Across The Pacific (1942)

Across The Pacific (1942) is a mildly xenophobic nautical noir spy movie with plenty of whimsy despite it being an eve-of-World-War-Two thriller, depicting in the figure of Humphrey Bogart, one studio's view of what involvement in that war might cause to bring about, while flinging some style-defining chops at the seascape in the traditional form of portholes, smoke machines, sea bars, deck rails, and Nihonnian peril seen through some rather insulting spectacle lenses.

Humphrey Bogart proves that despite being man of the century, which he may well have been, he does not look good in a uniform.

If we learn lesson about film noir and one lesson only let it be this: Humphrey Bogart does not look good in a uniform. Who would have thought that? More essentially: what deeper noir message can we elucidate from these sartorial obs?

A Kiss Before Dying (1956)

A Kiss Before Dying (1956) is a colour noir female seeker hero psychopath murder thriller film noir which while unlikely in its telling is a credible and effective movie version of the Ira Levin novel of the same name.

Making full use of the colour processes of the day, and delivering two bright American worlds, that of the college campus and that of the modern industrialist, A Kiss Before Dying (1956) delivers where many of the promised excitements of the coloured film noirs of the 1950s fail. 

The world of the campus and the café bars where the students gather are perfectly in keeping with the brightness of hope that struck across suburban America at the time, and nothing better expresses the reach of the industrialist and their aspirations than the copper telephone, which is in line with the other copper colours around it, including the victim's copper car, and the copper banisters and swimming pool ladder in the Arizona home of the mining magnate, played by George Macready.

The Little Giant (1933)

The Little Giant (1933) is a Pre-code proto-noir gangster-comedy romance story starring Edward G. Robinson and Mary Astor.

The comedy is given legs by a real life conundrum in the form of the question regarding what bootleggers and racketeers can now do, since Prohibition has ended and they are now in competition with the government for the production and distribution of liquor.

Bugs Alhern ― Edward G. Robinson ― is comically ahead of the game ―and his plan is to take his millions to Santa Barbara and start living the life of a socialite, living swell with the swanks, and appreciating culture ― usually expressed in this caper through the medium of polo.

Desert Fury (1947)

Racy, gaudy and melodramatic, Desert Fury (1947) commences as a somewhat typical if confused film noir.

In full and blazing colour, ripping back and fore across the wilds of the fictional Chuckawalla, and ultimately settles on the fraught mother and daughter relationship between two Golden Age favourites ― Lizbeth Scott and Mary Astor.

The cast is strong ― John Hodiak and Wendell Corey play two barely sublimated homosexual gangsters, while Burt Lancaster has little to do as the local police deputy. 

The crux of the capering belongs to the aforementioned Lizbeth Scott and Mary Astor, two women in search of more than just each others' love.

Act of Violence (1949)

A former prisoner of war, Frank Enley (Van Heflin) is hailed as a hero in his California town.

However, Frank actually aided his Nazi captors, and he closely guards this secret!

Frank's shameful past comes back to visit him when fellow survivor Joe Parkson (Robert Ryan) emerges, intent on making the turncoat pay for his betrayal. 

As Joe closes in on Frank, the traitor goes into hiding, abandoning his wife, Edith (Janet Leigh), who has no clue about her husband's wartime transgressions. When Frank begins to truly fear his nemesis, played by the relentlessly limping Robert Ryan, he begins to speak of him as if he were speaking of the stalking figure of death itself. 

And his paranoia is total:

"You don't know what made him the way he is - I do!"

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Despite spectacle, stories and such technical attributes as lighting and special effects, it’s a comfort that the biggest pull in cinema is that vague quantity known as ‘star quality’.

It’s star quality that makes a film noir classic like The Maltese Falcon watchable, even when the plot is failing.  There’s a section about 40 – 50 minutes into The Maltese Falcon in which the story widens out — suddenly there are more adventurers revealed, and a whole lot more in terms of characters and detail — and for those not used to the vagaries of the medium , this is the moment many switch off.

If it weren’t for Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre, and the vile duplicity portrayed by Mary Astor, they may even not switch back on again.