The Long Arm (1956)

The Long Arm (1956) is a Charles Frend British procedural heist and safe-crackin criminal thriller film noir detective motor car noir in which the central intrigue revolves around methodically executed burglaries, the circumvention of high-security safes, femme fatale, last chance saloon, tomorrow's my kid's birthday and the meticulous pursuit of the perpetrator by representatives of law enforcement, inflected throughout with the stylistic and thematic undertones the firm characteristic of the limey noir style and canon, including snarking adjacent cops, domestic bottles of beer and sobriety, silent-style motion action burglary and the deliberate repurposing of a motor vehicle into a mechanism of lethality.

Sapphire (1959)

Nobody requested a Basil Dearden season but when it came it was as welcomed as that of any other noir  favourite. So let's continue the season with this Dearden diamond in the rough.

Sapphire (1959) is a Basil Dearden police procedural violence against women cops playing with ladies underwear British limey deep racial tensions and civil rights and exceptionally rare passing-as-white Black British experience racism and bigotry murder mystery film noir starring Nigel Patrick, Yvonne Mitchell, Michael Craig, and Paul Massie. Progressive to a degree that borders on provocation for its historical moment, the film squarely addresses the everyday racism inflicted upon West Indian immigrants in London while anatomizing the buried insecurities, unspoken fears, and quietly festering hostilities of ordinary people when confronted with those they have racialized as other.

Pépé le Moko (1937)

Pépé le Moko (1937) is a mouche-noir French proto film noir Casbah-bound crime glamour seduction violence and poetic realist romance and intrigue police procedural classic of crime cinema and of French cinema, starring Jean Gabin and directed by Julien Duvivier.

As for films that stand the test of time and remain classics of cinema, and also classics of film noir, enough in fact to be here heralded and touted as an example of nothing less than classic film noir, then one must watch them to make the mind up, and not take any old soul's advice on that.

Watching Pépé le Moko (1937) is no duty however and will be a true pleasure, for the acting and the intrigue, for the framing and the fun, for the well constructed mis en scene and the en scene itself, of the many corridored confusions of The Casbah are the perfect and perfectly realised backdrop of this movie wonder. 

In the context of this, Julien Duvivier’s 1937 film Pépé le Moko, “le Moko” is not a surname but a nickname. It derives from the French slang term moko, which was used to describe people from the region around Toulon and Marseille in southern France, particularly dockworkers and sailors. 

Stray Dog (1949)

Stray Dog (1949) is an Akira Kurosawa buddy-cop Japanese film noir undercover heatwave detective police procedural homicide back-street illicit arms market absolute classic of Japanese noir, that stars  Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura.

It was Kurosawa's second film of 1949 produced by the Film Art Association and released by Shintoho and while considered a noir, it should also be fully considered as a fully formed detective movie and indeed you should know it as being among the earliest films in that genre.

Creature With The Atom Brain (1955)

Creature With The Atom Brain (1955) is a science fiction noir horror police procedural zombie brain chip implant mindless surrogate domestic terror thriller directed by Edward L. Cahn.

Noir-flavoured science fiction horror exploitation cinema is an important enough niche on its own but adding radiation and nuclear threat and bottom slapping pipe-smoking patriarchy 

As with all good 50s noir and atomic paranoia narrative the suburban dream is safely central to the threat and is the world  normative and in toto at threat of tipping into a void, in this case a radioactive brain chip zombie plague that is able to significantly interrupt national infrastructure, but unable to interrupt the laughing marital rump slapping and after work cocktail of the pipe smoking patriarchy.

The House on 92nd Street (1945)

The House on 92nd Street (1945) is an FBI espionage undercover Nazi wartime propaganda film noir starring William Eythe as Bill Dietrich (based on FBI double-agent William G. Sebold); Lloyd Nolan as Agent George A. Briggs; and Signe Hasso as Elsa Gebhardt (based on the spy Lilly Stein)

The film was made with the blessing and backing of the FBI — so much blessing in fact that Bureau director, J. Edgar Hoover, appears during the introductory montage. 

The FBI agents shown in Washington, D.C. were played by actual agents and the film's semi-documentary style inspired other films, including The Naked City and Boomerang.

Producer Louis de Rochemont was known for creating some pre-War anti-Nazi material for the March of Time newsreel series in which he mixed documentary footage with staged re-enactments.  

The Sniper (1952)

The Sniper is a 1952 psycho assassin deranged youth sex-pest film noir, directed by Edward Dmytryk, written by Harry Brown and based on a story by Edna and Edward Anhalt. 

The story is one of psychotic misogyny and the possibility of reform, as the police psychologist played by Richard Kiley, argues for treatment over incarceration and the death sentence.

The killer is an arch anti-woman boy with issues galore, a difficult thing to express on screen in 1952. That it is achieved soberly and without camp or cliché is testament to the cast and crew of The Sniper.

The film features Adolphe Menjou, Arthur Franz, Gerald Mohr and Marie Windsor, and is most notable of all perhaps for its fine San Francisco setting and photography.

The police have snipers too, and two decades before the rooftops of San Francisco became the hunting grounds of Dirty Harry Callaghan they are focused here on a mixture of police procedural, sensational woman-hating, and urban surveillance by both police forces and forces of psychopathy.

The Crimson Kimono (1959)

The Crimson Kimono (1959) is a brave bold and swingin Samuel Fuller race relations cop buddy noir with James Shigeta, Glenn Corbett and Victoria Shaw talkin and walkin the truth of Japanese American living on the West Coast in the late 1950s.

Amid a racial tolerance plea and a complicated love story that blossoms and battles its truthful way to a happy and promising conclusion, there is amid this and lurking there somewhere to be found a murder melodrama too. 

In one mouthful cheap and cheerful buddy noir when buddy noir was not really a thing — nobody should trust anybody in film noir — least of all your partner.