From Here to Eternity (1953)

From Here to Eternity (1953) is a wartime romance and martial bullying melodrama ensemble cast boxing or perhaps anti-boxing Oscar winning lousy husband controversial extra-marital foamy beach body embracing classic tale of some soldiers and their lovers stationed in Hawaii in the months leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor directed by Fred Zinnemann and starring  Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, and Frank Sinatra, Deborah Kerr and Donna Reed, Ernest Borgnine, Philip Ober, Jack Warden, Mickey Shaughnessy, Claude Akins, and George Reeves, and nope it's no noir, nor noir styled film nor film noir, with little of the noir style, but it's here because we can't talk about 1953 without giving it a shout, and it has many of our beloved noir heroes in it, within the cast ye ken, plus we got to have a film classics sidebar and this is where that belongs, film classics sidebar.

The Killers (1946)

The Killers (1946) is a classic film noir potboiler western-style revenge movie re-styled in the gangster mold post war study in masculinity flashback within flashback but no voiceover prison boxing crazed love and fatal existential doom laden hitman themed compote de criminalitie and lustful love forlorn longing and rejection, directed by Robert Siodmak, and starring  Ava Gardner, Edmond O'Brien and Sam Levene, with extra noir plus ultra provided by William Conrad, Charles McGraw, Albert Dekker and Jack Lambert.

Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

Sweet Smell of Success is a 1957 film noir drama starring Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster as two men working in the sleazier side of the media in New York, a gossip columnist and a press agent.

The film tells the story of powerful and newspaper columnist J.J. Hunsecker, portrayed by Burt Lancaster and based on Walter Winchell, the syndicated American newspaper gossip columnist and radio news commentator.

Playing JJ Hunsecker with a huge amount of control and menace, Burt Lancaster creates a character who uses his connections to ruin his sister's relationship with a man he deems unworthy of her.

The character of JJ, an unrepentant manipulator in a world of unrepentant manipulators, is based on the real life figure of Walter Winchell, who was well known for this kind of activity.

Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)

Good times with the paranoia on full-beam. That's film noir and this is Sorry, Wrong Number (1948), one of the most eminently exemplary portrayals of the 1940s housewife.

The film noir style presented this to perfection and in its highest form in the 1940s.

Paranoia is central to the film noir style. The urban jungle is fraught with dangers, and some are human, and some are technological. 

Some are criminal and others are political, and any old way you look at it, when you're in film noir, you're in the land of doubt, deceit and usually murder to boot.

There'd be no film noir without paranoia, and one of the stand-out examples of this is the 1948 film noir Sorry, Wrong Number, with Barbara Stanwyck, Burt Lancaster ... and tucked away there, along with Ed Begley, is Wendell Corey.

Of all the significant innovations the film noir style introduced to the popular imagination, paranoia may be among the best. First there’s the political paranoia, whether it is down to Nazis or Communists, or later in the cycle, your own government.

Kiss the Blood off My Hands (1948)

Two years in a Nazi prison camp and Bill Saunders  ― played by Burt Lancaster ― doesn’t like to be caged up one little bit. 

First it drives him to drink ―  anything  to try and forget. 

Then there's his uncontrolled violence down the pub. 

Finally, a trip to the zoo, can be entirely triggering for him.

Bill Saunders should never have come to London. It's certainly not the world's film noir capital either.

But here he is with Joan Fontaine, in a fascinating, compelling, melodramatic and slightly strange concoction called Kiss the Blood off My Hands. 

The story of the post-war male is a film noir staple. The rescuing female belongs to a much older tradition ― but even knowing that he’s a killer, doesn’t stop Joan Fontaine from a heart breaking attempt at rescue.

Kiss The Blood Off My Hands (1948) is one of those great film noirs in which the entirely story is told in the title. The hero is a murderer ― he has blood on his hands. The female lead is going to rescue him ― with love ― as symbolised in a kiss.

The aim thereafter is redemption. Can she wash away his sins with her love? And is World War 2 excuse enough for a man when it comes to drunken violence?

Find out the answers in Kiss The Blood Off My Hands.

I Walk Alone (1947)

I Walk Alone (1949) is a bold, fun and fast-moving flick with a truly film noir title.

It's a strong exemplar of the film noir style, even if it isn't held up as the one of the greats.

Frankie gets out of prison and after being triggered by the sight if some shadows at the station which remind him of prison bars, he heads down to Broadway ― it looks the same he says. 

But his pal isn’t so sure. The first early signs of the fast-bending steel of the film noir male, here beautifully and memorably played by Burt Lancaster, is one minute in, when he says angrily, and almost to himself  . . . that it better be the same.

It is not of course, the same. The war, and prison, similarly dealt with and both brutal and emotional in their transformative violence . . . these have changed everything. 

The war and prison have more in common that Burt Lancaster's sympathetic and tragic expression. And if one can be in one for the purposes of entertainment, one can certainly be in the other.

Brute Force (1947)

There are four to five hundred stories in the film noir city ― and around two dozen of them are sure-fire, indisputable, authentic classics. 

Brute Force is one of these.

Directed by Jules Dassin, it’s a story from stir ― strong men beat it out of each other as they go crazy behind prison walls. The manliness is multitudinous and the cruelty drives them to the end of their tethers.

Interests collide in a story that is both one man against the system, but also an indictment of the system itself. The cons are grim and the guard is grimmer. The result is a simmering and boiling mass of machismo, acted to within an inch of its life by a cast of glowering guys, who will do anything to survive amid the harsh conditions imposed on them.

Even outside of the canon, this is one of the greatest action, social and thrilling films of its day, with so much to commend the casual viewer, the film noir fanatic, and those generally interested in film. 

Rope of Sand (1944)

Rope of Sand is an action-adventure movie with film noir elements, featuring Burt Lancaster, who certainly was one of the film-noir kings of the 1940s.

Although it sometimes appears on lists of film noir titles, Rope of Sand isn’t urban, it isn’t psychological, it doesn’t feature much of those well-known shadowy cinematic elements, and its femme fatale turns on her heels fairly quickly, changing from a manipulative and greedy cheat, into a loving and caring amour, on the basis of a coup-de-foudre attack of love.

Corinne Calvet, who plays the femme fatale turned girl-next-door, Suzanne had an interesting, but rather unsatisfactory career. She made over thirty films, but the vast majority of people will have heard of none of them. 

And most actors who have worked for forty years in Hollywood will have been in at least one major production.

Corrine Calvet’s entrance in Rope of Sand is stunning, however. She vamps in and immediately attempts to abuse Claude Rains in the worst way possible ― tousling herself up after blagging her way into his hotel room, she announces that if he doesn’t give her money, she’ll say he raped her. 

When this doesn’t work, she reveals her true colours as a prostitute and then actually offers herself for money.

Criss Cross (1949)

Hitting the grounds of Bunker Hill running, Criss Cross (1949) opens with great excitement in the midst of several dramas.

There’s a fight at a night club ― or is it a fight? There’s a panicky couple of lovers ― Burt Lancaster and the incredible and much loved Yvonne De Carlo ― and there is a sizeable team of men, who have clearly come together with larceny in mind.

One long flashback and many moments of indecision from Lancaster’s character ‘Steve Thompson’ later, and the movie concludes with its high-octane combination of heist-gone-wrong meets triple-cross.

In Criss Cross, Robert Siodmak made a restless film noir, giving the story an exciting structure that raises the drama higher than it might otherwise be. The art here is in complicating something that might under other circumstances be quite straightforward.

One way this is achieved is through some regular film noir favourite tropes, moves and signals.

The first of these is the idea of returning. This isn’t just a favourite theme in film noir, and it is the start of many a good story. But film noir does use this to a great extent. Thus the flashback commences with Burt Lancaster’s character returning to Bunker Hill ― full of melancholy ― full of wisdom ― full of questions ― replete with memories ― weighed down with experience ― and looking for a lost love.

All My Sons (1948)

Dark secrets surfacing from the past ― a housebound woman obsessed with the belief that her dead son will return at any moment ― and the moral failings of suburban life barely concealed.

All My Sons (1948) is in its modest way a film noir showcase. 

Despite not being the most obvious contender for a hot-spot in the film noir canon, and despite its featuring Burt Lancaster and Edward G. Robinson, All My Sons does effectively what film noir should do. It explores fragility, secrets and demolishes the suburban American family dream.

The beauty of All My Sons lies in the source material. The play, as with the movie, builds carefully to a powerful climax that no amount of bad acting can damage ― the closing lines are always going to be powerful, if you’ve made the journey towards them.

Desert Fury (1947)

Racy, gaudy and melodramatic, Desert Fury (1947) commences as a somewhat typical if confused film noir.

In full and blazing colour, ripping back and fore across the wilds of the fictional Chuckawalla, and ultimately settles on the fraught mother and daughter relationship between two Golden Age favourites ― Lizbeth Scott and Mary Astor.

The cast is strong ― John Hodiak and Wendell Corey play two barely sublimated homosexual gangsters, while Burt Lancaster has little to do as the local police deputy. 

The crux of the capering belongs to the aforementioned Lizbeth Scott and Mary Astor, two women in search of more than just each others' love.