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Don't be too fooled though, as Cukor has some real noir sliders and sleepers up his sleevers. There was A Woman's Face (1941) which is a solid classical noir entry for its fantastical psychological doubling and dealing and pro and de- scribing of the female. And of course he directed Gaslight (1944) one of the most seminal movie happenings of the century, for the impact its theme came to have.
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The Web (1947) is in effect a Private Investigator film noir (P.I. Noir) although the character played by Edmond O'Brien is supposed to be a lawyer, although he functions entirely as a P.I,. being hired to be a bodyguard, carrying and using a gun, hanging with his coat collars up in alleyways, and more and more traditional and common P.I. behaviours.
He doesn't get down to none legal work, that is for sure. Other than the top and tail styling back of his maligned blue collar character, played by Tito Vuolo, with typical Vuoloism.
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Going so far as to include mad scientist elements in the hand of of some fully state operated crazy medicine men, Edmond O'Brien plays a criminal who undergoes a brain operation which serves to remove the part of his brain that makes him such a bad-ass robber, thug, and hater of and sneerer at humanity.
The downside of the operation is the loss of the criminal's memory, and so another case of amnesia noir commences, as Edmond O'Brien plays the weakened male lead, once more lost without a brain in the city and in a world of crime.
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The violence against women aspect of Between Midnight and Dawn (1950) is worth mentioning in this instance as it is called out and questioned. When Edmond O'Brien's no-nonsense beat cop bitch slaps up Gale Robbins' character he is challenged.
His response to this is not only that he kinda regrets losing it and beating up this woman, but that in his view, 'tramps like her ain't women', which becomes his justification for this cruelty.
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It was inspired by the Kefauver Committee's hearings dealing with organised crime which were of enormous public interest in 1950 and 1951, and which inspired quite a few film noir moments, as it happened.
The idea of these hearings as a locus for the challenging of crime by means of public morals, created a unique set of cultural points for the 1950s. Since prohibition times, crime had grown into a major enterprise, and this its mangerial Kefauver-style film noir re-telling with sensation, morality, family, frienship, thuggery and downtown Los Angeles location shooting.
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It's the mid 1950s and all is roaring forward into a bright future, but on the streets of the noir city it's a different story, where one man is bending the American Dream outta shape with every slug, snog and gamble.
A beautiful and even darker twin to the other great bent and copper movie of the moment which was Pushover (1954), with Fred MacMurray and Kim Novak. It's not debatable whether or not you want the cop to get the money and the woman.
In the brooding corridors of urban noir, Shield for Murder, a collaborative directorial effort helmed by Edmond O'Brien and Howard Koch, thrusts audiences into the visceral underbelly of Los Angeles, where O'Brien's portrayal of a cop gone awry serves as a chilling harbinger of moral decay and nasty noir cop rage.
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Super hot action and direction from Raoul Walsh flings James Cagney, Edmond O'Brien and Virginia Mayo into some of the best acting of their lives, elegantly supported by Steve Cochran
This explosive exploitation noir comes in at a huge length of nearly two hours.
White Heat (1949) is a multiple set of movies, seeming to smash them together at high speed, very much like the train which kicks the picture off, emerging from the tunnel to be robbed by the gang.
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