Sabotage (1936)

Sabotage (1936) is an Alfred Hitchcock suspense spy and public terror thriller starring Sylvia Sidney, Oskar Homolka, and John Loder.

It is loosely based on Joseph Conrad's 1907 novel The Secret Agent, about a woman who discovers that her husband, the owner of a London movie theatre, is a terrorist agent.

Alfred Hitchcock's pre-American British thriller, known in the United States as A Woman Alone, stands out as one of his finest works. 

Scripted by Charles Bennett and inspired by Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent, the film was retitled to avoid confusion with Hitchcock's earlier work of the same name. While the plotline remains somewhat thin, it's Hitchcock's meticulous attention to detail that makes this thriller truly captivating.

You Only Live Once (1937)

You Only Live Once (1937) is a 1930s couple on the run prison crime drama noir by Fritz Lang, and a super-early film noir classic, the bleakness of which the United States was not quite ready to face.

The picture's true noir inclination arises from the fact that it is about destiny and fate, and is the subjectively told story of the interlocking forces that serve to ruin the lives of a positive and beautiful young couple.

Although everything may at times seem to be going well for this couple, the truth is that everything is going badly. 

An early entry into the sub-genre of fugitive lovers on the lam pictures, the story leans on the legend of Bonnie and Clyde and shows how three times jailbird Eddie Taylor (played by Henry Fonda) is released, after strings are pulled,  into the arms of his adoring gal, Jo Graham (Sylvia Sidney). 

You and Me (1938)

You and Me (1938) starring George Raft and Silvia Sidney is an early film noir from Fritz Lang, set in a department store which is staffed by criminals on parole.

Delightful within You and Me is the German expressionist sensibility which is quite apparent in the photographic style, but which the American audiences may not have been quite ready for. 

Most especially in the scenes where the large criminal gang are together, there is a certain flavour of the director's earlier film M (1931), stylised at times by the actors facing directly into the camera to achieve an arresting effect — as well as powerful and small touches which carry great weight.

Likely the most memorable of these describes the relationship between the two young lovers George Raft and Sylvia Sidney, whose hands touch as they pass on an escalator. The way this shot is managed speaks volumes, and in the midst of a chaotic crime caper, which to be fair has as many romantic and screwball aspects to it as it does full film noir flavour, it's among the most powerful of moments.