Swamp Water (1941)

Swamp Water (1941) is a moody southern innocent-man-accused rural-backwater pelter manhunt film noir, which was Jean Renoir's first American movie.

A surprise treat from 1941, Renoir brings some poetic magic to the early years of the Golden Age, by taking time to develop characters and also developing the fact and fiction of the swamp itself, bringing on the sticky everglades as a peril as lousy as the urban jungles of more familiar film noir.

More complex and sad also, than the more common fare of the day, Swamp Water (1941) teases out feeling and emotional pain from the cast in the small town jealousies of its actors, and even a scene of torture in which Dana Andrews' character is drowned for information on the whereabouts of Walter Brennan's character.

It Came From Outer Space (1953)

It Came From Outer Space (1953) is a rock-slinging 3-D alien invasion science fiction shapeshifter blobby monster movie, which dabbles heavily in the film noir themes of paranoia and social threat.

In its day It Came From Outer Space  probably had the 3-D thing as its main selling point, although the whole suburban desert lifestyle is a fascinating vision of Americana in and of itself.

Desert wires carry communications, and the desert man has a wife and a pipe and a telescope in the yard. in the lonesome old desolate west there is a great new threat.

This all-American science fiction horror film, notable for being the first to use the 3D process from Universal-International, was produced by William Alland and directed by Jack Arnold. Starring Richard Carlson and Barbara Rush, it also features actors Charles Drake, Joe Sawyer, and Russell Johnson. Contrary to some claims, the script is based on Ray Bradbury’s original film treatment titled The Meteor, rather than a published short story.

Johnny Dark (1954)

Johnny Dark (1954) is not a film noir title, despite Johnny Dark being a provocatively film noir style title.

Instead Johnny Dark is a rather pleasant and fairly swift drama film about a motor car engineer who builds a super-efficient sports car, but finds himself sanctioned by the owner of the firm he works for, who is so stuck in his ways that he only wants to make super chunky American family cars that take six people —  a man who sees the sports car as a sign of corruption and decline in civic standards.

There is surprisingly little else to the story of Johnny Dark. The men are test racers and engineers and they used to be USAF pilots.

The owner of the company is fighting with a group of investors, each trying to gain control and this causes him to back the project, and kill it once the proxy vote is over.

Gilda (1946)

Gilda (1946) is a classic film noir love triangle murder mystery directed by Charles Vidor, which in many ways represents the fantastical apogee of the noir style with its romantic mystery, intense and strange relationships, and its obsessive characters, unsure of themselves in the mazes of deceit, crime and love in which they find themselves.

Gilda is less of a love story than many a similar film noir from the era, and in fact its characters often talks of hate. 

The star of the film is the gloriously cinematic Rita Hayworth in the title role, perhaps one of her best ever roles, and certainly one in which she seems to powerfully upstage and out-perform everyone around her.

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.

Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939)

Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939) was not just the first but one of the most convincing anti-Nazi films to come out of Hollywood's Golden Age.

Amazingly, it feels like it was made by a country that was already at war.

That's not the case though, and even though it would be another three years before the United States were actually at war with Germany, what is remarkable is that World War 2 had not even started by the time Confessions was made.

It is funnily enough pointed out somewhere around the midpoint, when Edward G. Robinson enters the film. Someone says that it feels like they are at war with Nazi Germany, but Edward G., playing an FBI spy hunter here, corrects this erroneous interpretation of events. 

"No," he says. "It's the other way round. It's as if Germany was at war with America."