Outrage (1950)

Outrage (1950) is a powerful woman's social message rape-discussing drama film noir from Ida Lupino, the undoubted quintessential queentessence of noir and lady noir and women's noir and femme-noir, and all things that do resolve upon the maximum that may be said of this gender and sex in the medium we best adore, and medium that best expresses the century. 

The fact is and was that America in 1950 was so neck-deep in a formal misogyny which allowed casual sexism to flourish in every look and leer, and in which even the children wolf whistle the older women.

Edge Of Doom (1950)

Edge Of Doom (1950) is a desperate priest killer noir starring Farley Granger as a man driven to edgy paranoiac and driven madness by poverty and in his view the Catholic church.

A paranoid city streets noir of the first drainage, Edge Of Doom is a slum story set in increasingly crummier settings, pitting priests against poverty and poverty against sanity, as one man turns to blame the church for the ills of his life, and now has issues with them around the deaths of both his parents.

A brilliant noir with all the fun of the style which includes Dana Andrews as the priestly narrative glue, offering a framed Farley fable, a story of desperation from the poor side. 

On the capitalist mean streets of 1950 there is a shinola-show of trouble for the poor, and all of this is focused on Farley Granger's increasingly desperate and tragic desire to see a large funeral for his penurious maw.

City That Never Sleeps (1953)

City That Never Sleeps (1953) is a criminal-spirit-of-the-city film noir drama directed by John H. Auer and starring Gig Young, Mala Powers, William Talman, Edward Arnold, Chill Wills, Marie Windsor, and Paula Raymond, with cinematography by John L. Russell.

In an film noir canon now advanced by several hundred film noir presentations, the 1953 movie City That Never Sleeps is self-conscious enough to be looking at noir from the inside. Certain noir conventions appear to be so perfectly understood by the time that City That Never Sleeps came to be produced in 1953, that they are not even explained.

For example the head and corporate villain of the piece, the rather articulately named Penrod Biddel (Edward Arnold) is most likely the head of a crime organisation which we never see, and is certainly a business man — although we do not see very much of his business as such — and is certainly a criminal — although likewise we see very little of his criminal activity.