Young and Innocent (1937)

Young and Innocent (1937) is an Alfred Hitchcock body on the beach female seeker hero wrongly accused man police procedural murder romance on the run sometime slapstick, sometime farcical, sometime Anglo-silly, Olde Englishe village life never leave the dog behind car in a collapsing mine special effects and tasteless blackface orchestra twitching man circumstantial pursuit and evasion thriller in the mold and style of many of Alfred Hitchcock's very well known pictures, and a minor 1930s classic most renowned for the wonderful but blackface focused crane shot of the decade and starring Nova Pilbeam, Torin Thatcher, Basil Radford, Derrick De Marney as Robert Tisdall lol, Percy Marmont, Edward Rigby, Mary Clare, John Longden as Inspector Kent . . . and George Curzon as "Guy", aka "the guy" I suspect.

Backfire (1950 )

Backfire (1950 ) is a flashback-based female seeker hero returning veteran rambling tangled web of mystery and violence against women-style Los Angeles and Christmas and military hospital and PTSD adjacent film noir thriller from the tail end of the high period of the dark and foggy beginnings of the television era and which sees Virginia Mayo, Gordon MacRae, Edmond O'Brien, und Great Dane Clark.

Two O' Clock Courage (1945)

Two O' Clock Courage (1945) is a romantic-comedic amnesia cabbie journalism and media comedy female seeker hero mystery writer-hero film noir from the classic era of the urban female seeker hero and cabbie noir adventure movie.

For 1945 this is powerful stuff, a seminal seminar in crossover and able to tell you more about history, narrative, meta-history, film-making, World War 2 and the USA than Citizen Kane might ever.

Mind you, this is virtually post-the-war and the thing hasn't gone off yet, it's one the last pictures from Innocentlandia.

Stage Fright (1950)

Stage Fright (1950) is an Alfred Hitchcock British female seeker hero theatre-land murder mystery starring Jane Wyman, Richard Todd, Alistair Sim and wow yes fans, it is Marlene Dietrich.

After the triumphs of his American films, Alfred Hitchcock returned to his roots with Stage Fright (1950), set largely in the theatrical world of post-war London. Based on Selwyn Jepson’s novel Man Running, the project marked Hitchcock’s attempt to merge his fascination with the stage with his penchant for suspense. The screenplay, adapted by his wife Alma and playwright James Bridie, promised a compelling tale of murder, deception, and performance, but the resulting film revealed both creative successes and notable flaws.

Deadline At Dawn (1946)

Deadline At Dawn (1946) is a classic era classic female seeker hero hardboiled amnesia film noir, and a classic film noir which is also a great example of several other film noir sub-styles including cabbie noir, and outre noir.

Full of fun, mystery and menace and with an almost unique script, quipped with an unequaled touch by Clifford Odets, not known for his cinematic writing, and directed by 

The history and definition of film noir remain complex, filled with contradictions and shifting interpretations. Though often described as an American invention emerging from a synthesis of hard-boiled fiction and German expressionism, noir's roots and reach are far broader.

Lured (1947)

Lured (1947) is a moody mystery female seeker hero investigatory London-set serial killer thriller outré film noir, made by Douglas Sirk and perhaps as far as the Sirk toes get into the fascinating dark and complicated world of noir drama.

In its way, Douglas Sirk’s lurid Lured (1947), an example of the lurid noir, reimagines hard enough upon Robert Siodmak’s 1939 film Pièges, that it must surely be classed as a remake, capturing the essence of a film noir thriller with an impressive cast and smoke machine moddiness and soundstage London-effect cinematography. 

The plot follows and does trail the female seeker hero type Sandra Carpenter (Lucille Ball), a sassy American dancer in London who is roped into a police investigation as a decoy for a serial killer targeting women through newspaper ads. 

Abandoned (1949)

Abandoned (1949) is a journalism and media baby-adoption-ring female seeker hero film noir from high into the classic years of all out full fat noir, remaining a mean wittaw crime flick that slithers through the back alleys of corruption like a grifter on the lam. 

It’s got all the dirty fingerprints of a real noir—shadows thick as cigarette smoke, dames in trouble, and heels looking to make a fast buck off somebody else's misery.

It kicks off when Paula Considine (Gale Storm) hits Los Angeles looking for her missing sister. The cops? They don’t care. But a wisecracking newshound named Mark Sitko (Dennis O’Keefe) smells a rat, and soon they’re knee-deep in a baby-smuggling racket run by a smooth operator with ice in his veins, played by the ever-slick Raymond Burr. 

He’s got an adoption scam so tight it squeaks, selling newborns like hot merchandise, and anyone who gets in his way winds up floating face-down in the Los Angeles River.

A Kiss Before Dying (1956)

A Kiss Before Dying (1956) is a colour noir female seeker hero psychopath murder thriller film noir which while unlikely in its telling is a credible and effective movie version of the Ira Levin novel of the same name.

Making full use of the colour processes of the day, and delivering two bright American worlds, that of the college campus and that of the modern industrialist, A Kiss Before Dying (1956) delivers where many of the promised excitements of the coloured film noirs of the 1950s fail. 

The world of the campus and the café bars where the students gather are perfectly in keeping with the brightness of hope that struck across suburban America at the time, and nothing better expresses the reach of the industrialist and their aspirations than the copper telephone, which is in line with the other copper colours around it, including the victim's copper car, and the copper banisters and swimming pool ladder in the Arizona home of the mining magnate, played by George Macready.

Born To Kill (1947)

Born To Kill (1947) is a savage psychopathic murder female seeker hero thriller noir, from the height of the classic film noir period, displaying virtually every noir vice and virtue in a brutal and thrilling tale of toxic male psychopathy and female resilience.

The opening minutes of Born To Kill are a quick and quiet succession of some of noir's best idiomatic themes and settings. All taking place in Reno, these scenes kick off with first the independent women, and then the suburban setting. Within that setting are more independent women, and plenty alcohol. 

The next scene is in a casino, not a likely setting for an innocent divorcee perhaps, but a great place for Americana to wash up against itself - - and the scene right after that is back into perfect suburbia, where it's all iceboxes and radio sets, a friendly doggie and a double murder out of nowhere.

Hell's Half Acre (1954)

Hell's Half Acre (1954) is a female seeker film noir about a woman who travels to Hawaii to investigate her missing or dead racketeer husband.

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.

High Wall (1947)

High Wall (1947) is a wife-murder mystery amnesia psychiatric PTSD ex-serviceman prison noir starring Audrey Totter, Robert Taylor and Herbert Marshall.

From its exciting opening sequence in which ex-mercenary flyer Steven Kenet (Robert Taylor) crashes his car into a river, trying to cover the evident strangulation murder of his wife with a suicide, to its traversing of the prison system for the criminally insane, up until its drug-induced truth-finding denouement, High Wall is exciting, fantastic, serious, dopey and features a proper film noir evil villain, a cool-blooded bad-doer who commits the most callous killings  — in order to save his chances at career promotion within the business of religious book publishing.

The Man I Love (1947)

The Man I love (1947) is not the most classifiable of film noir productions from the 1940s but it does say plenty about the style and the era.

It's also potentially a rare film noir in that it attempts to close in on the female experience of family life, dating, night life and petty criminality. Gender roles are clear in The Man I Love, as they are in all cinema of the 1940s. But they are still overturned in places.

And if you have found the overturning of social norms in the cinema of the 1940s, you have almost always certainly found film noir, even if your movie doesn't feature paranoia, corruption and the dark criminality and murder more normally associated with the style.

The Man I Love is not an immediately obvious placement in the film noir canon, and yet with its female seeker hero in the form of Ida Lupino, working her way through night clubs on the West Coast, this film has noir chops to spare.

Phantom Lady (1944)

Phantom Lady (1944) is a classic wrongfully accused lousy husband fantasy murder mystery film noir, a  luckless, dark and erotic tale of crime, generally in what is known as society’s underbelly.  

In Phantom Lady (Robert Siodmark, 1944, starring Franchot Tone, Ella Raines, Alan Curtis, Elisha Cook, Jr, Thomas Gomez and Regis Toomey) we have all of that on show, and more  

It’s one of the most purely enjoyable film noirs out there — unpretentious, fast and pleasing to watch. 

It has a frantic ‘rape by jazz’ drum scene that is famed through all cinema, and is a high point of the sub-style which we may carelessly call The Female Seeker Hero noir.

Black Angel (1946)

Black Angel (1946) is a mystery female seeker hero lousy husband alcoholic amnesia film noir from the heart of the classic noir period.

Jean-Luc Godard said that all you need for a movie is a gun and a girl — and bien sur, Monsieur Godard knew his noir.

Certainly, Black Angel (1946) satisfies Godard’s wisdom within one minute.

There’s a lot of noir in that first minute of Black Angel. 

Darkness, shadows, the down-at-heel, a glamorous girl with a gun, and piece of music that is going to haunt everyone right to their graves.  

Black Angel is a classic noir and as a signpost into the magic of the media in question, consider it as fantastical elements. This part of the story and the weirdness of ambience, focused in dreamlike and ridiculous assertions, that are more nightmare like in fact, this is a hallmark more than any other to show how 40s noir was the very crucible of mystery and crime cinemas many subsequent genres.

Destination Murder (1950)

Destination Murder (1950) is a blackmail and murder mystery queer-coded cinema-fantasy delivery boy fantasy psychopathic gang leader fantasy female seeker hero classic Edward L. Cahn film and also a classic film noir, by any sane and sober measure of the style, and doubtless listed as such because as far as Edward L. Cahn film noir output goes and is, this must be his noir masterpiece, the most classical and memorable of his out pout in that style and canon, Cahn's classic expression of the classic film noir style, and perfection ahoy.

In the 1940s and 1950s, the female seeker hero was a new twist in storytelling, and she was unique to film noir. 

Destination Murder (1950) is a good time. It is a film of stupidity greed and fo sho sho fire murder. It is not possible to relate any information regarding this cine-fayre without mention of the player piano which is a large part of its attraction.