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In the murky domain between madness and decorum, Charles Vidor's 1941 film Ladies in Retirement emerges as an exquisitely wrought chamber piece of deceit, loyalty, and murder.
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This is not a film noir, and yet within it lurks the genes of the style not quite activated, but present as the underscored factual spiritual well from which draws a grabbing interest, between the snogs and high-class encounters. In the 1940s they did not have slacker movies, but they did have loafer movies, and this is one.
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In the dimly lit streets of the city, a killer stalked the shadows, preying upon women with imperfections. His eyes, cold and calculating, sought out vulnerability—the slightest flaw that marked his victims. The town whispered of his deeds, and fear hung heavy in the air.
Helen, the mute caregiver for a wealthy old woman, was next on everyone’s list. Her silence made her an easy target, her inability to scream for help a cruel twist of fate. The old woman’s mansion loomed like a fortress, its walls hiding secrets and shadows.
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As a rather unique slice of Hawaii noir, Hell's Half Acre stars Evelyn Keyes as the seeker hero on the trail and Wendell Corey as the lousy husband, who is actually still alive but changed his identity due to his own criminal activities.
Hell's Half Acre was written screen by Steve Fisher, who also wrote I Wake Up Screaming which is a sure-fire classic film noir
It's set in a rundown section of Honolulu, incredibly well photographed it has to be said, and down there on Honolulu's skid row there are all kinds.
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It's known as one of the first films to be shot on and around location in the Boston and Cape Code area.
In the story by Leonard Spigelgass, a married, upper-class super-bounder James Joshua Harkley, played by Edmon Ryan, shoots dead his pregnant girlfriend Vivian Heldon (Jan Sterling), discards the naked body in the sea and sinks her stolen car in a muddy pond.
When the car owner Henry Shanway (Marshall Thompson) is arrested, super-smiley police lieutenant Peter Moralas (Ricardo Montalban) and never-smiling Harvard doctor Dr McAdoo (Bruce Bennett) set out to investigate.
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Ray Milland is a reporter in a news corporation, tasked with solving a complex situation of his own making, and mostly set in the ultra-high-modern offices of his employer.
This newspaper office is unlike any other in film noir. The more usual film noir newspaper offices are kinda drab and somewhat realistic, and may look like those featured in Fritz Lang's While The City Sleeps (1956). The publisher's offices in The Big Clock are as uber-modern as any of the period, and the sets throughout are fascinating.
The look is dynamic, and sharp, to match the technology which was booming, burgeoning in fact into the real life media corporations that would begin their march to world domination only a few years late, in the 1950s.