Miami Exposé (1956)

Miami Exposé (1956) is a crummy cop Miami based swamp wrangling political conniving over legalised gambling in Florida bribery and murder and faked death airboat and Cadillac bright white light cruiser film noir with first rate desk to camera footage and decent moments of driving and aerial scenery around the fastest growing city in America, decade after decade, the city that was never a town and the tropical miracle that is Miami.

Fred F. Sears, a director tethered to Columbia Pictures and the watchful eye of producer Sam Katzman, carved out a career from the frayed cloth of low-budget filmmaking. His oeuvre, stitched together from an array of genres including science fiction, juvenile delinquency, and war-time tales, finds a peculiar resonance within the crime genre. 

The Wild One (1953)

The Wild One (1953) is a classic teenage rebellion social commentary biker movie, renowned for its impact and shock, and featuring Marlon Brando as the iconic Johhny Strabler. The Wild One (1953) is in fact none other than the final word in being the classic teenage rebellion social commentary biker movie, presenting ideas for the breakaway generation to come post World War 2, a Boomer cohort that will create a division in liberal suburban democratic and generational politics and lifestyles, a splice of the 'cickle across America's brow, never to be repaired.

They boom. The bikes boom and as long as our society keeps hearing those bikes . . .

The movie captures 1950s youth rebellion and the generation gap, blending raw emotion and social commentary. Brando’s iconic performance, along with the movie's gritty portrayal of outlaw culture, cements it as a seminal work in motorcycle cinema.

The Damned Don't Cry (1950)

The Damned Don't Cry (1950) is a flashback rags-to-riches-lousy husband woman in the workplace corporate gangland crime kingpin's moll film noir, with Joan Crawford and David Brian, as well as a career highlight from noir superstar Steve Cochran

With Joan Crawford and an incredible four husbands in one movie, there are questions galore in the damned darkness of The Damned Don't Cry (1950).

Joan Crawford's character starts with a husband that she does not rate, even though it is Richard Egan. But he's too controlling and penny-pinching for her, and she is a film noir hero for whom enough is not enough.

Rephrasing that, this is a common enough film noir lesson: you are not satisfied with your mediocre and quotidian suburban working life, or as in this case, a rather blue collar existence on an oilfield.

Shield For Murder (1954)

Shield For Murder (1954) is a violent crooked cop bad-lieutenant style savagely enjoyable classic spaghetti cellar film noir starring a heaving Edmond O'Brien as a mentalist officer with a bend on for the dark side.

It's the mid 1950s and all is roaring forward into a bright future, but on the streets of the noir city it's a different story, where one man is bending the American Dream outta shape with every slug, snog and gamble.

A beautiful and even darker twin to the other great bent and copper movie of the moment which was Pushover (1954), with Fred MacMurray and Kim Novak. It's not debatable whether or not you want the cop to get the money and the woman. 

In the brooding corridors of urban noir, Shield for Murder, a collaborative directorial effort helmed by Edmond O'Brien and Howard Koch, thrusts audiences into the visceral underbelly of Los Angeles, where O'Brien's portrayal of a cop gone awry serves as a chilling harbinger of moral decay and nasty noir cop rage.

The Glass Web (1953)

The Glass Web (1953) is a blackmail and murder film noir set in and around a television show which profiles true crime.

The movie The Unsuspected (1947) starring Claude Rains and Audrey Totter must be the most immediate antecedent to this type of story, a film in which a true crime broadcast becomes the setting for an actual murder.

There is a great open gulf of questions spanning the hundreds of films that weer made across theses six years however, and The Unsuspected and The Glass Web are different prospects entirely.

One could accuse The Unsuspected of being proper noir, insofar as it is amoral, fun and shot plenty in the dark, with mystery and shadow playing with fantasy and romance, a veritable dance with the dark side but not taking itself so seriously, as they never did all the time in the film noir era.