Port of New York (1949)

Port of New York (1949) is a police procedural narcotics semi-documentary tough guy cheapo crime thriller film noir with location shooting, earnest voiceovers and striking dark camera work.

Drug gangsters abound in this early tale of the war against drugs, back in the day when packages were suspicious and the drug evil and crackdowns were both new.

Loud and operatic music accompanies K T Stevens and Yul Brunner as she offers herself to him in exchange for her freedom, in tough amoral crime kingpin fashion.

The opium-laden S.S. Florentine slinks into the murky harbor of New York City, its sleek exterior betraying the sinister cargo concealed within. 

A chill wind whips through the air as cool blonde K.T. Stevens, embodying the enigmatic Toni Cardell, steps onto the rain-slicked dock, her presence dripping with an aura of mystery and danger. But beneath her icy exterior lies a tumult of emotions, fuelled by a brutal murder that stains the ship's deck with black and white bloodshed.

Harriet Craig (1950)

Harriet Craig (1950) is a neurotic woman lady noir with high drama, rudeness and female perfectionism ramped to its psychological worst.

The story stars Joan Crawford and Wendell Corey and it is impossible to look away from either. 

Joan Crawford plays Harriet who is the suggestive opposite of the lousy husband, her husband is pretty nice, while she however is destructively controlling about everything, and in the manner of the human comedy, she explores the fringes of madness in the bourgeois dream, and is representative of a kind of stylistic madness.

Harriet Craig was directed by Vincent Sherman, produced by William Dozier, and distributed by Columbia Pictures. Harriet Craig is the second of three cinematic collaborations between Sherman and Crawford, the others being The Damned Don't Cry (1950) and Goodbye, My Fancy (1951).

Address Unknown (1944)

Address Unknown (1944) is a straight-up and fresh slice of anti-Nazi noir.

Straighter than most, because the one thing that Address Unknown is not, is a propaganda picture.

What Address Unknown (1944) serves instead is a more realistic and even intimate discussion of anti-Semitic behaviour under the Third Reich.

While still spinning with high velocity paranoia around the evils of Nazis and their totalitarian hatreds.

And Hitler is singled out, as is his anti-Jewish society which is presented in a rarely un-blinkered and un-varnished way.

The real hero of the film is K.T. Stevens, who plays Griselle Eisenstein — otherwise and more helpfully known on the stage as Griselle Stone.

She is the power, and her character is the prime mover in forcing out the massive quantities of paranoia created by the new German state.

It is an immense performance, and for the 1940s, the subject is handled with aplomb, and with film noir artistry.