Backfire (1950 )

Backfire (1950 ) is a flashback-based female seeker hero returning veteran rambling tangled web of mystery and violence against women-style Los Angeles and Christmas and military hospital and PTSD adjacent film noir thriller from the tail end of the high period of the dark and foggy beginnings of the television era and which sees Virginia Mayo, Gordon MacRae, Edmond O'Brien, und Great Dane Clark.

All Through The Night (1942)

All Through The Night (1942) is a comedic espionage hunted man anti-Nazi propaganda gambling and screwball influenced thriller directed by Vincent Sherman and starring an interestingly familiar film noir cast including Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorrie, Kaaren Verne, Barton MacLane and Conrad Veidt, who played many a Nazi across the course of the 1940s espionage noir cycles of film.

Made before the bombing of Pearl Harbour and released after it, All Through The Night (1942) plays upon ideas of a simpler sort, funning up the World War a little, and a little too late in the day for comfort.

Across The Pacific (1942)

Across The Pacific (1942) is a mildly xenophobic nautical noir spy movie with plenty of whimsy despite it being an eve-of-World-War-Two thriller, depicting in the figure of Humphrey Bogart, one studio's view of what involvement in that war might cause to bring about, while flinging some style-defining chops at the seascape in the traditional form of portholes, smoke machines, sea bars, deck rails, and Nihonnian peril seen through some rather insulting spectacle lenses.

Humphrey Bogart proves that despite being man of the century, which he may well have been, he does not look good in a uniform.

If we learn lesson about film noir and one lesson only let it be this: Humphrey Bogart does not look good in a uniform. Who would have thought that? More essentially: what deeper noir message can we elucidate from these sartorial obs?

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 Damned Don't Cry (1950)

The Damned Don't Cry (1950) is a flashback rags-to-riches-lousy husband woman in the workplace corporate gangland crime kingpin's moll film noir, with Joan Crawford and David Brian, as well as a career highlight from noir superstar Steve Cochran

With Joan Crawford and an incredible four husbands in one movie, there are questions galore in the damned darkness of The Damned Don't Cry (1950).

Joan Crawford's character starts with a husband that she does not rate, even though it is Richard Egan. But he's too controlling and penny-pinching for her, and she is a film noir hero for whom enough is not enough.

Rephrasing that, this is a common enough film noir lesson: you are not satisfied with your mediocre and quotidian suburban working life, or as in this case, a rather blue collar existence on an oilfield.

Underground (1941)

Underground (1941) is an action packed counter-Nazi propaganda espionage adventure movie in which one brave brother fights a massive propaganda war within wartime Germany while his brother supports and upholds the regime.

Nothing could be more dangerous in this artfully constructed version of Nazi society which is exactly as you would expect it. A place of propaganda. Where people are not free to speak. 

No mention is made of the Nazi's racial mania, although the young mouthpiece who is the dedicated wounded Nazi soldier, whose brother is hard at work in the underground, is racially crazed for the notion of Mother Germany and its capacity for ruling all of Europe and the World.

His brother runs an illegal and dangerous radio van service which certainly seems to be broadcasting a minority message. This message is that Nazis are an untrustworthy evil and not fit for power.

Harriet Craig (1950)

Harriet Craig (1950) is a neurotic woman lady noir with high drama, rudeness and female perfectionism ramped to its psychological worst.

The story stars Joan Crawford and Wendell Corey and it is impossible to look away from either. 

Joan Crawford plays Harriet who is the suggestive opposite of the lousy husband, her husband is pretty nice, while she however is destructively controlling about everything, and in the manner of the human comedy, she explores the fringes of madness in the bourgeois dream, and is representative of a kind of stylistic madness.

Harriet Craig was directed by Vincent Sherman, produced by William Dozier, and distributed by Columbia Pictures. Harriet Craig is the second of three cinematic collaborations between Sherman and Crawford, the others being The Damned Don't Cry (1950) and Goodbye, My Fancy (1951).