Peking Express (1951)

Cotten remains our guide, the Joseph Cotten season drifting forward with an air of gentle fulfilment.

Peking Express (1951) is a William Dieterle anti-communist yellowface post-war returning veteran trains in noir remake thriller action adventure starring Jospeh Cotten, Corrine Calvet, Edmund Gwenn, Benson Fong, Marvin Miller and Soo Yong.

What follows is a deliberately confrontational act of reinterpretation, an academic recomposition that refuses both ideological timidity and critical fashion. I write not to soothe but to correct, and as I have already declared elsewhere, « la neutralité est la posture préférée de ceux qui n’ont rien à perdre », a statement I repeat here not as ornament but as methodological principle.

Pool of London (1951)

The notion of a Basil Dearden season remains an unexpected and quietly subversive curatorial gesture.

Pool of London (1951) is a post war race relations smuggling offbeat classic British film noir customs officers and river police dockyard and barroom melodramatic crime story in a realistic setting procedural race against time thriller of the river underworld, so declared, and which is of note for portraying the first interracial relationship in a British film.

The Captive City (1952)

The Captive City (1952) is a small town suburban journalism and media gambling and local corruption organised crime exposé with flashback and voiceover film noir, with epic desk to camera and such a strong Kefauver theme that Estes Kefauver himself appears in the film.

Super strong in its categories, this noir is nearly a classic film noir, and maybe even is such, certainly it is a class film noir, if not a classique. Close up paranoid photography and murder, newspaper men against the odds, small town atmosphere to perfection and an intriguing thug hood and mookery-style delivery under professional organised crookery.

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 Case Against Brooklyn (1958)

The Case Against Brooklyn (1958) is a crooked cop police procedural crime-syndicate corrupting city officials style of late film noir cycle rookie-cop-taking-on-the-system style of bribery thriller drama from Paul Wendkos, who went on to direct many a cop and comedy TV and movie thriller up until the 1990s, and indeed many other kind of 80s and 90s era TV movie fare.

The 1958 noir film The Case Against Brooklyn offers a semi-gripping portrayal of systemic corruption within the police force and the criminal underworld. Directed by Paul Wendkos and based on a real-life article by investigative journalist Ed Reid, the film is a film noir sensational guarantee that Hollywood will pretend to offer a reminder of the ethical dilemmas and personal sacrifices involved in exposing organized crime.

New Orleans Uncensored (1955)

New Orleans Uncensored (1955) is a dockside labor-relations boxing mob corruption romance drifter narrative film noir set in America's second largest port, after New York, as the film makers and their voiceovers remind us de temps en temps.

New Orleans Uncensored is a dismal and entertaining noir waterfront drama set in the French Quarter and docks of New Orleans. This low-budget film punches above its balance sheet, as all such films must do, offering viewers an engrossing experience from the opening sequence. 

The plot revolves around freight theft on the docks, with several suspects in play. However, rather than keeping the audience guessing about the perpetrators, the film takes a unique approach by revealing the culprits early on and focusing on the systematic destruction of a criminal network.

The Sleeping City (1950)

The Sleeping City (1950) is an undercover cop murder metropolitan hospital criminal nurse film noir starring Richard Conte and Coleen Gray, and directed by George Sherman.

Less well known than many inferior film noirs, The Sleeping City does offer a disturbing vision of one of the world's most famous hospitals — Bellevue in New York — in which black market drugs are smuggled out of the hospital in a sting and scam gambling operation.

Richard Conte is the cop who goes undercover, after some suitable screening, and his investigations bring him into contact with a rugged elderly elevator operator, a tormented roommate, and a mysteriously criminal nurse. an authority figure — here the actor Richard Conte — offers some message of public authority and often warning.

The Miami Story (1954)

The Miami Story (1954) is a Kefauver hearings inspired city-titled Florida noir tale of mobsters, massive hidden television cameras, an informant and murder suspect who come out of hiding to boss the police about, and roving cameras which film the streets of Miami as automobiles carry mooks, thugs and suspects from location to location.

The Miami Story (1954) is a delight of cheap and effective film noir from the most unconvincing period of the style, when black and white denoted cost-savings and often meant that the stock and trade shadows of noir were consigned to the cutting room floor, in order to create a brighter and whiter screen of action, better suited to the television.

The Las Vegas Story (1952)

The Las Vegas Story (1952) is a lousy husband cop-on-the-strip romance thriller set amidst the Hoagy Carmichael Vegas nights of yore, when the air was clear and hot and Hoagy Carmichael played the merry songs on his drinking and playing room keys.

Starring Victor Mature as a sour-faced doubtful package of twitching male unease and noir never-come-lately star of many other styles, the top-billing Jane Russell.

Now there's a rule on the here-hold her old noir blog of yore, about what it takes to get your name a category tag. And so it is generally the case that to be in this blog you must have been involved in at least three film noir titles, and of course, so long as the era is betwits and between the years of 1940 and 1960, the definition of film noir even hereabouts is not that fixed and fairly malleable at times.

Hollywood Story (1951)

Hollywood Story (1951) is a motion picture industry noir killer thriller historic Hollywood mystery drama starring Richard Conte and Julie Adams, Richard Egan, Henry Hull, Fred Clark and Jim Backus, a high host of noir talent.

The murder in Hollywood trope usually takes a film noir twist and usually with a bit of fun. If it ain't In a Lonely Place it will be elsewhere.

Directed by William Castle, Hollywood Story (1951) takes us on a captivating journey through the glitz and shadows of old Hollywood. In a kind of film noir style, with curiosity and nostalgic tableau. Starring Richard Conte and Julie Adams, this American mystery film weaves a tale of ambition, murder, and intrigue.

The Houston Story (1956)

The Houston Story (1956) is a corporate managerial Texas-based oil-boosting racket noir from the high era of corporate and racket noir.

It's a tough tale of industrial scale mob dodging oil thievery from the slick black beating heart of the Texas oil industry.

Seedy and pulpy and violent and silly, with a streak of cabbie noir and a lot of dirty oil scenery as well as some sordid poolside lechery, The Houston Story is a rewarding noir of parts.

Chicago Confidential (1957)

Chicago Confidential (1957) is a crime syndicate hard-boiled DA film noir thriller directed by Sidney Salkow, starring Brian Keith, Beverly Garland and Dick Foran. 

It is based on the 1950 book Chicago: Confidential! by Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer.

Chicago Confidential was the first film produced for Edward Small by Robert E. Kent, who had been a writer and story supervisor at Columbia. Small and Kent went on to make many movies together.

The movie is known for its crime-drama narrative and is set against the backdrop of organized crime in Chicago.

The story revolves around a crusading attorney named Jim Fremont, played by Brian Keith. Fremont is determined to take down the organized crime syndicate that controls various aspects of Chicago's business and political landscape. The narrative unfolds as Fremont gathers evidence to expose the corruption within the city.

Edge of the City (1957)

Edge of the City (1957) is a drifter stevedore race relations buddy film noir starring Sidney Poitier and John Cassavetes as two dockside workers involved in one of the worst workplace bullying stories in all of film noir.

Down at the docks where the men are we witness the petty trials of labour teams and the spilling over of race relations into murder. John Cassavetes is an insecure war deserter, a peripheral social figure and not one we see often enough in noir — where historically the hero has seen action.

This is different however, and the tough and realistic noir drama that takes place is as great a testament to left wing politics as it is to humanity and the value of integrity in all things.

Also in the cast are Kathleen Maguire, Ruby Dee, Robert F Simon, Ruth White, Val Avery, William A Lee, John Kellogg and David Clarke.

City That Never Sleeps (1953)

City That Never Sleeps (1953) is a criminal-spirit-of-the-city film noir drama directed by John H. Auer and starring Gig Young, Mala Powers, William Talman, Edward Arnold, Chill Wills, Marie Windsor, and Paula Raymond, with cinematography by John L. Russell.

In an film noir canon now advanced by several hundred film noir presentations, the 1953 movie City That Never Sleeps is self-conscious enough to be looking at noir from the inside. Certain noir conventions appear to be so perfectly understood by the time that City That Never Sleeps came to be produced in 1953, that they are not even explained.

For example the head and corporate villain of the piece, the rather articulately named Penrod Biddel (Edward Arnold) is most likely the head of a crime organisation which we never see, and is certainly a business man — although we do not see very much of his business as such — and is certainly a criminal — although likewise we see very little of his criminal activity.

City For Conquest (1940)

City for Conquest (1940) is an epic Warner Bros. stories-of-the-city style prestige picture with a few filings of film noir placed within its frames, which tend to sprawling grandeur rather than intimate psychological portrayal.

Manhattan melodrama is the pure-bred genre this humanistic tale of immigrant struggles in New York City, does not fare high in noir, but is still a part of the story of the style, above all in the efforts of Warner Bros. to depict James Cagney as something more than a criminal, a boxer on the rise and fall, a story paralleled by the story of his young love Peg Nash, played by Ann Sheridan.

The Phenix City Story (1955)

The Phenix City Story (1955) is a violent semi-documentary true-life film classic film noir story set in the super-corrupt Alabama town of Phenix City.

The film depicts the real-life 1954 assassination of Albert Patterson, who was nominated as the Democratic candidate for Alabama Attorney General on a platform of cleaning up Phenix City, a city controlled by organized crime. 

Patterson was murdered in Phenix City, and the subsequent outcry resulted in the imposition of martial law by the state government. Full length prints of the film include a 13-minute newsreel-style preface which stars newsman Clete Roberts interviewing many of the actual participants.

While The City Sleeps (1956)

While The City Sleeps (1956) by Fritz Lang is late enough in the cycle to be classed as knowing-noir - an almost self-aware example of the medium, that has mastered the tropes, themes, acting style and drama of the film noir phenomenon - enough to package up the groove and bottle it. 

While still a classic of the film noir style, many of the more significant tropes which formed the medium in the 1940s are curiously absent. While The City Sleeps is not a film of shadows, and neither is it a production heavy with cigarette smoke, hoods in hats and of course femmes fatales.

Still however, While The City Sleeps is considered by many to be a fine example of classic film noir.

It certainly has an A-list of film noir graduate class of 1956 noir as they come actors in it, including Ida Lupino, Dana Andrews, Thomas Mitchell and Howard Duff.

What makes this journalistic story of a psychopathic killer being caught by the press in concert with the cops a classic of film noir then? Perhaps it is because the story it tells of this killer loose in New York, as told by Fritz Lang, simply in and of itself contains enough material to be a Grade A example of the style, as it stood, towards the end of the cycle.

New York Confidential (1955)

In the wake of the televised Kefauver hearings of 1950 (Kefauver Hearings at Mob Museum) which revealed the extent of organised crime in the US to a fascinated public, Broderick Crawford stepped up to camera to play a leading member  of a syndicate, in its Manhattan headquarters.  

Part documentary, part gangster thriller, New York Confidential (1955) (director Russell Rouse, and staring Richard Conte, Ann Bancroft and Broderick Crawford) is played to perfection and has a strong cast. 

New York Confidential almost stands alone.

We're much more used to seeing the corporate gangster these days, but in the mid 1950s, at the tail end of film noir, it was a far harder pitch.

The Naked City (1948)

This time yesterday, Jean Dexter was just another pretty girl.  But now she’s the marmalade on 10,000 pieces of toast. 

In this fashion — by being murdered — this young model becomes one of the stories of The Naked City (1948) which was not just a seminal film noir, but a new departure in many different screen-crafts. 

If you were looking for brave film making in 1948, this was it — cutting edge — innovative and yet sticking to some familiar aspects and techniques, as seen its police procedural and final chase and shoot out.  

It was all the inspiration of Mark Hellinger, who was one of the most ground-breaking producers of the time. And directed by Jules Dassin, whose film noirs always appear in critic's top tens.

Kansas City Confidential (1952)

Kansas City Confidential (1952) is a classic no-honour-among-thieves heist patsy on the case film noir, starring John Payne as a determined innocent man, trailing the gangster crew who set him up for a heist he had nothing to do with.

This all time classic slice of Columbia noir has plenty of malice crammed into the close ups of its prolific baddies’ sweaty, greedy faces.

Director Phil Karlson made some pretty smart crime flicks in his time, such as 99 River Street and Scandal Sheet, and while it has cheap moments, Kansas City Confidential may be the sweatiest of all film noirs, with several gallons of perspiration being shown on the flow in each act.

Sheer noir entertainment awaits in the evil forms of some great noir character actors — Jack Elam, Lee Van Cleef and Neville Brand are an excellent trio of baddies, each with their own fatal foible.