Sullivan's Travels (1941)

Sullivan's Travels (1941) is a drifter-narrative social message self-reflecting Hollywood blockbuster role reversal comedy social commentary prison and road movie media satire that looks at the business of the movie franchise ('Ants in your Pants 1939') in which the differences between worthy art and cinematic entertainment is pressed, as well as the truest social politics of the queer and socialist civil rightists kind

No it is not a film noir, c'est pas un noir mes flics et mesdames!

But there is still a reason it is here and many reasons it is relevant to our defence of the film noir form.

The social politics are true insofar as they are presented in 1941 before the mass media hold upon messaging defined social justice into some kind of communist nightmare.

Mirage (1965)

Mirage (1965) is an amnesia corporate crime nuclear threat hunted man paranoia thriller film noir, usually called a neo noir by the time we have come to examine the 1960s and its use of the style.

Yes, even though Mirage (1965) was made by Edward Dmytryk in the 1960s it rolls with the full flavour of all iconic and classic film noir, from the paranoiac lost in the city, to the hats and hoods of a mysterious underworld. Great motor cars and docu-noir style street action, a dream-like quality, and mystery intimate quick flashback visions as Gregory Peck pieces the cliches together, with the unique addition of Walther Matthau.

Two O' Clock Courage (1945)

Two O' Clock Courage (1945) is a romantic-comedic amnesia cabbie journalism and media comedy female seeker hero mystery writer-hero film noir from the classic era of the urban female seeker hero and cabbie noir adventure movie.

For 1945 this is powerful stuff, a seminal seminar in crossover and able to tell you more about history, narrative, meta-history, film-making, World War 2 and the USA than Citizen Kane might ever.

Mind you, this is virtually post-the-war and the thing hasn't gone off yet, it's one the last pictures from Innocentlandia.

Deadline At Dawn (1946)

Deadline At Dawn (1946) is a classic era classic female seeker hero hardboiled amnesia film noir, and a classic film noir which is also a great example of several other film noir sub-styles including cabbie noir, and outre noir.

Full of fun, mystery and menace and with an almost unique script, quipped with an unequaled touch by Clifford Odets, not known for his cinematic writing, and directed by 

The history and definition of film noir remain complex, filled with contradictions and shifting interpretations. Though often described as an American invention emerging from a synthesis of hard-boiled fiction and German expressionism, noir's roots and reach are far broader.

The Wolfman (1941)

The Wolfman (1941) is a Universal horror cycle classic lycanthrope thriller adventure amalgamation of Gothic ambience and psychological film making which juxtaposes the primal and the civilized within a tragically cursed protagonist who goes on to play in a variety of non-threatening carnival of monsters-style of movies, while cycling into the larger culture notions of monsterism coded with what in film noir terms could be a kind of gothic Überwald mis en scene.

Exploring the fragility of human identity through lycanthropic metamorphosis, The Wolfman (1941) has become one of the more indelible stopping points in the narratives of horror lore, not so much creating horror as such, but forming a solid concrete base upon which to build the identity of this genre.

The Power of The Whistler (1945)

The Power of The Whistler (1945) is a death-prediction amnesia thriller mystery identity serial film noir movie, and is the eerie third entry into the 1940s serial noir The Whistler series.

In the film, Janis Carter plays Jean Lang, a character whose actions spark intrigue and tension as she makes some highly questionable decisions regarding a complete stranger she encounters. 

Jean, who is telling fortunes using cards, becomes concerned when her cards predict grave danger for a man she notices in a restaurant, played by Richard Dix, who is suffering from that most famous of every film noir malady available to the script writes, amnesia. 

Man In The Dark (1953)

Man In The Dark (1953) is a rough-edged and semi-sleazy fantasy Lew Landers 3-D amnesia criminal mystery drama low-budget film noir, starring solid noir scions Edmond O'Brien, Audrey Totter and Ted de Corsia.

Going so far as to include mad scientist elements in the hand of of some fully state operated crazy medicine men, Edmond O'Brien plays a criminal who undergoes a brain operation which serves to remove the part of his brain that makes him such a bad-ass robber, thug, and hater of and sneerer at humanity.

The downside of the operation is the loss of the criminal's memory, and so another case of amnesia noir commences, as Edmond O'Brien plays the weakened male lead, once more lost without a brain in the city and in a world of crime.

Crack-Up (1946)

Crack-Up (1946) is an amnesia fraudulent artwork persecution noir with psychological elements delving into the amazing practise of narcosynthesis, and featuring some great train-bound action as a paranoid art critic played by Pat O'Brien searches frantically for his unknown tormentors.

Directed by Irving Reis, this fast moving art-crime drama also starred Claire Trevor, Herbert Marshall, Erskine Sanford and Wallace Stevens —  a strong film noir showing by any standards.

Dark and mysterious and tugging at undercurrents in the highest echelons of society, as represented by the artworld, Crack-Up has an uncanny feel, largely brought about by its quite distinctive paranoid train sequences.

Singapore (1947)

Singapore (1947) is a romantic smuggler exotic amnesia noir with Fred MacMurray and Ava Gardner.

Directed by John Brahm Singapore is an enjoyable mix of movie exotica — the style which clichéd the best of the rest of the globe and brought it to Hollywood, minced it, encoded various messages concerning foreign policy and international relations — and presented it on the screen

Despite being a post-World War II drama set in Singapore, there isn't much that one can learn about the Fall of Singapore and the rebuilding of the island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia, which took place after 1945.

Spellbound (1945)

Spellbound (1945) is an Alfred Hitchcock romantic psychological amnesia thriller with a noir nuance that cannot be denied. 

In some senses an outlier in the body of Alfred Hitchcock's own work, and not entirely styled in the mode of a more traditional or acceptable example of film noir, Spellbound does carry with it key noir themes of amnesia and psychoanalysis, and is as much a thriller as it is a psychological mystery.

Most of Spellbound's power comes as a romance story — always a strength with Alfred Hitchcock, who was as much a master of amour as he was of suspense.

Spellbound follows a psychoanalyst who falls in love with the new head of the Vermont hospital in which she works, only to find that he is an imposter suffering dissociative amnesia, and potentially, a murderer.

Repeat Performance (1947)

Repeat Performance (1947) is a lousy husband murder fantasy amnesia film noir with Joan Leslie, Louis Hayward, Richard Basehart, Tom Conway and Virginia Field.

One of the strengths of 1940s film noir was the element of the fantastic, which was often created by closed studio sets and incredible coincidences in the storytelling, in which characters acted out dark fantasies for real, with as little realism as possible — another world often being created by the mis en scene and the strange happenings.

Repeat Performance (1947) is something of an outlier in that the fantasy within it is manifest. Like other film noir which quickly taps into a national unconscious and plays out a murderous what-if, Repeat Performance tells a wild story in which the wild elements are simply givens that are accepted from the off.

Possessed (1947)

Possessed (1947) is high period paranoid woman family mystery amnesiac film noir with complexities galore, and starring Joan Crawford, Van Heflin and Raymond Massey.

Working wonders with the flashback structure, Possessed starts in dramatic style with a woman on the wander through some vacant city streets, murmuring only the name 'David' to herself.

The opening, which punches hard upon the perennial themes of urban isolation and amnesiac or damaged individuals lost within these concreted jungle confines, opens the door to frame an entirely flashback-told story of a woman called Louise Howell, played by Joan Crawford, who is presumably the possessed character of the title.

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. 

Crossroads (1942)

Crossroads (1942) is an amnesia mystery film noir starring William Powell, Hedy Lamarr, Claire Trevor and Basil Rathbone, and directed by Jack Conway. 

William Powell plays a diplomat whose amnesia about his past subjects him to back-to-back blackmail schemes, which threaten his reputation, job, marriage, and future. 

The film was based on the 1938 French film Crossroads which had also had a British remake called Dead Man's Shoes in 1940.

With shimmering cobblestones and foggy streetlamps, and deception, blackmail and a surprising if dubious mystery story, Crossroads (1942) is a prime example of 1940s amnesia noir.

High Wall (1947)

High Wall (1947) is a wife-murder mystery amnesia psychiatric PTSD ex-serviceman prison noir starring Audrey Totter, Robert Taylor and Herbert Marshall.

From its exciting opening sequence in which ex-mercenary flyer Steven Kenet (Robert Taylor) crashes his car into a river, trying to cover the evident strangulation murder of his wife with a suicide, to its traversing of the prison system for the criminally insane, up until its drug-induced truth-finding denouement, High Wall is exciting, fantastic, serious, dopey and features a proper film noir evil villain, a cool-blooded bad-doer who commits the most callous killings  — in order to save his chances at career promotion within the business of religious book publishing.

Mr Arkadin (1955)

Mr Arkadin (1955) is an Orson Welles mystery drama French-Swiss-Spanish co-produced espionage film noir, also known as Confidential Report and as is not unusual for a plagued Welles production, one which exists in several edits and versions.

In an 1991 essay The Seven Arkadins, writer  Jonathan Rosenbaum identified seven different versions of the story, and since its initial publication, two more versions have emerged, including a novel and a stage play. 

When Welles missed an editing deadline, producer Louis Dolivet took the film out of his hands and released several edits of the film, none of which were approved by Welles. 

Adding to the confusion is a novel of the same title that was credited to Orson Welles, though Welles claimed that he was unaware of the book's existence until he saw a copy in a bookshop.

Hangover Square (1945)

Hangover Square (1945) is a classic historically-set amnesia film noir about madness, genius, weakness and manipulation, starring Laird Cregar, Linda Darnell and George Sanders.

Add to this some further elements of police psychology, the perils of artistic genius and a clash of class, and there emerges one of the best thrillers of the decade, albeit bizarre with facial pulls from Cregar, super-dramatic music from Bernard Herrmann, one of the cinema's greatest ever composers.

That and a whole host of Cockney side-fun, which serves to pull focus on the murderous madness which is at the centre of the action.

Street of Chance (1942)

Street of Chance (1942) is an early noir cycle amnesia noir that with Burgess Meredith and Claire Trevor which beautifully captures so many of the elements that would go on to make the full fat noir formula.

Burgess Meredith takes a little accident downtown and the fantasy world of Street of Chance has begun. You find a few full on readies in the early 1940s, where pretence to realism is only in the way, and every idea can be playful run.

Here is the hapless man who becomes film noir's solid centre stage staple. Here is a descent into an opposing world that this heel has experienced. He carries with him too a seeker female hero in Claire Trevor and it's going to be a helluva ride. There is domestic routine, without which any early noir would lose its bindings and be entirely wild.

Beware, My Lovely (1952)

Beware, My Lovely (1952) is a home invasion amnesia Christmas-themed paranoid delusional maniac film noir starring Ida Lupino and Robert Ryan, two of noir's greatest acting talents.

Robert Ryan plays a strange kinda killer in this low-key film noir which takes something of a path of its own off of the main noir highway, and which yet complies with many of film noir's best tropes.

Most clearly of all, Beware, My Lovely (1952) is suburban noir and is the kind of noir that was becoming increasingly popular in the early 1950s — the type of noir which dealt the goods not on the streets and criminal dives of the 1940s, but directly within the super-vulnerable domestic bliss of the 1950s.

Moontide (1942)

Moontide (1942) with Ida Lupino, Thomas Mitchell, Jean Gabin and Claude Reins is a wacky tale of dockside folks getting up to all sorts of bumps, drunken maudlin dive haunting, flagon tanking, and trying to kill oneself in the waves.

Romantic drama noir takes a love story and mystifies it with crime elements one way or another, and here bathing in the moontide, a sense of sentimental shack dwelling darkness, adds some criminality while we witness the love of two misfits

This dockside light noir was directed by Archie Mayo and written by John O'Hara and an uncredited Nunnally Johnson, based on the novel Moon Tide by Willard Robertson.

Key to the production is the solid comic manliness of Jean Gabin, trans-Atlantically transported to an indeterminate American location where he gets up to all sorts of larks, most of which is not entirely noir but all of which are band-wagonning him quite well into the American heart. Daft docks drama noir at its best — and this is even before we have seen the antic disposition of Ida Lupino — something she was quite good at.