama hostess-at-a-roadhouse film noir of complicated romances, and double crosses.

Directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Joan Crawford, Zachary Scott, Sydney Greenstreet, and David Brian, the screenplay for Flamingo Road (1949) was written by Robert Wilder. It was based on a 1946 play written by Wilder and his wife, Sally, which in turn was based on Robert Wilder’s 1942 novel of the same name.

The plot follows an ex-carnival dancer who marries a local businessman to seek revenge on a corrupt political boss who had her railroaded into prison. Some of the more salacious aspects of the novel were downplayed in the film due to the Hollywood Production Code.

The Damned Don't Cry (1950)

The Damned Don't Cry (1950) is a flashback rags-to-riches-lousy husband woman in the workplace corporate gangland crime kingpin's moll film noir, with Joan Crawford and David Brian, as well as a career highlight from noir superstar Steve Cochran

With Joan Crawford and an incredible four husbands in one movie, there are questions galore in the damned darkness of The Damned Don't Cry (1950).

Joan Crawford's character starts with a husband that she does not rate, even though it is Richard Egan. But he's too controlling and penny-pinching for her, and she is a film noir hero for whom enough is not enough.

Rephrasing that, this is a common enough film noir lesson: you are not satisfied with your mediocre and quotidian suburban working life, or as in this case, a rather blue collar existence on an oilfield.

Night Editor (1946)

Night Editor (1946) is a lousy husband crooked cop journalism and media-framed film noir murder and police procedural directed by Henry Levin and starring William Gargan, Janis Carter and Jeff Donnell.

This quiet epic of quick production B or C-movie magic and exploitation melodrama was adapted from a well-liked radio show bearing the same title. Its screenplay drew inspiration from an episode of the radio series titled Inside Story. 

Produced by Columbia Pictures as a B-movie, it was intended to launch a sequence of movies chronicling the nocturnal adventures of crime reporters at the fictitious New York Star newspaper. However, no subsequent films in the Night Editor series were produced.

Carrefour (1938)

Carrefour (1938) is an amnesia noir proto-noir French thriller with a pedigree so crucial to film noir and the noir style, that pages must and will be written about this classic of the noir manner.

Crossroads, as anglophones might intone, being the translated term, much it might be said in the film noir mode, with its emphasis in naming, upon streets, roads, and other similar type of concept.

Actually titled Carrefour in French, this early expression of the film noir trend is a mystery drama film from 1938. Directed by Curtis Bernhardt, it features Charles Vanel, Jules Berry, and Suzy Prim in leading roles. This influential film led to two remakes in English: the British Dead Man’s Shoes in 1940 and the American Crossroads in 1942. Filming took place at the Billancourt Studios and around Paris, with Jean d’Eaubonne and Raymond Gabutti as the art directors responsible for the film’s visual design.

Curtis Bernhardt’s journey through the film industry mirrors that of his contemporaries, traversing Germany, France, and America. Unlike Fritz Lang and Robert Siodmak, Bernhardt never returned to Germany to film. 

Key Largo (1948)

Key Largo (1948) is a classic film noir home invasion criminal versus returning war veteran drama thriller directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and Edward G. Robinson.

A full noir cast however awaits within the reels of Key Largo (1948), revealed with the standard credit sequence and a short aerial introduction and voiceover, explaining where we are, embedding the physical in what turns out to be high impact environment, both human and meteorological.

The Set-Up (1949)

The Set-Up (1949) is a high-intensity weakened male failing old timer boxing set-up patsy takes a dive real-time action concept classic film noir based on a narrative poem published in 1929.

The streets of the night with their emphasis on fun, with arcades and bars, and  cigar stands and joints of all sorts, are seen as places of isolation as Julie walks them without aim, unable to watch her man Stoker take part in another fight.

Existential expression is often key to film noir, and of course Albert Camus needed to go to the cinema too, and would have ideally found confirmation of his philosophical expression in a picture such as this.

Take One False Step (1949)

Take One False Step (1949) is an innocent-man-accused murder mystery comedy-toned film noir by Chester Erskine, which follows decent upstanding citizen Andrew Gentling (played by William Powell) as he negotiates the criminal backdrops of San Francisco, trying to clear his name from the frame, and deal with a rabid dog bite in the process.

In town for a conference, Powell's character bumps into an old flame in the form of Shelley Winters, and she relentlessly hits on him until he drives her home, and she disappears, leaving him suspected of murder.

It's a murder without a body however, and an ordinarily tense noir setup falls into place and the hacks of film noir will argue that it winds up lacking in the tension that is traded for comedy.

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.

Pickup On South Street (1953)

Pickup On South Street (1953) is an urban Red Scare espionage and petty crime classic film noir directed by Samuel Fuller, and starring Richard Widmark, Thelma Ritter and Jean Peters.

Telling the story of how an innocent couple of low life New York petty criminals, a pickpocket and a vaguely defined B-girl, come to be involved in a highly dangerous Communist plot to smuggle some microfilm out of the city, and away from the pursuing FBI.

It goes without saying that the FBI are rather inefficient in handling this affair, relying on assumption, framing and the good will of the petty criminals who know the streets and their denizens better than they ever could. In the favour of the FBI, the commies are not much better organised, although they are quite well funded as cash bribes and payments seem to be their main approach.

The Iron Curtain (1948)

The Iron Curtain (1948) is an early Cold War espionage and infiltration thriller based on the breaking up of a real Canadian spy ring in the immediate aftermath of World War 2. 

It didn't take long, but shortly after World War 2 ended it became apparent that the liberators of Berlin and the nation which defeated the Nazis in Germany became the main enemy of the United States, and by association here, and everywhere, Canada.

It is in fact by all accounts the first feature film to dramatize and propagandise the new-fangled Cold War of the period, which could really be said to have run from 1947 until 1991, and seen the rise and development of film noir as one of its key cultural expressors.

Highway Dragnet (1954)

Highway Dragnet (1954) is an innocent male war veteran accused of murder mistaken identity road movie and sexual tension couple on the run thriller film noir, set on the highways and desert areas of Nevada and California.

Highway Dragnet holds the distinction of being the inaugural film to feature Roger Corman in the credits, marking his debut in the industry.

Corman was part of a team of six screenwriters who crafted this tension-filled melodrama shot on location. The film features Richard Conte as a former Marine fleeing from an unjust murder accusation. During his escape, he encounters Joan Bennett, a sophisticated magazine photographer, and her leading model, Wanda Hendrix, as they embark on a cross-country journey. 

Swamp Water (1941)

Swamp Water (1941) is a moody southern innocent-man-accused rural-backwater pelter manhunt film noir, which was Jean Renoir's first American movie.

A surprise treat from 1941, Renoir brings some poetic magic to the early years of the Golden Age, by taking time to develop characters and also developing the fact and fiction of the swamp itself, bringing on the sticky everglades as a peril as lousy as the urban jungles of more familiar film noir.

More complex and sad also, than the more common fare of the day, Swamp Water (1941) teases out feeling and emotional pain from the cast in the small town jealousies of its actors, and even a scene of torture in which Dana Andrews' character is drowned for information on the whereabouts of Walter Brennan's character.

Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954)

Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954) is a science fiction horror creature feature monster movie of the most classic stamp,

funny how sci fi invokes religion at the start of these films

A strange prehistoric beast lurks in the depths of the Amazonian jungle. A group of scientists try to capture the animal and bring it back to civilization for study.

This process should viewers care to see it is explored in The Shape of Water (2017).

Creature With The Atom Brain (1955)

Creature With The Atom Brain (1955) is a science fiction noir horror police procedural zombie brain chip implant mindless surrogate domestic terror thriller directed by Edward L. Cahn.

Noir-flavoured science fiction horror exploitation cinema is an important enough niche on its own but adding radiation and nuclear threat and bottom slapping pipe-smoking patriarchy 

As with all good 50s noir and atomic paranoia narrative the suburban dream is safely central to the threat and is the world  normative and in toto at threat of tipping into a void, in this case a radioactive brain chip zombie plague that is able to significantly interrupt national infrastructure, but unable to interrupt the laughing marital rump slapping and after work cocktail of the pipe smoking patriarchy.

Rage in Heaven (1941)

Rage in Heaven (1941) is a mannered psychological jealous love and madness film noir from the early years of the psychological jealous love and madness noir period.

Intimate and wild, formatively dramatic, Rage in Heaven is naturally also served with a twist of vaudeville, because psychological harm was only communicable in this manner at the opening of the era, circa 1940 and 1941.

Psychology is a supernatural form for noir and romance cinema, spoken of in unfounded vagueness and mystery, often in authoritative or awed tones.

The vaudevillian doctors of early psychology are a cinematic class unto themselves and are more prominent and more interesting and contain more semiotic fare in the 1940s, than they do or appear to be in any other decade.

My Six Convicts (1952)

My Six Convicts (1952) is an earnest prison reform noir drama movie from the very high water mark of the classic film noir era.

Yet maybe just floating upon that watermark does not mean your every film production is a classic, and most certainly of all, unlikely to be a classic of the film noir style.

What My Six Convicts (1952) does manage is a sympathetic-psychopathic portmanteau of movie moodiness with the nascent form of the movie madman being treated of as seriously as it could have been after just having undergone a fantastical 1940s of fun and fear, in which cod-psychoanalytic crime detection became 

The film kicks off with John Beal's arrival at the prison, tasked with trialing a psychological rehabilitation system for convicts. However, progress is slow until Millard Mitchell's seasoned safe-cracker takes a chance on the new doc.

The Verdict (1946)

The Verdict (1946) is an historical chiller thriller police versus killer film noir, and noir boy genius' Don Siegel's first directorial work.

With the smoke over the sound stage and the shadow chasing bulky form of Sidney Greenstreet and character actors galore to boot, The Verdict plays an old time turna the century London vibe as upped with character as any other in the foggy-noir sub genre.

This classic of foggy noir has more than a few twists to turn your interest to it, superior in depth perhaps if less held together in the low key nature of the incidents, while playing in turn for a kind of horror, the very possible horror of having condemned an innocent man, while coupled with smug 1890s Victorian era cop shop workplace bullying.

Guilty Bystander (1950)

Guilty Bystander (1950) is an alcoholic ex-cop crime drama panic scheming business acquaintance and smuggler film noir starring Zachary Scott and Faye Emerson.

In the midst of an era inundated with ceaseless reports of misfortune, as well as poor HD movies that rehash every last bullet and trope of soft genius from the golden days of cinema there emerges a glimmer of hope, however slight. 

Guilty Bystander (1950) is a diminutive, economical gem of the noir genre, cherished only by eccentric enthusiasts and much worthy of being resurrected from the annals of obscurity. 

Forlorn and neglected for decades, relegated to the most abysmal state imaginable, the film has been granted a new lease on life through a resplendent restoration, unveiling its splendour anew.

The Invisible Woman (1940)

The Invisible Woman (1940) is an US science fiction comedy film with little to commend it to the regular noir nor horror marketeer noireau, and yet comedy included it still grabs the headlines with its genre mixup and inevitable 1940s-style gender statements. It features Virginia Bruce, John Barrymore, John Howard, Charles Ruggles, and Oskar Homolka.

The Invisible Woman is an US science fiction comedy film. In this fil, well, to say the least an attractive model with an ulterior motive volunteers as guinea pig for an invisibility machine. Danger and hilarity and gender immorality ensues.