Short Cut To Hell (1957)

Short Cut to Hell (1957) is a  sure fire curious hitman revenge kidnap detective pursuit film noir, shot in black-and-white VistaVision, featuring Robert Ivers and Georgann Johnson in lead roles. 

Notably, it marks the sole directorial production by renowned actor James Cagney.

The film serves as a remake of the 1941 Alan Ladd classic "This Gun for Hire," itself based on Graham Greene's 1936 novel, "A Gun for Sale."

In the plot, professional hitman Kyle Niles (Ivers) accepts a contract for two murders, only to be betrayed by his employer, Bahrwell (Aubuchon). Seeking retribution, Kyle kidnaps Glory Hamilton (Johnson), a singer and girlfriend of the detective pursuing him (Bishop). As the story unfolds, Kyle confronts Bahrwell, ultimately revealing a dormant sense of morality as he seeks justice.

Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1950)

Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1950) is a bitch-and-towel slappin violent anti-social criminal psychopath flashback murder courtroom film noir with the king of the noir loons himself James Cagney as a no nonsense violent career criminal en route to hell.

Ralph Cotter, a hardened criminal with a penchant for violence, embarks on a harrowing journey of deceit and betrayal after a daring prison escape turns deadly. 

The death of his escape partner, Carleton, at his own hands sets the stage for a twisted game of manipulation and obsession. Is the love between brother and sister greater than that between gangster and long-suffering moll?

As Cotter insinuates himself into the life of Carleton's unsuspecting sister, Holiday, a dark and disturbing dynamic emerges — a typical web of desire and domination, where passion and pain collide in a volatile mix of emotion. 

Their sadomasochistic bond is laid bare in a chilling scene where Cotter's brutality is met with Holiday's fervent embrace — a stark portrayal of the depths of their depravity. They are American. They are you.

Picture Snatcher (1933)

Picture Snatcher (1933) is a pre-code proto-noir ex-con-goes-straight journalism and media drama come farce starring James Cagney, Ralph Bellamy, Patricia Ellis and Ralf Harrolde.

The movie runs to many things in its farcical and dramatic and comic qualities, and this includes being a portrait of contemporary big-city journalism, in which various metropolitan dailies and evening papers would compete hard to scoop each other. 

In a cinematic take on a tabloid journalist sneaking a camera into the Ruth Snyder execution in 1928, James Cagney does the same and a chaotic chase follows. The electrocution of housewife Ruth Snyder at Sing Sing on the evening of January 12, 1928, for the March 1927 murder of her husband was made famous when news photographer Tom Howard, working for the New York Daily News, smuggled a hidden camera into the death chamber and photographed her in the electric chair as the current was turned on. 

Smart Money (1931)

Smart Money (1931) is a Pre-Code Proto-Noir comedy caper starring Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney, playing larger than life the all-American obsession with gambling.

This overbearing national pastime which had flourished via the stock tickers of the 1920s, resulting in the almighty and catastrophic crash of that same decade, is here presented in every popular form available, including horse racing, quiet gambling with dice in the back room and it appears the front room of the quiet small town barber Nick Venizelos, played by Edward G. Robinson.

Nick is a swell fellow and a charmer, and considered a champion gambler by all who know him. The back room seems like a swell place too, where the wisecracking cracks all night long and Nick and the others laugh it up no end, often at the uncomfortable expense of their African American 'boy' 'Snake Eyes' — played by an uncredited John Larkin.

City For Conquest (1940)

City for Conquest (1940) is an epic Warner Bros. stories-of-the-city style prestige picture with a few filings of film noir placed within its frames, which tend to sprawling grandeur rather than intimate psychological portrayal.

Manhattan melodrama is the pure-bred genre this humanistic tale of immigrant struggles in New York City, does not fare high in noir, but is still a part of the story of the style, above all in the efforts of Warner Bros. to depict James Cagney as something more than a criminal, a boxer on the rise and fall, a story paralleled by the story of his young love Peg Nash, played by Ann Sheridan.

G Men (1935)

G Men (1935) is a Proto-Noir Post-Code Warner Bros. crime and police procedural action film starring James Cagney, Ann Dvorak, Margaret Lindsay and Lloyd Nolan in his film debut. 

G Men, one of the top-grossing films of 1935 was a shot at portraying crime successfully within the confines of the newly enforced Hayes Code, by creatively casting crime favourite James Cagney in a non-criminal role -- in this case supporting the law and maintaining the action by becoming a federal agent.

The supporting cast features Robert Armstrong and Barton MacLane and the surrounding tension arises from the fact that Cagney's character, Brick Davis changes sides and bides farewell to the mob boss who financed his education as a lawyer, to become a full on nark, a fed or what passed for it in the long-past and unarmed days of 1935.

White Heat (1949)

White Heat (1949) is the ultimate white hot gangster semi-documentary heist prison movie in the entirety of the classic film noir canon.

Super hot action and direction from Raoul Walsh flings James Cagney, Edmond O'Brien and Virginia Mayo into some of the best acting of their lives, elegantly supported by Steve Cochran

This explosive exploitation noir comes in at a huge length of nearly two hours.

White Heat (1949) is a multiple set of movies, seeming to smash them together at high speed, very much like the train which kicks the picture off, emerging from the tunnel to be robbed by the gang.

Angels With Dirty Faces (1938)

Angels With Dirty Faces (1938) is the great post-code gangster film. 

The fun truth that is constant about film noir, is that at its heart it does talk about morality. 

Angels With Dirty Faces (1938) directed by Michael Curtiz for Warner Brothers, and starring James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, The Dead End Kids, Humphrey Bogart, Ann Sheridan, and George Bancroft, makes at a stab at futurity and morality, the twin pins that the production is based on.

This is flat out morality with as much gangsterism as could be squeezed on to the screen, while Catholicism beckons from the sidelines, filtered through the rough-housing rough antics of a real juvenile delinquent squad of tearaways, who wreck the movie, much as the real life juvenile actors behaved true to type and wrecked the studio. 

This is an irony because film noir was brought about itself by the imposition of a moral code on cinema production, and film noir became an artistic way to discuss this code and frame its requirements in the most interesting ways possible.