On The Beach (1959)

On The Beach (1959) is a metaphenomenal post apocalyptic novel adaptation dark and empty gaze at the emptiness of post-nuclear life and the actual point of any kind of human existence, phrased beautifully in a Hollywood void of expression, most appropriate to the winding close of the existential age brought about by the cold Cold War reality of a life that is either radioactively poisonous, or sub marine.

On the Beach, written by Nevil Shute and adapted into a film by Stanley Kramer, stands as one of the most controversial and widely read books of its time. Both the book and the film are credited with significantly influencing the anti-nuclear weapons movement of the 1960s and contributing to the end of the nuclear arms race.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941)

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941) is an atmospheric horror science fiction mystery movie adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, that stars Spencer Tracy, Ingrid Bergman and Lana Turner.

While not a film noir in the conventional mode nor even much in the capacity of the subject matter and story, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941) is classic film noir inasmuch as it introduces the style within its full dramatic flow.

Yet as far as the noir, ambivalence and duality are pushed to the extremes in this cracker of a science fiction thriller, with Spencer Tracy who had been symbolising rectitude for many a cinematic year preceding. 

A Woman's Face (1941)

A Woman's Face (1941) is a fantastical hard-luck-lady flashback courtroom film noir blackmail tale of gender expectation, bitterness and plastic surgery.

One of several plastic surgery miracle movies made in the era, it seemed like the trope and myth of the plastic surgeon and face exchange being ideal narrative material on the big screen.

Most meaningfully and in the terms of the noir universe these are Dark Passage (1947), Black Dragons (1942), Nora Prentiss (1947), Stolen Face (1952), G-Men Never Forget (1948), Dead End (1937), The Second Face (1950), It Happened in Hollywood (1935), and then She Demons (1958) a strangely far out genre find, Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), and with The Raven (1935), that might be enough for now, although others will materialise, that is certain.

Party Girl (1958)

Party Girl (1958) is a brassy blast of 50s technicolor dance and jealous showgirl murder misogyny film noir.

Directed by Nicholas Ray and starring Robert Taylor, Cyd Charisse and Lee J. Cobb, and filmed in CinemaScope, Party Girl celebrates like few other mediocre classics, the gazing male and the prancing half naked female, along with such blasts of wowed brass instruments the sound of those fat horns lingers painfully after the fact.

The movie we are talking about describes a perspective often portrayed in media and art that tends to objectify and depict women from a particular viewpoint. 

This perspective often emphasizes certain physical attributes or characteristics of women, positioning them as objects of desire rather than fully realized individuals. 

The Beat Generation (1959)

The Beat Generation (1959) is an outré exploitation rapist versus cop beatnik beat thriller which manages to deal with the worst social topics imaginable and do so in a madly unorthodox and spoof manner, while working hard to retain narrative dignity.

Featuring an array of daft and hip beats, beat songs, beat drinks, a beat with a rat, a beat who goes scuba diving and is a kind of harpoon beat, a wrestling beat which is hard to beat, Louis Armstrong, one of the greatest musicians of all time who is playing with some tuneless white dropout cats and a noisy mime, some straight ladies who are not beats, and some other squares who are raped.

Then there is a serious discussion of abortion wedged in between the acting of Fay Spain and Steve Cochran, Cochran playing the cop who is thrown into the world of the beats while tracing a rapist beat.

Nazi Agent (1942)

Nazi Agent (1942) is a propaganda espionage thriller directed by Jules Dassin in his first feature-length film for MGM. 

It stars Conrad Veidt playing identical twins, one loyal to the United States, the other a dedicated German Nazi.

There is an uncommonly interesting patch of movie-making in the 1940s which intersects both espionage themed thrillers and the spy genre with film noir.

Nazi Agent (1942) by dint of its subject matter is a film concerned with identity and that which is hidden —  a film of shadows and of betrayal —  and although its director Jules Dassin went on to make some of the finest film noir known to humanity including the mighty Brute Force (1947) and The Naked City (1948) Nazi Agent is not a film noir — despite certain qualities.

Crossroads (1942)

Crossroads (1942) is an amnesia mystery film noir starring William Powell, Hedy Lamarr, Claire Trevor and Basil Rathbone, and directed by Jack Conway. 

William Powell plays a diplomat whose amnesia about his past subjects him to back-to-back blackmail schemes, which threaten his reputation, job, marriage, and future. 

The film was based on the 1938 French film Crossroads which had also had a British remake called Dead Man's Shoes in 1940.

With shimmering cobblestones and foggy streetlamps, and deception, blackmail and a surprising if dubious mystery story, Crossroads (1942) is a prime example of 1940s amnesia noir.

East Side, West Side (1949)

East Side, West Side (1949) is melodrama crime film with noir overtones, starring Barbara Stanwyck, James Mason, Van Heflin, and Ava Gardner. 

It's a film of socialites and infidelity, one of these glimpse-into-the-lives of the rich and popular, and a look at their habits, drinks, dresses, affairs, apartments, moeurs and murders.

In this world it's always a beautiful morning, and the jewels and the dresses sparkle, and platonic relationships spring up, as does the rekindling of old flames. There is a club where they hang out, and a friendly barman called Bill — and it's always time for a straight Scotch.

The Tall Target (1951)

The Tall Target (1951) is a historical film noir crime film starring Dick Powell as a latter-day detective working to foil an assassination plot against then President-Elect Abraham Lincoln.

The action is based on an alleged real life plot to kill the President in 1861, and this historical fact of a possible assassination attempt on Lincoln gives the movie most of its power and interest.

Dick Powell is the star with the period hat and haircut who uses deduction and logic to find who on the train could be conspirators. 

He is straight-up foiled at different times but manages to win the day even when the conspirators have caught him. For effect, the movie's action takes place mostly on the train with the old rocking-camera technique and some fun fights in the steam and in the various parts of the vehicle.

Johnny Eager (1941)

Johnny Eager (1941) is a delightful and fast-moving early period classic film noir, starring Robert Taylor and Lana Turner as two compromised and heartless individuals working against their better natures as they slide fatefully into separate dooms.

Directed by Mervin LeRoy and also starring Van Heflin and Paul Stewart, Johnny Eager is a cynical entertainment showing criminal hubris as only the gangster films of the era can.

Lana Turner plays her role almost without anyone appreciating her full star power, and she is certainly no femme fatale, but rather a femme who is fated, almost lost between two worlds, represented by the gangster she falls in with in the form of Johnny Eager —  and her stepfather, who is the District Attorney who imprisoned him.

Caught (1949)

Caught (1949) is a film noir melodrama from Max Ophüls starring Barbara Bel Geddes, Robert Ryan and James Mason, laying bare the perils of middle class marriage and the bullying and controlling which waits any eager young bride, keen to live the fantasy life which the magazines of the time were selling.

Caught is a film which appears more vicious the closer we look at it. 

To kick off, we have some young women who are planning to live their lives through catalogues, an excellent introduction to the mating game as America enters the 1950s.

It is stressed over and over again, in fact. Young model Maude, who changes her name to a more charming 'Leonora', played by Barbara Bel Geddes is seen with her friend and flatmate Dorothy (played by Natalie Shafer) constructing the fantasy life she shall lead via the pages of the many magazines and lifestyle publications that occupy their evenings in their rather downbeat and crummy digs.

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) is classic style film noir murder femme fatale courtroom death row take-out diner of doom powered by lust, fatality and fortune, played out to the death as a classic film noir must do.

In terms of film noir street cred, it packs a bagful. Considered too immoral to be filmed for many a year, with its themes of adultery and murder, The Postman Always Rings Twice was hastened into production after the success of the film Double Indemnity (1944), which was also adapted from a novel by James M. Cain.

The real themes of the movie are sexual dynamics however, and the tension between the man as drifter, working his way across the land with no particular goal or ambition, and the woman as the more rooted character, seeking to set up home. This is not just a tension played out in the sexual relationship, but in the society as a whole, with drifters being increasingly considered an anti-social element.

Side Street (1950)

Side Street (1950) is an urban slice of romantic classic film noir, starring love-birds Cathy O'Donnell and Farley Granger.

The couple who debuted in They Live By Night, the debut too of director Anthony Mann, made a total of four noirs in a line.

Although the action in Side Street is underpinned by the hard city, with its dark corners, bars, cop shops, rentals, night clubs and stone blocks.

Side Street makes a virtue of every urban geography going, a psychogeography in fact of the young man wrestling with the madness of the city whirlpool.

The city is filmed constantly throughout, a place of promise to begin with and straight on into the action, transformed by crime - - by a crime - -  into a depth charged doom hole of paranoia, doubt and fear.

What also makes Side Street so interesting is the violence, rather extremely played, particularly with the strangling. And it is also cool that Fraley Granger as Joe Norson attempts to atone, in a way that few other film noir heroes do.

The saps usually go all the way down to the end. And never atone. The pain of atonement, guided of course by the good lady love of  love-a-dove lady Cathy O'Donnell  - - as Ellen Norson, his young wife.

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.

The Tell-Tale Heart (1941)

Felt by some of us lovers of the cinema to be a tiny treasure of the silver screen, Jules Dassin's 1941 short feature version of The Tell-Tale Heart features a manic performance from Joseph Schildkraut as the apprentice weaver who kills his cruel master, only to be tormented by guilt, in the aural form of his master's still-beating heart.

Edgar Allan Poe didn’t always transfer successfully to screen, even when dramatised to the utmost in the hands of Roger Corman. And even in Roger Corman’s hands, plenty needed to be added ― including camp, suspense, romance and even back stories and new action.

The divide that is being bridged in the filming of Edgar Allan Poe concerns the massive popularity of Poe’s writing. Because of their short length, their memorable titles and scenes, and the fact that they largely presented a Freudian interior human world, long before there was any Freud or Freudian analysis, kept the writing of Edgar Allan Poe valid ― even unto the 1960s ― these facts alone make Poe tempting indeed for any movie producer.

But in Poe stories there is often not a lot of action, but instead, vortices of interior turmoil. There is sometimes not a lot of dialogue, but instead doubting turns and descriptions of crummy corners, hysterical emotions and vast natural, often unseen forces. There are often strong key images, that everything hinges upon ― and sometimes the stories seem to be entirely internal ― a little like this one.

Border Incident (1949)

Border Incident (1949), starring Ricardo Montalban, George Murphy and Howard Da Silva is a film noir set in the wild border lands between Mexico and California.

Director Anthony Mann is maybe better known for the gritty westerns he made with James Stewart in the 1950s.

However he also directed some memorable film noir favourites such as T-Men (1947), He Walked By Night (1948) and Raw Deal (1948).

Curiously, Border Incident lacks any femme fatale, or indeed any female character at all, and is an unusally violent film for its day.

Border Incident winds its way on to film noir lists, therefore, primarily because of the photography, which teems with interesting closeups, wide-angle lenses, low-angle shots, tons of shadows and light, and a lot of darkness, from which scared and tense faces emerge.

We'll dig deeper into whether this is an actual film noir or not, later. 

But first it's the politics.

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 Asphalt Jungle (1950)

The Asphalt Jungle (1950) is a cool, classy, rough and stylish classic film noir hit from John Huston starring Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, John McIntire and Marilyn Monroe.

This heist film noir classic has grungy backstreet scenery and is populated by dishonourable thieves and has a twisted backstabber feel about it, with everyone backstabbing left, right and centre, save for the two central crooks that we root for, Dix and Doc.

Both Dix and Doc have virtue, with Dix played by Sterling Hayden seeming to be the moral helm of the film. It is Dix's fantasy that gives The Asphalt Jungle the most angelic and super-normal film noir conclusion as this moral thief and thug almost ascends in a moment of equine and pastoral magic.

The Asphalt Jungle was based on the novel of the same name by W. R. Burnett. It was the first major example of the heist crime caper trope, while also being a deconstruction of it. It's  a classic of the Film Noir style with a large film noir ensemble cast including Jean Hagen, Sam Jaffe, James Whitmore, Barry Kelley, Anthony Caruso, Marc Lawrence and Brad Dexter; as well as Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, John McIntire and Marilyn Monroe.