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Apologies if the film noir canon is to be legally formatted in the 1920s, the thought is not tuned into the key features of the style, so it is unusual to call it a classic, and yet unanimous support from the Film Noir Board in fact classify it, classicify it if you can, that is the verdict.
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Fred F. Sears, a director tethered to Columbia Pictures and the watchful eye of producer Sam Katzman, carved out a career from the frayed cloth of low-budget filmmaking. His oeuvre, stitched together from an array of genres including science fiction, juvenile delinquency, and war-time tales, finds a peculiar resonance within the crime genre.
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Based on the book Légitime défense by Stanislas-Andre Steeman, 'Quai' was directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot tand stars Suzy Delair as Jenny Lamour, Bernard Blier as Maurice Martineau, Louis Jouvet as Inspector Antoine and Simone Renant as Dora.
The film was Clouzot's third directorial work, and the first after the controversy of Le corbeau. Without having the novel on hand, Clouzot and Jean Ferry based the film on memory and deviated significantly from the original story.
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its about the bonhomie and salt of the earth morality of the constables, all working men with values that we might like to interpret as British and are seen giving directions, and actually helping elderly women across the road. They even appear to have a separate division titled 'Women Police' (26:10).
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The Night Holds Terror (1955), directed by Andrew Stone, dramatizes the terrifying ordeal of Eugene M. Courtier, whose real-life kidnapping in 1953 inspired the film. On February 13, Courtier, an Air Force technician, was abducted along a highway in Lancaster, California, by three criminals: Leonard Daniel Mahan, James Bartley Carrigan, and Don Eugene Hall.
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Clearly by 1954 there was little noir left and although this film and many others like it carry the label of film noir and are known to the lazies who populate the fanchats and social pages constructed and dedicated to the deconstruction and dedication of the style, there is little of what could ever be classified as the true film noir in here, with none of the noirish measures of shadow and paranoia, of the individual and their fateful decline, and of the psychosexual madnesses of melodrama so typical of the medium in its 1940s heyday.
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Drain dwelling hi-technology oscillograph and television projector building full fat classic film noir, He Walked By Night may also be appreciated for the stunning array of tech gadgets and insight into the technical electronic industry as it might have stood in 1948, as well as its stunning lack of female actors and characters and for what it says about the battles for social control that went on as fascism was unspooled across social institutions after World War II
Gun totin and fast moving, He Walked By Night rides through the night of course, that being its charm, and of course it's night in the storm drains too, where master lone wolf Richard Basehart - the character's name is Roy Martin or Roy Morgan - has a stash of guns too.
When it comes to doggy nemesis none are harder and cleverer and more determined and sharp as Scott Brady, who also plays a mean police milkman when need be.
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Eye on the prize the Communists know what they want in the form of America's most TOP SECRET space diagrams, showing the dream revolving space station envisaged by the tech wisdom and fantasist futurists accelerationists of 1952.
With a clip shot of Hoover refusing to look at the camera Walk East on Beacon (1952) is a fed-dreamboat of technological noir as the movie artfully shows the latest and best in detection methods.
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This classic film noir from 1947 follows two Treasury Department agents, Dennis O'Brien and Tony Genaro, as they go undercover to break up a counterfeiting ring. The film provides a glimpse into the post-World War II era of the United States and speaks to several aspects of 1940s American society.
One of the main themes of the film is the idea that the American dream is attainable through hard work and honesty. This idea is represented in the characters of O'Brien and Genaro, who are portrayed as hard-working and dedicated agents who are willing to risk their lives to protect their country. The film also portrays a strong sense of patriotism, which was common in the post-World War II era.
Another theme of the film is the idea that crime does not pay, which is a common message in many film noir movies. The counterfeiting ring that O'Brien and Genaro are trying to bust is shown to be ruthless and violent, and the film suggests that their criminal enterprise is ultimately doomed to fail.
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Further, the tooth-pick may have been a stylised way of suggesting a drug habit, although Sterling Hayden's Detective Lieutenant Sims is an early and incongruous promoter of quitting smoking for one's health.
As well as crime on the streets, there is a crime in the home theme as Crime Wave hits the home invasion theme hard, too. Home invasion in film noir signals in its stylised way the demolition of the full-on dream of Americana, that so infected the States in the 1950s.