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There’s a long tradition of films about ambitious nobodies clawing their way to fame and power, only to reveal themselves as fakes. Citizen Kane and All About Eve are often held up as the gold standard — stylish, intelligent dissections of ambition, ego, and betrayal. Hey No Kings LOL!
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An interesting look at gay themes from the 1950s, The Strange One is a film that reflects the era's attitudes towards homosexuality. At the time of its release, homosexuality was still criminalized in most states and considered a mental illness until much later.
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Scandal Sheet (1952) does remain an engaging noir film directed by Phil Karlson, featuring Broderick Crawford as managing editor of a sensationalist newspaper, John Derek as an ambitious reporter, and Donna Reed as a principled journalist. Based on Samuel Fuller's novel The Dark Page, the film opens with the murderer's identity revealed—editor Mark Chapman (Crawford) kills his ex-wife, setting off a tense storyline as he encourages his staff to solve the very crime he committed.
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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.
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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.
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It's based on a play by Leonard Kantor, and so is largely contained within a single set, a luxury hotel suite, and within the mix of styles are touches of screwball romantic comedy, courtesy of Ginger Rogers, and material far darker and more in line with the hand of noir.
It takes place over a weekend before the start of a mob trial and with crucial witnesses murdered, prosecutor Lloyd Hallett (Edward G. Robinson) has only one long shot left in order to prosecute public enemy and nemesis mob boss Benjamin Costain (Lorne Greene)
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Complex in approach and yet diverting in its charm and snazz, Johnny O'Clock is a waltz through the film noir style, able to copy with mystery, murder, deception and some vile violence, before it wraps up and paces stylishly through its conclusion.
New York gambling house operator Johnny O'Clock played by Dick Powell, is junior partner in a smart casino with Guido Marchettis (Thomas Gomez) and Chuck Blayden (Jim Bannon), the latter being a crooked cop.
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The picture which packs a certain punch for its ultimate lack of 1940s style chiaroscuro, hoods, slayings, femmes fatales — and other recognisable forms of film noir — is one of the more subversive of the later film noir era and bravely enough is thought to be the first overtly anti-McCarthyism film to be produced in Hollywood.
It is said that in the year of 1950, the United States' share of the entire world Gross Domestic Product was in the region of 50% — and this from a nation that contained only 4% of the world's population.
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Barry Sullivan plays Joe Morgan, an unkempt drifter type who arrives in Los Angeles and winds up working at an ice theatre, the star of which is Roberta Elva, played by former Olympic skater Belita. The heavy crime and mystery melodrama which ensues is solid film noir, insofar as it is redolent of nothing less than a nightmare.
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The film marked Susan Peters' return to the screen after a three-year absence following a gun accident that paralysed her. It was her final film.
There is a solid fear factor Cornish foam alert for SPOILERS because the logic of film noir The Sign of the Ram is cast horrific and solid in the portrayal of Susan Peters in something that at the time and for some time after was unique among wheelchair roles in Hollywood.
The creepy house of secrets was a firm feature too of family noir, most especially if that house is in England, and of course it has to be on a cliff. Within the house is tragedy and secrecy, something that film noir was custom built to suggest. Within shadows, mystery, and within mystery, suspense.
