Deadline At Dawn (1946)

Deadline At Dawn (1946) is a classic era classic female seeker hero hardboiled amnesia film noir, and a classic film noir which is also a great example of several other film noir sub-styles including cabbie noir, and outre noir.

Full of fun, mystery and menace and with an almost unique script, quipped with an unequaled touch by Clifford Odets, not known for his cinematic writing, and directed by 

The history and definition of film noir remain complex, filled with contradictions and shifting interpretations. Though often described as an American invention emerging from a synthesis of hard-boiled fiction and German expressionism, noir's roots and reach are far broader.

Eyes In The Night (1942)

Eyes In The Night (1942) is a crime and detection sleuthing espionage spy noir directed by Fred Zinnemann which features Edward Arnold as blind detective Mac MacLain, and the dog Frida, as the dog Friday.

Oddball, unusual and earnest, Eyes in the Night (1942) doesn't suffer as many of its cheapo contemporaries do from dud scripting and the ill-effects of bum-row production values.

This celluloid endeavor, which inaugurated an ill-fated B-movie detective series, featured the venerable Edward Arnold in the role of a sightless sleuth, and although the public’s tepid reception precluded the realization of subsequent instalments, super oddity and noir make good companions and this blind sleuth endeavour has a lot to say.

Affair in Trinidad (1952)

Affair in Trinidad (1952) is an exotically located crypto-Nazi post-war thriller vehicle for the return of Rita Hayworth who had wowed the world in Gilda, and appears here collided once more with some of the same cast including the rough and sarcastically toned Glenn Ford and the bumbling native idiotically styled  craven lackey themed performance by Steven Geray.

It is not as bad as it sounds, and although not a classic noir nor even a noir much discussed, nor a classic of any kind of noir not even non-noir or faux-Caribbean noir, for anyone in the swing of the full film noir journey much of the usual enjoyment is found here, in both the slightly angrier than usual performance from mug in the tropics, Glenn Ford, and the constant soft-focus camera lingering on the multiply costume changed gorgeousness of Rita Hayworth.

The Conspirators (1944)

The Conspirators (1944) is an espionage and resistance romance and adventure film noir made by Jean Negulesco, and starring Hedy Lamarr and Paul Henreid.

Despite its wartime time and the complexities of wartime spying and resistance and the very real and sometimes unreal presence of the Nazis, the set-up of this wartime noir is classicly typical of the style - - a man and a woman, both of whom are fleeing from their pasts, accidentally meet and he falls for her - - big time.

A chance meeting, indicative of the noirish fate of many a wartime film noir protagonist. He in particular feels that the past can never harm them, and urges his new love to forget it.

Spellbound (1945)

Spellbound (1945) is an Alfred Hitchcock romantic psychological amnesia thriller with a noir nuance that cannot be denied. 

In some senses an outlier in the body of Alfred Hitchcock's own work, and not entirely styled in the mode of a more traditional or acceptable example of film noir, Spellbound does carry with it key noir themes of amnesia and psychoanalysis, and is as much a thriller as it is a psychological mystery.

Most of Spellbound's power comes as a romance story — always a strength with Alfred Hitchcock, who was as much a master of amour as he was of suspense.

Spellbound follows a psychoanalyst who falls in love with the new head of the Vermont hospital in which she works, only to find that he is an imposter suffering dissociative amnesia, and potentially, a murderer.

The Mask of Dimitrios (1945)

The Mask of Dimitrios (1945) beloved of many whom adore the adventurous and thrilling aspect of the silver screen in its lovely golden age, is part mystery, part adventure and a part film noir.

That part which remains film noir, is here within The Mask of Dimitrios, perhaps relegated to the baggage of delight and mystery which is transported within the facial and emotional aspects presented by Peter Lorre. 

Lorre in The Mask of Dimitrios does not however play to any of his strengths, and plays best of all in his duet with Sidney Greenstreet.  Peter Lorre is for once the good guy, the hero no less, the seeker on that often-told quest and his are the bulging eyes through which the audience approaches the mystery.

Like every good slice of film noir, The Mask of Dimitrios is told mostly in flashback. Like many other film noir favourites, the character flashing back is in fact a writer, a mystery writer in this case. 

On hearing about the exploits of the international blackguard Dimitrios, Peter Lorre becomes fascinated and determines to learn as much as he can from as many sources as he can find, and crucially, every one of these sources has been left sadder and wiser after their encounter.

Jean Negulesco who later moved over to 20th Century Fox and made more lighter films than this, did manage to generate of dream of sorts here, in the form of a study in pure evil, in the form of Zachary Scott playing Dimitrios Makropoulos.

Cornered (1945)

Cornered (1945) brings Dick Powell back to the film noir screen, and opens with him being refused a passport between London and France.

Undeterred, Powell slams his hands in his pockets, storms out of the passport office, and promptly swims the English Channel.

It’s that spirit that dominates Cornered (1945, Edward Dmytryk starring Dick Powell, Walter Slezak, Micheline Cheirel and Nina Vale.) 

The war had only been over for a matter of minutes before the film noir canon kicked off a whole new epoch in cinema — a time of uncertainty, deceit and men whose identities were always up for grabs.

Generally these guys were suckered by deceitful women, but often they didn’t know which way to wear their pants to begin with.

Either way, the post-war male was wholly bruised and confused.

Who exactly was he fighting?

In a Lonely Place (1950)

In a Lonely Place (1950) by Nicholas Ray and starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame, always turns up pretty high in those lists of classic film noirs.  

This probably has more to do with its adoption by the French New Wave than it does with true noir credentials, and the fact that it is one of Hollywood’s periodic flashes of its own underbelly.  

But Bogart is slick, wise-ass and selfish and so is the movie, which doesn't offer up a hero but instead presents a bitter and depressed cynic anti-hero incapable of heroism.  

It's a comment on the 1950s, when screenwriters were accused of communism and their friends often turned against them, and Humphrey Bogart plays it dark, often amoral, insisting that a girl find her own cab, refusing to show empathy for a murdered woman, remorseless when shown photos of a crime scene and sexually aroused when given the chance to re-enact a violent murder.

The House on Telegraph Hill (1951)

The House on Telegraph Hill (1951) is an assumed identity, post-Bergen Belsen concentration camp paranoid woman San Francisco featuring lousy husband consummate film noir performance, with every trope of the paranoid woman genre well represented, from the gothic and creepy matrimonial home, to the gothic and creepy housekeeper, to the poisoned bedtime drink, 

She's a paranoid woman but she's not alone.  They are all over film noir, and not just in The House on Telegraph Hill (1951).