Sullivan's Travels (1941)

Sullivan's Travels (1941) is a drifter-narrative social message self-reflecting Hollywood blockbuster role reversal comedy social commentary prison and road movie media satire that looks at the business of the movie franchise ('Ants in your Pants 1939') in which the differences between worthy art and cinematic entertainment is pressed, as well as the truest social politics of the queer and socialist civil rightists kind

No it is not a film noir, c'est pas un noir mes flics et mesdames!

But there is still a reason it is here and many reasons it is relevant to our defence of the film noir form.

The social politics are true insofar as they are presented in 1941 before the mass media hold upon messaging defined social justice into some kind of communist nightmare.

The Mark of The Whistler (1946)

The Mark of The Whistler (1946) is a The Whistler series drifter narrative film noir tale of deceit and false identity, revenge and corruption, and the impossible allure of abandoned dormant bank accounts.

If ever the fringe world of American noir was bottled up in hour bags and bands this were it. The essence of the style, the resonant espirit de noir.

A deeper consciousness of film noir, a ritual of film noir, a primal series of events that say noir and noir only in their connection and passing.

Greed, deceit, double identity, broken men, guilt and deception, and a cash lump sum of thousands.

Say are you scared of something?

Banking on a fraud and engrossing within its capacity for amazing coincidences, as true noir maybe need be, this is a subtle masterpiece guised as a universally plain style of cheapo noir, but there are resonances galore for the student of the style.

Double Indemnity (1944)

Double Indemnity (1944) is the super-famous mutha-of-all-noir stylish insurance fraud double murder classic film noir thriller that stands central to all commentary, criticism, focus and definition of the great noir style of the 1940s, and the production which is usually cited as the best example of the medium, the finest of all noirs, the apogee of the instance of the style, and the exemplification and blueprint were it needed of all the thousands of brimming wonders of production that made up the hugely powerful film noir movement.

The frightening and exciting weakness of sex was never better shown than in the encounters between Fred MacMurray and a to-begin-with naked Barbara Stanwyck, whom as equals it seems, concoct a murder for the existential fact of morality take over and trip them both up.

Ace in the Hole (1951)

Ace in the Hole (1951) is the ultimate journalism and media noir with the most vile connivance going down between Kirk Douglas as a manically ambitious and revenge-fuelled journalist and a local sheriff in a life or death rescue situation.

Ace in the Hole, which also known as The Big Carnival is directed by Billy Wilder and stars Kirk Douglas as a disgraced reporter who stops at nothing to try to regain a job on a major newspaper. The film co-stars Jan Sterling and features Robert Arthur and Porter Hall.

Kirk Douglas plays "Chuck" Tatum, a frustrated former big-city journalist stranded working for a small  Albuquerque newspaper. Because of his megalo-manic ways and urge to revenge himself he exploits a story about a man trapped in a cave to restart his career, but the situation fast escalates into an out-of-control circus which will end in death, and more death.

Singapore (1947)

Singapore (1947) is a romantic smuggler exotic amnesia noir with Fred MacMurray and Ava Gardner.

Directed by John Brahm Singapore is an enjoyable mix of movie exotica — the style which clichéd the best of the rest of the globe and brought it to Hollywood, minced it, encoded various messages concerning foreign policy and international relations — and presented it on the screen

Despite being a post-World War II drama set in Singapore, there isn't much that one can learn about the Fall of Singapore and the rebuilding of the island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia, which took place after 1945.