Tender Comrade (1943)

Tender Comrade (1943) is a Edward Dmytryk and Dalton Trumbo anti-fascist furloughed wife home front World War 2 morale and community enrichment rousing patriotic drama that also managed to be interpreted by HUAC as a socialistic sinkhole of evidence of communist messaging and infiltration in Hollywood movie-making, melodramatic newlyweds flashback style 'pre-democracy' diverse female housemates drama and war baby and returning and departing veteran tear-inspirer or 'jerker' if you prefer, starring Ginger Rogers, Robert Ryan, Ruth Hussey and Kim Hunter.

Crossfire (1947)

Crossfire (1947) is a classic film noir returning veteran anti-Semitic military procedural Hollywood Ten produced and directed murder chase thriller with Roberts Ryan, Young and Mitchum, in a night-long low-budget detection and paranoia drama.

Known and loved as a classic of its kind, Crossfire (1947) is best known as being a fore-runner to the justices of HUAC and features many heavily Communised individuals including actors, writer, director and producers, and in fact bearing that in mind it is not surprising that this red-fest of socialist freedom and civic principles in the face of any kind of incipient fascism was always going to be a McCarthy favourite. The film in fact premiered at the Rivoli Theatre in New York City on July 22, 1947 and only a few months later producer Adrian Scott and director Edward Dmytryk were cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), becoming part of the blacklisted Hollywood Ten.

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.

Mirage (1965)

Mirage (1965) is an amnesia corporate crime nuclear threat hunted man paranoia thriller film noir, usually called a neo noir by the time we have come to examine the 1960s and its use of the style.

Yes, even though Mirage (1965) was made by Edward Dmytryk in the 1960s it rolls with the full flavour of all iconic and classic film noir, from the paranoiac lost in the city, to the hats and hoods of a mysterious underworld. Great motor cars and docu-noir style street action, a dream-like quality, and mystery intimate quick flashback visions as Gregory Peck pieces the cliches together, with the unique addition of Walther Matthau.

Obsession (1949)

Obsession (1949) is a Limey lousy husband murder cat and mouse and dog revenge thriller in which Robert Newton plays a London psychiatrist who is so fed up with the repeated affairs of his wife Storm, that he plots and executes a seemingly perfect revenge against her latest lover, an American, by locking him for five months in a dingy post-war basement, while preparing a fiendish end for the sorry Yank.

The American nature of the victim seems to be a snidely perfect backdrop for the very British murder, and as the action commences, we are in the gentleman's club where the psychiatrist relaxes, listening to the snobbish upper classes dish the dirt on the British economy, and its new reliance on the US dollar, and the post-war glooms which are irritated further by the cultural evidence of the United States which pervades the drear with its omnipresent and clashing accent.

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. 

The Sniper (1952)

The Sniper is a 1952 psycho assassin deranged youth sex-pest film noir, directed by Edward Dmytryk, written by Harry Brown and based on a story by Edna and Edward Anhalt. 

The story is one of psychotic misogyny and the possibility of reform, as the police psychologist played by Richard Kiley, argues for treatment over incarceration and the death sentence.

The killer is an arch anti-woman boy with issues galore, a difficult thing to express on screen in 1952. That it is achieved soberly and without camp or cliché is testament to the cast and crew of The Sniper.

The film features Adolphe Menjou, Arthur Franz, Gerald Mohr and Marie Windsor, and is most notable of all perhaps for its fine San Francisco setting and photography.

The police have snipers too, and two decades before the rooftops of San Francisco became the hunting grounds of Dirty Harry Callaghan they are focused here on a mixture of police procedural, sensational woman-hating, and urban surveillance by both police forces and forces of psychopathy.

Hitler's Children (1943)

Book burning, bad-ass Berlin-based Nazis, tell like it partially is in the fourth highest grossing film of 1943  ― Hitler's Children, directed by Edward Dmytryk.

Hitler's Children stars Tim Holt, Bonita Granville, and Kent Smith.

The film does not mess around in portraying the brutalities real and imaginary associated with the Hitler Youth, represented particularly by two young participants.

Both love and the church stand resolute in the face of the overwhelmeing Nazi menace, which makes a nice change from "democracy" being what everybody is hoping is going to save the day.

At the heart of things is not just an amazing love story, some interesting propaganda and a festival of horrors, but this was directed by one of film noir's then most dynamic exponents, Edward Dmytryk.

Hitler's Children is not entirely Dmytrk's trademark 'docu-drama', although it does have some documentary sequences, even a couple with the Fuhrer of the film's title featured.

It is also told in the barest of flashback which tops and tails it, and proposes to be an American teacher, based in Berlin in 1933.

It also purposes to be an adaptation of the non-fiction book of the same name by American author Gregor Ziemer. The short Disney film and short book that this comes from features the story of Hans, a boy born and raised in Nazi Germany, his indoctrination in the Hitlerjugend, and his eventual march to war.

The story of Hitler's Children is pretty different, and the hero isn't even called Hans. He's called Karl Bruner and his story tells of his zealous youth, rampant career Nazism in the Gestapo, burning love which cannot be quelled, and his demise at the hands of his evil bosses and their puritanical employment practices.

Cornered (1945)

Cornered (1945) brings Dick Powell back to the film noir screen, and opens with him being refused a passport between London and France.

Undeterred, Powell slams his hands in his pockets, storms out of the passport office, and promptly swims the English Channel.

It’s that spirit that dominates Cornered (1945, Edward Dmytryk starring Dick Powell, Walter Slezak, Micheline Cheirel and Nina Vale.) 

The war had only been over for a matter of minutes before the film noir canon kicked off a whole new epoch in cinema — a time of uncertainty, deceit and men whose identities were always up for grabs.

Generally these guys were suckered by deceitful women, but often they didn’t know which way to wear their pants to begin with.

Either way, the post-war male was wholly bruised and confused.

Who exactly was he fighting?

Murder My Sweet (1944)

Humphrey Bogart played Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon in 1941 —  then played Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep in 1946.

But in between these two, we find Dick Powell playing Marlowe in Murder My Sweet (1944, director Edward Dmytryk) — an adaptation of Farewell My Lovely.

History has been kinder to Humphrey Bogart than it has to Dick Powell.

So while most would argue that  Bogart may have been a definitive Sam Spade, Dick Powell does well to capture the charm and cynicism of Marlowe.

In fact, he’s probably proved better at it than anybody else.

Murder, My Sweet (1944)

Director Edward Dmytryk is something of a film noir hero.  Born in Canada in 1908, the son of Ukranian immigrants, he was raised in California and began working in the Hollywood studios as a teenager.  From 1935 to 1942 he directed a few B-pictures, but his breakthrough came in 1943 with the anti-Nazi propaganda piece, Hitler's Children.

The two noirs he made after this, Murder, My Sweet (1944) and Cornered (1945) secured his home in the noir canon, and this was followed by the excellent Crossfire (1947), possibly the first Hollywood picture to deal with the subject of racism.

As a left wing liberal however, Edward Dmytryk was one of the first to fall foul of film's furious foes at HUAC, and he became one of the Hollywood Ten for refusing to testify about his so-called un-American activities.