The Naked Street (1955)

The Naked Street (1955) is a death penalty pregnancy and child loss crime corruption and extortion frame up film noir by Maxwell Shane starring Anne Bancroft, Anthony Quinn and Farley Granger.

If film noir naming conventions are to be adhered to, then The Naked Street (1955) trumps top in many delightful ways, composed as it is of that favourite noir naming trope — the street.

Lassie slapping noir is a stryle of street noir dirty with villainy and snarls, here delivered by back-handin' Anthony Quinn, some super indented toothy noir by numbers, a film of straight lines.

Studio noir with cool and low down fast action location shooting blended everyday realism with a sense of poetic melancholy. Films of noir often depicted characters living on the margins of society, facing disappointment, disillusionment, and fatalistic views of life.

Edge Of Doom (1950)

Edge Of Doom (1950) is a desperate priest killer noir starring Farley Granger as a man driven to edgy paranoiac and driven madness by poverty and in his view the Catholic church.

A paranoid city streets noir of the first drainage, Edge Of Doom is a slum story set in increasingly crummier settings, pitting priests against poverty and poverty against sanity, as one man turns to blame the church for the ills of his life, and now has issues with them around the deaths of both his parents.

A brilliant noir with all the fun of the style which includes Dana Andrews as the priestly narrative glue, offering a framed Farley fable, a story of desperation from the poor side. 

On the capitalist mean streets of 1950 there is a shinola-show of trouble for the poor, and all of this is focused on Farley Granger's increasingly desperate and tragic desire to see a large funeral for his penurious maw.

Strangers on a Train (1951)

Strangers on a Train is a masterful 1951 adventure in film noir, with all the morbid fun that Alfred Hitchcock perennially mustered. 

The theme of psychopathy was explored more than once by Alfred Hitchcock, and was one of the more interesting developments in the film noir style.

The idea of the psychopath, who may murder for reasons which are extra-normative to the great American dream, is traced through film noir. Psychological shock explanations are often used, and other psychopaths in noir, who were the first batch of psychopaths in cinema, like Robert Walker's character Bruno in Strangers on a Train, are either aberrations, or the product of environments that are sick.

In this case, Robert Walker's psychopathic Bruno appears to be spoiled by his family's money, and his father's determined disapproval.

The story follows two men who meet on a train, one of whom is a psychopath who suggests that they "exchange" murders so that neither will be caught. The film initially received mixed reviews but has since been regarded much more favourably, especially as it showcased many techniques which Alfred Hitchcock had already perfected and would further perfect, as a master cinematic storyteller.

Side Street (1950)

Side Street (1950) is an urban slice of romantic classic film noir, starring love-birds Cathy O'Donnell and Farley Granger.

The couple who debuted in They Live By Night, the debut too of director Anthony Mann, made a total of four noirs in a line.

Although the action in Side Street is underpinned by the hard city, with its dark corners, bars, cop shops, rentals, night clubs and stone blocks.

Side Street makes a virtue of every urban geography going, a psychogeography in fact of the young man wrestling with the madness of the city whirlpool.

The city is filmed constantly throughout, a place of promise to begin with and straight on into the action, transformed by crime - - by a crime - -  into a depth charged doom hole of paranoia, doubt and fear.

What also makes Side Street so interesting is the violence, rather extremely played, particularly with the strangling. And it is also cool that Fraley Granger as Joe Norson attempts to atone, in a way that few other film noir heroes do.

The saps usually go all the way down to the end. And never atone. The pain of atonement, guided of course by the good lady love of  love-a-dove lady Cathy O'Donnell  - - as Ellen Norson, his young wife.

They Live by Night (1948)

They Live by Night is a 1948 an essential stop on the American film noir tour. 

Not just directed by Nicholas Ray, but his directorial debut, and starring Cathy O'Donnell and Farley Granger, is a tale of young love on the run; another film noir staple.

The story is psychologically bound to emergent teenage culture: after an unjust prison sentence, a young innocent gets mixed-up with hardened criminals and a violent escape.

First to note here is how and why the trope of the young lovers on the run was created and developed; because the idea sprang into being on the doorstep of film noir. It is no accident that Nicholas Ray, responsible for many of the finest and most intelligent items in the film noir cycle, went on to direct Rebel Without A Cause.

The similarities between They Live By Night and Rebel Without a Cause are many. The driver in both cases, is young love, certainly doomed love, and the puzzle as to why two such young and innocent people should fail to find the happiness that they believe can be achieved. The happiness in question is something of a myth in itself, and ironically is part created by the cinema itself.

Rope (1948)

David, Brandon and Philip are meeting for cocktails in a fancy Manhattan apartment. 

But Brandon and Philip strangle David and heave his body into a sturdy wooden chest.

This is the commencement of one of the most unusual of Alfred Hitchcock’s works, Rope (1948). 

It was the first Hitchcock movie to feature James Stewart and is certainly the most underrated of the four movies they made together. 

It might not be classed as film noir by everybody ― Hitchcock’s films are sometimes seen as existing as semi-isolated in their own genre. 

And it’s also in colour ― unusual for a film noir.

But even if you argue that this is not film noir and that it never will be, discussions are never that exclusive, and Rope still shines bright light on many of the interesting movie-based fixations of the late 1940s.