Body and Soul (1947)

Body and Soul (1947) is a Robert Rossen directed classic film noir Citizen Kane of all boxing movies flashback and occasionally De Niro sounding voiceover violence and corruption portraits in noir family and friendship melodrama of doom and lucre classic boxing and anti-boxing civil rights James Wong Howe shot boxing clever solid punch clawing your way to the top boxing film noir starring John Garfield, Lilli Palmer, Hazel Brooks, Anne Revere, William Conrad, Joseph Pevney, Lloyd Gough, Canada Lee and Art Smith.

Framed (1947)

Framed (1947) is a sap drifter frame-up femme-fatale murder film noir which features many a trope from the classic canon, and provides evil atmosphere aplenty for noir-seekers seeking the less than canonical but still functional examples of the classical canon.

Within this atmospheric noir landscape Glenn Ford assumes the role of the intrepid trucker miner and engineer heel and sap for the rap drifter Mike Lambert, a man thrust into an alcoholic ordeal when he unwittingly becomes embroiled in a web of deceit and danger. 

Behind the wheel of a truck sans brakes, his journey careens into the shadowy confines of La Paloma, a nondescript bar and restaurant where fatal sleaze and hot love intertwines his path with that of the enigmatic waitress, Paula Craig, portrayed with mesmerising female fatalistic allure by Janis Carter.

The Killer That Stalked New York (1950)

The Killer That Stalked New York (1950) is a race-against-time paranoia thriller film noir made in the semi-documentary style in which doctors politicians and police struggle to find small-pox infected female smuggler.

Also known as Frightened City, The Killer That Stalked New York (1950) stands as a cinematic testament hailing from the noir-tinged annals of 1950, a creation helmed by the cinematic maestro Earl McEvoy and featuring the luminous talents of Evelyn Keyes, Charles Korvin, and William Bishop. 

This celluloid venture, captured on location and steeped in a semi-documentary aesthetic, unfurls a gripping narrative centred around diamond smugglers who, unbeknownst to them, become inadvertent instigators of a smallpox outbreak amidst the gritty expanse of 1947 New York City. 

Youth Runs Wild (1944)

Youth Runs Wild (1944) is an inattentive parents and juvenile delinquency returning veteran social drama which takes an early look at the idea of juvenile delinquency, several years before the teen-boom began across America and emerged within the Hollywood movies of the post-war years.

The returning veteran aspect is unusual and not entirely noir in its outlook, as Kent Smith plays Danny Coates who returns wounded to his old working class neighbourhood and takes up a mission to keep the toddlers safe. 

As a kind of side-mission to this, he is obliged by the local oldie judge to take care of some teenage tearaways, but he doesn't seem to succeed at this, and the teenagers tear right off and into Juvenile Hall.

Manhandled (1949)

Manhandled (1949) is a lousy husband psychiatric jewel thievery crooked private eye wife-murder film noir crime drama directed by Lewis R. Foster and starring Dorothy Lamour, Sterling Hayden and Dan Duryea. It is based on the 1945 novel The Man Who Stole a Dream by L. S. Goldsmith.

Dan Duryea plays a crooked private eye, which is the first twist in this serpentine and sinuous noir drama, which is a lot of fun as any classy high period film noir should be. The convoluted plot is at the best of times a feature of film noir, and not to be sneered at in such a circuitous story as Manhandled tells.

The Sound of Fury (1950)

The Sound of Fury (1950) is a hard hittin' tale of narcissism, sensational journalism, criminality and mob violence from the very heart of film noir and a classic of its kind.

It's a film that fires on all cylinders and one of the few from the era that still has the power to shock — the full on shocks coming in the final scenes, when a mob gathers to hit a jailhouse. 

In the long build up to this however, there is a full film noir panoply of crime, saps, weak males, money-minded females, a brutal murder that is just as gratuitous and frightening as the justice it inspires, and classic spiral-into-alcoholism that is every bit the quintessential sign of public failure — wrapped up in a hard hittin' tale of crime, punishment and yellow journalism.

The dramatic set up for The Sound of Fury (also known as Try and Get Me!) is a classic of its kind. Frank Lovejoy is the honest family man who is out of work and getting dissed like a jerk wherever he goes. Back home he's got an honest family life in the form of a wife and kid to support  — but there is still a sense there that he is going to crack.

Caught (1949)

Caught (1949) is a film noir melodrama from Max Ophüls starring Barbara Bel Geddes, Robert Ryan and James Mason, laying bare the perils of middle class marriage and the bullying and controlling which waits any eager young bride, keen to live the fantasy life which the magazines of the time were selling.

Caught is a film which appears more vicious the closer we look at it. 

To kick off, we have some young women who are planning to live their lives through catalogues, an excellent introduction to the mating game as America enters the 1950s.

It is stressed over and over again, in fact. Young model Maude, who changes her name to a more charming 'Leonora', played by Barbara Bel Geddes is seen with her friend and flatmate Dorothy (played by Natalie Shafer) constructing the fantasy life she shall lead via the pages of the many magazines and lifestyle publications that occupy their evenings in their rather downbeat and crummy digs.