Sullivan's Travels (1941)

Sullivan's Travels (1941) is a drifter-narrative social message self-reflecting Hollywood blockbuster role reversal comedy social commentary prison and road movie media satire that looks at the business of the movie franchise ('Ants in your Pants 1939') in which the differences between worthy art and cinematic entertainment is pressed, as well as the truest social politics of the queer and socialist civil rightists kind

No it is not a film noir, c'est pas un noir mes flics et mesdames!

But there is still a reason it is here and many reasons it is relevant to our defence of the film noir form.

The social politics are true insofar as they are presented in 1941 before the mass media hold upon messaging defined social justice into some kind of communist nightmare.

Man with the Gun (1955)

Man with the Gun (1955) is a lone gunfighter town in distress drifter narrative gunslinger and anarchy western with noirlike tones, and starring Robert Mitchum and Jan Sterling.

In the scorched townscape of Sheridan, 1955’s Man with the Gun offers a monochrome portrait of institutional paralysis and a solitary man’s iron remedy. 

At the heart of this tight-lipped Western, Robert Mitchum stalks the frame with coiled menace as Clint Tollinger, a man whose profession is extermination. 

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 Mark of The Whistler (1946)

The Mark of The Whistler (1946) is a The Whistler series drifter narrative film noir tale of deceit and false identity, revenge and corruption, and the impossible allure of abandoned dormant bank accounts.

If ever the fringe world of American noir was bottled up in hour bags and bands this were it. The essence of the style, the resonant espirit de noir.

A deeper consciousness of film noir, a ritual of film noir, a primal series of events that say noir and noir only in their connection and passing.

Greed, deceit, double identity, broken men, guilt and deception, and a cash lump sum of thousands.

Say are you scared of something?

Banking on a fraud and engrossing within its capacity for amazing coincidences, as true noir maybe need be, this is a subtle masterpiece guised as a universally plain style of cheapo noir, but there are resonances galore for the student of the style.

Walk On The Wild Side (1962)

Walk On The Wild Side (1962) is a drifter narrative historical film noir tale of corrupt and tragic and exploitative brothel living starring Jane Fonda and Laurence Harvey, with Capucine and Barbara Stanwyck providing support and at times violent melodrama.

More than that, Walk On The Wild Side (1962) does provide a f & m buddy movie vibe, kicking off with a wandering tale of two drifters, drifting together, the young and wild and immoral Twist played by Jane Fonda, and the cool calm cowpoke character played by Laurence Harvey. 

Suspense (1946)

Suspense (1946) is an ice-skating mystery film noir, combing the popular tropes of the self-propulsion and gliding of an dancer across an ice surface using metal-bladed ice skates — and the mystery and murder aspects of noir.

Barry Sullivan plays Joe Morgan, an unkempt drifter type who arrives in Los Angeles and winds up working at an ice theatre, the star of which is Roberta Elva, played by former Olympic skater Belita. The heavy crime and mystery melodrama which ensues is solid film noir, insofar as it is redolent of nothing less than a nightmare.