A Place In The Sun (1951)

A Place In The Sun (1951) is a rich and poor love and melodrama classic American tragedy American Tragedy adaptation corporate America family drifter lousy fiancée tortured young man marital fear and unwanted pregnancy fear murder or not quite murder film noir starring Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Shelley Winters, in which a poor boy gets a job from his rich uncle and ends up falling in love twice, and not coping, and this is directed by George Stevens and is a great Oscar winner, a great, great Oscar winner.

From Here to Eternity (1953)

From Here to Eternity (1953) is a wartime romance and martial bullying melodrama ensemble cast boxing or perhaps anti-boxing Oscar winning lousy husband controversial extra-marital foamy beach body embracing classic tale of some soldiers and their lovers stationed in Hawaii in the months leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor directed by Fred Zinnemann and starring  Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, and Frank Sinatra, Deborah Kerr and Donna Reed, Ernest Borgnine, Philip Ober, Jack Warden, Mickey Shaughnessy, Claude Akins, and George Reeves, and nope it's no noir, nor noir styled film nor film noir, with little of the noir style, but it's here because we can't talk about 1953 without giving it a shout, and it has many of our beloved noir heroes in it, within the cast ye ken, plus we got to have a film classics sidebar and this is where that belongs, film classics sidebar.

The Small Voice (1948)

The Small Voice (1948) is a lousy husband returning veteran home invasion British hostage classic tension and confrontation low budget escaped prisoners jeopardy film noir drama with Valerie Hobson, Howard Keel and James Donald. 

Temptation (1946)

Temptation (1946) is a shady lady femme fatale scheming wife and marital infidelity historical flashback and voiceover lousy Egyptologically obsessed husband brooding jealous and lust based on a play film noir murder melodrama starring Merle Oberon, Paul Lukas, George Brent and Charles Korvin.

Victim (1961)

Der extreme Höhepunkt des absoluten Kinos in Bezug auf die Basil-Dearden-Filmsaison.

Victim (1961) is a classic British later late period film noir blackmail and homosexuality socio public crime and mystery social issue internalised homophobia Basil Dearden lousy husband thriller noir which as well as being the the first British film to explicitly name homosexuality and deal with it sympathetically, is a sneak look into the male queer London underground as it affected lives high and low, pub going and inner court, bookshop and barber shop, and starring Dirk Bogarde, Sylvia Syms, Dennis Price, Anthony Nicholls, Peter Copley, Norman Bird and Peter McEnery as Jack "Boy" Barrett.

Pink String and Sealing Wax (1945)

Pink String and Sealing Wax (1945) is a British historical poisoning and lousy alcoholic husband murdering Victorian age pharmacist daft dreaming son and local intrigue and femme fatale drama with Googie Withers, Mervyn Johns and Gordon Jackson, in a pent up family story of murder, reserve, calculation and feral femme folie in a beautifully set studio recreation of an 1880s Brighton agay with m class tension, social climbing and gossip.

The Man in the Net (1959)

The Man in the Net (1959) is a disappearing suburban wife lousy husband and beautiful young alcoholic missus versus artist versus conformity versus suburbia versus a nasty cop and an angry mob and crazy Connecticut manhunt for a framed and accused husband with assistance form children mystery thriller late late classic era film noir which makes a virtue of an avuncular, painterly but less engaged every year Alan Ladd, starring Carolyn Jones and Charles McGraw in a noir which has so many classic psychological tones that one would argue that had this script been filmed in 1949 or 1939, the resultant noir would have been prototypically excellent, as opposed what it is, a fully toned late period weirdismal reflection of of realism.

Margin for Error (1943)

Margin For Error (1943) is a flashback Otto Preminger anti-Nazi screwball German American Bund, or the German American Federation (German: Amerikadeutscher Bund, Amerikadeutscher Volksbund, AV), German-American Nazi organization military and beat cop forced Nazi marriage with black comedy Jewishness versus Nazi gambling goose-stepper lousy husband and abused wife black comedy by Otto Preminger and starring Otto Preminger, and Joan Bennett, based on a play by Clare Boothe Luce and somewhat improved upon the play in its own way, starring Milton Berle in classic comic form, with Carl Esmond as Baron Max von Alvenstor, Howard Freeman as Otto Horst (the American Führer), Clyde Fillmore as Dr. Jennings, and Poldi Dur as Frieda (as Poldy Dur) personal maid to the villainous Karl Baumer (General Consul of Germany), whackily portrayed by Preminger, and delivered with good Jewish humour and a constant comic return to the name of the character played by Berle — Officer Moe Finkelstein.

The Bigamist (1953)

The Bigamist (1953) is a downbeat lousy husband melodrama of loneliness and freezer salesmen about an almost accidental case of bigamy and the sad perils of being a man in the 1950s, told in flashback and voiceover, showing who a fifties bloke-man unwittingly partaking of two marriages for mundane and perfectly normal reasons, crafted in an eternally dramatically perfect style by the great master of film noir, Ida Lupino, and starring Ida Lupino herself, and Edmond O'Brien in the title role, and Edmund Gwenn as an avuncular adoption official, and Joan Fontaine, and Kenneth Tobey.

Yield to the Night (1956)

Yield to the Night (1956) which is also known by its US release title Blonde Sinner is a classic film noir Limey death row female criminality flashback and voiceover murder exploitation lousy husband prison movie with a mean prison warden trope and revenge thriller element and with a confused fixation on women's legs, and is most overall best enjoyed as a incredible and felt performance from Diana Dors, and showing as it does the descent to madness through lousy husbandry and mannishness in general, was directed by J. Lee Thompson, and includes many sympathetic character acting performances and otherwise strong supporting acting from all and among others Yvonne Mitchell, Geoffrey Keen, Michael Ripper and Marie Ney, and Michael Craig as the lousy Jim Lancaster.

Suspicion (1942)

Suspicion (1942) is an Alfred Hitchcock birth of psychological film noir era foaming seas beneath the cliffs and motor car as lethal weapon gothic romance drama abusive behaviour gaslighting and lousy husband bullying-and-belittling-style paranoid woman film noir classique, and probably a classic film noir, starring Cary Grant as the sarcastic, mysterious, lousy husband from somewhere between farce and vaudeville, Joan Fontaine as his target and constant, and Nigel Bruce as a buddy bumbler comic face pulling foil, and containing the full silver service of Hitchcock mental cruelty, as Joan Fontaine instantly transforms from bookish, educated and independent professional woman into sensual and servile lover and then into quivering gaslit wreck.

Wide Boy (1952)

Wide Boy (1952) is a post war Limey spiv noir which is a blend of police procedural, classic fated weakened male lead noir, lousy husband noir, blackmail noir, and the typical descent into crime downward trajectory film noir which was popular as a medium backdrop in the dispositif-forming 1950s, when either teenagers, war-shirkers, and unwise family men move from one relatively innocuous crime — the vending of black market stockings and fags — for wor post-war British purposes 'cigarettes' — to theft, to blackmail  — inevitably to murder.

Seamy Trümmerfilm glamour and ethical collapse collide in this low grade limey film noir.

Something to Live For (1952)

The Ray Milland season continues with a languid, almost metaphysical hesitation, like a thought groping its way through fog

Something to Live For (1952) is an alcoholic uncommunicative male melodrama romance and extramarital affair lousy husband Christmas-based suburban versus the ratted out city of advertising and Americana with its multiple booze options and constant idiotic nagging party scenarios, starring Ray Milland and Joan Fontaine, as the fated foetid couple at large battling the booze against a stable marital backstop of two young boys and the perfected wife=figure, as played by Teresa Wright

A Life of Her Own (1950)

The Ray Milland season does not advance so much as unfold — temporally, tentatively, beautifully. Its path is all digression and delay, yet within that slow meander there trembles a strange coherence, the whisper of a destination it cannot name.

A Life of Her Own (1950) is a George Cukor woman's picture young model from Kansas trying to make it big in New York, doomed romance and suicide driven depression discussing psychological critique lousy husband melodrama starring Lana Turner and Ray Milland, Louis Calhern and Ann Dvorak, Jean Hagen and Phyllis Kirk.

Dial M For Murder (1954)

The Ray Milland Season Hitchcock Highlight unfolds without haste —  it drifts — not lost, but unanchored — tracing arabesques through the medium of noir

Dial M For Murder (1954) is an Alfred Hitchcock Technicolor dual-strip polarised 3D but always subsequently seen in 2D lousy husband telephone-noir based-on-a play home invasion murder and police and detective procedural intriguer starring Grace Kelly, Ray Milland, Robert Cummings, Anthony Dawson and John Williams.

La Chienne (1931)

La Chienne (1931) is a French poetic realist film de pur génie puppet show de la vie misery of faked identities, Jean Renoir-noir Paris night-time street scenes murder and fated descent into tramping bummery, all round classique de poetic realism, classic film noir, and ardent ancient treasury of la cinematique-du-crime, in which a dupe is duped by a couple of unsympathetic street denizens of poverty struck human villainy wherein all you own are your clothes and your cigarettes, while also satirising the middle and business merchant class, and the art class, with its mendicant conclusion and historic remaking by Fritz Lang in the equally immortal and immoral bum-quest to the bottom that is Scarlet Street (1945)

A Double Life (1947)

A Double Life (1947) is a melodramatic psychological theatreland ego-driven personality and jealousy possession and amnesia lousy husband film noir with ham leanings, set on and off the stages of Broadway, and directed by George Cukor, admittedly not know for his forays into film noir.

Don't be too fooled though, as Cukor has some real noir sliders and sleepers up his sleevers. There was A Woman's Face (1941) which is a solid classical noir entry for its fantastical psychological doubling and dealing and pro and de- scribing of the female. And of course he directed Gaslight (1944) one of the most seminal movie happenings of the century, for the impact its theme came to have.

Undercurrent (1946)

Undercurrent (1946) is a paranoid women lousy husband drama woman's picture-style essential woman's picture film noir story of riches, jealousy, egregious abuses of domestic trust, and all out manic equine-based murder plot around a mystery Mitchum-alike sibling and significant and pressing hunky love interest in a rough leather jacket.

Undercurrent starts with normality, suburbia in the snow, the very surface that film noir was about to break, when 1946 spilled into the century and sped the future on with its weirdismal messaging about the martyrdom and murderdoom of wifely women.

Island of Doomed Men (1940)

Island of Doomed Men (1940) is an undercover cop prison exploitation lousy husband film noir adventure shocker about sadistic capitalistic island owner in conspiratorial league with the US prison system, who runs a mean slave labour based penal island where he keeps his wife a captive, and where he is bothered to his downfall by a domestic monkey.

Peter Lorre is that island owner in Island of Doomed Men (1940), the prosaically named Stephen Darnel who runs a mean slave colony, with a sophisticated home enclave of dreams, flowers, a kitchen, grand piano, electric fence and a domestic monkey.

The Two Mrs Carrolls (1947)

The Two Mrs Carrolls (1947) is a lousy husband paranoid woman blackmail murder and poison mystery manor house art and intrigue infidelity and obsession Mark Hellinger portraits of women in noir film noir starring Barbara Stanwyck, Humphrey Bogart, Alexis Smith and Nigel Bruce.

You might imagine that this melange of mild madness and misty focused love and lust has often been misapprehended as an ungainly hybrid of overwrought melodrama and tepid suspense. Such assessments have become axiomatic, yet they do not withstand close inspection. 

Though the film remains aesthetically uneven, it exerts a strange and unrelenting fascination, anchored by peculiar tonal shifts and grotesque exaggerations that reveal, rather than obscure, its psychological acuity.