The Web (1947)

The Web (1947) is a fast-moving entertaining late-early period and slightly preposterous but fun film noir filler, with Ella Raines, Edmond O'Brien, Vincent Price and William Bendix, so that is certainly a stern and select noiresque collection of faces to do the actin'.

The Web (1947) is in effect a Private Investigator film noir (P.I. Noir) although the character played by Edmond O'Brien is supposed to be a lawyer, although he functions entirely as a P.I,. being hired to be a bodyguard, carrying and using a gun, hanging with his coat collars up in alleyways, and more and more traditional and common P.I. behaviours.

He doesn't get down to none legal work, that is for sure. Other than the top and tail styling back of his maligned blue collar character, played by Tito Vuolo, with typical Vuoloism.

High Noon (1952)

High Noon (1952) is a renowned suspense classic Western that is not in any sense of the term a film noir, although it yet reflects many film noir values, and was made by many film makers associated by the style, while at the same time being a product of its exact age, and so reflects many of the concerns social and political of the film noir style, while remaining faithful to its own underlying genre. That of the Western.

Not even in this sense then can High Noon (1952) be quantified as a film noir western, like many movies of the period may be. And yet there are so many minute noir markers placed within, and a certain sensitivity to the ailing male and some more complex female relations, as well as commentary on the public body politic, and the influence on community of criminal fear, direct from the government as much as from the villains in our midst, those determined unto lawlessness. 

Pickup (1951)

Pickup (1951) is a tragic Hugo Haas femme fatale on the make tale of weak and devious minor characters planning murder in a rural backwater, starring Beverly Michaels as a bored and ambitious scheming woman, who attempts in the style of The Postman Always Rings Twice, to kill an older man for his dough.

With its scuzzy setting, between the old railway shack where Hugo Haas' vulnerable old widower lives, the nearby fairground, and the rails themselves, it is a simple an exploitative tale, assuming the worst of the wicked female lead, and the worst of her husband, the sap, the mark in this matter, the man she marries for money.