Conspirator (1949)

Conspirator (1949) is a double agent British espionage and early Cold War Soviet versus England romance and intrigue anti-USSR propaganda spy thriller starring Elizabeth Taylor, Robert Taylor, Honor Blackman and Robert Flemyng, in a Victor Saville directed tale of female belittlement and abuse in the honourable name of spying for the Soviets, while protecting the integrity of the Brits.

Round it thusly spins, not so fast, but with a fairly interesting admixture of fog and domesticity, with some cold and lonely English wetland landscapes to break up the misery.

From the Earth to the Moon (1958)

The Cotten Sequence, or Joseph Cotten Season, proceeds with understated poise, its pleasures evenly shared, although obliging us to view this non-noir folly of fifties fantasia and filmation, we are not always best delighted.

From the Earth to the Moon (1958) is a Byron Haskin Jules Verne Civil War space rocket science fiction revenge and rivalry sane scientist drama featuring a cold war mutually assured destruction power that can destroy the earth action special effects adventure movie with Joseph Cotten, Debra Paget, George Sanders, Byron Haskin, Henry Daniell, Carl Esmond and Morris Ankrum. Oh cielo, questo non è un film noir!

The Man Between (1953)

The Man Between (1953) is a post war Cold War Trümmerfilm-styled Carol Reed espionage and defection and rebuilding of German and Europe The Third Man style Cold War thriller film noir starring James Mason, Claire Bloom and the queen of Cold War Euro noir cinema, Hildegard Knef. 

Carol Reed's The Man Between (1953) is a sure fire melancholic echo of his earlier triumphs, a film of shadows, silences, and moral indecision, set amidst the frost-bitten rubble of postwar Berlin. A lot of snow went into the making of this cold Cold War thriller.

Diplomatic Courier (1952)

Diplomatic Courier (1952) is a Henry Hathaway Cold War espionage in post-war Europe screwball-adjacent drama romance chase military police procedural thriller, with Tyrone Power, Patricia Neal, Hildegard Knef, Stephen McNally, Karl Malden and special spot appearances from Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin, and a further dynamic and fun extra cross dress appearance

As for screwball, there is a certain sure pedigree of connecting dramatic matter which links the screw of the ball and its previous decades of filmatics and is indicated in Diplomatic Courier (1952), highlighted and brought to our attention when Tyrone Power describes Patricia Neal across a Trieste café bar table as 'screwey'. 

The Thief (1952)

The Ray Milland Season dilates in time, endures with fascination. 

The Thief (1952) is a non-verbal one of a kind atomic age location-shot nuclear secrets classic Ray Milland and Russell Rouse film noir, both innovative and inventive, curious and classic, telling the engrossingly spun paranoid tale of one man's turning Communist spy and his discovery and having to go on the run, with escape and capture fantasy played out across New York, in some most famously shot locals and corners.

On The Beach (1959)

On The Beach (1959) is a metaphenomenal post apocalyptic novel adaptation dark and empty gaze at the emptiness of post-nuclear life and the actual point of any kind of human existence, phrased beautifully in a Hollywood void of expression, most appropriate to the winding close of the existential age brought about by the cold Cold War reality of a life that is either radioactively poisonous, or sub marine.

On the Beach, written by Nevil Shute and adapted into a film by Stanley Kramer, stands as one of the most controversial and widely read books of its time. Both the book and the film are credited with significantly influencing the anti-nuclear weapons movement of the 1960s and contributing to the end of the nuclear arms race.

The Master Plan (1955)

The Master Plan (1955) is a Cold War amnesia spy military paranoia post-Korean war mind-control McCarthy era blacklist ahead of its time Limey noir made by Cy Endfield, already exiled from America and resettling within the British film industry.

The Master Plan (1955) is another circa 1955 thriller loss mysteries which open on a transatlantic flight in 'you are American!' mid air kind of whimsy arriving in an all too wrong England, it is sufficient of a noir trope to be expressive for decades, the Korean War is also mentioned in passing quoting banter, while they still also have the overgrown headaches from what they call already the last war.

36 Hours, or as it is daftly or is it deftly otherwise known Terror Street own start this way these characters we meet on the plane, it's the same with another Cy Endfield fun piece from the exact same time, and no surprising because he did fly into England in intrigue and who knows, maybe even disappointment at the old boys of the OSS back home, rooting out the communists.

The Iron Curtain (1948)

The Iron Curtain (1948) is an early Cold War espionage and infiltration thriller based on the breaking up of a real Canadian spy ring in the immediate aftermath of World War 2. 

It didn't take long, but shortly after World War 2 ended it became apparent that the liberators of Berlin and the nation which defeated the Nazis in Germany became the main enemy of the United States, and by association here, and everywhere, Canada.

It is in fact by all accounts the first feature film to dramatize and propagandise the new-fangled Cold War of the period, which could really be said to have run from 1947 until 1991, and seen the rise and development of film noir as one of its key cultural expressors.

The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951)

The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951) is the quintessential high quality high concept high tension classic Hollywood 1950's science-fiction presentation.

The nascent and sudden re-invention of the science fiction film in the 1950s does inevitably draw on film noir style when need be.

And although the themes are of a universal and global nature, not quite the subjective and local tendency in film noir, there are still film techniques and themes aplenty which crossover between the film noir of its day and the science fiction.

Directed by Robert Wise The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951) is spritely, earnest, playful, philosophical, funny, serious and has distinct Bernhard Hermann music, as well as the most irresistible use of the theremin in film history.

A Bullet for Joey (1955)

The curious late-cycle film noir gangster-spy picture A Bullet for Joey (1955) unites the two stars Edward G. Robinson and George Raft,  who had previously been paired in Raoul Walsh's Manpower (1941).

Edward G. Robinson was at ease in film noir, and able to play good guy roles, which he often did with pipe-wielding authority, and out and out villains. 

George Raft in A Bullet For Joey plays the hoodlum figure, working here to kidnap a nuclear scientist, with Peter van Eyck as the true ring-leader.

Comparing it to Illegal (1955), also with Robinson and by director Lewis Allen, there is slightly less in terms of dark city noir qualities, paranoia, and psychological damage.

In Montreal, a police inspector (Edward G. Robinson) uncovers piece by piece a plan to kidnap a nuclear physicist. American mobsters, foreign spies and a blonde seductress are all involved in this rather staid caper.

Shout out, however, to monkeys in film noir.