Joe MacBeth (1955)

Joe Macbeth (1955) is a feverish, noir-soaked transposition of Shakespeare’s blood-stained tragedy into a mobster film noir in which ensemble parking garage acting where ambition clashes with brass-knuckled loyalty collapses under the weight of prophecy, and a henpecked trigger man is whipped into grandiose dreams of power by his razor-edged wife, featuring back-alley execution, and guilt-ridden hallucination seeping from the same anxious postwar mood of rising urban brutality and moral corrosion, and starring Sid James as an American, an oddity in itself, and Paul Douglas as Macbeth and Ruth Roman as the all alluring femme fatale star of the show.

Clash By Night (1952)

Clash By Night (1952) is a romantic-unromantic dockside drama destructive love drifter-comes-home film noir by Fritz Lang, starring Barbara Stanwyck, Marilyn Monroe, Paul Douglas and Robert Ryan.

For a film noir there are few of the elements we normally might expect to see from the form, and yet with the addition of a fairly noirish cast, and some dark and unpleasant behaviour and characterisation from Robert Ryan, Clash By Night (1952) squeezes into the fold because of anguished performances, again largely delivered by the alienated woman hater played by Robert Ryan.

Barbara Stanwyck plays Mae Doyle, a woman who returns to her hometown, the fishing town of Monterey, California, after 10 years on the East Coast. 

A Letter To Three Wives (1949)

A Letter To Three Wives (1949) is a Joseph L. Mankiewicz female returning veteran multiple lousy husband female inferiority complex suburban melodrama romantic mystery radio and television advertising satire failing American Dream special audio effect inserting class barriers and rattling trains humour woman's picture which stars but does not credit Thelma Ritter and makes a mock of marriage, radio and American suburban culture as the 50s dawn, mystery woman comic but anxious fiasco character humour and anthology structured film classic of period empowerment for fifties women, of the sort fabricatable fashion that is managed to restore hetero and gender normative happy endings for the childless nuclear family.