Silver Lode (1954)

Silver Lode (1954) is an anti-McCarthy communist movie industry witch-hunt scandal film noir western angry mob in a small town revenge cat and mouse Wile West thriller romance and adventure murder and public disorder noir inflected western Lin which wedding bells curdle into mob hysteria, authority masquerades as law, suspicion metastasizes, and a lone man is publicly lynched by paperwork, starring Dan Duryea, Lizabeth Scott, John Payne and a few other fifties film faithfuls, in a tidy rather false-looking western town set setting wrapped up in a Fourth of July barbecue, but did they have barbecues in the wild west?

The Great Flamarion (1945)

The Great Flamarion (1945) is an Anthony Mann flashback and voiceover vaudeville love and murder cheap-shot theatreland lowlife uptight artiste double love triangle scheming woman and cross-continental double-crossing dame pan-American alcohol-related hunt and chase drifter narrative classic sucker falls for a conniving woman film noir, starring Erich von Stroheim, Mary Beth Hughes and Dan Duryea.

Main Street After Dark (1945)

Main Street After Dark (1945) is a bunco-detail  criminal family crime drama pawn-brokered pistol packing mugging conspiracy Edward L. Cahn cheapso randomly told film noir thriller, etched into the back of the noir alley paper hoardings, seen only when you pull away from the possibility of sensible thriller cinematics, says The Noircades Project.

Winchester '73 (1950)

Winchester '73 (1950) is a weapon worshippin road movie adventure mortal peril survival on the range revenge western film noir picture following the journey of a prized brand new state of the art lever action rifle the Winchester 1873 a formidable weapon on the range, from one ill-fated owner to another, as well as a cowboy's search for a murderous fugitive, and plenty side swipes at native American victims and dispossessed savages, a la Hollywood.

Winchester '73 (1950), directed by Anthony Mann and starring James Stewart, is widely regarded as a milestone in the development of the Western genre. It is a film that transcends the conventions of its time, bringing a darker, more psychologically complex approach to the genre, while still maintaining the essential elements that define a great Western. Those elements are not as varied as you might like ti imagine, it's a tight set of tropes on the range. Here though and in western noir, psychological western film noir, the cultural impact of Winchester '73 as a transformative film in Hollywood's portrayal of the American frontier should be manifest as much as it's a manifesto.

One Way Street (1950)

One Way Street (1950) is a couple on the run in Mexico killer gangster thriller starring James Mason, Märta Torén and Dan Duryea.

The full cast list is impressive however, with some solid noir delivered by some of its finest character exponents, like Jack Elam, King Donovan, William Conrad and even Rock Hudson making a showing.

As the city of Los Angeles pulsates with the wail of sirens, the stage is set for a tale of intrigue and betrayal. From the window of her apartment, the enigmatic Marta Toren observes the chaos below, her cigarette smoke curling into the night. She relays her findings to the cunning Dan Duryea, the architect of a daring heist. But when one of his henchmen falls to a bullet, it's James Mason's turn to shine, using his surgical skills to extract both the slug and Duryea's coveted prize - Toren herself.

Their flight takes them across the border to the rugged terrain of Mexico, where the pace slows to a languid crawl. In a rustic village, Mason's talents as a healer are put to the test, while Toren finds herself drawn to the simplicity of their surroundings. 

Manhandled (1949)

Manhandled (1949) is a lousy husband psychiatric jewel thievery crooked private eye wife-murder film noir crime drama directed by Lewis R. Foster and starring Dorothy Lamour, Sterling Hayden and Dan Duryea. It is based on the 1945 novel The Man Who Stole a Dream by L. S. Goldsmith.

Dan Duryea plays a crooked private eye, which is the first twist in this serpentine and sinuous noir drama, which is a lot of fun as any classy high period film noir should be. The convoluted plot is at the best of times a feature of film noir, and not to be sneered at in such a circuitous story as Manhandled tells.

Larceny (1948)

Larceny (1948) is a con-man swindler romance drama film noir starring John Payne, Joan Caulfield, Shelley Winters and Dan Duryea.

Directed by George Sherman, this high period noir is a lot of fun — if it's not Dan Duryea's paranoia about his gal Tory being around the other members of his all male gang — and if it's not Tory's own fast-cracking dangerous barbed wire one liners — or John Payne's noir-like descent from hangdog swindler to deadbeat romantic lover, unable to fulfil any heroic role at all, either as good guy or villain — neither suit this bird.

The sacrifice of trust is at the heart of the con, as is the false identity of a man whom it appears does not even know who he is to begin with — who he loves — or even which side he might be on. The essence of film noir perhaps lies within in the short journey there is between dreams and disillusionment. 

The Underworld Story (1950)

The Underworld Story (1950) is a journalism and media murder family intrigue race relations noir starring Dan Duryea, and directed by Cy Endfield.

Also starring Herbert Marshall, Gale Storm, Howard Da Silva and Michael O'Shea with Da Silva playing the loud-mouthed gangster Carl Durham, one of his last roles before becoming blacklisted.

The newspaperman played by Duryea in The Underworld Story is similar in attitude to that played by Kirk Douglas in Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole (1951) —  a reporter that does anything for publicity for himself regardless of ethics.

The Underworld Story is a strange name for a film that is largely about newspaper ethics, and which features little about the underworld, which albeit forms an occasional backdrop for the action.

Too Late For Tears (1949)

Too Late for Tears (1949) stars Lizabeth Scott and Dan Duryea as first lady and super-sap of classic film noir, in a fantastic and twisted set of murder plots focused on a sack of dough and one of noir's best femme fatale characters.

You'd be pushed to find a more textbook cheaply made classic film noir than Too Late For Tears, starring Lizabeth Scott and Dan Duryea.

Cheap it may be, but Too Late For Tears packs a mighty punch. The flick opens with a simple premise which has been much repeated over the years: a young couple come across some ill-gotten money, and their decision to keep it reverberates hard.

Nobody in any movie at any time hands in the money they find. There would of course be no movie if that happened, no moralising, no murder, no suspense and no desperate sliding into purgatory as the noose tightens, and increasingly hard decisions need to be taken. 

Storm Fear (1955)

On the run and in the snow ― a lethal combination for those caught in the violence of Storm Fear (1955).

As dramatic set-ups and frequently visited tropes go, the home invasion is as stable a staple as one might wish for, and was perfect for film noir.

There are many examples of home invasion film noirs, from Suddenly (1954), in which Frank Sinatra plays an assassin intent on killing the US President; all the way back to the slightly more conventional The Petrified Forest (1936). 

Probably the most famous example of this style of story from the classic film noir period is Key Largo (1948) ― and many of these movies contain the same set-up ― gangsters on the run take over a family home or similar residence, thus creating perfect conditions to explore the inevitable culture clash that crime inspired in the bourgeois imagination.

The Burglar (1957)

Both Atlantic City and Philadelphia feature beautifully in one of the best-loved late B-film noirs, The Burglar (1957), starring Dan Duryea and Jayne Mansfield.

The Burglar is more than just a cut above average film noir, as well as being that rare cinematic item ― a Dan Duryea leading role.

To begin with there is mood and atmosphere. Everyone working on this picture knew what they were doing by this point, the very end of the film noir show.

Insofar as plot chops, The Burglar is not dissimilar to The Asphalt Jungle, in the way in which the leading guys seem to be led on down and down, into fates more awful, peculiar and hopeless. The direction from Paul Wendko has style aplenty, oblique angles, super-sweaty close-ups and even some shock cutting, which adds huge amounts of class.

And then there is the beginning newsreel passage ― and the amusement arcade ending. I would wonder here if director Paul Wendko is trying to tell us something about his admiration for Orson Welles? These would appear to be samples from Citizen Kane and Lady from Shanghai, respectively.

Scarlet Street (1945)

Scarlet Street is a 1945 film noir, directed by Fritz Lang, and is one of what you may call Lang's dream film noirs.

The dream film noir is a heady and difficult combination, and was almost exclusively the creation of Fritz Lang, who employed psychology and hidden impulse very well in his work, and did so brilliantly in The Ministry of Fear, with its dream Nazis, and most successfully of all in The Woman in the Window. (1944).

The same applies to many of Fritz Lang's films, such as The Secret Beyond the Door (1947).

Fritz Lang was born to this. Lang was born to mix the heady visuals of the new cinema with the relatively recent findings of psychoanalytic theory. All this amounts to in practice, and in film noir, are dark desires, so-called because they are both illicit and unknown.

Often in film noir, a man seeks to escape domesticity, while at the same time in film noir, a woman often feels trapped by it, subjugated by the commercial forces that were fast growing the world about her.

Johnny Stool Pigeon (1949)

Johnny Stool Pigeon (1949) is a film noir caper which satisfies with its buddy-movie flavour, and location-hopping road movie feel.

Starring Howard Duff, Dan Duryea, Shelley Winters and a young Tony 'Anthony' Curtis, Johnny Stool Pigeon cuts its chops on role reversal, as dyed-in-the-wool copper Howard Duff toughens up to the wrong side of the law, becoming an undercover hood in order to bust a massive drug ring.

Not many films from the 1940s tackle the new-ish science of drug abuse, but Johnny Stool Pigeon does. 

Evidence of product itself and its effects are kept to a minimum, and so most of the caper is spent as Dan Duryea, already a criminal on the inside, helps show conservatively acting and dressing Howard Duff, how it is done on the dark side.

First, you gotta wear a snappy suit, and thirty dollar shoes. But is that enough for Howard Duff to lose his straight-guy copper flavour?

We'll have to see. He's up against amazing rising young star Anthony Curtis; and veteran John McIntire in a villainous suit of rodeo gear.

Terror Street (1953)

Terror Street (1953) is not the tale of terror its title may promise. But it stars Dan Duryea, and is a classic slice of limey noir.

It's crummy, and it's wooden, and it moves the pace of a cement snail at times. Terror Street also falls into the film noir 'Lousy Husband' sub-genre.

Men fail as much as they succeed in film noir, and if you are a lousy husband, you'd better be prepared for the bizarre consequences.

And don't be looking for much terror, film noir fans, as you venture down terror street. That would asking a lot.

There may yet be terror lurking there, but Terror Street is going to make you wait.

Instead, over the first nearly twenty minutes of Terror Street, you will find what seem like hours of solid wood largely coming from Dan Duryea, although this is barely his fault. It is as if Duryea has been asked to perform as solidly woodenly as he can by the directors of the piece; as if there is nothing else for him to do.

So Dan steps up with solid wood for the fans.

And the mis en scene, the action, the script and the psychic landscape of terror street, provides if truth be told, all the terror of a plate of cold Limey porridge.

So what is the point of Terror Street (1953)? How could this slice of Brit noir have come to have been made, and had the manufacturers of this misnamed flick understood anything of the dark noir rumblings which had been piling their way across the Atlantic for nearly fifteen years?

Criss Cross (1949)

Hitting the grounds of Bunker Hill running, Criss Cross (1949) opens with great excitement in the midst of several dramas.

There’s a fight at a night club ― or is it a fight? There’s a panicky couple of lovers ― Burt Lancaster and the incredible and much loved Yvonne De Carlo ― and there is a sizeable team of men, who have clearly come together with larceny in mind.

One long flashback and many moments of indecision from Lancaster’s character ‘Steve Thompson’ later, and the movie concludes with its high-octane combination of heist-gone-wrong meets triple-cross.

In Criss Cross, Robert Siodmak made a restless film noir, giving the story an exciting structure that raises the drama higher than it might otherwise be. The art here is in complicating something that might under other circumstances be quite straightforward.

One way this is achieved is through some regular film noir favourite tropes, moves and signals.

The first of these is the idea of returning. This isn’t just a favourite theme in film noir, and it is the start of many a good story. But film noir does use this to a great extent. Thus the flashback commences with Burt Lancaster’s character returning to Bunker Hill ― full of melancholy ― full of wisdom ― full of questions ― replete with memories ― weighed down with experience ― and looking for a lost love.

The Woman in the Window (1945)

It’s plastered on thick.   

Fritz Lang’s The Woman in the Window (1944) opens with Edward G. Robinson giving a college lecture, while behind him the words SIGMUND FREUD are written on a blackboard.  

If only he had turned to read that board himself.  

Ten minutes later Joan Bennett, playing the strange femme fatale of the title, turns up in a see-through blouse, and asks him to her apartment to see her etchings. 

That would be enough for many pictures, but in terms of the psychological goodies of film noir, The Woman in the Window probably has it in greater quantities than any other movie of the era.

The story is as fine a descent as featured in any film noir.  After psychology professor Richard Wanley (Edward G. Robinson) sends his wife and two children off on vacation, he sees a striking oil portrait of Alice Reed played by Joan Bennett in a storefront window.

Later, he meets the subject of the portrait, who is standing near the painting watching people gaze at it. Reed convinces Wanley to join her for drink, and thereafter there's murder, shootouts, clues, crime scenes and comic dialogues ... culminating in one of the greatest story-telling cliches of all time.

Black Angel (1946)

Black Angel (1946) is a mystery female seeker hero lousy husband alcoholic amnesia film noir from the heart of the classic noir period.

Jean-Luc Godard said that all you need for a movie is a gun and a girl — and bien sur, Monsieur Godard knew his noir.

Certainly, Black Angel (1946) satisfies Godard’s wisdom within one minute.

There’s a lot of noir in that first minute of Black Angel. 

Darkness, shadows, the down-at-heel, a glamorous girl with a gun, and piece of music that is going to haunt everyone right to their graves.  

Black Angel is a classic noir and as a signpost into the magic of the media in question, consider it as fantastical elements. This part of the story and the weirdness of ambience, focused in dreamlike and ridiculous assertions, that are more nightmare like in fact, this is a hallmark more than any other to show how 40s noir was the very crucible of mystery and crime cinemas many subsequent genres.

Ministry of Fear (1944)

Ministry of Fear (1944) is an espionage dream Nazi spy thriller starring Ray Milland, presenting an almost surreal succession of events and clues as one man is sucked further into a murderous Nazi spy plot as he inadvertently receives something the enemy agents are after — in a cake which he wins at a bizarre midnight village fete.

The Nazis in Fritz Lang's film noir mid-war favourite Ministry of Fear aren't presented in the typical style of the day.

The Nazis in this film noir classic don't wear swastika armbands and nor do they make fascist speeches about the benefits of the Reich's new order, a sight common enough from other mid-War propaganda.

There were many films made about WWII, during WWII. The movie Nazis that made the most impact at the time were in the style of the pompous evil-doers of films like Sherlock Holmes And The Voice Of Terror (1942); or Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1943).