The Fountainhead (1949)

The Fountainhead (1949) is an Ayn Rand adaptation and scripted hyper-melodramatic didactic economics and social science charged pre-post modern pre-relativist objetivist and more than just a little film noir tinged melodrama of rags to riches UnAmercian Dream-style semi-speculative cross class dedication to art and architectural and individualistic vision unromantic romance set-up with its no promises and no obligations ultar-objectivist marriages alternate reality white suprematic media manipulation and propagandist anarcho-capitalist post-communist anti-communist media demagogue public opinion forming artisitic vindication of terrorism in the name of individualism impotent platonic-erotic love triangle drama directed by King Vidor and starring Patricia Neal, Gary Cooper, Raymond Massey, Kent Smith, Henry Hull, Moroni Olsen und Ray Collins, yah, Ray Collins is in this film produced by Henry Blanke.

Three Silent Men (1940)

Three Silent Men (1940) is a Thomas Bentley directed pacifist surgeon and deadly weapon of war early nuclear threat war-themed innocent man accused of murder mystery courtroom largely farcical semi-serious pre-War style but intra-War produced drama noir low budget thriller intriguer, directed by Thomas Bentley and starring Sebastian Shaw, Derrick De Marney, Patricia Roc and Arthur Hambling, written by Jack Byrd and Dudley Leslie.

Count the Hours (1953)

Count the Hours (1953) is a small town innocent man accused of murder courtroom crusading lawyer death row psychopath home invasion theramin scored Don Siegel rural paranoia and persecution film noir with Macdonald Carey, Teresa Wright, John Craven, Dolores Moran and wow — they got Jack Elam.

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.

I Believe in You (1952)

To mount a Basil Dearden season is an unusual idea and of course, one that resists the orthodox rhythms of repertory programming, and yet, and yet, and yet here is that season all the same. The Basil Dearden Season continues next with:

I Believe in You (1952) is an earnest British flashback and voiceover ex-Colonial Office probation officer seeks leisure and seeks social service courtroom-based teenage tearaway and juvenile threat social conscience anti-fun-fair young love and petty crime social melodrama modest Ealing drama exposing post imperial exhaustion, moral fog, bureaucratic hopefulness, and social ache, where reform curdles, idealism bruises, and British decency quietly erodes under persistence film noir by Basil Dearden, and starring Joan Collins, Laurence Harvey, Cecil Parker, Harry Fowler and Sid James.

Witness for the Prosecution (1957)

Witness for the Prosecution (1957) is a Billy Wilder classic court room drama classic film noir murder suspenser did he or didn't he? Hitchcockian love-that-Laughton Agatha Christie mystery plot twister puzzle game millinery-provoking murder character and melodrama film noir production based on a play and starring Marlene Dietrich, Elsa Lanchester, Tyrone Power, Charles Laughton, Ian Wolfe and Henry Daniell.

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.

All The Kings Men (1949)

All The Kings Men (1949) is a realpolitik rise and fall with alcohol courtroom and firebrand wielding mob Southern corruption and fidelity, local and state influence peddling kickback and malfeasance drama with more film noir chops than may be immediately evident, and starring Broderick Crawford, Mercedes McCambridge, John Ireland and Joanne Dru.

There’s a long tradition of films about ambitious nobodies clawing their way to fame and power, only to reveal themselves as fakes. Citizen Kane and All About Eve are often held up as the gold standard — stylish, intelligent dissections of ambition, ego, and betrayal. Hey No Kings LOL!

The Sellout (1952)

The Sellout (1952) is a journalism and media small town crooked cop courtroom and corruption kangaroo and criminal court repping high class low profile film noir drama.

Little known and little loved The Sellout (1952) is a film noir gem, and buzzes with tension and all the undercurrents of psychological and physical force that noirs up the focused greed and determination of the rounded and flawed characters of its small town setting.

Dust Be My Destiny (1939)

Dust Be My Destiny (1939) is an innocent-man-jailed moral drifter narrative prison farm social state of the US couple on the run drama and romance proto noir which expresses noir moments and captures noir sentiment, as it bums across the states in various wagons and train carriages, always expressive of the idea that love will out.

Dust Be My Destiny (1939) is beautifully staged expression of what America sought most for itself, the idea of what it was set to become, its deepest anxieties about morality expressed in individual and romantic action from John Garfield, largely.

The Wrong Man (1956)

The Wrong Man (1956) is a classic Alfred Hitchcock wrongfully accused man film noir movie, starring Henry Fonda as the man accused, and Vera Miles as the wife-at-home who loses her mind in the process.

One of the most moving of all classic film noir, in terms of the dramatic effect, The Wrong Man is a powerful procedural object lesson in legal terror and powerlessness, framing up the wrong guy as only Hitchcock can, and bringing deep and dangerous emotions to the tableau.

The duet of Henry Fonda and Vera Miles is well cast, and both face their demons. Unlike in many a film noir there is no slippery slope within this classic, in the sense of the wrong side of the tracks and one-false-step style noir that the style favours.

A Woman's Face (1941)

A Woman's Face (1941) is a fantastical hard-luck-lady flashback courtroom film noir blackmail tale of gender expectation, bitterness and plastic surgery.

One of several plastic surgery miracle movies made in the era, it seemed like the trope and myth of the plastic surgeon and face exchange being ideal narrative material on the big screen.

Most meaningfully and in the terms of the noir universe these are Dark Passage (1947), Black Dragons (1942), Nora Prentiss (1947), Stolen Face (1952), G-Men Never Forget (1948), Dead End (1937), The Second Face (1950), It Happened in Hollywood (1935), and then She Demons (1958) a strangely far out genre find, Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), and with The Raven (1935), that might be enough for now, although others will materialise, that is certain.

Carrefour (1938)

Carrefour (1938) is an amnesia noir proto-noir French thriller with a pedigree so crucial to film noir and the noir style, that pages must and will be written about this classic of the noir manner.

Crossroads, as anglophones might intone, being the translated term, much it might be said in the film noir mode, with its emphasis in naming, upon streets, roads, and other similar type of concept.

Actually titled Carrefour in French, this early expression of the film noir trend is a mystery drama film from 1938. Directed by Curtis Bernhardt, it features Charles Vanel, Jules Berry, and Suzy Prim in leading roles. This influential film led to two remakes in English: the British Dead Man’s Shoes in 1940 and the American Crossroads in 1942. Filming took place at the Billancourt Studios and around Paris, with Jean d’Eaubonne and Raymond Gabutti as the art directors responsible for the film’s visual design.

Curtis Bernhardt’s journey through the film industry mirrors that of his contemporaries, traversing Germany, France, and America. Unlike Fritz Lang and Robert Siodmak, Bernhardt never returned to Germany to film. 

Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1950)

Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1950) is a bitch-and-towel slappin violent anti-social criminal psychopath flashback murder courtroom film noir with the king of the noir loons himself James Cagney as a no nonsense violent career criminal en route to hell.

Ralph Cotter, a hardened criminal with a penchant for violence, embarks on a harrowing journey of deceit and betrayal after a daring prison escape turns deadly. 

The death of his escape partner, Carleton, at his own hands sets the stage for a twisted game of manipulation and obsession. Is the love between brother and sister greater than that between gangster and long-suffering moll?

As Cotter insinuates himself into the life of Carleton's unsuspecting sister, Holiday, a dark and disturbing dynamic emerges — a typical web of desire and domination, where passion and pain collide in a volatile mix of emotion. 

Their sadomasochistic bond is laid bare in a chilling scene where Cotter's brutality is met with Holiday's fervent embrace — a stark portrayal of the depths of their depravity. They are American. They are you.

Party Girl (1958)

Party Girl (1958) is a brassy blast of 50s technicolor dance and jealous showgirl murder misogyny film noir.

Directed by Nicholas Ray and starring Robert Taylor, Cyd Charisse and Lee J. Cobb, and filmed in CinemaScope, Party Girl celebrates like few other mediocre classics, the gazing male and the prancing half naked female, along with such blasts of wowed brass instruments the sound of those fat horns lingers painfully after the fact.

The movie we are talking about describes a perspective often portrayed in media and art that tends to objectify and depict women from a particular viewpoint. 

This perspective often emphasizes certain physical attributes or characteristics of women, positioning them as objects of desire rather than fully realized individuals. 

The Monster and the Girl (1941)

The Monster and the Girl (1941) is an outré monster death row revenge movie from the golden age of monster death row revenge movies. 

Unorthodox and strange, this crime science fiction courtroom horror thriller revenge monkey noir is a message to film lovers for all time, and stands as an immortal portal to more than just entertainment.

Film noir is one the least issues with The Monster and the Girl (1941) as there is such a delightful heap of unpacking to be made of this short epic, which tells of a mad experiment with monkeydom, and a mad experiment in film making too, as Hollywood feels its way towards the horror genre out of the monster department, while still indulging in its deep passion for monkeys.

more mystery than monster for the main of its short running time, The Monster and the Girl is a courtroom framed thriller mystery told in flashback as the shocked participants of a murder trial piece together the most awful facts that had ever been imagined on screen.

Angel Face (1953)

Angel Face (1953) is a obsessive paranoid murder madness classic film noir from RKO Radio Pictures, the home of film noir, film noir central, as it should be known, and a late late entry from the great forgotten studio, and maybe one of the few from the Howard Hawks era that can be enjoyed for its full scale bizarre noir melodrama.

It's hard for some people to recover from the initial sight of Robert Mitchum in that apron. He is a lousy guy, yet hopefully not a lousy ambulance driver and medic. In the motor car noir aspect of Angel Face (1953) he is a bulk boy to be racing the elite cars so maybe ambulances are his thing.

He wants to race elite though and that is what happens. As a lousy boyfriend he is up there with the lying best of them. He doesn't mind a bit of the cheat and like any good heel does not spot the femme fatale with the offer of not just an apartment but more than that.

The Tattered Dress (1957)

The Tattered Dress (1957) is a small town courtroom corruption drama film noir which pits a supposedly corrupt New York lawyer against the definitely corrupt Sherriff of a small town California resort.

A mixture of commentary and caper, sexual molestation and revenge, domesticity versus barbarism and big city manners versus straight-talking small town mentality, The Tattered Dress (1957) is a combination of tropes, all of which are settled in courtroom scenes dark alleys and in the luxury homes of the wealthy resort dwellers.

A slick and effective tale of violence, corruption, foul play, conspiracy, lies and relentless vengefulness, The Tattered Dress evokes late film noir style. Not the obfuscous and stygian shadowy affair that might be typical of 1940s film noir, the evolved style fits the wider screen and the greater amount of light, almost anticipating the later life the movies would have on television, there are longish courtroom scenes which rely on light and not the indistinct flavours of light which make up classic noir.

Eight O'Clock Walk (1954)

Eight O'Clock Walk (1954) is an anti-capital punishment limey-noir in which an innocent bourgeois is catapulted into the justice system after circumstantially being held to be the murderer of a small girl.

Directed by Lance Comfort and starring Richard Attenborough, Cathy O'Donnell, Derek Farr and Maurice Denham, Eight O'Clock Walk (1954) is a fairly solid example of how the British adapted common film noir themes to their own place, time and circumstances, with a taste of the post-war era and British theatrics in an extended look into the legal procedures of a murder trial than is usual in a film of this type.

Based on a true story, Eight O'Clock Walk is an anti-capital punishment film — the title refers to the hour at which executions were traditionally carried out — that highlights the danger of circumstantial evidence resulting in the death of a mistakenly accused prisoner. 

Crossroads (1942)

Crossroads (1942) is an amnesia mystery film noir starring William Powell, Hedy Lamarr, Claire Trevor and Basil Rathbone, and directed by Jack Conway. 

William Powell plays a diplomat whose amnesia about his past subjects him to back-to-back blackmail schemes, which threaten his reputation, job, marriage, and future. 

The film was based on the 1938 French film Crossroads which had also had a British remake called Dead Man's Shoes in 1940.

With shimmering cobblestones and foggy streetlamps, and deception, blackmail and a surprising if dubious mystery story, Crossroads (1942) is a prime example of 1940s amnesia noir.