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I'll Be Seeing You (1944) is a returning veteran PTSD Christmas romance and recovery lost souls and trauma themed prisoner of love during wartime date rape drama of past secrets and emotional struggle, voiceover, and prison movie of a kind, starring Ginger Rogers and Joseph Cotten, as well as Shirlet Temple, directed it is said by both William Dieterle and George Cukor, and produced to the high emotional standards of David O. Selznick, and while not in sense nor measure nor capacity nor style at all a film noir, is a film which does feature a manslaughter or murder and clings close to themes of PTSD and past secrets, most darkly and commonly explored by film noir at this moment, and so with Joseph Cotten commanding an excellent performance, and Ginger Rogers excellently exploring violence against women and rape culture, is clearly an honorary film noir.
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Directed by Irving Reis, this fast moving art-crime drama also starred Claire Trevor, Herbert Marshall, Erskine Sanford and Wallace Stevens — a strong film noir showing by any standards.
Dark and mysterious and tugging at undercurrents in the highest echelons of society, as represented by the artworld, Crack-Up has an uncanny feel, largely brought about by its quite distinctive paranoid train sequences.
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The telephone number "1119" is the police emergency number used in the film, which could be classed as one of several prominent telephone noirs from the golden age of Hollywood cinema.
Delusional mental patient Gunther Wyckoff (Marshall Thompson) escapes from a mental institution, intent on locating psychiatrist Dr. John Faron (Sam Levene), whose testimony sent him to the asylum.
Wyckoff arrives by bus in the rather interestingly named Terminal City, and as he disembarks, he is confronted by the bus driver for stealing his Colt pistol. Wyckoff uses it to kill the driver.
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From its exciting opening sequence in which ex-mercenary flyer Steven Kenet (Robert Taylor) crashes his car into a river, trying to cover the evident strangulation murder of his wife with a suicide, to its traversing of the prison system for the criminally insane, up until its drug-induced truth-finding denouement, High Wall is exciting, fantastic, serious, dopey and features a proper film noir evil villain, a cool-blooded bad-doer who commits the most callous killings — in order to save his chances at career promotion within the business of religious book publishing.
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Despite quality issues and any stand out cast performances, The Fearmakers also sounds an early alert concerning the war on the public that has become a ubiquitous feature of modern living.
Because of course, if it was unseen in the 1950s or 1940s, and if it was criminal, psychological and at odds with the public vision, it was going to be a subject of film noir.
There seems something peculiarly prescient about The Fearmakers, even if it is a part of the obsessive hunting of Communists that took over American public and cultural life in the 1950s.
The real threat to freedom and civil society were already at work in the 1950s however, and The Fearmakers is a great introduction to the science of public relations, which had already been perfected over several decades and through World War Two, before it began to be used out in the open, in the form of political theatre.
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Robert Ryan plays Lieutenant Burnett of the Mounted Coast Guard, and as the film commences, we are launched straight into his nightmares.
Although it is not made entirely clear what is going on, it is highly likely what is presented is another film noir rendering of what we now know as PTSD.
Burnett, we witness, has recurring nightmares involving a maritime tragedy. He sees himself immersed in an eerie landscape surrounded by a shipwreck and walking over skeletons at the bottom of the sea while a ghostly blonde woman beckons him.
C'est noir par la mer!
As Burnett walks towards this ghostly woman, the tension increases, and when they finally meet, then boom! He awakens into an explosion of emotion.
Strange as this is, the story becomes stranger still when he sets out for his day job, which involves patrolling the coast on his black horse.
There on the coast he encounters Joan Bennett, the eponymous woman on the beach, a melancholic and lonely character collecting wood for her meagre fire. And he immediately becomes attracted.
First it drives him to drink ― anything to try and forget.
Then there's his uncontrolled violence down the pub.
Finally, a trip to the zoo, can be entirely triggering for him.
Bill Saunders should never have come to London. It's certainly not the world's film noir capital either.
But here he is with Joan Fontaine, in a fascinating, compelling, melodramatic and slightly strange concoction called Kiss the Blood off My Hands.
The story of the post-war male is a film noir staple. The
rescuing female belongs to a much older tradition ― but even knowing that he’s
a killer, doesn’t stop Joan Fontaine from a heart breaking attempt at rescue.
Kiss The Blood Off My Hands (1948) is one of those great film noirs in which the entirely story is told in the title. The hero is a murderer ― he has blood on his hands. The female lead is going to rescue him ― with love ― as symbolised in a kiss.
The aim thereafter is redemption. Can she wash away his sins with her love? And is World War 2 excuse enough for a man when it comes to drunken violence?
Find out the answers in Kiss The Blood Off My Hands.
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