Mission to Moscow (1943)

Mission to Moscow (1943) is a lengthy docu-style pro-Stalinist American mid-War political and diplomatic film noir tour of pre-World War Two Europe and the Soviet Union, displaying Nazi activity in the USA and in Germany and offering a vaguely unique 120 minutes of cinematic earnest as diplomat Joseph E. Davies, a handpicked business choice by President Roosevelt, featured in shadow, moves pleasantly and occasionally with a furrowed brow through the landscapes of the Nazi world of confusion which presaged the fatal conflagration of the early to mid 1940s.

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 Hollywood Ten (1950)

The Hollywood Ten (1950) is a documentary short from the heart of the film noir era dealing with the heart of the film noir issue as it deals HUAC-style with the predictive enforced persecution of American citizens in the form of ten Hollywood working men who were found in contempt of the House Un American Committee in the early hey day of American political persecution, indeed back in the days when it meant so much more, to so many more. 

This was not a social media event, but prefigures some of our crazed modern censoring in a few material manners.

Illegal Entry (1949)

Illegal Entry (1949) is an unlawful residence Truman-era illicit Mexican border immigrant smuggling operation film noir directed by Frederick De Cordova and starring Howard Duff, Märta Torén and George Brent.

The later 1940s and early 1950s were a unique era in American cinema, where the intersection of real-world fears and Hollywood's hunger for drama gave birth to a distinct genre: the semi-documentary. 

These films, often based on espionage and FBI cases, served not only as entertainment but also as propaganda, reinforcing the public's trust in federal agencies at the dawn of the Cold War. 

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.

Bullets or Ballots (1936)

Bullets or Ballots (1935) is a Warner Bros. corporate crime police detective gang infiltration classic from the pre-film noir years.

Starring the star of the show Edward G. Robinson, star of many Warner Bros. and other gangster films over three decades, perfectly paired with Humphrey Bogart, very much the rising star, in the first of five films the pair made together over the next twelve years.

That film noir charts multiple social, criminal, political, psychological trends in American society is one of its fascinations and why we're here.

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.

M (1951)

M (1951) is remake of Fritz Lang's 1931 classic of the same name, and does not disappoint as it condenses and updates the drama, taking it to the streets of Los Angeles, and offering up some great visuals of the Victorian area of Bunker Hill.

A significant amount had happened in the world and in cinema in the twenty years between the two films, and while the story is in essence exactly the same, the two worlds, that of Berlin in 1931 and Los Angeles in 1951, have little in common.

While Fritz Lang presented public and personal paranoia to the max in his 1931 masterpiece, neither are edged deep into the drama of the 1951 M, but it is otherwise an effective film.

There are stabs at public paranoia and criminal psychology, although both seem to be token efforts at times. The police procedural which returns an otherwise constantly roving camera to the quite corner of a soundstage on a fairly regular basis, is handled by Howard Da Silva, who plays the carefree cop, chewing his way from meeting to meeting, first with the city's mayor, and then with various psychologists, colleagues and villains.