Tender Comrade (1943)

Tender Comrade (1943) is a Edward Dmytryk and Dalton Trumbo anti-fascist furloughed wife home front World War 2 morale and community enrichment rousing patriotic drama that also managed to be interpreted by HUAC as a socialistic sinkhole of evidence of communist messaging and infiltration in Hollywood movie-making, melodramatic newlyweds flashback style 'pre-democracy' diverse female housemates drama and war baby and returning and departing veteran tear-inspirer or 'jerker' if you prefer, starring Ginger Rogers, Robert Ryan, Ruth Hussey and Kim Hunter.

Crossfire (1947)

Crossfire (1947) is a classic film noir returning veteran anti-Semitic military procedural Hollywood Ten produced and directed murder chase thriller with Roberts Ryan, Young and Mitchum, in a night-long low-budget detection and paranoia drama.

Known and loved as a classic of its kind, Crossfire (1947) is best known as being a fore-runner to the justices of HUAC and features many heavily Communised individuals including actors, writer, director and producers, and in fact bearing that in mind it is not surprising that this red-fest of socialist freedom and civic principles in the face of any kind of incipient fascism was always going to be a McCarthy favourite. The film in fact premiered at the Rivoli Theatre in New York City on July 22, 1947 and only a few months later producer Adrian Scott and director Edward Dmytryk were cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), becoming part of the blacklisted Hollywood Ten.

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.

Inferno (1953)

Inferno (1953) is a vivid Vista-Vision survival epic revenge desert color film noir from the baffling files of bright and gaudy three dimensional 50s.

Inferno however is saved from most of the widescreen peril of most color noir and despite employing a moderately beige and drab process, manages to follow its noir roots well, and wear its hard-boiled pants hitched right.

As a superior vehicle for noir's captain of the tough-side Robert Ryan, Inferno offers perils and deceits and desert sun and rolls out hard with its dangerous tycoon narrative, as Robert Ryan with a broken leg is ditched in the desert to di of exposure by his scheming missus and her lousy lover.

In the rugged expanse of the desert, a formidable and driven business magnate finds himself ensnared in a dire predicament. Live or die, your choice tough guy.

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.

The Woman on Pier 13 (1949)

The Woman on Pier 13 (1949) is the ultimate anti-Communist paranoid thriller mash-up Red Scare classic film noir.

With a large cast and yet larger reputation for more back-room witch-hunting and Communist panic than any other movie in the film noir style, The Woman on Pier 13 (1949) tells of a powerful Communist cell in the docklands of San Francisco Bay.

As a blunt noir thematic descant The Woman on Pier 13 is also a fast-assed attack on any and all Hollywood radicals who defended their party membership on the grounds of a youthful indiscretion.

I Married a Communist must also be read as Hollywood’s version of its own internal politics. Someone got to the moguls and infected them with the idea that Communists had infiltrated and infected and otherwise corrupted showbusiness at every level from the theater door to the scripts and properties departments.

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. 

On Dangerous Ground (1951)

On Dangerous Ground (1951) is a classic Nicholas Ray urban rural violent cop film noir starring Robert Ryan and Ida Lupino in a tale of loneliness and duality combining the full and contrasting forces of both the wildscapes of the north and the urban environments on the individual.

Robert Ryan plays Jim Wilson a brutalised city cop, in danger of losing his job due to his lack of control when it comes to managing violence in his job. 

Ida Lupino plays Mary Malden, a blind woman who characteristic of blindness in the movies at the time — is symbolically set to allow the hero to finally 'see'.

The Racket (1951)

The Racket (1951) is a tough-guy crooked cop corporate crime thriller noir which pits cop against mobster in a classic tale of urban violence, corporate criminality and corruption which may in fact go all the way to the to the top — a great new flavour of wickedness for the 1950s, as the more fantastical and psychological elements of personal corruption are left in the shadowy fun of the 1940s.

As an exercise in casting, The Racket (1951) is a film noir which pulls together so many favourite actors and even directors, that it might appear hard to miss. You'll maybe want to know why The Racket ain't a classic film noir — given that it features Robert Ryan, Robert Mitchum and Lizabeth Scott, supported by William Conrad and William Talman, and with direction from not just the credited John Cromwell, but from Nicholas Ray and Tay Garnett also.

Beware, My Lovely (1952)

Beware, My Lovely (1952) is a home invasion amnesia Christmas-themed paranoid delusional maniac film noir starring Ida Lupino and Robert Ryan, two of noir's greatest acting talents.

Robert Ryan plays a strange kinda killer in this low-key film noir which takes something of a path of its own off of the main noir highway, and which yet complies with many of film noir's best tropes.

Most clearly of all, Beware, My Lovely (1952) is suburban noir and is the kind of noir that was becoming increasingly popular in the early 1950s — the type of noir which dealt the goods not on the streets and criminal dives of the 1940s, but directly within the super-vulnerable domestic bliss of the 1950s.

Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)

Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) is a color film noir classic with a neo-Western setting, offering a thrilling paranoiac small-town murder story in which Spencer Tracy roughs up against some brilliantly played rough and tough local talent in a desert town.

Directed by John Sturges and starring Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine, Bad Day at Black Rock is the sure-fire best deepest and most entertaining colour film noir of the era — if indeed we are classifying it as such!

The film was based on a short story called Bad Time at Honda by Howard Breslin, published by The American Magazine in January 1947. Filming began in July 1954 and the movie went on national release in January 1955. It was a box office success and was nominated for three Academy Awards in 1956. In 2018, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant"

The bad-ass desert town-dwellers, led by film noir's own Robert Ryan are as immortal immoral crew as cinema ever created. They would be great with their own mini-series, Thugs of Black Rock, or similar.

Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)

Odds Against Tomorrow (1959) is a late noir cycle race-relations civil-rights and jazz-fuelled minor heist film noir movie produced and directed by Robert Wise, starring Harry Belafonte, Robert Ryan, Ed Begley, Shelley Winters and Gloria Grahame. 

Odds Against Tomorrow is one of the last films to appear in the classic noir cycle, and is notable for a plot which features a serious commentary on racism.

If there were to be such a sub-genre as arthouse-noir from the late 1950s, Odds Against Tomorrow would qualify. The score is by The Modern Jazz Quartet, so it would be hard to groove harder than that in the late-noir groove-yard of arthouse heist noir.

As well as the most solid of noir tropes, such as the ex-soldier turned to crime, and the massive dose of 'one last job' which everybody seems to be on, there are also dramatic shots of birds in flight, city landscapes and children at play, all set to that arty jazz soundtrack by John Lewis —  and even some experimental infra-red photography.

Caught (1949)

Caught (1949) is a film noir melodrama from Max Ophüls starring Barbara Bel Geddes, Robert Ryan and James Mason, laying bare the perils of middle class marriage and the bullying and controlling which waits any eager young bride, keen to live the fantasy life which the magazines of the time were selling.

Caught is a film which appears more vicious the closer we look at it. 

To kick off, we have some young women who are planning to live their lives through catalogues, an excellent introduction to the mating game as America enters the 1950s.

It is stressed over and over again, in fact. Young model Maude, who changes her name to a more charming 'Leonora', played by Barbara Bel Geddes is seen with her friend and flatmate Dorothy (played by Natalie Shafer) constructing the fantasy life she shall lead via the pages of the many magazines and lifestyle publications that occupy their evenings in their rather downbeat and crummy digs.

The Woman on the Beach (1947)

The Woman on the Beach (1947), by Jean Renoir, and starring Joan Bennett, Robert Ryan and Charles Bickford, is a fascinating character study, as well as an appropriately twisted dream-noir, telling of an abusive love triangle, acted out by the sea.

Robert Ryan plays Lieutenant Burnett of the Mounted Coast Guard, and as the film commences, we are launched straight into his nightmares. 

Although it is not made entirely clear what is going on, it is highly likely what is presented is another film noir rendering of what we now know as PTSD. 

Burnett, we witness, has recurring nightmares involving a maritime tragedy. He sees himself immersed in an eerie landscape surrounded by a shipwreck and walking over skeletons at the bottom of the sea while a ghostly blonde woman beckons him. 

C'est noir par la mer!

As Burnett walks towards this ghostly woman, the tension increases, and when they finally meet, then boom! He awakens into an explosion of emotion.

Strange as this is, the story becomes stranger still when he sets out for his day job, which involves patrolling the coast on his black horse.

There on the coast he encounters Joan Bennett, the eponymous woman on the beach, a melancholic and lonely character collecting wood for her meagre fire. And he immediately becomes attracted.

Act of Violence (1949)

A former prisoner of war, Frank Enley (Van Heflin) is hailed as a hero in his California town.

However, Frank actually aided his Nazi captors, and he closely guards this secret!

Frank's shameful past comes back to visit him when fellow survivor Joe Parkson (Robert Ryan) emerges, intent on making the turncoat pay for his betrayal. 

As Joe closes in on Frank, the traitor goes into hiding, abandoning his wife, Edith (Janet Leigh), who has no clue about her husband's wartime transgressions. When Frank begins to truly fear his nemesis, played by the relentlessly limping Robert Ryan, he begins to speak of him as if he were speaking of the stalking figure of death itself. 

And his paranoia is total:

"You don't know what made him the way he is - I do!"

Born To Be Bad (1950)

Born To Be Bad (1950) is a Nicholas Ray woman's picture writer hero portraits of women in film noir film noir classic film noir ADHD themed deep twist on the popular paranoid woman genre murderless melodrama of marriage, wealth, romantic lust and frocks, furs love quadrangle or is that a square-shaped love theme, starring Joan Fontaine, Zachary Scott, Joan Leslie, Robert Ryan and Mel Ferrer.

Nicholas Ray a made at least half a dozen films held in high esteem within the noir canon.