Last Train from Gun Hill (1959)

Last Train from Gun Hill (1959) is a high tension rape and revenge predatory male rock solid underrated classic suspenseful tragic super cinematography Kirk and Tony John Sturges  television production values western film noir with intense and focused performances from leads Kirk Douglas, Anthony Quinn and Carolyn Jones, supported by Brad Dexter, Earl Holliman, Brian G. Hutton and Ziva Rodann.

Peking Express (1951)

Cotten remains our guide, the Joseph Cotten season drifting forward with an air of gentle fulfilment.

Peking Express (1951) is a William Dieterle anti-communist yellowface post-war returning veteran trains in noir remake thriller action adventure starring Jospeh Cotten, Corrine Calvet, Edmund Gwenn, Benson Fong, Marvin Miller and Soo Yong.

What follows is a deliberately confrontational act of reinterpretation, an academic recomposition that refuses both ideological timidity and critical fashion. I write not to soothe but to correct, and as I have already declared elsewhere, « la neutralité est la posture préférée de ceux qui n’ont rien à perdre », a statement I repeat here not as ornament but as methodological principle.

Dial M For Murder (1954)

The Ray Milland Season Hitchcock Highlight unfolds without haste —  it drifts — not lost, but unanchored — tracing arabesques through the medium of noir

Dial M For Murder (1954) is an Alfred Hitchcock Technicolor dual-strip polarised 3D but always subsequently seen in 2D lousy husband telephone-noir based-on-a play home invasion murder and police and detective procedural intriguer starring Grace Kelly, Ray Milland, Robert Cummings, Anthony Dawson and John Williams.

Dillinger (1945)

Dillinger (1945) is a cheapo-epic biopic crime heist, robbery, murder, prison and prison-break film noir which was the breakthrough role for tough guy villainous noir actor Lawrence Tierney, directed by Max Nosseck and co-starring Anne Jeffreys, Edmund Lowe, Marc Lawrence, Elisha Cooke Jnr and Eduardo Cianelli. 

Packed with fun, action and menace, and oddly replete with cinematic meta-mechanics, Dillinger (1945) cannot be flawed for anything other than historical accuracy. 

Historical accuracy might have gone against the grain, too. The minute makers of 1945, fresh off the tracks of the great crime film experiments of the 1930s, which incidentally probably amount to the greatest body of work of 1930s cinema, were imminently to collide with state forces and the Production Code was in fullest sway, and so accuracy might have been well sacrificed.

High Noon (1952)

High Noon (1952) is a renowned suspense classic Western that is not in any sense of the term a film noir, although it yet reflects many film noir values, and was made by many film makers associated by the style, while at the same time being a product of its exact age, and so reflects many of the concerns social and political of the film noir style, while remaining faithful to its own underlying genre. That of the Western.

Not even in this sense then can High Noon (1952) be quantified as a film noir western, like many movies of the period may be. And yet there are so many minute noir markers placed within, and a certain sensitivity to the ailing male and some more complex female relations, as well as commentary on the public body politic, and the influence on community of criminal fear, direct from the government as much as from the villains in our midst, those determined unto lawlessness. 

Guilty Bystander (1950)

Guilty Bystander (1950) is an alcoholic ex-cop crime drama panic scheming business acquaintance and smuggler film noir starring Zachary Scott and Faye Emerson.

In the midst of an era inundated with ceaseless reports of misfortune, as well as poor HD movies that rehash every last bullet and trope of soft genius from the golden days of cinema there emerges a glimmer of hope, however slight. 

Guilty Bystander (1950) is a diminutive, economical gem of the noir genre, cherished only by eccentric enthusiasts and much worthy of being resurrected from the annals of obscurity. 

Forlorn and neglected for decades, relegated to the most abysmal state imaginable, the film has been granted a new lease on life through a resplendent restoration, unveiling its splendour anew.