The Trouble With Harry (1955)

The Trouble With Harry (1955) is an Alfred Hitchcock shaggy dog black comedy iconic and laconic absurdist Beckettian farcical narcissistically inclined fantasy romance melodramatic lampoon burlesque send-up Technicolor travesty with John Forsythe, Mildred Natwick, Jerry Mathers, Edmund Gwenn, Shirley MacLaine in her film debut, and Royal Dano, and is one of Hitchcock’s few unequivocal forays into comedy, though it remains consistent with his habitual use of irony and dark, tongue-in-cheek humor while being also notable for its unusually frank dialogue, exemplified by John Forsythe’s unembarrassed declaration of his wish to paint Shirley MacLaine’s character wiff no clothes upon her!

Let me go on, The Trouble With Harry (1955) is not an film noir, nor has much noir adjacent styles themes nor tones, nor noir inflections as they are called, but as a Hitchcock film made in the era, noir abiding, and not a classic of anything much other than perhaps curiosity or absurdism, it is still be included in our global survey of the decade.

The Captive City (1952)

The Captive City (1952) is a small town suburban journalism and media gambling and local corruption organised crime exposé with flashback and voiceover film noir, with epic desk to camera and such a strong Kefauver theme that Estes Kefauver himself appears in the film.

Super strong in its categories, this noir is nearly a classic film noir, and maybe even is such, certainly it is a class film noir, if not a classique. Close up paranoid photography and murder, newspaper men against the odds, small town atmosphere to perfection and an intriguing thug hood and mookery-style delivery under professional organised crookery.