The Reckless Moment (1949)

The Reckless Moment (1949) is a murder and blackmail domestic noirodrama Christmas film noir woman's picture suspense love melodrama and tragedy film noir classic of suburban panic and paranoia with Joan Bennett and James Mason, and a classic film noir as well, supported by Geraldine Brooks, directed by Max Ophüls and suggestive of the Suburban Disturbin 1950s to come, with the additional actor talents of Henry O'Neill, Shepperd Strudwick, David Bair and Roy Roberts as Nagel, and of course, Frances E. Williams.

The Upturned Glass (1947)

The Upturned Glass (1947) is a British flashback and voiceover brain surgeon and love affair murder madness and suicide sanity-searching wicked lady and high quality limey 1940s criminologist revenge introspective and calculated insanity intriguer with star of the show James Mason, and Rosamund John, Pamela Kellino and Ann Stephens.

Bigger Than Life (1956)

Bigger Than Life (1956) is a Cinemascope James Mason Nicholas Ray film noir masterpiece of drug addiction, marital survival school teaching depression mania, cortisone abuse, parenting folly and the suburban collapse of the male mind, pharmacy lurking and the horrors of drug abuse, drug cautionary and high dosage psychosis, pharmamerican tragedy, the American Dream | Nightmare scenario middle class suburban disturbin melodrama, starring James Mason, Barbara Rush and Walter Matthau.

I Want To Live! (1958)

I Want To Live! (1958) is a defiant female lead victimisation of women habitual female criminal courtroom and prison death row journalism and media crime and exploitation based on a true story biographical Robert Wise Oscar winning anti-capital punishment tragedy masterpiece considered by many to be a classic film noir starring Susan Hayward in a once in a lifetime Oscar winning showdown with your senses, with Simon Oakland, Virginia Vincent, and Theodore Bikel.

The Man in the Net (1959)

The Man in the Net (1959) is a disappearing suburban wife lousy husband and beautiful young alcoholic missus versus artist versus conformity versus suburbia versus a nasty cop and an angry mob and crazy Connecticut manhunt for a framed and accused husband with assistance form children mystery thriller late late classic era film noir which makes a virtue of an avuncular, painterly but less engaged every year Alan Ladd, starring Carolyn Jones and Charles McGraw in a noir which has so many classic psychological tones that one would argue that had this script been filmed in 1949 or 1939, the resultant noir would have been prototypically excellent, as opposed what it is, a fully toned late period weirdismal reflection of of realism.

Violent Playground (1958)

The Basil Dearden season continues, presenting many noir-adjacent films that are more the by product of the medium than its core element, dealing with teenage, social and criminal problems and the police effort to present social reason for the increasing use of machine guns by school students.

Violent Playground (1958) is a Basil Dearden teenage tearaway race relations British battle of wills between a Liverpool Juvenile Liaison officer and a young and dangerous pyromaniac rock n roll social problem picture movie response to the alarmist, hugely successful teen melodrama The Blackboard Jungle (US, 1955) James Kennaway scripted inspired by an actual experiment that was carried out in Liverpool in 1949 late period Limey noir crime and civic anxiety fusion and social confusion picture starring Stanley Baker, Anne Heywood, David McCallum, Peter Cushing, John Slater and Clifford Evans.

Cape Fear (1962)

Cape Fear (1962) is a classic film noir revenge and violence against women southern suburban disturbin psychopathic ex con on the loose police, lawyer and detective censorship-barrier-breaking intimidation-genre child exploitation and &ape-heavy terrifying thriller violence against women and girls movie with one of Robert Mitchum's most heavyweight performances of all time, and one of Bernard Hermann's most heavyweight scores of all times — and directed as it is by J. Lee Thompson, Cape Fear is in deed and in the opinion of many noireaux — and this is a biggie — the very last and final ultimate late in the day, last blast of heroic pure and timeless formula-based all in actual full on 100% qualified film noir — the terminal articulation of the studio-era noir idiom — the concluding flourish of Hollywood’s original noir cycle — the last film noir.

A Blueprint for Murder (1953)

The Joseph Cotten season is a gentle joy, and it drifts on with another film touched by his grace.

A Blueprint for Murder (1953) is an amateur sleuth suburbin disturbin courtroom and hospital with occasional voiceover ocean-going whodunnit poisoning family plot styled did she or didn't she suspenser film noir directed by Andrew L. Stone and starring the sterling super noir suspenser superstar Jospeh Cotten, with Jean Peters, Gary Merrill and Catherine McLeod.

Jeopardy (1953)

Jeopardy (1953) is a super fast road John Sturges adventure psycho on wheels thriller woman chasing mad murderer chaser through Mexico car smash and trapped old man family adventure film noir from the earnest era of the early fifties and starring noir empress and all round actor supremo of the style Barbara Stanwyck, as well as a got getter outdoor Barry Sullivan, with none other than Ralph Meeker, a noir lover's actor as the murderous escapee of swagger and menace.

Jeopardy (1953) is a lean, 69-minute exercise in cinematic claustrophobia and moral ambiguity.

Suddenly (1954)

Suddenly (1954) is a presidential assassination Lewis Allen home invasion children in film noir classic film noir Frank Sinatra and Sterling Hayden small town crime suspense thriller, which is not only a good time, but a beautiful item of film nostalgia, noir history, cinematic escapism, and an all round document of mid fifties optimism, conservatism, paranoia, and social confidence.

Yeah this is a town in which the lil boys want to be police officers when they grow up. The truth was break America fairly soon, but for the time this suburban aspic is a gelatinous capturing of some of the best known American dream-style tropes, characters and idiomes en scene.

Miami Exposé (1956)

Miami Exposé (1956) is a crummy cop Miami based swamp wrangling political conniving over legalised gambling in Florida bribery and murder and faked death airboat and Cadillac bright white light cruiser film noir with first rate desk to camera footage and decent moments of driving and aerial scenery around the fastest growing city in America, decade after decade, the city that was never a town and the tropical miracle that is Miami.

Fred F. Sears, a director tethered to Columbia Pictures and the watchful eye of producer Sam Katzman, carved out a career from the frayed cloth of low-budget filmmaking. His oeuvre, stitched together from an array of genres including science fiction, juvenile delinquency, and war-time tales, finds a peculiar resonance within the crime genre. 

The Two Mrs Carrolls (1947)

The Two Mrs Carrolls (1947) is a lousy husband paranoid woman blackmail murder and poison mystery manor house art and intrigue infidelity and obsession Mark Hellinger portraits of women in noir film noir starring Barbara Stanwyck, Humphrey Bogart, Alexis Smith and Nigel Bruce.

You might imagine that this melange of mild madness and misty focused love and lust has often been misapprehended as an ungainly hybrid of overwrought melodrama and tepid suspense. Such assessments have become axiomatic, yet they do not withstand close inspection. 

Though the film remains aesthetically uneven, it exerts a strange and unrelenting fascination, anchored by peculiar tonal shifts and grotesque exaggerations that reveal, rather than obscure, its psychological acuity.

The Gunfighter (1950)

The Gunfighter (1950) is a lone gun-fighter facing early celebrity in the nascent wild west western revenge chase and showdown saloon and range estranged child and wife thriller starring Gregory Peck, Karl Malden, Helen Westcott and directed by Henry King. 

In the noirlands of the wild west and in the imaginations of the film makers and narrative makers of the high era of American creativity, a film such as The Gunfighter (1950) carries many a surprise.

The Steel Helmet (1951)

The Steel Helmet (1951) is a written, produced and made during the Korean war, Korean War military man versus man behind enemy lines race relations and American imperialism critiquing buddy movie war noir made by Samuel Fuller, who created it in Californian parks on the cheap while infuriating military authorities and Uncle Sam by using military footage gained from them in order to express that war is a scam and a tragedy and that not all death was glorious, while racism and Imperialism were both real.

Good old friend of Jean Luc Godard Samuel Fuller made this film in ten days with twenty-five extras who were UCLA students and he used a plywood tank, he shot in a studio using mist, and he shot exteriors in Griffith Park, a large municipal park at the eastern end of the Santa Monica Mountains, in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, California.

Germany, Year Zero (1948)

Germany, Year Zero (1948) is a Robert Rossellini episodic tragic Italian neo-realist Trümmerfilm in German, French and Italian, and could and shall be qualified as a film noir, not in the least for the fact that Trümmerfilm are in every capacity actual or virtual noir, by virtue of their subject fields, which comprise the tragedies of the mid to late 1940s with comment on the Second World War and its effects.

Third of what is trailed as a trilogy of stories of World War 2 Germany, Year Zero is Rossellini’s Meditation on Post-War Devastation and Neorealist Experimentation and is as a necessary counterpart to 1940s film makers attempts to present the unreal in as realistic a tone as possible, making the timing of the neo-realist movement excruciating in its combinations of tone.

Cry Vengeance (1954)

Cry Vengeance (1954) is an ex-con framed and disfigured ex-cop on a mission violent rural slick vengeance and violence against women film noir with hardboiled cops and a blond psycho hitman on the loose in backwater Alaska.

The orchestras of the 1950s are bigger, bolder, brassier and this mid 50s noir indicates well the period when the hardboiled become so hard that the pan had dried and the metal of its surface had fused into a mighty grimace, here worked by the unsmiling Mark Stevens.

The Thirteenth Hour (1947)

The Thirteenth Hour (1947) is a haulage and hallucination diamond smuggling duplicity and mystery film noir story from the The Whistler series of the films, eight of which appeared in the 1940s.

Haulage heel Steve Reynolds, played by Richard Dix, is a trucker guy who falls foul of a scheme that he uncovers from what seems like a series of accidents, and may in fact just be that, a series of accidents. 

Indeed and for whatever reason, there are questions unanswered at the conclusion of this tale, possibly the greatest of these being why is this film called The Thirteenth Hour, and what is the thirteenth hour and what in fact is it the thirteenth hour of?

Man Hunt (1941)

Man Hunt (1941) is a hunted man World War II anti-Nazi political romance drama thriller made by the master of plastering the paranoia far and wide and dep into and out of the cinematic shadows, yes it is Fritz Lang, the plasterer of these shadows, the far and beyond the pale of the scale past maestro of so many of the defining motions of film noir.

Man Hunt is one of Fritz Lang's most compelling films, showcasing his mastery in creating action-packed, humorous, and emotionally gripping thrillers. With the collaboration of superior scenarist Dudley Nichols, Lang crafted a literate and imaginatively photographed film that, despite occasional implausibility, captivates the audience from the start.

The Unseen (1945)

The Unseen (1945) is an old dark house children and governess paranoid woman lousy husband old homeless woman murder mystery mansion house genuine thrillodrama film noir, from mid the paranoia period of women in crazy marriages era of the Golden Age of the Silver Screen

Watching The Unseen (1945) you will be upset into a derisory frame of mind when you hear how often the prettiness of Gail Russell's character is referred to. 

I am sure this might have contributed to her drinking herself to death, being called pretty in so many scenes.

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.