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.

From the Earth to the Moon (1958)

The Cotten Sequence, or Joseph Cotten Season, proceeds with understated poise, its pleasures evenly shared, although obliging us to view this non-noir folly of fifties fantasia and filmation, we are not always best delighted.

From the Earth to the Moon (1958) is a Byron Haskin Jules Verne Civil War space rocket science fiction revenge and rivalry sane scientist drama featuring a cold war mutually assured destruction power that can destroy the earth action special effects adventure movie with Joseph Cotten, Debra Paget, George Sanders, Byron Haskin, Henry Daniell, Carl Esmond and Morris Ankrum. Oh cielo, questo non è un film noir!

Witness To Murder (1954)

Witness To Murder (1954) is a citizen sleuth misogyny and violence against women inept cop and de-Nazified murderer and sympathetic sceptic cop procedural LA based thriller with a rooftop denouement and paranoid woman in a racist sanatorium film noir from the early hey days of the victimisation of females genre of film noir, starring Barbara Stanwyck as the silly victim of a murderous persecution and George Sanders as a creepy killer guy, and Gary Merrill as a cop who believes nothing any woman says, because all women are dreamers and fantasists and cannot be trusted to look out a window without making up a whole murder plot.

Tales of Manhattan (1942)

Tales of Manhattan (1942) is an  accursed coat anthology portmanteau many star cast 1942 film which has solid noir quantities in the murder and intrigue elements, and in the alcohol and fated collapse of manhood elements, and of the femme fatale element too, the film is composed of these, and while full-billed melodrama, does have a significant noir-style and edge to its intense psychosexed up and indigently dangerous disaster stores, which are all based on the Mexican writer Francisco Rojas González's novel, Historia de un frac (Story of a Tailcoat) which he was not credited for, which he was not credited for, not credited at all, was it becauyse he was Mexican, and that would have spoiled the Manhattan vibe, I doubt it, he just was not credited, that's how it goes in Holly-hollywood?

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) is a historical supernatural film noir drama adaptation of the great decadent novel by the fop himself, the dandy of the decade, the finesse of the fin de siècle himself, Oscar Wilde.

Noir and special effects and noir and colour noir, and a peculiar observation that like The Woman in White (1949) it's a novel adaptation that stretches the patience of its period, proving words provide girth and are worth their weight in those heavy heavy reels and our tendency to like em short.

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. 

Foreign Correspondent (1940)

Foreign Correspondent (1940) is an early American period Alfred Hitchcock wartime journalism and media political adventure anti-Nazi propaganda espionage romance thriller chase and assumed identity movie, not in any sufficiency of the term as film noir, but most importantly a spy noir, and an espionage adventure, made noir almost with the advent of the twentieth century's best known bad types, the Nazis. 

Made in, for and about a morbid and bellicose hiatus period before the United States entered Word War II and when World War II had no name and is referred to as 'a general war', when Germany has invaded Poland but Russia is still in Alliance with Germany and Britain is at war of a sudden, while Holland is Nazified and occupied and makes up most of the set piece glory, most famously some windmill scene and scenery, amounting to some of the best and if not the best windmill film of the century.

The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (1945)

The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (1945) is a jealous invalid-sister paranoid woman small town family murder plot movie which takes the film noir style and its themes off of the city streets and into the middle class homes of a dull New Hampshire mill town.

Historical classical and purest high period Golden Age film noir does have a slight craze for mid century small town mill-centred drama. There are more than a few mill-town noirs. Among The Living (1941) is a classic mill-town noir, as is the amazing Bette Davis noir Beyond The Forest (1949). Purely classic mill town film noir

The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (1945) and any article about it, or discussion of its noir propensities must always come with an extra spoiler warning, extra to the universal spoiler warning of this website, and your every day moment of film exploration will be shattered if you have not seen this film noir and continue reading this.

Man Hunt (1941)

Man Hunt (1941) is a hunted man World War II anti-Nazi political romance drama thriller made by the master of plastering the paranoia far and wide and dep into and out of the cinematic shadows, yes it is Fritz Lang, the plasterer of these shadows, the far and beyond the pale of the scale past maestro of so many of the defining motions of film noir.

Man Hunt is one of Fritz Lang's most compelling films, showcasing his mastery in creating action-packed, humorous, and emotionally gripping thrillers. With the collaboration of superior scenarist Dudley Nichols, Lang crafted a literate and imaginatively photographed film that, despite occasional implausibility, captivates the audience from the start.

Rage in Heaven (1941)

Rage in Heaven (1941) is a mannered psychological jealous love and madness film noir from the early years of the psychological jealous love and madness noir period.

Intimate and wild, formatively dramatic, Rage in Heaven is naturally also served with a twist of vaudeville, because psychological harm was only communicable in this manner at the opening of the era, circa 1940 and 1941.

Psychology is a supernatural form for noir and romance cinema, spoken of in unfounded vagueness and mystery, often in authoritative or awed tones.

The vaudevillian doctors of early psychology are a cinematic class unto themselves and are more prominent and more interesting and contain more semiotic fare in the 1940s, than they do or appear to be in any other decade.

Hangover Square (1945)

Hangover Square (1945) is a classic historically-set amnesia film noir about madness, genius, weakness and manipulation, starring Laird Cregar, Linda Darnell and George Sanders.

Add to this some further elements of police psychology, the perils of artistic genius and a clash of class, and there emerges one of the best thrillers of the decade, albeit bizarre with facial pulls from Cregar, super-dramatic music from Bernard Herrmann, one of the cinema's greatest ever composers.

That and a whole host of Cockney side-fun, which serves to pull focus on the murderous madness which is at the centre of the action.

While The City Sleeps (1956)

While The City Sleeps (1956) by Fritz Lang is late enough in the cycle to be classed as knowing-noir - an almost self-aware example of the medium, that has mastered the tropes, themes, acting style and drama of the film noir phenomenon - enough to package up the groove and bottle it. 

While still a classic of the film noir style, many of the more significant tropes which formed the medium in the 1940s are curiously absent. While The City Sleeps is not a film of shadows, and neither is it a production heavy with cigarette smoke, hoods in hats and of course femmes fatales.

Still however, While The City Sleeps is considered by many to be a fine example of classic film noir.

It certainly has an A-list of film noir graduate class of 1956 noir as they come actors in it, including Ida Lupino, Dana Andrews, Thomas Mitchell and Howard Duff.

What makes this journalistic story of a psychopathic killer being caught by the press in concert with the cops a classic of film noir then? Perhaps it is because the story it tells of this killer loose in New York, as told by Fritz Lang, simply in and of itself contains enough material to be a Grade A example of the style, as it stood, towards the end of the cycle.

Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939)

Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939) was not just the first but one of the most convincing anti-Nazi films to come out of Hollywood's Golden Age.

Amazingly, it feels like it was made by a country that was already at war.

That's not the case though, and even though it would be another three years before the United States were actually at war with Germany, what is remarkable is that World War 2 had not even started by the time Confessions was made.

It is funnily enough pointed out somewhere around the midpoint, when Edward G. Robinson enters the film. Someone says that it feels like they are at war with Nazi Germany, but Edward G., playing an FBI spy hunter here, corrects this erroneous interpretation of events. 

"No," he says. "It's the other way round. It's as if Germany was at war with America."

Rebecca (1940)

Rebecca (1940) is the Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece that won Best Picture and Best Cinematography Oscars in 1940, and was nominated for seven more, and may both be and not be held by those who have a say in these matters to be a film noir.

But if Rebecca is not an example of film noir, what then is Rebecca, with its suspense, mystery, paranoia and brooding atmosphere?

Rebecca in fact while not held as being film noir, does feature many of the aspects of the genre which may be called the paranoid woman film: a young woman, captive in body and mind, lost in a spooky house masquerading as a family home; and a husband who may or may not be homicidal, possibly also even suicidal.

Thing is, in this production, the husband is captive too, which may be a more accurate psychological assessment of marriage. At the very least, Rebecca is a firm and fine example of the paranoid woman genre, and is certainly also to be considered in many aspects as -  an example of film noir.

The Lodger (1944)

The 1944 film The Lodger, starring Merle Oberon, Laird Cregar and George Sanders, is a fine example of movie making splendour, ponderously piling suspicion upon suspicion in a brave attempt to create suspense.

The Lodger doesn't fail at all, however, and in spite of some ropey material at times, the three above mentioned leads act their socks off, and are watchable for every second of their screen time.

Less convincing are the cookie-cut Cockneys, the London bobbies in the fog and the behind-the-scenes antics at the music hall, up until the finale of course, which takes place in and around the eaves of a theatre.

It is an epic climax, and worth the wait, something of a classic even. Laird Cregar delivers so much in every scene, it is hard to keep your eyes off him. He is a little like Charles Laughton, an actor born to this, and able to win the viewer with the most subtle and considered acting.

Laird Cregar is indeed fantastic, and gives the performance of his short, short life. He would die in the year of this movie's release, 1944, and aged only 31.