X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963)

X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963) is a classic cosmic horror psychedelic parody Roger Corman mad scientist acid casualty and addiction groovy lounge music and experimental sound masterpiece of comedy terror and inverted American dream Vegas and sideshow apocalyptic guignol Lovecraftian scientific hubris Pathécolor pulp science fiction horror film produced and directed by Roger Corman, from a script by Ray Russell and Robert Dillon, and starring Ray Milland as a scientist who develops a method to extend the range of his vision, which results in unexpected complications, with Don Rickles, Diana Van der Vlis and veteran character actor Morris Ankrum.

Forbidden Planet (1956)

Forbidden Planet (1956) is a science fiction mad scientist classic 50s robot and monster outer space adventure movie based on a play and in its way an acme of the day as only in Henry Luce's America could it be quite normative and unquestioned to describe space exploration, as the voiceover does, as 'the process of conquest and colonisation', distasteful and camp male meathead dream opera magna landmark space thriller cinematographic classic and pioneering superior sound effect keystone one of a kind enduring id versus ego genre defying movie in which Dr. Morbius gives a description of the Krell race, particularly regarding how many shafts there were, their size, and the machines only for a red monster (alive only because of Morbius' thoughts) to come down the valley to the electro-field and kill one of the crew members, directed by Fred M. Wilcox from a script by Cyril Hume that was based on a film story by Allen Adler and Irving Block, and starring Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis, and Leslie Nielsen, and shot in Eastmancolor and CinemaScope.

The Fountainhead (1949)

The Fountainhead (1949) is an Ayn Rand adaptation and scripted hyper-melodramatic didactic economics and social science charged pre-post modern pre-relativist objetivist and more than just a little film noir tinged melodrama of rags to riches UnAmercian Dream-style semi-speculative cross class dedication to art and architectural and individualistic vision unromantic romance set-up with its no promises and no obligations ultar-objectivist marriages alternate reality white suprematic media manipulation and propagandist anarcho-capitalist post-communist anti-communist media demagogue public opinion forming artisitic vindication of terrorism in the name of individualism impotent platonic-erotic love triangle drama directed by King Vidor and starring Patricia Neal, Gary Cooper, Raymond Massey, Kent Smith, Henry Hull, Moroni Olsen und Ray Collins, yah, Ray Collins is in this film produced by Henry Blanke.

Red River (1948)

Red River (1948) is a classic Howard Hawks non-noir Indian wrestlin cattle nestin steer brandin wandering epistolary epic narrative forming cowboy bangin homo-incestuo-erotic hard as nails hard bargaining pig headed bullying and unapologetically stampeding male egotistical alpha male patriarchal bard nosed bully-boss overlong and racist gripping dramatic super right wing cattle drivin hold you to your word or I will kill you preachin disastrous middle class white Americans out west in the scrubby wilds of a sound stage on which John Wayne will shoot ya just for BEING A QUITTER FFS starring a morally darkened John Wayne ("Watch it!") 

From Here to Eternity (1953)

From Here to Eternity (1953) is a wartime romance and martial bullying melodrama ensemble cast boxing or perhaps anti-boxing Oscar winning lousy husband controversial extra-marital foamy beach body embracing classic tale of some soldiers and their lovers stationed in Hawaii in the months leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor directed by Fred Zinnemann and starring  Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, and Frank Sinatra, Deborah Kerr and Donna Reed, Ernest Borgnine, Philip Ober, Jack Warden, Mickey Shaughnessy, Claude Akins, and George Reeves, and nope it's no noir, nor noir styled film nor film noir, with little of the noir style, but it's here because we can't talk about 1953 without giving it a shout, and it has many of our beloved noir heroes in it, within the cast ye ken, plus we got to have a film classics sidebar and this is where that belongs, film classics sidebar.

Kitty Foyle (1940)

Kitty Foyle (1940) is an almost or proto feminist classic woman's picture white collar girl class and women's rights flashback romance and melodrama Oscar-winning smoochie love and marriage triangle tale of high sadness and existential mid-century womanly angst in both Philly and Manhattan, facing death of hope and an illegitmate baby, and really not the only film of 1940 to make a massive deal out of a snow globe, starring Ginger Rogers, Katharine Stevens, Dennis Morgan, and James Craig, based on Christopher Morley's 1939 bestselling novel of the same name. 

The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)

The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) is a Hollywood-based flashback-told drama of hubris and mania in film production, of betrayal and ambition and which shines a harsh critical light on the lives and careers of the producers of the era, and earlier, notably looking at David O. Selznick, or maybe not since he did not sue Metro about it, and maybe it was Daryl F. Zanuck, or Val Lewton or Orson Wells, and a five Academy Award winning ironic homage to Hollywood showing fragmentary multiple POV the ruthless eighteen-year rise and fall of a tyrannical, manipulative Hollywood movie tycoon, directed by Vincente Minelli and Starring Kirk Douglas, Lana Turner, Barry Sullivan, Walter Pidgeon, Dick Powell, Gloria Grahame, Paul Stewart and Leo G. Carroll.

All About Eve (1950)

All About Eve (1950) is a six Academy Award winning all time classic best films of all time cynical and feminist masterpiece of late golden age Hollywood acting, screen-writing and direction telling of deceit, ambition and betrayal in theatreland, which was written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and produced by Darryl F. Zanuck and based on the 1946 short story (and subsequent 1949 radio drama) The Wisdom of Eve by Mary Orr, although Orr does not receive a screen credit, and stars Bette Davis as Margo Channing, a highly regarded but aging Broadway star, and Anne Baxter as Eve Harrington, an ambitious young fan who manoeuvres herself into Channing's life, ultimately threatening Channing's career and her personal relationships, as well as starring George Sanders, Celeste Holm, Gary Merrill, and Hugh Marlowe, and features Thelma Ritter, Marilyn Monroe in one of her earliest roles, Gregory Ratoff, Barbara Bates and Walter Hampden.

A Star is Born (1954)

A Star is Born (1954) is a Judy Garland comeback star vehicle musical scratch the surface portrayal of Hollywood stardom and its machinery love story and doomed romance tale of alcohol, fame, and every day studio and star system misogyny, big production piece musical action and suicide and love and success and failure and the scheming folly of the industry that produced it, and while not only not a film noir but emphatically not a noir nor noir film, is still in its narrative and meta-narrative and reflective qualities, one of the darker musicals one might see, in its reflections made upon the place and time of Hollywood at the end of the golden era of the silver screen.

The Best Years of our Lives (1946)

The Best Years of our Lives (1946) is a returning veteran epic post-war romance and social adjustment classic and sweeping melodrama of PTSD, alcoholism, social manners and physical disability charting America's adjustment to the post war order with broken limbs, broken relationships, broken aircraft and civilian indifference, directed by William Wyler and starring Dana Andrews, Harold Russell, Myrna Loy, Cathy O'Donnell, Frederic March, Virginia Mayo, Teresa Wright, Steven Cochran and with best of all perhaps, Hoagy Carmichael on piano.

Bringing Up Baby (1938)

Bringing Up Baby (1938) is a screwball thirties film classic classic Howard Hawks zany heiress and hen-pecked fiancée comedy proto femme fatale use of gay reverse stereotypical gender role bumbling sexless workaholic themes of exploitation, and the impact of colonialism and the removing of animals from their natural habitat madcap fast talkin improvised and anarchic universally acclaimed seminal item of Americana as well as a semantic and semiotic artistic act of gender and social denotation starring Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant and May Robson and Charles Ruggles and Walter Catlett, as well as Barry Fitzgerald as Aloysius Gogarty, Mrs. Random's gardener.

The League of Gentlemen (1960)

De la saison Basil Dearden, c’est le moment absolument suprême, certainement l’un des moments forts.

The League of Gentlemen (1960) is a Basil Dearden criminal melodrama disgruntled and disgraced returning veteran multiple lousy husband heist and caper movie from the cusp of the sixties and the final gasp of the fifties before the post war spirit collapsed into an English society as irony as empire ends style of comedy noir starring Jack Hawkins, Nigel Patrick, Roger Livesey, Richard Attenborough, Bryan Forbes, Kieron Moore, Terence Alexander, Norman Bird, Robert Coote, Melissa Stribling, and Nanette Newman.

The Front Page (1931)

The Front Page (1931) is a journalism and media Lewis Milestone pre-code screwball death row telephony comedy classic United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" public domain brilliant early talkie perfectly transferring into screen terms a stage classic of the twenties ribald rat-a-tat dialogue movie creation which imagines into life a new American archetype, the fast-talking, hard-drinking newshound who'll do anything for a scoop, starring Adolphe Menjou as Walter Burns, Pat O'Brien as Hildebrand "Hildy" Johnson, Mary Brian as Peggy Grant, Edward Everett Horton as Roy V. Bensinger, Walter Catlett as Jimmy Murphy, George E. Stone as Earl Williams, Mae Clarke as Molly Malloy, Slim Summerville as Irving Pincus, Matt Moore as Ernie Kruger, Frank McHugh as "Mac" McCue, Clarence Wilson as Sheriff Peter B. "Pinky" Hartman. 

Margin for Error (1943)

Margin For Error (1943) is a flashback Otto Preminger anti-Nazi screwball German American Bund, or the German American Federation (German: Amerikadeutscher Bund, Amerikadeutscher Volksbund, AV), German-American Nazi organization military and beat cop forced Nazi marriage with black comedy Jewishness versus Nazi gambling goose-stepper lousy husband and abused wife black comedy by Otto Preminger and starring Otto Preminger, and Joan Bennett, based on a play by Clare Boothe Luce and somewhat improved upon the play in its own way, starring Milton Berle in classic comic form, with Carl Esmond as Baron Max von Alvenstor, Howard Freeman as Otto Horst (the American Führer), Clyde Fillmore as Dr. Jennings, and Poldi Dur as Frieda (as Poldy Dur) personal maid to the villainous Karl Baumer (General Consul of Germany), whackily portrayed by Preminger, and delivered with good Jewish humour and a constant comic return to the name of the character played by Berle — Officer Moe Finkelstein.

The Green Man (1956)

A classic in its own style, time and place, and an essential highpoint of any Basil Dearden season.

The Green Man (1956) is splendid if not classic British comedy two act farcical assassination Basil Dearden black comedy about international terrorism with a zany lady orchestrazia, starring Alistair Sim, George Cole, Jill Adams, Avril Angers, Terry Thomas LOL, Dora Bryan, John Chandos, Colin Gordon, Cyril Chamberlain, Doris Yorke, Vivienne Wood, Arthur Brough, Marie Burke, Peter Bull, Willoughby Goddard, Arthur Lowe, Michael Ripper and Terence Alexander.

Dead of Night (1945)

Your every Basil Dearden season must include this delighting wonder of British forties filmation, a classic of several kinds and dear to all  Deardenians.

Dead of Night (1945) is a super classic anthology supernatural horror film noir themed portmanteau mixture of ghoulish spooky weird and comic misadventure with a framed narrative and fever pitched all time classic ventriloquist dummy anthology film in which the narratives spiral from spectral visitations to prophetic terror to outright, feral possession, each tale recounted by those who survived its ordeal. These confessions are bound together by a single, unsettling guest who claims an impossible intimacy with the house, the host, and the assembled company, recognizing them not from life but from a recurring nightmare he has endured relentlessly, a nightmare that has rehearsed this very gathering long before it came grotesquely true.

Duel in the Sun (1946)

Our sojourn with Cotten continues softly, its rewards modest, humane, and widely felt. Yes, indeed, this may not be his film, but the Cotten retrospective continues in a tone of soft confidence, gratifying precisely because it does not overreach.

Duel in the Sun (1946) is a big budget, trashy, overblown, fuss and lust in the dust perfect and strange Technicolor violence against women and girls epic ethnically unengaged and super-classic Jennifer Jones ill-informed diegetically failing mainstream meta-normative-narrative and hegemonic conservatism-inducing psychological western family feud and patriarchal posturin' romance fantasy drama David O. Selznick dream cinematic vision directed by King Vidor, with several directors being left uncredited for their work in the film, such as Josef von Sternberg, William Dieterle, William Cameron Menzies, Otto Brower, Sidney Franklin and Selznick himself, while production unit managers Glenn Cook and William McGarry were also uncredited, and starring Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten, Gregory Peck, Herbert Marshall, Lillian Gish, Walter Huston, Butterfly McQueen and Lionel Barrymore.

Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Bride of Frankenstein (1935) is a classic Universal Monsters monster classic James Whale camp horror mad scientist angry torch-wielding mob driven queer coded Breen-positive historic recreational fantasy monster horror feature film sequel from the earliest most nascent era of screen creations both bestial in demeanour and possessed of a quasi-mythic savagery, marked by both vaudeville and a brutal, subhuman force, a movie which like its creatures, groans under the weight of its own deformity and beauty, respectively, with pile-driving feminist angst clashing misogynist tropery galore. 

To Be Or Not To Be (1942)

To Be Or Not To Be (1942) is not a film noir but as it is a theatreland mistaken identity German occupation of Poland romantic satire black comedy caper about the Holocaust, Nazism and Adolf Hitler and as such it is destined to feature on the classic film noir website, and though with little pedigree, wenn es überhaupt etwas ist, dann ist es kein Film Noir!

A comedy and as comedy does not age well of all the products and causes of the works of Hollywood, and of the few directors of the era that have no feet nor fingertips in film noir, Ernst Lubistch has no feet nor fingertips, non in film noir non, none.

An endless matinée, a film that works to eternity, one of the Hitler films and hard to conceive of in light of how magnificent it must be to portray the fascist in film, and there is film noir style, because if the shooting and the price of black and white, relax there is very little.

Casablanca (1942)

Casablanca (1942) is the one of a kind classic cinema anti-Nazi tale of war time love and intrigue which regularly appears in greatest film of all time compositions and not that often in classic film noir selections nor even moderate noir canons, nor even in the non-canonical and noir at a stretch.

Funny that Casablanca was not an instant hit and funny that your first thoughts are that the special effects are not that good for the greatest film of all time. 

By which you mean that the basic investment made in this greatest film of all time seems moderate to say the least. The aeroplane and some of the attending dressing of scene, the special effects.