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Little known and little loved The Sellout (1952) is a film noir gem, and buzzes with tension and all the undercurrents of psychological and physical force that noirs up the focused greed and determination of the rounded and flawed characters of its small town setting.
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A full noir cast however awaits within the reels of Key Largo (1948), revealed with the standard credit sequence and a short aerial introduction and voiceover, explaining where we are, embedding the physical in what turns out to be high impact environment, both human and meteorological.
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Fairly silly and not universally enjoyed, Dead Man's Eyes (1944) is a basic production to say the least, and is fairly static in terms of its acting and direction, and so quite easy to see why it is not so widely enjoyed as other films noir might still be.
Indeed, for a love triangle picture it is even hard to imagine any of the characters having any true feeling for each other, but then in a cinematic landscape where nothing makes total sense, then nothing particularly matters either.
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Directed by John Brahm Singapore is an enjoyable mix of movie exotica — the style which clichéd the best of the rest of the globe and brought it to Hollywood, minced it, encoded various messages concerning foreign policy and international relations — and presented it on the screen
Despite being a post-World War II drama set in Singapore, there isn't much that one can learn about the Fall of Singapore and the rebuilding of the island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia, which took place after 1945.
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Complex in approach and yet diverting in its charm and snazz, Johnny O'Clock is a waltz through the film noir style, able to copy with mystery, murder, deception and some vile violence, before it wraps up and paces stylishly through its conclusion.
New York gambling house operator Johnny O'Clock played by Dick Powell, is junior partner in a smart casino with Guido Marchettis (Thomas Gomez) and Chuck Blayden (Jim Bannon), the latter being a crooked cop.
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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.
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Ride the Pink Horse is a jam, in its capacity to mix and ferment and develop a few new tropes. Film noir not only comes back from World War Two here, but it goes south towards the border, and finds itself down New Mexico way.
Revenge, blackmail, innocence, experience and cultures clash, and all with an almost unique new flavour, as Robert Montgomery's ambitious direction pays off.
The walking California Redwood style performance from Robert Montgomery suits the dream-like quality of the environment his character Lucky Gagin enters. Luck is in fact a theme, as it always is with crime, and other games of chance.
As in its best, film noir is a dream, or presents its dilemmas and encounters in as much dream language as can be mustered. The carousel with the pink horse in Ride The Pink Horse is one example of many.
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