The Killers (1964)

The Killers (1964) is a television-style flashback color Hemingway remake sports motor racing and murder femme fatal and gangster heist fallout and violence against a blind woman Don Siegel almost un- or non-credible cool brutal crime action film noir that is barely a film noir insofar as the noir is far from the habitual armoire of typical style motifs, but is called a film noir nonetheless, with oddly no night time scenes at all, not that excludes it from the film noir category, it is in the style that this nonnoirness nor nihilist nemesis, nor nausea-inducing net of failed morality, but it's crass instead, normal narrative, neatly non-noir, and with the star Lee Marvin and the stars Angie Dickinson, John Cassavettes, and President Ronlad Reagan.

Cash on Demand (1961)

Cash on Demand (1961) is a Limey Christmas home invasion based on a play heist telephone claustrophobic encounter and minimal set design Quentin Lawrence paranoia threat and snow and rather low key film noir, starring Peter Cushing as a signature performance fastidious bank manager put under pressure to rob his own safe under pressure from a caddish caper style gentleman's thief, and as such very almost adheres to the theatrical Aristotelian unities.

One-Eyed Jacks (1961)

One-Eyed Jacks (1961) is a classic epic Oedipal psychological drama revenge heist and horseback softly romantic and simultaneously sadistic arthouse western classic and favourite of many for its wildscapes and manly actions and is a film and maybe even a film noir which retains a certain uniquness insofar as it is directed by Marlon Brando and one of the very few elite one of a kind westerns that are set beside the seaside, beside the sea in southern California in this case and instance. 

Jewel Robbery (1932)

Jewel Robbery (1932) is a pre-code comedy heist reefer-mad lad and lady gentleman thief and sexy Vienses bonbon romp and romance amoral fun and games feature directed by William Dieterle and starring William Powell and Kay Francis, based on the 1931 Hungarian play Ékszerrablás a Váci-utcában by Ladislas Fodor and its subsequent English adaptation, Jewel Robbery by Bertram Bloch.

The Badlanders (1958)

The Badlanders (1958) is a Metrocolor western caper-style heist and western action romance and crime and camaraderie thriller remake directed by Delmer Daves and starring Alan Ladd, Ernest Borgnine, Anthony Caruso, Kent Smith, Katy Jurado and Claire Kelly, highlighting Mexican immigration issues and general western greed, local bullying  and cruelty. It is the second film adaptation of the novel following 1950's The Asphalt Jungle. Anthony Caruso was also in the original version of the film, playing the safecracker, Ciavelli.

The Long Arm (1956)

The Long Arm (1956) is a Charles Frend British procedural heist and safe-crackin criminal thriller film noir detective motor car noir in which the central intrigue revolves around methodically executed burglaries, the circumvention of high-security safes, femme fatale, last chance saloon, tomorrow's my kid's birthday and the meticulous pursuit of the perpetrator by representatives of law enforcement, inflected throughout with the stylistic and thematic undertones the firm characteristic of the limey noir style and canon, including snarking adjacent cops, domestic bottles of beer and sobriety, silent-style motion action burglary and the deliberate repurposing of a motor vehicle into a mechanism of lethality.

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.

Le rouge et mis (1957)

Le rouge et mis (1957) is a classic jazz riffs all out good time Parisienne one last job-styled heist and gangsters in pyjamas motor car chase and crash French crime film directed by Gilles Grangier and starring Jean Gabin, with the original French title Le rouge est mis, meaning "the red light is on", and with a screenplay based on a novel by Auguste Le Breton, and which not only mentions the 'serie noire' as its own originator, in a metafictional coup, but which stars French legends Jean Gabin, Lino Ventura, with Paul Frankeur, Marcel Bozzuffi, Annie Girardot, Jean-Pierre Mocky and Lucien Raimbourgand it was 100% réalisé par Gilles Grangier, assisté de Jacques Deray, Jacques Rouffio, et sorti en 1957.

Pool of London (1951)

The notion of a Basil Dearden season remains an unexpected and quietly subversive curatorial gesture.

Pool of London (1951) is a post war race relations smuggling offbeat classic British film noir customs officers and river police dockyard and barroom melodramatic crime story in a realistic setting procedural race against time thriller of the river underworld, so declared, and which is of note for portraying the first interracial relationship in a British film.

Cosh Boy (1953)

Cosh Boy (1953) is a exciting but also earnestly vile teen exploitation juvenile threat ditto post war youth trouble boom psychopatriarch urban noir also known as The Slasher (1953) movie which studies juvenile delinquency and the spectre of moral collapse in Post-War Britain using the crime thriller format and which charts the birth of cruelty as a form of social and parental guidance for the worrying young persons' culture which the cinema and its co-habiting rock n roll and jazz exponents were cashing in upon, coshing in you might say — — and be warned — — Cosh Boy (1953) has the most vile and violently cruel conclusion in all of Limey post war silver screen flickery. The most violent ending of any film of the decade — reckons .

The Steel Trap (1952)

The Steel Trap (1952) is a classic-style fifties loner opportunist trash nailbiter heist and paranoia robbery and flight from suburbia film noir starring Joseph Cotten as an weakened male noir lead bank employee who comes up with something of a scheme which once executed, unravels in a fateful manner as he tries to make various flights and escapes and handle the pressure of his actions as they crescendo to a noirish finale.

That finale is a film noir fiction, and this film noir has one of the less noir-like summations as we return to the scene of the real crime, which is suburban America bub.

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. 

Rififi (1955)

Rififi (1955) is a classic for-all-time French crime heist criminal gang suspense film noir adaptation of Auguste Le Breton's novel of the same name.

Directed by American blacklisted filmmaker Jules Dassin, the film stars Jean Servais as the aging gangster Tony "le Stéphanois", Carl Möhner as Jo "le Suédois", Robert Manuel as Mario Farrati, and Jules Dassin as César "le Milanais". 

This equippe du crime collab to commit an almost impossible theft, the burglary of an exclusive jewelry shop in the Rue de la Paix. 

The centerpiece of the film is an intricate half-hour heist scene depicting the crime in detail, shot in near silence, without dialogue or music. The fictional burglary has been mimicked by criminals in actual crimes around the world, making of Rififi (1955) more than just a classic of cinema, but a criminal touchstone in tis own right.

Armored Car Robbery (1950)

Armored Car Robbery (1950) is a police procedural heist from the hard school of film noir as it slid painfully from the 1940s to the 1950s, leaving the theater, hitting the television, and features a super full film noir cast and a host of other style details and landmarks.

This is an Austerely Efficient B-Noir. Film noir, as a stylistic and narrative mode, emerged in American cinema as an aesthetic response to postwar disillusionment, embodying moral ambiguity, existential anxiety, and the inexorable descent of its protagonists into fated destruction.

Amongst the myriad offerings of this style, by which there may be about 1,000 relevant films from the 1940s and 1950s, with about and at least 700 of those being of the most importance to the noir crazed academics of the dark and black and white.

Dillinger (1945)

Dillinger (1945) is a cheapo-epic biopic crime heist, robbery, murder, prison and prison-break film noir which was the breakthrough role for tough guy villainous noir actor Lawrence Tierney, directed by Max Nosseck and co-starring Anne Jeffreys, Edmund Lowe, Marc Lawrence, Elisha Cooke Jnr and Eduardo Cianelli. 

Packed with fun, action and menace, and oddly replete with cinematic meta-mechanics, Dillinger (1945) cannot be flawed for anything other than historical accuracy. 

Historical accuracy might have gone against the grain, too. The minute makers of 1945, fresh off the tracks of the great crime film experiments of the 1930s, which incidentally probably amount to the greatest body of work of 1930s cinema, were imminently to collide with state forces and the Production Code was in fullest sway, and so accuracy might have been well sacrificed.

Hollow Triumph (1948)

Hollow Triumph (1948), which is also known as The Scar, and sometimes also by its working title The Man Who Murdered Himself, is a full on fantastical and fun full-fat film noir classic crime film directed by Steve Sekely starring Paul Henreid, Joan Bennett and Leslie Brooks. 

It was released by Eagle-Lion Films, based on the 1946 novel of the same title written by Murray Forbes.

It's everything high noir should be — a story of hardened criminality, deceit, weird and fantastical problems and situations, ambiguity, pursuit, fate, twists and doomed and destructive love affairs — it's incredible what can be packed into this 83 minute ride.

Highway 301 (1950)

Highway 301 (1950) is gang-on-the-run moralising action film noir with police procedural action on top, and starring Steve Cochran as a bold-knuckled psychopathic gang leader, who leads a mini-mob of five violent thieves and three women, who terrorise the banks and payrolls in North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland.

Supposedly modelled on the real life 'Tri-State Gang', this film noir, very much in the style of White Heat (1949) takes the criminal viewpoint for the most part, showing the exciting and sadistic execution of the robberies, the escapes and the life on the run that the criminals face. 

This is cut with elements of police procedural although the real glue of the movie is the voiceover, which in this instance is delivered by the chief investigating police officer.

You and Me (1938)

You and Me (1938) starring George Raft and Silvia Sidney is an early film noir from Fritz Lang, set in a department store which is staffed by criminals on parole.

Delightful within You and Me is the German expressionist sensibility which is quite apparent in the photographic style, but which the American audiences may not have been quite ready for. 

Most especially in the scenes where the large criminal gang are together, there is a certain flavour of the director's earlier film M (1931), stylised at times by the actors facing directly into the camera to achieve an arresting effect — as well as powerful and small touches which carry great weight.

Likely the most memorable of these describes the relationship between the two young lovers George Raft and Sylvia Sidney, whose hands touch as they pass on an escalator. The way this shot is managed speaks volumes, and in the midst of a chaotic crime caper, which to be fair has as many romantic and screwball aspects to it as it does full film noir flavour, it's among the most powerful of moments.

The Killing (1956)

The Killing (1956) by Stanley Kubrick is like a graduation class for many of the best stars and tropes of the classic film noir style.

As well as a cast including many of the styles favourites, from Sterling Hayden and Elisha Cook Jnr, through Marie Windsor and Jay C. Flippen, to Ted de Corsia and Joe Sawyer, The Killing is a kind of celebration of the style like no other.

It was in fact possible by 1956 to make almost consciously film noir pictures. The themes of robbery, lust and anti-social activity are there, and like some truly epic expressions of the style, there are no good people to talk of in here.

In fact possibly the only good character is the wife of one of the villains, portrayed as unwell and blind, and the reason for this man's turning to crime.

Invisible Stripes (1939)

Invisible Stripes is (1939) starring George Raft, Humphrey Bogart, Jane Bryan and William Holden, is one of those great 1930s movies that lays down some of the rails upon which film noir would soon enough run.

If it's a crime film, if it's a prison film, or if it's a heist film, the chances are that in the Golden Age of the silver screen, this movie may be presented with all the tropes, style and wisdom of film noir.

It's often true, but it also ain't necessarily so. Nobody rushes to call the Falcon films, or the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films film noir ... and yet they deal in crime, conspiracy, and often in the shadows and fog.

The prefiguring of film noir is still quite evident in 1930s cinema. To find it, one can trace the morality of the crimes, cops, robbers, murderers and increasingly, the psychopaths and the teenage tearaways.

Film noir prefiguring aside, Invisible Stripes, directed by Lloyd Bacon is a lot of fun, and acts out that fine 1930s theme of the kids on the street battling with the urge to turn to crime. It's in this environment, that director Lloyd Bacon brings home a few new ideas, including that of the teenage tearaway.

And that tearaway, is committing a certain form of crime, against both the combined moral wealth of the family, and society itself.