Five Graves To Cairo (1943)

Five Graves To Cairo (1943) is a World War Two espionage and desert assumed-identity Nazis on the march adventure and romance thriller, made by Billy Wilder, and while not often thought of as classic film noir in its story and outlook, is as essential to the canon as other key works from its super talented and Germanic Americanic, classic of all time wonderful uberfilm powerhouse of a director.

Five Graves To Cairo (1943) remains of critical interest to the noireaux and other aficionados who hover among the tombstones which mark the old old films that are rarely but watched no more, because it forms the foundational evidence for the thesis of one of the most interesting noir writers and commenters on the globe, which is Dan Hodges of The Film Noir File.

The Unseen (1945)

The Unseen (1945) is an old dark house children and governess paranoid woman lousy husband old homeless woman murder mystery mansion house genuine thrillodrama film noir, from mid the paranoia period of women in crazy marriages era of the Golden Age of the Silver Screen

Watching The Unseen (1945) you will be upset into a derisory frame of mind when you hear how often the prettiness of Gail Russell's character is referred to. 

I am sure this might have contributed to her drinking herself to death, being called pretty in so many scenes.

I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958)

I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958) is a lousy husband horror science fiction suburban film noir frightener which owes more to the scare of women and their assertive good sense beauty and civil morality, than it does to the Red Scare which may have inspired it.

The 1958 American horror science fiction film I Married a Monster from Outer Space produced and directed by Gene Fowler Jr. for Paramount Pictures, features Tom Tryon and Gloria Talbott.

When Worlds Collide (1951)

When Worlds Collide (1951) is a classic apocalypse, science fiction global planetary collision build-an-ark and flee-the-planet adventure drama, created by producer George Pal and director Rudolph Maté.

Starring Richard Derr, Barbara Rush, Peter Hansen, John Hoyt, Larry Keating, Rachel Ames and Stephen Chase, When Worlds Collide brings high altitude snogging to the masses from the very off and races through the night skies to terrify the world with Hollywood's first major non-Biblical destruction movie, wowing the masses into ecstatic fear of the end.

The Glass Key (1942)

The Glass Key (1942) is a classic Ladd-Lake Dashiell Hammett violent political intrigue and romance film noir thriller remake directed by Stuart Heisler and starring a case-file of noir talent including Brian Donlevy, Veronica Lake, Alan Ladd, Bonita Granville, Richard Denning and Joseph Calleia.

It's a complex fast moving typewriter-written stylistic and at times super violent political romp, with a dog attack.

Whatever your take on and tolerance for film noir the 1942 second production of The Glass Key is almost a law unto itself at times, not so outré as some of its peers, but far harder for it.

The Glass Key (1935)

The Glass Key (1935) is an underworld of politics and crime thriller that is not film noir but well may be a proto-noir, but is an adaptation of a seminal Dashiell Hammett novel, later remade into a more lavish effort in 1942.

In the dimly lit chambers of literary discourse, where the flicker of candle flames dances upon the parchment, let us embark upon a journey through the labyrinthine corridors of this narrative. 

The tale that unfolds before us, like the intricate workings of a Victorian pocket watch, neither wears the gilded mask of merriment nor the embroidered cloak of frivolity. Nay, it treads the murky path of shadows and secrets, where the echoes of footsteps linger long after the last page is turned.

Our protagonist, Ned Beaumont, emerges from the fog of obscurity—a man of enigmatic countenance, his features etched by the chisel of fate. 

Chicago Deadline (1949)

Chicago Deadline (1949) is a journalism and media murder conspiracy film noir with Alan Ladd as the laddish reporter with the jump on the police, as a deadly chase takes place in unravelling the mystery of a murdered lass played by Donna Reed.

In the shadowed alleys of the alleys shadowed by the shadows of Chicago's seedy alley Alan Ladd-based underbelly, reporter Alan Ladd stumbles upon the lifeless form of a mysterious woman, her tragic demise shrouded in the haze of what is surely a noir boarding house murder mystery.

Yet, within the pages of her address book lies a tantalizing glimpse into a world of intrigue and decadence—a world that beckons Ladd into a labyrinthine quest for truth.

As Ladd delves deeper into the enigmatic past of the deceased, guided by the alluring June Havoc, a society dame with secrets of her own, he becomes ensnared in a web of deceit and danger. 

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.

Manhandled (1949)

Manhandled (1949) is a lousy husband psychiatric jewel thievery crooked private eye wife-murder film noir crime drama directed by Lewis R. Foster and starring Dorothy Lamour, Sterling Hayden and Dan Duryea. It is based on the 1945 novel The Man Who Stole a Dream by L. S. Goldsmith.

Dan Duryea plays a crooked private eye, which is the first twist in this serpentine and sinuous noir drama, which is a lot of fun as any classy high period film noir should be. The convoluted plot is at the best of times a feature of film noir, and not to be sneered at in such a circuitous story as Manhandled tells.

Union Station (1950)

Union Station (1950) is a kidnap and ransom police thriller set in and around Chicago's Union Station, and starring William Holden and Nancy Olsen.

The film was based on Nightmare in Manhattan, an Edgar-winning novel by Thomas Walsh. 

Sydney Boehm's script for the film version was nominated for an Edgar in the screenplay category.

Aside from changing the setting from New York City's Grand Central Station to Chicago's Union Station (though the Los Angeles Union Station was the actual filming location), and changing the kidnap victim from a little boy to a blind, teen-aged girl, the script was quite faithful to its source material.

Union Station is a realistic 1950 film noir police and public nuisance kidnap movie starring William Holden, Nancy Olson, Jan Sterling and Barry Fitzgerald. It was released after Sunset Boulevard so by the time it came out, Holden had actually moved up another level of stardom. William Holden and Nancy Olson also appeared in Sunset Boulevard the same year.

Detective Story (1951)

Detective Story (1951) is a classic stage play brought top screen film noir psychological police drama directed by William Wyler and starring Kirk Douglas and Eleanor Parker, among many more.

It's not the most obvious film noir but makes up for that in a mighty cast, with a mighty punch, based on a play by Sidney Kingsley. This picture also brings up the tricky subject of police brutality — something that should have been against the Production Code of the time — and yet which still forms the central moral aspect of this piece.

Detetcive Story is a brilliant cop-on-the-edge narrative, a form familiar to film noir. Kirk Douglas is that cop, every bit as tense and nervous as Robert Ryan in On Dangerous Ground (1951); or maybe Sterling Hayden in Crime Wave (1953).

The Accused (1949)

The Accused (1949) is a psychology sex-killer-thriller paranoid woman classic from the film noir era, starring Loretta Young as a psychology professor who asks he students to perform sexual-psychological experiments on each other. With disastrous consequences.

The Accused is as essential a film noir one would need as the most extreme example of the othering and socially oppressing of women. It's the ultimate in #metoo noir as well.

The Accused is directed by William Dieterle and adapted to screenplay by Ketti Frings from the novel Be Still, My Love written by June Truesdell. It stars Loretta Young, Robert Cummings, Wendell Corey, Sam Jaffe and Douglas Dick. Music is by Victor Young and cinematography by Milton R. Krasner.

Street of Chance (1942)

Street of Chance (1942) is an early noir cycle amnesia noir that with Burgess Meredith and Claire Trevor which beautifully captures so many of the elements that would go on to make the full fat noir formula.

Burgess Meredith takes a little accident downtown and the fantasy world of Street of Chance has begun. You find a few full on readies in the early 1940s, where pretence to realism is only in the way, and every idea can be playful run.

Here is the hapless man who becomes film noir's solid centre stage staple. Here is a descent into an opposing world that this heel has experienced. He carries with him too a seeker female hero in Claire Trevor and it's going to be a helluva ride. There is domestic routine, without which any early noir would lose its bindings and be entirely wild.

Alias Nick Beal (1947)

Alias Nick Beal (1947) is a fantasy-mystery film noir with occasionally spiritual overtones, which tries in its way to re-tell the Faust myth, setting it in the milieu of American state and domestic politics.

Although Thomas Mitchell receives third billing in Alias Nick Beal (1947), he is the central character, whose rather erratic journey we follow, as he discovers that politics is messier than he thought, and that simply wanting to clean up the city, is never going to be enough.

Supporting this journey are Ray Milland who plays the eponymous Nick Beal, who is in fact none other the Lucifer himself, at work on the city streets and in the salons of offices of 1940s America.

At the very least, the appearance of the devil in Faustian form, in a fedora and in the guise of Ray Milland, makes for a new and effective take on the film noir punishment and redemption motif. 

Vertigo (1958)

Vertigo (1958) one of the greatest and best known of Alfred Hitchcock's films is also at its heart in the classic film noir tradition.

This psychological fantasy in full colour is probably one of the greatest and more ravishing Technicolor films ever produced, and so it does not perhaps fit the full film noir bill with its vibrant shades of rose and green.

The paranoia is real as is the preposterous fantasy elements, which if anything work against Vertigo because full-on colour like this, and most especially in its many splendid exteriors, are suggestive of a more real milieu.

The story is one of murder and madness, of weakness and psychological manipulation, and as often with Hitchcock, the ongoing manipulation and cruelty to women, who are judged poorly by men - - and it is all wrapped up in suspenseful storytelling and mystery.

The full whack of the psychological thriller film directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock has become immortal in this picture. 

You and Me (1938)

You and Me (1938) starring George Raft and Silvia Sidney is an early film noir from Fritz Lang, set in a department store which is staffed by criminals on parole.

Delightful within You and Me is the German expressionist sensibility which is quite apparent in the photographic style, but which the American audiences may not have been quite ready for. 

Most especially in the scenes where the large criminal gang are together, there is a certain flavour of the director's earlier film M (1931), stylised at times by the actors facing directly into the camera to achieve an arresting effect — as well as powerful and small touches which carry great weight.

Likely the most memorable of these describes the relationship between the two young lovers George Raft and Sylvia Sidney, whose hands touch as they pass on an escalator. The way this shot is managed speaks volumes, and in the midst of a chaotic crime caper, which to be fair has as many romantic and screwball aspects to it as it does full film noir flavour, it's among the most powerful of moments.

Among The Living (1941)

Melodramatic and at times oddly crazed Southern Gothic meets film noir in the effective 69 minute suspense thriller Among The Living (1941).

Among The Living stars Albert Dekker in twin roles as John and Paul Raden, one of whom is a successfully sane and moral social actor, while the other is a dark half, locked away in a basement room of the family home for 25 years, confined to madness, solitude, and a perpetual infancy which sees him often landed in a straitjacket.

The set-up is as follows: twenty years ago, the town's founder discovered that one of his twin sons was insane. He has the doctor fake a death certificate, had an old servant from the house made to care for him, and then moved the other son and himself into the town's best hotel. 

The Desperate Hours (1955)

The Desperate Hours (1955) is a home invasion film noir, by William Wyler, and starring Humphrey Bogart as a criminal on the run, terrorising suburban America from within.

Suburban noir can only mean one thing as far as classic film noir is concerned: home invasion. 

Not that the idea was new for the 1950s. Humphrey Bogart had played out the home invasion trope before, and most successfully, with The Petrified Forest (1936). Bogart is said to have commented that his character in The Desperate Hours was in a manner of speaking, his character in that production (Duke Mantee) grown up. 

The home is still central to film noir, at any stage in its evolution. On one level classic film noir is always discussing the family unit.  The home may sometimes be suggestive for reasons of contrast, as the home contrasts the streets, and everything that happens there, including crime and loose-behaviour of any sort. 

Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)

Good times with the paranoia on full-beam. That's film noir and this is Sorry, Wrong Number (1948), one of the most eminently exemplary portrayals of the 1940s housewife.

The film noir style presented this to perfection and in its highest form in the 1940s.

Paranoia is central to the film noir style. The urban jungle is fraught with dangers, and some are human, and some are technological. 

Some are criminal and others are political, and any old way you look at it, when you're in film noir, you're in the land of doubt, deceit and usually murder to boot.

There'd be no film noir without paranoia, and one of the stand-out examples of this is the 1948 film noir Sorry, Wrong Number, with Barbara Stanwyck, Burt Lancaster ... and tucked away there, along with Ed Begley, is Wendell Corey.

Of all the significant innovations the film noir style introduced to the popular imagination, paranoia may be among the best. First there’s the political paranoia, whether it is down to Nazis or Communists, or later in the cycle, your own government.

The File on Thelma Jordon (1950)

A woman’s place in film noir is evilly clear — she’s the seductress who tempts the man into his own destruction — although often she plays a stronger role as the heroine, the seeker hero of her own, solving a crime on behalf of an imprisoned or incapacitated male.

Even if they are irresistibly destructive, the women of noir are never static symbols of male repression — they’re intelligent, powerful, and overly-sexual.

The File on Thelma Jordon is Double Indemnity meets Pitfall — disguised as a well-presented story of marital infidelity. 

And it has Barbara Stanwyck in the lead, bidding for film noir immortality.