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.

The Glass Wall (1953)

The Glass Wall (1953) is a returning veteran post-Holocaust musical Manhattan based chase and race against time innocent man abroad man hunt cheap-boarding room bound ship and pavement immigrant stowaway thriller with Vittorio Gassmann and Gloria Grahame, and in the meantime, I would so assert bub, that this is a little known but effective film noir, notable for terrific street photography, as wella s starring Joe Turkel in an uncredited young punk son role, and being directed by Maxwell Shane, who became a screenwriter before becoming a director in 1947, after which he worked on noirish films, as a writer or director, like Hell's Island, Fear in the Night and the remake Nightmare, while also scripting City Across the River (1949) and directing1955's The Naked Street, generally some decent noirs, some decent noirs.

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.

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.

Sapphire (1959)

Nobody requested a Basil Dearden season but when it came it was as welcomed as that of any other noir  favourite. So let's continue the season with this Dearden diamond in the rough.

Sapphire (1959) is a Basil Dearden police procedural violence against women cops playing with ladies underwear British limey deep racial tensions and civil rights and exceptionally rare passing-as-white Black British experience racism and bigotry murder mystery film noir starring Nigel Patrick, Yvonne Mitchell, Michael Craig, and Paul Massie. Progressive to a degree that borders on provocation for its historical moment, the film squarely addresses the everyday racism inflicted upon West Indian immigrants in London while anatomizing the buried insecurities, unspoken fears, and quietly festering hostilities of ordinary people when confronted with those they have racialized as other.

Murder! (1930)

The nascent works of Alfred Hitchcock, those formative exercises in suspense and moral ambiguity produced in the liminal years between silent expressionism and the codified sound era, persist as spectral presences within the embryonic landscape of what would later crystallize as film noir.

Murder! (1930) is an Alfred Hitchcock death row amnesia proto film noir poetic realist murder melodrama locked room  mystery sleuthing and amateur detection story of touring theatre blackmail and early twentieth century racism and transvestite trapeze performance.

No Way Out (1950)

No Way Out (1950) is a medical crime and fraternal revenge and racist mob race war film noir starring Sydney Poitier, Linda Darnell, Richard Widmark and Stepehen McNally. It's a tense and immense pretence with a sense of offence and it's also a noir classic, for several reasons, the least of which are the serious and more fantastic civil rights, and mass race relations race riot.

In order to historicise the idea of Black activist communities and groups, a junk yard of creeping figures emerges, but it could be argued that the multi-****** quoting racist lead has its own cliched aspects, and the dual creation, while imbalanced as racist itself, is just that, and is a creation. There never was a junkyard fight, was there?

Sullivan's Travels (1941)

Sullivan's Travels (1941) is a drifter-narrative social message self-reflecting Hollywood blockbuster role reversal comedy social commentary prison and road movie media satire that looks at the business of the movie franchise ('Ants in your Pants 1939') in which the differences between worthy art and cinematic entertainment is pressed, as well as the truest social politics of the queer and socialist civil rightists kind

No it is not a film noir, c'est pas un noir mes flics et mesdames!

But there is still a reason it is here and many reasons it is relevant to our defence of the film noir form.

The social politics are true insofar as they are presented in 1941 before the mass media hold upon messaging defined social justice into some kind of communist nightmare.

Crossfire (1947)

Crossfire (1947) is a classic film noir returning veteran anti-Semitic military procedural Hollywood Ten produced and directed murder chase thriller with Roberts Ryan, Young and Mitchum, in a night-long low-budget detection and paranoia drama.

Known and loved as a classic of its kind, Crossfire (1947) is best known as being a fore-runner to the justices of HUAC and features many heavily Communised individuals including actors, writer, director and producers, and in fact bearing that in mind it is not surprising that this red-fest of socialist freedom and civic principles in the face of any kind of incipient fascism was always going to be a McCarthy favourite. The film in fact premiered at the Rivoli Theatre in New York City on July 22, 1947 and only a few months later producer Adrian Scott and director Edward Dmytryk were cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), becoming part of the blacklisted Hollywood Ten.

Devil's Doorway (1950)

Devil's Doorway (1950) is a returning veteran race relations injustice on the range and one man against the system social commentary action adventure wild western movie with film noir leanings, and one that is significantly and surprisingly better than its black face or whatever and inappropriate Native American portrayals this represents, which are not well done and which might be off-putting for any modern kinda film observers.

For example, Native Americans have never and would never refer to themselves as 'Indians', as they do here, even a patent absurdity in 1950.

Anthony Mann’s Devil’s Doorway (1950) is a significant yet underappreciated western film that offers a haunting portrayal of racial discrimination in the American West. 

Salt of the Earth (1954)

Salt of the Earth (1954) is a feminist independent labour relations HUAC-influenced overtly left wing civil rights and anti-capitalist voiceover ensemble drama movie, not so noir in flavour as in provenance, and yet a study in defiance, gender and class in the minerally and ethnically graped American wasteland. 

In the scorched, unforgiving landscapes of New Mexico, Herbert J. Biberman's Salt of the Earth rises like a monolith against the decrepit remains of an industrial empire. 

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.

The Lawless (1950)

The Lawless (1950) is a racially charged journalism and media civil rights and leftist crusading journalist film gris film noir concerned about the plight of California state's fruit pickers, mostly immigrants from Mexico who are disparagingly referred to as "fruit tramps".

Film gris, in a world of micro classification, most especially among the classification of mid century noir, in defining film noir, the leading cultural and most defining of all that lost century's art forms, gris is most certainly a thing to behold, a useful methodology, and this is a terrific movie, super enjoyable, racing with fun and aggression, and containing multitudes of great moments, cementing a heartful place in the fact of film noir's place in the civil rights story of the times.

Blackboard Jungle (1955)

The Blackboard Jungle (1955) is the ultimate mid-1950s juvenile delinquent scare movie and features Glenn Ford in one of his best roles as a teacher in a violent urban school for boys. 

Within The Blackboard Jungle (1955) are both significant lies and truths, as well as discussion of racism underpinned by the thin air of misogyny, and an uncomfortable sexism which is constant enough to form an almost separate movie. Unlike in noir in toto, and this is not noir, there are no interesting roles for women in this man's, man's, man's, man's movie.

Key Largo (1948)

Key Largo (1948) is a classic film noir home invasion criminal versus returning war veteran drama thriller directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and Edward G. Robinson.

A full noir cast however awaits within the reels of Key Largo (1948), revealed with the standard credit sequence and a short aerial introduction and voiceover, explaining where we are, embedding the physical in what turns out to be high impact environment, both human and meteorological.

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.

Storm Warning (1950)

Storm Warning (1950) is an investigative journalist Ku Klux Klan murder thriller film noir starring Ginger Rogers, Ronald Reagan, Doris Day, and Steve Cochran. 

Directed by Stuart Heisler, it follows a fashion model (Ginger Rogers) traveling to a small Southern town to visit her sister (Doris Day), who witnesses the brutal murder of an investigative journalist by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). 

The cop hard on the case is Ronald Reagan and the unwilling and unstable weak link in the criminal chain is the erratic Steve Cochran — often appearing in a Stanley Kowalski-style white tee-shirt.

The original screenplay was written by Richard Brooks and Daniel Fuchs and is a curiosity in some respects, as it seems to demand interpretation.

The Tall Target (1951)

The Tall Target (1951) is a historical film noir crime film starring Dick Powell as a latter-day detective working to foil an assassination plot against then President-Elect Abraham Lincoln.

The action is based on an alleged real life plot to kill the President in 1861, and this historical fact of a possible assassination attempt on Lincoln gives the movie most of its power and interest.

Dick Powell is the star with the period hat and haircut who uses deduction and logic to find who on the train could be conspirators. 

He is straight-up foiled at different times but manages to win the day even when the conspirators have caught him. For effect, the movie's action takes place mostly on the train with the old rocking-camera technique and some fun fights in the steam and in the various parts of the vehicle.

Moonrise (1948)

Moonrise (1948) is a rural redemption murder and forgiveness film noir crime film directed by Frank Borzage starring Dane Clark, Gail Russell and Ethel Barrymore.

Atypical in the classic film noir canon, Moonrise is a small-town story of bullying and fate — of how the sins of one man reflect upon his son, and ruin and determine his son's life. 

What is remarkable about Moonrise is how true it is to some regular film nor themes —  most surely of all those of fate and paranoia, and the haunting effect of the past — combined with a story that presses hard into notions of redemption and transcendence.

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.