Red River (1948)

Red River (1948) is a classic Howard Hawks non-noir Indian wrestlin cattle nestin steer brandin wandering epistolary epic narrative forming cowboy bangin homo-incestuo-erotic hard as nails hard bargaining pig headed bullying and unapologetically stampeding male egotistical alpha male patriarchal bard nosed bully-boss overlong and racist gripping dramatic super right wing cattle drivin hold you to your word or I will kill you preachin disastrous middle class white Americans out west in the scrubby wilds of a sound stage on which John Wayne will shoot ya just for BEING A QUITTER FFS starring a morally darkened John Wayne ("Watch it!") 

All The Kings Men (1949)

All The Kings Men (1949) is a realpolitik rise and fall with alcohol courtroom and firebrand wielding mob Southern corruption and fidelity, local and state influence peddling kickback and malfeasance drama with more film noir chops than may be immediately evident, and starring Broderick Crawford, Mercedes McCambridge, John Ireland and Joanne Dru.

There’s a long tradition of films about ambitious nobodies clawing their way to fame and power, only to reveal themselves as fakes. Citizen Kane and All About Eve are often held up as the gold standard — stylish, intelligent dissections of ambition, ego, and betrayal. Hey No Kings LOL!

The Walking Hills (1949)

The Walking Hills (1949) is a hybrid treasure-hunt and hunted man adventure Western film noir in which a disparate cast of archetypes head into Death Valley to look for some lost gold, that they believe to be buried in the sands known as the walking hills, for their ability to shift and change topographical form.

The sand shifts and the land changes, and there is sand blown in storms and sand erodes the hard materials of civilisation, before blowing into people's souls, shovelled into the wind, and there is a shovel fight and a lot of shifty eyes across the campfire, as well as brilliant blues music from Josh White.

My Darling Clementine (1946)

My Darling Clementine (1946) is a poetic, mythic Western rather than a noir-inflected one. But yet it surfaces in film noir lists as crossover material, and the big critickers of the century do like to hat-tip it as a noiresque style of western adventure.

I’m curious about the film noir style in My Darling Clementine, noting moody cinematography, deep shadows, lawlessness, and moral ambiguity. Characters like Doc Holliday and Linda Darnell enrich this dark, personal narrative.

Although My Darling Clementine (1946) is most often celebrated as a classical John Ford Western rather than a noir-inflected film, a few stylistic and thematic elements overlap with the film noir sensibility. Below are some of the key noir-like components you can find in the film.

I Shot Jesse James (1949)

I Shot Jesse James (1949) is a wild west historical-mythical hero-plagued-by-guilt and self-disgust film noir western concerning one of the pivotal motions in the story of the national formation of the super-historic late nineteenth century force that was to become the United States, retelling in its suitably sanitised and Samuel Fullerised force to story of the the shooting of Jesse James by Robert Ford, whose name inspired a rhyme scheme that draws the tourists and the film makers to this very day.

It is a rocky period in history and it is a question indeed as to whether I Shot Jesse James (1949) might categorically qualify for either the western noir or the historical noir designation, for weirdly in effect it is both.

Party Girl (1958)

Party Girl (1958) is a brassy blast of 50s technicolor dance and jealous showgirl murder misogyny film noir.

Directed by Nicholas Ray and starring Robert Taylor, Cyd Charisse and Lee J. Cobb, and filmed in CinemaScope, Party Girl celebrates like few other mediocre classics, the gazing male and the prancing half naked female, along with such blasts of wowed brass instruments the sound of those fat horns lingers painfully after the fact.

The movie we are talking about describes a perspective often portrayed in media and art that tends to objectify and depict women from a particular viewpoint. 

This perspective often emphasizes certain physical attributes or characteristics of women, positioning them as objects of desire rather than fully realized individuals. 

Raw Deal (1948)

Raw Deal (1948) is a classic of on the lam noir film-making starring Dennis O'Keefe, Claire Trevor and Marsha Hunt.

Prison convict Joe Sullivan has not only taken the fall for an unspecified crime, but he sports the classic film noir overcoat in this film, and runs desperately from hideout to hideout, trekking down the West Coast of the USA on a collision course with revenge.

Best of all, his run is made with two women at his side, Pat and Ann, dames established from the off as the good and bad side of femininity, both of whom are of course sweet on him, in their separate ways.

Pat is the more traditional gangster's moll, who helps Joe with the breakout, and is as tough as the leather which this film noir is made from; contrasted with Ann, the good gal who is her foil and love rival, and is actually Joe's case-worker, who has against her own will fallen for the convict.