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.

Soho Incident (1956)

Spin a Dark Web (1956) is a Vernon Sewell Limey noir telephony, gambling and boxing femme-fatale and fatally suckered sap on the run London gangland film noir studio and street filmed pot-boiler thriller with elements of some of that famed fifties and later forties male post-war disillusionment and a small home invasion segment as suburbia is disturbed by gangland and its femmes and thugs.

Miami Exposé (1956)

Miami Exposé (1956) is a crummy cop Miami based swamp wrangling political conniving over legalised gambling in Florida bribery and murder and faked death airboat and Cadillac bright white light cruiser film noir with first rate desk to camera footage and decent moments of driving and aerial scenery around the fastest growing city in America, decade after decade, the city that was never a town and the tropical miracle that is Miami.

Fred F. Sears, a director tethered to Columbia Pictures and the watchful eye of producer Sam Katzman, carved out a career from the frayed cloth of low-budget filmmaking. His oeuvre, stitched together from an array of genres including science fiction, juvenile delinquency, and war-time tales, finds a peculiar resonance within the crime genre. 

The Lady Gambles (1949)

The Lady Gambles (1949) is a gambling addiction, social and moral descent romance women's film noir starring Barbara Stanwyck, turning in a stunning and brutal performance as a woman who is overcome with addiction, so as to the point of ruination.

As the film opens prepare to see Barbara Stanwyck punched 11 or 12 times in the face by three mooks in an alley, each bruising face-breaking blow leaving a great ouch across the style. It has to be one of the more terrifying noir beatings.

This leads to a hospital managed by a cynical hard smoking medical stoic played by John Hoyt, and the whole flashback, fading screen, voiceover here-is-how-it happened commences, and Double Indemnity style, the story unravels, although it ain't such a hot story.

Hoodlum Empire (1952)

Hoodlum Empire (1952) is a semi-documentary corporate noir managerial Kefevaur hearing inspired film noir starring Luther Adler as a managerial darklord of gambling facing up to a Senate hearing.

Solid film noir technique and actors including a star turn from Claire Trevor and the normative mustachoed noirisms of Brian Donlevy.

For a film that fix to flips flashbacks like flying filmic tales there is epic wobbly fades and wipes to indicate the passage of time, back to World War 2, offering a creditable treasure trove of tropes for all to look and learn.

Johnny O'Clock (1947)

Johnny O'Clock (1947) is a sinister snappy-dialogue murder and finally it has to be said classic film noir which is a lot of fun and is surely one of the hidden gems of the who noir effort of the 1940s.

Complex in approach and yet diverting in its charm and snazz, Johnny O'Clock is a waltz through the film noir style, able to copy with mystery, murder, deception and some vile violence, before it wraps up and paces stylishly through its conclusion.

New York gambling house operator Johnny O'Clock played by Dick Powell, is junior partner in a smart  casino with Guido Marchettis (Thomas Gomez) and Chuck Blayden (Jim Bannon), the latter being a crooked cop. 

Smart Money (1931)

Smart Money (1931) is a Pre-Code Proto-Noir comedy caper starring Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney, playing larger than life the all-American obsession with gambling.

This overbearing national pastime which had flourished via the stock tickers of the 1920s, resulting in the almighty and catastrophic crash of that same decade, is here presented in every popular form available, including horse racing, quiet gambling with dice in the back room and it appears the front room of the quiet small town barber Nick Venizelos, played by Edward G. Robinson.

Nick is a swell fellow and a charmer, and considered a champion gambler by all who know him. The back room seems like a swell place too, where the wisecracking cracks all night long and Nick and the others laugh it up no end, often at the uncomfortable expense of their African American 'boy' 'Snake Eyes' — played by an uncredited John Larkin.

Blues in the Night (1941)

Blues in the Night (1941) is a blues musical roadhouse road movie jazz band drinking and gambling brutal love and betrayal American Dream style rags to riches to institution for the insane violence against women national narrative love steals a man's creative powers hustle and dream montage rail-ridin left-leanin guy becomes a nobody rosy-posy monkey on a stick fast talkin comedy that is among the most fun of all film noir. 

Fun and noir are not the most common of screen-fellows, but this fast-moving wise-cracking funny and feeling love adventure into music, has more packed into its hour and a half than many of its slower contemporaries.

711 Ocean Drive (1950)

Vintage Columbia Pictures 1950 crime film noir 711 Ocean Drive, starring Edmond O'Brien, Joanne Dru and Otto Kruger, tells the story of how an ambitious and happy go lucky expert in telephony becomes a mean and vicious gang-land leader.

It's a wandering tale of crime, bookmaking and the perils of making a fast and succesful rise in the world of gangsterism.

It leads us from the small bookies of coastal California, through the high lives and low lives of its gangster antagonists, to wind up on and within the Boulder Dam in Arizona, where the gangster meets his inevitable end.

Edmond O'Brien is known from other contemporary film noirs such as The Killers, A Double Life and The Web (all 1947), to D.O.A.and Backfire in 1950.

And he does good guys just he does bad guys, and here we see him doing both.

Sure, he starts off as the wisecracking and fun telephone engineer, who likes nothing more than to bet in the horses.

But when he has the bookmaking system explained to him, and the importance of telephony, he is offered a job that he can't refuse.

Force of Evil (1948)

Force of Evil (1948) is a classic New York numbers racket conflicted brothers pre-HUAC and voiced-over film noir with many biblical allusions (Cain and Abel, Judas's betrayal, stigmata) which pits a rising Wall Street lawyer against the modernising principles of post-war capitalism and the fascinating blue-collar practise of playing the numbers game.

Film noir is darkness, film noir is crime and film noir is human folly . . . writ large and personal, as a force of evil.  Film noir renders a cinema of weakness, deceit, lust-inspired crime, greed and mid-century urban survival.  

In the film noir city disasters are acted out in bars, cars and street corners, or in cheerless apartments, suggestive of a kind of homelessness.

Bob le flambeur (1956)

Bob le flambeur (1956)

For the lover of film noir, and the French dedicatee of American cinema, there is Jean-Pierre Melville's 1956 movie Bob le flambeur.

Mai oui, Bob le flambeur is a French film, but in many ways it could barely be more American.

It was made by director Jean-Pierre Melville who was obsesed with all things American, and who loved the gangster films of the 1930s, 40s and 50s so much, that he made many of his own.

In Bob Le Flambeur, we find is the first great hommage to noir, for Bob Le Flambeur is an outsider's view of American cinema, an attempt to make an American style film on foreign soil.  

The story features many film noir elements — it is set in the criminal underworld of a big city, and features a loner who at various times works on both sides of the law, even though he is essentially a crook. The urban settings and the odd camera angles will also be familiar to viewers of classic film noir, as will be one of the main themes — a man undone because of a woman.