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.

The Conspirators (1944)

The Conspirators (1944) is an espionage and resistance romance and adventure film noir made by Jean Negulesco, and starring Hedy Lamarr and Paul Henreid.

Despite its wartime time and the complexities of wartime spying and resistance and the very real and sometimes unreal presence of the Nazis, the set-up of this wartime noir is classicly typical of the style - - a man and a woman, both of whom are fleeing from their pasts, accidentally meet and he falls for her - - big time.

A chance meeting, indicative of the noirish fate of many a wartime film noir protagonist. He in particular feels that the past can never harm them, and urges his new love to forget it.

Detective Story (1951)

Detective Story (1951) is a classic stage play brought top screen film noir psychological police drama directed by William Wyler and starring Kirk Douglas and Eleanor Parker, among many more.

It's not the most obvious film noir but makes up for that in a mighty cast, with a mighty punch, based on a play by Sidney Kingsley. This picture also brings up the tricky subject of police brutality — something that should have been against the Production Code of the time — and yet which still forms the central moral aspect of this piece.

Detetcive Story is a brilliant cop-on-the-edge narrative, a form familiar to film noir. Kirk Douglas is that cop, every bit as tense and nervous as Robert Ryan in On Dangerous Ground (1951); or maybe Sterling Hayden in Crime Wave (1953).

Alias Nick Beal (1947)

Alias Nick Beal (1947) is a fantasy-mystery film noir with occasionally spiritual overtones, which tries in its way to re-tell the Faust myth, setting it in the milieu of American state and domestic politics.

Although Thomas Mitchell receives third billing in Alias Nick Beal (1947), he is the central character, whose rather erratic journey we follow, as he discovers that politics is messier than he thought, and that simply wanting to clean up the city, is never going to be enough.

Supporting this journey are Ray Milland who plays the eponymous Nick Beal, who is in fact none other the Lucifer himself, at work on the city streets and in the salons of offices of 1940s America.

At the very least, the appearance of the devil in Faustian form, in a fedora and in the guise of Ray Milland, makes for a new and effective take on the film noir punishment and redemption motif. 

Gilda (1946)

Gilda (1946) is a classic film noir love triangle murder mystery directed by Charles Vidor, which in many ways represents the fantastical apogee of the noir style with its romantic mystery, intense and strange relationships, and its obsessive characters, unsure of themselves in the mazes of deceit, crime and love in which they find themselves.

Gilda is less of a love story than many a similar film noir from the era, and in fact its characters often talks of hate. 

The star of the film is the gloriously cinematic Rita Hayworth in the title role, perhaps one of her best ever roles, and certainly one in which she seems to powerfully upstage and out-perform everyone around her.

The Big Clock (1948)

The Big Clock (1948) a classy and classic film noir race against the clock movie starring Ray Milland, and Charles Laughton, is a fairly unique entry in the canon.

Ray Milland is a reporter in a news corporation, tasked with solving a complex situation of his own making, and mostly set in the ultra-high-modern offices of his employer.

This newspaper office is unlike any other in film noir. The more usual film noir newspaper offices are kinda drab and somewhat realistic, and may look like those featured in Fritz Lang's While The City Sleeps (1956). The publisher's offices in The Big Clock are as uber-modern as any of the period, and the sets throughout are fascinating.

The look is dynamic, and sharp, to match the technology which was booming, burgeoning in fact into the real life media corporations that would begin their march to world domination only a few years late, in the 1950s.

My Name Is Julia Ross (1945)

One of the best times you can have if you crave a sixty-five minute paranoid woman film noir, is My Name Is Julia Ross (1945), starring Nina Foch.

Should there be madness in your script and the stretching of credibility, and should your script also be offering some subtle social comment, then there will be film noir.

The theme of there being a woman-in-danger ― or as the producers might prefer it ― to call it exactly what it is in their minds  ― the paranoid woman ― is a firm film noir fave.

Nina Foch is one of many who had a bash at this ― note: you can tell she is a paranoid woman, because she is shot in bed. The paranoid woman is always filmed in bed, often clutching the covers. It's one of the more obvious signs of the trope. Bed is where these paranoid women often are!

Nina Foch however keeps the suspense on high throughout. The script never strays from her dilemma, which is just as well, because as with other films in this style, once examined, the set-up will be revealed as preposterous. It's one of the other better genre tropes and why it makes this psychological mayhem the fun time it is.

This is all happening in your marriage!