Diplomatic Courier (1952)

Diplomatic Courier (1952) is a Henry Hathaway Cold War espionage in post-war Europe screwball-adjacent drama romance chase military police procedural thriller, with Tyrone Power, Patricia Neal, Hildegard Knef, Stephen McNally, Karl Malden and special spot appearances from Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin, and a further dynamic and fun extra cross dress appearance

As for screwball, there is a certain sure pedigree of connecting dramatic matter which links the screw of the ball and its previous decades of filmatics and is indicated in Diplomatic Courier (1952), highlighted and brought to our attention when Tyrone Power describes Patricia Neal across a Trieste café bar table as 'screwey'. 

Rawhide (1951)

Rawhide (1951) is a high stakes drama home invasion single mother out on the range heist and robbery ensemble gang on the run stagecoach robbery and overland mail company and relay station noir-inflected Western movie from the later stages of the golden era of the silver screen displaying tropes and sceneries that had been solidly familiar for decades 

It's a western but in any other form Rawhide (1951) would be a film noir. Deceit, revenge, a heist and a home invasion, with robbery, exploitation and a vulnerable hold up.

The western did not seem to update as quickly as did the classic film noir. 

23 Paces To Baker Street (1956)

23 Paces To Baker Street (1956) is a London-based slack-paced DeLuxe Color CinemaScope blindness writer hero murder mystery suspenser, based on the 1938 novel Warrant for X by Philip MacDonald.

Van Johnson’s sightless sleuth slides by the skin of ears into and out of and around the shadows of 50s suspense, as cinema overhears some conversation in a pub and the predictable aural showdown.

Call Northside 777 (1948)

Call Northside 777 (1948) is a 20th Century Fox journalism and media documentary style innocent man accused prison and investigation crusading reporter classic polygraph classic prison pantechnicon classic film noir, directed by Henry Hathaway and starring James Stewart as the man looking for Wanda Skutnik.

The sub brand of noir known as documentary style film noir is a useful something of a vague category descriptor, although it refers in real terms to the removal of production from sound stages to in many cases the streets and buildings in which events real or based on actuality came to be filmed.

Niagara (1953)

Niagara (1953) is a murder femme-fatale colour classic film noir movie with Marilyn Monroe as a scheming and seductive noir villainess who is planning the truly classic murder of a true film noir sap, played by Joseph Cotten.

All of this takes place by the roaring falls of the title which are magnificently displayed and form a foamy misty counterpart of art to the mortally scheming people, both innocent and guilty, who lurk upon its touristic shores.

This color noir movie, a 1953 commonplace of the American cinematic underworld, oozes with tension and shadows, directed by the seasoned hand of Henry Hathaway, overseen by the shrewd eye of Charles Brackett, and crafted in the dark alleys of screenplay by Brackett, Richard L. Breen, and Walter Reisch. 

Starring in this grim tale are the luminous Marilyn Monroe, the enigmatic Joseph Cotten, the seductive Jean Peters, and the slick Max Showalter, known in the shadows as Casey Adams. It strutted onto the scene like a siren in the night, capturing the hearts of audiences and leaving them breathless in its wake, a crown jewel in the treasury of 20th Century Fox's film noir files.

Johnny Apollo (1940)

Johnny Apollo (1940) is an inter-generational double identity crime and prison break film noir from early in the cycle.

Directed by Henry Hathaway and starring Tyrone Power and Dorothy Lamour, Johnny Apollo tells the story of the son of a jailed financial and corporate embezzling broker who turns to crime to pay for his father's release.

Tyrone Power fits the title role of Johnny Apollo well. 

The name Johnny Apollo is a crazy, spontaneous, to-heck-with-it whassin-a-name spur of the moment decision for his character Robert Cain, Jr. whose father (played by Edward Arnold) has been jailed for some white collar securities violations, an event which brings his son's soft and privileged life to an end.

The House on 92nd Street (1945)

The House on 92nd Street (1945) is an FBI espionage undercover Nazi wartime propaganda film noir starring William Eythe as Bill Dietrich (based on FBI double-agent William G. Sebold); Lloyd Nolan as Agent George A. Briggs; and Signe Hasso as Elsa Gebhardt (based on the spy Lilly Stein)

The film was made with the blessing and backing of the FBI — so much blessing in fact that Bureau director, J. Edgar Hoover, appears during the introductory montage. 

The FBI agents shown in Washington, D.C. were played by actual agents and the film's semi-documentary style inspired other films, including The Naked City and Boomerang.

Producer Louis de Rochemont was known for creating some pre-War anti-Nazi material for the March of Time newsreel series in which he mixed documentary footage with staged re-enactments.  

Kiss of Death (1947)

Kiss of Death (1947) is a psychopathic traumatic sttol-pigeon crime procedural film noir, featuring Victor Mature as a troubled ex-con; Brian Donlevy as a firm, fair and forgiving Assistant DA; Richard Widmark as a crazed psychopath; and Collen Gray as a sweet and innocent goody-two-shoes, the type of woman in fact beloved of all film noir scenarios, the guiding angel flying in the fateful face of sexual lust and loose living.

An all-American woman perhaps, certainly offering morality and everything else in line with the cinematic Code of operation.

The semiotic valuations which lead to the promotion of one family ideal, and the extinction of African American life in the process, was a bold attempt by Hollywood to attempt to mythify the American way of life into a set of values that all would adopt.

While similarly in this case being spooked up to high heaven by the emerging figure of the psychopath. And that with one of the greatest psychopath's in film history. Noir is its own set of cultures and ideas, and is roughly speaking, a set of conventions defining perception in limited and predictable ways within just about any picture of American life you might care to inject it into.

Seven Thieves (1960)

Seven Thieves (1960) seems too good a caper noir to miss, with Edward G. Robinson, Rod Steiger, Eli Wallach and Joan Collins, all in one tidy package of heist.

Instead, Seven Thieves maybe demonstrates what the style had lost by 1960, and the ways in which production and vision had altered, to knock classic film noir on the head.

With the odour of a caper movie, it's maybe a shame that Seven Thieves is not film in colour. Certainly VistaVision and other widescreen techniques do leave some directors offering large empty spaces on screen, especially in the shots of single individuals.

The Dark Corner (1946)

Classic film noir — deceitful people at work — a private dick with a dicky past — a murderous art dealer with an obsession about a woman in a painting — sluggings in the dark — frame ups — a cheating wife — crosses — double crosses.

The Dark Corner (1946), directed by Henry Hathaway, presents full-on film noir in the shape of an ex-con detective willing to bend the rules at every point, with the most wholesome role going to an angelic Lucille Ball — though even dear sweet Lucille is up to her elbows in it.

Up to her neck in fact, in blood, lying, is conspiracy to conceal evidence, washing murder weapons and immediately opting to cover up a crime rather than report it . . .

Welcome to the Dark Corner of Film Noir!