The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)

The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) is a Hollywood-based flashback-told drama of hubris and mania in film production, of betrayal and ambition and which shines a harsh critical light on the lives and careers of the producers of the era, and earlier, notably looking at David O. Selznick, or maybe not since he did not sue Metro about it, and maybe it was Daryl F. Zanuck, or Val Lewton or Orson Wells, and a five Academy Award winning ironic homage to Hollywood showing fragmentary multiple POV the ruthless eighteen-year rise and fall of a tyrannical, manipulative Hollywood movie tycoon, directed by Vincente Minelli and Starring Kirk Douglas, Lana Turner, Barry Sullivan, Walter Pidgeon, Dick Powell, Gloria Grahame, Paul Stewart and Leo G. Carroll.

Last Train from Gun Hill (1959)

Last Train from Gun Hill (1959) is a high tension rape and revenge predatory male rock solid underrated classic suspenseful tragic super cinematography Kirk and Tony John Sturges  television production values western film noir with intense and focused performances from leads Kirk Douglas, Anthony Quinn and Carolyn Jones, supported by Brad Dexter, Earl Holliman, Brian G. Hutton and Ziva Rodann.

Champion (1949)

Champion (1949) is a sports-noir drifter narrative boxing film noir rags to riches drama of hubris and corruption, starring Kirk Douglas as a one time bum who finds he is a great boxer, and makes an all-American stab at gaining the all-American system of fight-rigging, mobsterism, and big sport gambling and media.

A remarkable and entertaining vehicle for the young Kirk Douglas, for whom this was a certain break-through role, Champion (1949) is not lauded much as a great noir, although it is, with first rate performances and high drama and emotion, sweeping through much of American social systems and presenting as well as any other high-period film noir does, the story of the individual against himself, against the country, against the insurmountable cruelty and manipulations of the system that elevates sport to the wild, corrupted and abusive focal point of life it will become.

Ace in the Hole (1951)

Ace in the Hole (1951) is the ultimate journalism and media noir with the most vile connivance going down between Kirk Douglas as a manically ambitious and revenge-fuelled journalist and a local sheriff in a life or death rescue situation.

Ace in the Hole, which also known as The Big Carnival is directed by Billy Wilder and stars Kirk Douglas as a disgraced reporter who stops at nothing to try to regain a job on a major newspaper. The film co-stars Jan Sterling and features Robert Arthur and Porter Hall.

Kirk Douglas plays "Chuck" Tatum, a frustrated former big-city journalist stranded working for a small  Albuquerque newspaper. Because of his megalo-manic ways and urge to revenge himself he exploits a story about a man trapped in a cave to restart his career, but the situation fast escalates into an out-of-control circus which will end in death, and more death.

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) is a high period film noir telling a complex tale of love, weakness, criminality and fateful meetings. 

As in the mode of any high grade film noir, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) speaks of the past and its characters' inability to escape it. 

In fact the characters in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) seems to exist around one moment in the past, a fateful once when Martha Ivers committed a murder as young girl.

Everything else in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) is about what this murder brings about, creating a drama of many parts, fixedly rooted in one fateful and distant moment.

Moreover, it's a complex film — not a classic love triangle story, but something more akin to a love parallelogram.

Detective Story (1951)

Detective Story (1951) is a classic stage play brought top screen film noir psychological police drama directed by William Wyler and starring Kirk Douglas and Eleanor Parker, among many more.

It's not the most obvious film noir but makes up for that in a mighty cast, with a mighty punch, based on a play by Sidney Kingsley. This picture also brings up the tricky subject of police brutality — something that should have been against the Production Code of the time — and yet which still forms the central moral aspect of this piece.

Detetcive Story is a brilliant cop-on-the-edge narrative, a form familiar to film noir. Kirk Douglas is that cop, every bit as tense and nervous as Robert Ryan in On Dangerous Ground (1951); or maybe Sterling Hayden in Crime Wave (1953).

I Walk Alone (1947)

I Walk Alone (1949) is a bold, fun and fast-moving flick with a truly film noir title.

It's a strong exemplar of the film noir style, even if it isn't held up as the one of the greats.

Frankie gets out of prison and after being triggered by the sight if some shadows at the station which remind him of prison bars, he heads down to Broadway ― it looks the same he says. 

But his pal isn’t so sure. The first early signs of the fast-bending steel of the film noir male, here beautifully and memorably played by Burt Lancaster, is one minute in, when he says angrily, and almost to himself  . . . that it better be the same.

It is not of course, the same. The war, and prison, similarly dealt with and both brutal and emotional in their transformative violence . . . these have changed everything. 

The war and prison have more in common that Burt Lancaster's sympathetic and tragic expression. And if one can be in one for the purposes of entertainment, one can certainly be in the other.

A Letter To Three Wives (1949)

A Letter To Three Wives (1949) is a Joseph L. Mankiewicz female returning veteran multiple lousy husband female inferiority complex suburban melodrama romantic mystery radio and television advertising satire failing American Dream special audio effect inserting class barriers and rattling trains humour woman's picture which stars but does not credit Thelma Ritter and makes a mock of marriage, radio and American suburban culture as the 50s dawn, mystery woman comic but anxious fiasco character humour and anthology structured film classic of period empowerment for fifties women, of the sort fabricatable fashion that is managed to restore hetero and gender normative happy endings for the childless nuclear family.

Out of the Past (1947)

Out Of The Past (1947) is a classic fate-filled doomed-romance revenge mystery film noir, directed by Jacques Tourneur, and starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer and Kirk Douglas.  

From the shadows of the past stumble the memories of your misdeeds. They lug themselves towards you in heavy coats and hats — packing heat and chewing on cocktail sticks.  

Whatever you do, wherever you go, fate can catch you — fate WILL catch you.  

And that’s the message of Out of the Past (1947)

Out of the Past is one of the most heavy duty, hard-wearing, cigarette-smoking film noirs in the whole damn canon — hoods, hats, hold ups and past actions dredging up the most awful barrelfuls of darkness.