Kitty Foyle (1940)

Kitty Foyle (1940) is an almost or proto feminist classic woman's picture white collar girl class and women's rights flashback romance and melodrama Oscar-winning smoochie love and marriage triangle tale of high sadness and existential mid-century womanly angst in both Philly and Manhattan, facing death of hope and an illegitmate baby, and really not the only film of 1940 to make a massive deal out of a snow globe, starring Ginger Rogers, Katharine Stevens, Dennis Morgan, and James Craig, based on Christopher Morley's 1939 bestselling novel of the same name. 

Silver Lode (1954)

Silver Lode (1954) is an anti-McCarthy communist movie industry witch-hunt scandal film noir western angry mob in a small town revenge cat and mouse Wile West thriller romance and adventure murder and public disorder noir inflected western Lin which wedding bells curdle into mob hysteria, authority masquerades as law, suspicion metastasizes, and a lone man is publicly lynched by paperwork, starring Dan Duryea, Lizabeth Scott, John Payne and a few other fifties film faithfuls, in a tidy rather false-looking western town set setting wrapped up in a Fourth of July barbecue, but did they have barbecues in the wild west?

The Leopard Man (1943)

The Leopard Man (1943) is a Val Lewton Jacques Tourneur pre-serial killer era serial killer horror thriller chiller film noir filler large cat-themed dark side proto just about everything golden era silver screen classic of what became the horror genre, although it might be for another day to require of the LLMs to ask what the exact genre trajectory comprises that runs from Val and Jacques productions such as The Leopard Man (1943) and Cat People (1942) to Saw (2004); Saw II (2005); Saw III (2006); Saw IV (2007); Saw V (2008); Saw VI (2009); Saw 3D (2010); Jigsaw (2017); Spiral (2021); and Saw X (2023). 

Jeez I asked the LLM what it thought about that and guess what it was happy to spit. We will return to that.

The Body Snatcher (1945)

The Body Snatcher (1945) is a dark and gloomy atmospheric chiller classic old school creepy horror gothic dramatisation of the body snatching habits of early 19th century Scotland.

Presumably one could tune in as many have done in order to see Lugosi and Karloff playing a scene together, which certainly happens within and is worth the wait.

Elsewhere Scotland provides some proper atmosphere and the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle are re-created well given the restraints of a typical studio.

There are a few other Scottish travesties to enjoy, and one of the rarest within The Body Snatcher (1945) is the murdering of the dog Greyfriar's Bobby, much beloved of every soul in both Hollywood, and in Scotland. To see wee Bobbie smashed and disposed of with a shovel is an awesome and horrific sight.

Step by Step (1946)

Step by Step (1946) is a returning veteran post-war Nazis-in-California espionage and action thriller chase murder fugitive romance on the run film with noir qualities, and the amazing bodily properties of Lawrence Tierney, a truer man of film noir there rarely was, with this little coastal corker as one of his finest cracker crazed noiresque outings.

It Happened One Night (1934) properly introduced the couple-thrown-together trope, and it is true that this semi-noir Step By Step proves what a confused year 1946 may have been as it does indeed feature screwball elements, in light dashes, such as Anne Jeffreys in military uniform, and some carrying-across-the-threshold romance style of jinx.

Experiment Perilous (1944)

Experiment Perilous (1944) is a historical melodrama lousy husband suspicious couple insane jealousy film noir tale of  shattered glass, gushing water and floundering fish noir, yes aquarium film noir, and a crazy virtual prisoner drama of noirish proportions.

Tis indeed a film noir which is of those high-class nightmares wrapped in velvet, but make no mistake—it’s got a black heart beating under all that lush, shadow-soaked atmosphere. It’s a tale of gaslight and doom, where dames aren’t sure if they’re crazy or just trapped, and every smooth-talking gent’s got a trick up his sleeve.

The story kicks off when square-jawed psychiatrist Dr. Huntington Bailey (George Brent) stumbles into a real honey of a mess. A train ride and a chance meeting lead him straight into the twisted world of rich and refined Nick Bederaux (Paul Lukas), a husband with a mind like a steel trap and a grip on his wife, Allida (Hedy Lamarr), so tight it’s choking the life outta her. She’s a knockout with trouble in her eyes, and Bailey starts wondering if she’s really losing her marbles—or if her charming hubby is playing a slow, deadly game.

Armored Car Robbery (1950)

Armored Car Robbery (1950) is a police procedural heist from the hard school of film noir as it slid painfully from the 1940s to the 1950s, leaving the theater, hitting the television, and features a super full film noir cast and a host of other style details and landmarks.

This is an Austerely Efficient B-Noir. Film noir, as a stylistic and narrative mode, emerged in American cinema as an aesthetic response to postwar disillusionment, embodying moral ambiguity, existential anxiety, and the inexorable descent of its protagonists into fated destruction.

Amongst the myriad offerings of this style, by which there may be about 1,000 relevant films from the 1940s and 1950s, with about and at least 700 of those being of the most importance to the noir crazed academics of the dark and black and white.

Riffraff (1947)

Riffraff (1947) is a  flavoursome Panamanian-set P.I. adventure oil executive nightclub mystery film noir with Pat O'Brien committed to the hard-bittten style, atheistically prosecuting the style for all the grimy practise it is worth.

The question of who came first, Dan Hammer or Mike Hammer, is one that warrants investigation. Both characters made their debut in 1947, but the more pressing question is: which of the two left a more significant mark on American pop culture?

Dan Hammer, the protagonist of the film Riffraff, is a character who, despite having several commendable qualities, has largely faded into obscurity. The film, set in Panama, features Pat O’Brien as Dan Hammer, a suave and resourceful man who knows the ins and outs of the town. 

Station West (1948)

Station West (1948) is a private eye cynical male lead morally ambiguous rugged frontier Western tale of deceit, violence and heists, and is likely a star case of the strangely elusive and debatable category that the cineastes and afficionados refer to as film noir Western, or Western film noir.

Snappy, moody and splashing a wagon load of Sedona scenery, Station West is an earnest and honest item of op class Americana from the days when film noir and westerns were the absolute staples of 

Sidney Lanfield, director, is not best known for film noir although he did direct the 1939 The Hound of the Baskervilles, a classic of more than just one canon, and comedy and romance with a little bit of musical might describe his work. The closest effort to a spy film within his range might well have been The Lady Has Plans (1942), a comedy spy thriller with Ray Milland and Paulette Goddard.

The Set-Up (1949)

The Set-Up (1949) is a high-intensity weakened male failing old timer boxing set-up patsy takes a dive real-time action concept classic film noir based on a narrative poem published in 1929.

The streets of the night with their emphasis on fun, with arcades and bars, and  cigar stands and joints of all sorts, are seen as places of isolation as Julie walks them without aim, unable to watch her man Stoker take part in another fight.

Existential expression is often key to film noir, and of course Albert Camus needed to go to the cinema too, and would have ideally found confirmation of his philosophical expression in a picture such as this.

The Spiral Staircase (1946)

The Spiral Staircase (1946) is a stalking terrorisation paranoia psychological historical film noir thriller with all the trimmings of the mystery style and elements of the apprehensive female domestic victim movie.

In the dimly lit streets of the city, a killer stalked the shadows, preying upon women with imperfections. His eyes, cold and calculating, sought out vulnerability—the slightest flaw that marked his victims. The town whispered of his deeds, and fear hung heavy in the air.

Helen, the mute caregiver for a wealthy old woman, was next on everyone’s list. Her silence made her an easy target, her inability to scream for help a cruel twist of fate. The old woman’s mansion loomed like a fortress, its walls hiding secrets and shadows.

A Dangerous Profession (1949)

A Dangerous Profession (1949) is a stylised pulp cop versus bail-bondsman versus client stand-off romance crime and detective mystery mannered film noir directed by Ted Tetzlaff, and starring Ella Raines, George Raft, Jim Backus and Pat O'Brien.

The tough loners of film noir are always waiting for a new case in the city of crime, whether they be detective or heel, or in this case a bail bondsman, something of the perfect cinematic loner. 

Some of them are waiting for the return of the woman that burned them, and George Raft plays both, with his usual stillness and impassive stone hard cinematic stare.

In the game of sucker moves, this loner works his broken relationships with broken noir charm, the grimaces of both his current partner and his former police partner testify to this.

The Las Vegas Story (1952)

The Las Vegas Story (1952) is a lousy husband cop-on-the-strip romance thriller set amidst the Hoagy Carmichael Vegas nights of yore, when the air was clear and hot and Hoagy Carmichael played the merry songs on his drinking and playing room keys.

Starring Victor Mature as a sour-faced doubtful package of twitching male unease and noir never-come-lately star of many other styles, the top-billing Jane Russell.

Now there's a rule on the here-hold her old noir blog of yore, about what it takes to get your name a category tag. And so it is generally the case that to be in this blog you must have been involved in at least three film noir titles, and of course, so long as the era is betwits and between the years of 1940 and 1960, the definition of film noir even hereabouts is not that fixed and fairly malleable at times.

A Woman's Secret (1949)

A Woman's Secret (1949) is a jealous woman murder melodrama with film noir pretensions, which casually mixes the woman genre with the thriller to create a mood movie. It's a good nod of the hat towards the notion of the Woman's Picture, much beloved of the forties filmmaking frater-hood, who when they were not feminising fatality, had plenty other background tropes to develop into motion pictures. Behold the enigma that is the screenplay of this cinematic endeavor, shrouded in mystery as thick as the fog veiling the forlorn streets of a noir tale. The aim, if indeed there is one, remains an elusive specter, teasing viewers with its ambiguous intentions. Is it a whodunit, a labyrinthine maze of deceit and treachery? 

Edge Of Doom (1950)

Edge Of Doom (1950) is a desperate priest killer noir starring Farley Granger as a man driven to edgy paranoiac and driven madness by poverty and in his view the Catholic church.

A paranoid city streets noir of the first drainage, Edge Of Doom is a slum story set in increasingly crummier settings, pitting priests against poverty and poverty against sanity, as one man turns to blame the church for the ills of his life, and now has issues with them around the deaths of both his parents.

A brilliant noir with all the fun of the style which includes Dana Andrews as the priestly narrative glue, offering a framed Farley fable, a story of desperation from the poor side. 

On the capitalist mean streets of 1950 there is a shinola-show of trouble for the poor, and all of this is focused on Farley Granger's increasingly desperate and tragic desire to see a large funeral for his penurious maw.

Where Danger Lives (1950)

Where Danger Lives (1950) is a disturbed wife psycho murder couple on the run film noir with Robert Mitchum as the hell in love with Faith Domergue, one deranged half of a supremely dysfucntional marriage — the other half being Claude Rains.

A severe combinations of noir elements give the story of Where Danger Lives (1950) a bizarre enough edge to classify it as several types of crazy, largely derived from the mad and maddening behaviour of the suicide patient played by Faith Domergue.

The relationship with her husband which is abusive and very much a front for her to get access to money and for him (the husband played by Claude Rains) to have ownership of a young woman , and as such a marriage doomed to fail.

Berlin Express (1948)

Berlin Express (1948) is a train-bound post-war espionage cloak and dagger military mission movie with plenty film noir tones, themes and touches.

Drenched in the unappealing and captivating intricacies of the post-war milieu, rife with a tapestry of tropes, landscapes, and clichés that echo the discordant symphony of a world grappling with the aftermath of conflict, Berlin Express (1948) is an unusual and compelling espionage noir.

In the brutal theater of World War II's ferocity, where mushroom clouds etched indelible scars on history, few glimpses pierce the collective consciousness like the haunting images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki's atomic abyss. 

Yet, within the silent reels of this revelation, a different, less heralded tale unfolds — a cinematic odyssey unearthing the aftermath of conventional bombardment upon the ancient lands of Germany.

Youth Runs Wild (1944)

Youth Runs Wild (1944) is an inattentive parents and juvenile delinquency returning veteran social drama which takes an early look at the idea of juvenile delinquency, several years before the teen-boom began across America and emerged within the Hollywood movies of the post-war years.

The returning veteran aspect is unusual and not entirely noir in its outlook, as Kent Smith plays Danny Coates who returns wounded to his old working class neighbourhood and takes up a mission to keep the toddlers safe. 

As a kind of side-mission to this, he is obliged by the local oldie judge to take care of some teenage tearaways, but he doesn't seem to succeed at this, and the teenagers tear right off and into Juvenile Hall.

Born To Kill (1947)

Born To Kill (1947) is a savage psychopathic murder female seeker hero thriller noir, from the height of the classic film noir period, displaying virtually every noir vice and virtue in a brutal and thrilling tale of toxic male psychopathy and female resilience.

The opening minutes of Born To Kill are a quick and quiet succession of some of noir's best idiomatic themes and settings. All taking place in Reno, these scenes kick off with first the independent women, and then the suburban setting. Within that setting are more independent women, and plenty alcohol. 

The next scene is in a casino, not a likely setting for an innocent divorcee perhaps, but a great place for Americana to wash up against itself - - and the scene right after that is back into perfect suburbia, where it's all iceboxes and radio sets, a friendly doggie and a double murder out of nowhere.

Angel Face (1953)

Angel Face (1953) is a obsessive paranoid murder madness classic film noir from RKO Radio Pictures, the home of film noir, film noir central, as it should be known, and a late late entry from the great forgotten studio, and maybe one of the few from the Howard Hawks era that can be enjoyed for its full scale bizarre noir melodrama.

It's hard for some people to recover from the initial sight of Robert Mitchum in that apron. He is a lousy guy, yet hopefully not a lousy ambulance driver and medic. In the motor car noir aspect of Angel Face (1953) he is a bulk boy to be racing the elite cars so maybe ambulances are his thing.

He wants to race elite though and that is what happens. As a lousy boyfriend he is up there with the lying best of them. He doesn't mind a bit of the cheat and like any good heel does not spot the femme fatale with the offer of not just an apartment but more than that.