Seven Thieves (1960)

Seven Thieves (1960) seems too good a caper noir to miss, with Edward G. Robinson, Rod Steiger, Eli Wallach and Joan Collins, all in one tidy package of heist.

Instead, Seven Thieves maybe demonstrates what the style had lost by 1960, and the ways in which production and vision had altered, to knock classic film noir on the head.

With the odour of a caper movie, it's maybe a shame that Seven Thieves is not film in colour. Certainly VistaVision and other widescreen techniques do leave some directors offering large empty spaces on screen, especially in the shots of single individuals.

The Sleeping Tiger (1954)

The Sleeping Tiger (1954) is a Brit-teen jazz-crime tearaway movie, with stiff upper lip, hot and sexy jazz in Soho, and failed psychanalysis taking place in the midst of an even harder failing marriage. 

The subject matter is the mood music of the British time; teenage criminality, the hopeless British stabbing at psychoanalysis; the tragedy of marriage and the family, and the failure of men to control the disastrous environments their misogyny created to begin with.

While Dirk Bogarde's character suffers from an inability to control his criminal teenage urges, his psychiatrist can't control his profession, and is a failure as a husband while obviously believing he is doing the right thing. When he is mansplaingly doing the wrong thing, again and again, while being the lamest husband ever.

And the teenage tearaway Dirk Bogarde is marvellous; his character longs to have actual issues but he is in fact a middle class boy, which makes his random bullying and cigarette puffing anger all the more wild; and how he has the hot-hots for his psychiatrist's moody wife!

Phantom Lady (1944)

Phantom Lady (1944) is a classic wrongfully accused lousy husband fantasy murder mystery film noir, a  luckless, dark and erotic tale of crime, generally in what is known as society’s underbelly.  

In Phantom Lady (Robert Siodmark, 1944, starring Franchot Tone, Ella Raines, Alan Curtis, Elisha Cook, Jr, Thomas Gomez and Regis Toomey) we have all of that on show, and more  

It’s one of the most purely enjoyable film noirs out there — unpretentious, fast and pleasing to watch. 

It has a frantic ‘rape by jazz’ drum scene that is famed through all cinema, and is a high point of the sub-style which we may carelessly call The Female Seeker Hero noir.