Two Smart People (1946)

Two Smart People (1946) is a goofy capersome madcap kinda screwball-styled film noir-ish buddy movie style road movie style (train would be more accurate) government bond smuggling romance adventure movie, although to call it either a thriller or a film noir might indeed be stretching the definitions of both, though it is an event-filled journey that Two Smart People follows.

Yet Two Smart People (1946) does find its way on to our radar screens, not in the least because it is directed by film noir scion Jules Dassin, making of it Grade-A material for our investigative teams of ardent noireaux.

The Girl Hunters (1963)

The Girl Hunters (1963) is a barely coherent lost classic Mickey Spillane Mike Hammer curiosity P.I. outré grilled steak big city hard nosed hard boiled  hard sidewalk and newsstand pounding snogga neo film noir blandishment from the 1960s, the non-standard issue cereal-box-reciting acting style creation of the entire all American Hammer oeuvre.

Infamous as the moment when Mickey was Mike, The Girl Hunters (1963) rocks the city and ransacks the style, tuning into the weirdness of the new era of the 1960s, rooted in habits that resonate from the vaudeville years even before the Depression.

Johnny Apollo (1940)

Johnny Apollo (1940) is an inter-generational double identity crime and prison break film noir from early in the cycle.

Directed by Henry Hathaway and starring Tyrone Power and Dorothy Lamour, Johnny Apollo tells the story of the son of a jailed financial and corporate embezzling broker who turns to crime to pay for his father's release.

Tyrone Power fits the title role of Johnny Apollo well. 

The name Johnny Apollo is a crazy, spontaneous, to-heck-with-it whassin-a-name spur of the moment decision for his character Robert Cain, Jr. whose father (played by Edward Arnold) has been jailed for some white collar securities violations, an event which brings his son's soft and privileged life to an end.

The House on 92nd Street (1945)

The House on 92nd Street (1945) is an FBI espionage undercover Nazi wartime propaganda film noir starring William Eythe as Bill Dietrich (based on FBI double-agent William G. Sebold); Lloyd Nolan as Agent George A. Briggs; and Signe Hasso as Elsa Gebhardt (based on the spy Lilly Stein)

The film was made with the blessing and backing of the FBI — so much blessing in fact that Bureau director, J. Edgar Hoover, appears during the introductory montage. 

The FBI agents shown in Washington, D.C. were played by actual agents and the film's semi-documentary style inspired other films, including The Naked City and Boomerang.

Producer Louis de Rochemont was known for creating some pre-War anti-Nazi material for the March of Time newsreel series in which he mixed documentary footage with staged re-enactments.  

The Street With No Name (1948)

The Street With No Name (1948) is a gangster gang-busting cop-on-the-inside undercover documentary style FBI procedural crime wave film noir from William Keighley, starring Mark Stevens and Richard Widmark as uneasy cat and mouse opponents in the burgeoning game of federal crime detection.

As the 1950s approached classic film noir began to make an uneasy turn towards portraying, usually via the medium of the earnest authoritarian male voiceover, the technological and forensic crime detection methods.

Never much required in earlier film noir, the voiceover becomes an unnoticed interruption in the crime drama, and forms one aspect of the documentary style noir storytelling, and aspect somewhat determined to lecture and inform, as well as providing the useful service of telling the audience what is happening on screen.

Blues in the Night (1941)

Blues in the Night (1941) is a blues musical roadhouse road movie jazz band drinking and gambling brutal love and betrayal American Dream style rags to riches to institution for the insane violence against women national narrative love steals a man's creative powers hustle and dream montage rail-ridin left-leanin guy becomes a nobody rosy-posy monkey on a stick fast talkin comedy that is among the most fun of all film noir. 

Fun and noir are not the most common of screen-fellows, but this fast-moving wise-cracking funny and feeling love adventure into music, has more packed into its hour and a half than many of its slower contemporaries.

Lady in the Lake (1947)

Adapted from the Raymond Chandler novel of the same name, the 1947 film noir Lady in the Lake was an experiment and a half for star Robert Montgomery, and his directorial debut to boot.

Montgomery was keen to replicate Chandler’s first-person voice over style as he brought the iconic gumshoe, Phillip Marlow back to the screen.

Except for a few instances, Lady in the Lake is presented exclusively from Marlow’s point of view with Montgomery providing the detective’s voice. 

At some points the camera is punched by some tough guy. There are some other amusing tricks, like when Marlow is on the phone, we see the mouthpiece, blurred in the lower frame; and when Marlow holds a lit cigarette, smoke drifts up from below the frame. 

At one point, the hard-working femme fatale leans in for a kiss on the lens.