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.

The Undercover Man (1949)

The Undercover Man (1949) is a Joseph H. Lewis procedural Capone-inspired cops and gangsters corruption and organised crime oddly neglected G-man IRS Burnett Guffey class-act street photography special gangland mob boss and determined cop chase-off class but not classic crime film noir with Glenn Ford, Nina Foch, Barry Kelley, Judith Warren, James Whitmore, George Pappas, David Bauer and Howard St. John. 

The Reckless Moment (1949)

The Reckless Moment (1949) is a murder and blackmail domestic noirodrama Christmas film noir woman's picture suspense love melodrama and tragedy film noir classic of suburban panic and paranoia with Joan Bennett and James Mason, and a classic film noir as well, supported by Geraldine Brooks, directed by Max Ophüls and suggestive of the Suburban Disturbin 1950s to come, with the additional actor talents of Henry O'Neill, Shepperd Strudwick, David Bair and Roy Roberts as Nagel, and of course, Frances E. Williams.

Under Capricorn (1949)

We return to that felicitous juncture at which the season consecrated to Joseph Cotten unites itself with the prospective current of Alfred Hitchcock.

 Under Capricorn (1949) is an Alfred Hitchcock brooding moral historical sinister housekeeper and class conflict romance outback ranch nine to ten minute tracking shot paranoid women and gaslighting and past catching up with you alcohol themed antipodean love triangle drama classic color film noir farewell to the forties tale of the masochistic extremes of marital fidelity and a gloomy amalgam of shared guilt abjured desire complete with a drugged drink starring Ingrid Bergman, Jospeh Cotten, Cecil Parker, Michael Wilding, Margaret Leighton (as Milly, Flusky's scheming housekeeper), Denis O'Dea as Mr Corrigan, Jack Watling and Harcourt Williams.

The Third Man (1949)

The high point of the Joseph Cotten season may be one of the most famous motion pictures of all time.

The Third Man (1949) is a milestone classic film noir Carol Reed and Alexander Korda and Graham Greene collaborative drama of post-war Trümmerfilm and unconventional romance while also being an unconventional thriller of confused ethics in a devastated world-themed zither-thou-goest intrigue in partitioned post-war Vienna multiply layered writer hero voiceover contraband underground mainstream masterpiece of collaboration and all time cinema favourite, indeed in 1999, the British Film Institute voted The Third Man the greatest British film of all time, while later in time, after long mature reflection, in 2011, a poll for Time Out ranked it the second-best British film ever; and starring Joseph Cotten, Du kannst darauf wetten, dass er es ist!, and Alida Valli and Orson Welles, with Trevor Howard, Bernard Lee, and some cats in film noir also for completeness of theme.

Conspirator (1949)

Conspirator (1949) is a double agent British espionage and early Cold War Soviet versus England romance and intrigue anti-USSR propaganda spy thriller starring Elizabeth Taylor, Robert Taylor, Honor Blackman and Robert Flemyng, in a Victor Saville directed tale of female belittlement and abuse in the honourable name of spying for the Soviets, while protecting the integrity of the Brits.

Round it thusly spins, not so fast, but with a fairly interesting admixture of fog and domesticity, with some cold and lonely English wetland landscapes to break up the misery.

The Threat (1949)

The Threat (1949) is a prison break revenge and violence cons on the run hostage procedural Felix E. Feist classic era film noir psychopathic bully drama with Charles McGraw, Virginia Grey, Michael O'Shea, Anthony Caruso, Julie Bishop and Frank Conroy.

Felix E. Feist's The Threat (1949) is a violent, accelerated bullet of a film. Clocking in at barely over an hour, it encapsulates the claustrophobic essence of noir within its limited timeframe. There is no flab to be found; every scene is propelled by urgency, and every character stands in the shadow of mortal danger. The film traffics in archetypes: the brutal criminal, the loyal detective, the compromised woman, and the hapless bystander. 

All The Kings Men (1949)

All The Kings Men (1949) is a realpolitik rise and fall with alcohol courtroom and firebrand wielding mob Southern corruption and fidelity, local and state influence peddling kickback and malfeasance drama with more film noir chops than may be immediately evident, and starring Broderick Crawford, Mercedes McCambridge, John Ireland and Joanne Dru.

There’s a long tradition of films about ambitious nobodies clawing their way to fame and power, only to reveal themselves as fakes. Citizen Kane and All About Eve are often held up as the gold standard — stylish, intelligent dissections of ambition, ego, and betrayal. Hey No Kings LOL!

Der Ruf (1949)

Der Ruf (1949) is a returning professor as opposed to returning veteran post World War Two post-Nazi anti-anti-Semitism in German society drama Trümmerfilm starring Fritz Kortner and Johanna Hofer and directed by Josef von Báky.

Josef von Báky's 1949 film Der Ruf, known in English as The Last Illusion, occupies a unique and unsettling place in the postwar cinematic reckoning with Nazism. The film unearths the persistence of fascist ideologies within a defeated Germany, where the symbolic collapse of the Third Reich fails to extinguish the embers of antisemitic animus. 

Yellow Sky (1949)

Yellow Sky (1949) is a dark and noiresque based-on-The Tempest-by-William Shakespeare salt flats ghost town band of robbers no honour among thieves atmospheric ensemble cast film noir western pistol-packin tomboy cinematic presentation of many common noir and western themes.

Super fine composition work complements Gregory Peck's desire to do good and right which compromises his loyalty to his gang of evil-doers and is driven by his growing love for the tomboy in question, played by Anne Baxter, inexplicably living on the edge with her old grandpops on an abandoned movie set.

His love is more than forceful, and not just because this is the 1940s, but rape is more than suggested in their first sexual encounter in which Peck angrily forces himself upon Baxter. She resists but later relents.

The Walking Hills (1949)

The Walking Hills (1949) is a hybrid treasure-hunt and hunted man adventure Western film noir in which a disparate cast of archetypes head into Death Valley to look for some lost gold, that they believe to be buried in the sands known as the walking hills, for their ability to shift and change topographical form.

The sand shifts and the land changes, and there is sand blown in storms and sand erodes the hard materials of civilisation, before blowing into people's souls, shovelled into the wind, and there is a shovel fight and a lot of shifty eyes across the campfire, as well as brilliant blues music from Josh White.

I Shot Jesse James (1949)

I Shot Jesse James (1949) is a wild west historical-mythical hero-plagued-by-guilt and self-disgust film noir western concerning one of the pivotal motions in the story of the national formation of the super-historic late nineteenth century force that was to become the United States, retelling in its suitably sanitised and Samuel Fullerised force to story of the the shooting of Jesse James by Robert Ford, whose name inspired a rhyme scheme that draws the tourists and the film makers to this very day.

It is a rocky period in history and it is a question indeed as to whether I Shot Jesse James (1949) might categorically qualify for either the western noir or the historical noir designation, for weirdly in effect it is both.

Lust for Gold (1949)

Lust for Gold (1949) is a bookend narration-style lost goldmine murder greed and deception lousy husband historical western meets modern day media film noir of the western stamp, one of several noirs which combine past and present in a treasure huntin narrative.

All of which is made perfectly desperate by the acting of Ida Lupino, who does in the great noir tradition perform the most desperate of acting styles, making of everything a high stakes showdown, as is fitting of her role as the First Lady of Noir.

Colorado Territory (1949)

Colorado Territory (1949) is a Raoul Walsh train-heist noir western remake of the director's own class act 1941 film noir High Sierra.

Colorado Territory is a fun-laced trawl through the mental badlands of the noirish west making live action commitment to many facets of the styles beloved of the era, both the noir, and the west, the male staples of the period.

Raoul Walsh's Colorado Territory (1949) is, yes here we are to say it for once and for all, my God it doth do stand as a testament to the director's ability to transmute his earlier noir creations into the stark, rugged aesthetic of the Western genre. 

Rimfire (1949)

Rimfire (1949) is a shoddy wild west justice undercover cop revenge journalism and media mystery semi-supernatural ghost of a gambler low budget thriller western film noir starring Reed Hadley, and directed by B. Reeves Eason.

Eason, who directed his first film in 1915, proving something about the Hollywood machine, and it must have been wonderful for him to see it in these glorious nascent and then silver and golden stages. This film starts too with a stage, a rather arbitrary and somehow unexciting stagecoach chase, which trails round the bends in a high speed action for the sake of action-sequence.

House of Strangers (1949)

House of Strangers (1951) is a corporate crime Italian-American family drama revenge and rags to riches corruption film noir with fragments of boxing noir and courtroom noir included, which stars Edward G. Robinson as a patriarch in a family of boys who can't sort their succession planning.

Richard Conte is the star of the show and its his story we follow as he smoothly and suavely negotiates this house of would-be strangers, acting as his own father's attorney in the courtroom and beyond, convinced that his rich and domineering banker of a dad is innocent of making his fortune on the backs of the misery of others.

This misery is present as usury, played out by character actor Tito Vuolo, the man who became the stand-by Italian American in many a film noir.

Døden er et kjærtegn (Death is a caress) (1949)

Døden er et kjærtegn (Death is a caress) (1949) is a heart-breaking cold-hearted Norwegian lousy husband and motor car infidelity and murder shocker romance film noir, often cited as Norway's first film noir, and celebrated also for the fact that one of Norway's leading female directors shot it.

A wordy, pensive and petulant slow burner of sadness and emotional decline in the frank face of sex, Døden er et kjærtegn (Death is a caress) (1949) runs many a risk of falling a foul of the lack of Americana and the singular lack of a national cinematic voice, in order to achieve its grim ends.

As a noir worthy of any nation, Døden er et kjærtegn (Death is a caress) (1949) is a story freed from World War 2 and shot in a recently occupied country, which might make cause for thought.

Black Magic (1949)

Black Magic (1949) is an historical Orson Welles film noir hypnosis ham and history fest of magical and wildly entertaining crowd and close up, sumptuous set piece dark and magical fun-based frolics of the late forties, with some Dumas-based class projections as the piece adopts the narrative of the novel of the same by Alexander Pere.

For oddity and oddity alone the first scene of this spectacular cast of hundreds of extras spectacular festacular magicianical historical Francophile tale of society ambition and absolute Welles-ian pride of personality leading to a hubris-driven fall, has for no apparent reason other than the whimsie or the dandification of the reels, an entretemps between Dumas Snr played with bold waggery by Berry Kroeger, and Dumas Jnr, played with gentle ungruffery by the normally gruffed up Raymond Burr.

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.

The Bribe (1949)

The Bribe (1949) is a classic exotic lousy husband post-war Central American murder mystery cop film noir with Ava Gardner, Robert Taylor, Vincent Price and Charles Laughton, in a kind of noir-by-numbers take on many staples of the style, combing noirish elementata in a perfect combination late forties thriller.

There is a lot to see, not the least of it is Robert Taylor and Vincent price, sitting together and looking so kinda similar that it is not just eerie, but a sign that things are going to be a lot of fun.