The Captive City (1952)

The Captive City (1952) is a small town suburban journalism and media gambling and local corruption organised crime exposé with flashback and voiceover film noir, with epic desk to camera and such a strong Kefauver theme that Estes Kefauver himself appears in the film.

Super strong in its categories, this noir is nearly a classic film noir, and maybe even is such, certainly it is a class film noir, if not a classique. Close up paranoid photography and murder, newspaper men against the odds, small town atmosphere to perfection and an intriguing thug hood and mookery-style delivery under professional organised crookery.

The Scarface Mob (1959)

The Scarface Mob (1959) is an early TV movie historical Al Capone and The Untouchables Eliot Ness-based film edit of the television pilots into an end of the cycle movie noir type of affair which has virtually no film noir elements to speak of, as such stylistic gems and nuggets are smoothed out to make way for the televisual plainety of the new mass media era of the 1960s.

The late 1950s brought black-and-white television to new heights, with The Untouchables exemplifying the era’s gritty appeal and plunge into endless tropery, some of which started right here. Known for its violence, the show stirred controversy in its day, with its portrayal of mob brutality and intense confrontations between law enforcement and the Chicago crime syndicates. 

The Turning Point (1952)

The Turning Point (1952) is a corporate crime prosecution crooked cop journalism and media managerial film noir starring Edmond O'Brien and Joseph Cotten, as a special prosecutor and a journalist — respectively — breaking a crime syndicate in downtown Los Angeles. 

It was inspired by the Kefauver Committee's hearings dealing with organised crime which were of enormous public interest in 1950 and 1951, and which inspired quite a few film noir moments, as it happened. 

The idea of these hearings as a locus for the challenging of crime by means of public morals, created a unique set of cultural points for the 1950s. Since prohibition times, crime had grown into a major enterprise, and this its mangerial Kefauver-style film noir re-telling with sensation, morality, family, frienship, thuggery and downtown Los Angeles location shooting.