My Darling Clementine (1946)

My Darling Clementine (1946) is a poetic, mythic Western rather than a noir-inflected one. But yet it surfaces in film noir lists as crossover material, and the big critickers of the century do like to hat-tip it as a noiresque style of western adventure.

I’m curious about the film noir style in My Darling Clementine, noting moody cinematography, deep shadows, lawlessness, and moral ambiguity. Characters like Doc Holliday and Linda Darnell enrich this dark, personal narrative.

Although My Darling Clementine (1946) is most often celebrated as a classical John Ford Western rather than a noir-inflected film, a few stylistic and thematic elements overlap with the film noir sensibility. Below are some of the key noir-like components you can find in the film.

Swamp Water (1941)

Swamp Water (1941) is a moody southern innocent-man-accused rural-backwater pelter manhunt film noir, which was Jean Renoir's first American movie.

A surprise treat from 1941, Renoir brings some poetic magic to the early years of the Golden Age, by taking time to develop characters and also developing the fact and fiction of the swamp itself, bringing on the sticky everglades as a peril as lousy as the urban jungles of more familiar film noir.

More complex and sad also, than the more common fare of the day, Swamp Water (1941) teases out feeling and emotional pain from the cast in the small town jealousies of its actors, and even a scene of torture in which Dana Andrews' character is drowned for information on the whereabouts of Walter Brennan's character.

Nobody Lives Forever (1946)

Nobody Lives Forever (1946) is a returning veteran swindler confidence-man romance drama film noir which like many prime examples of the style from the 1940s discusses the impossibility of going straight and escaping one's past in post-WWII American society that is noir as hell and a constant fateful threat, never to be reconciled with the American Dream.

Nick Blake (played by John Garfield) is a charming and roguish ex-con artist who has just been released from prison. He decides to go straight and live an honest life. However, he is approached by his former partner-in-crime, Doc, with an opportunity for a lucrative con job. The target is a wealthy widow, Gladys Halvorsen (played by Geraldine Fitzgerald), who is seeking companionship and may be susceptible to Nick's charms.

Nick reluctantly agrees to participate in the scheme, but as he spends more time with Gladys, he begins to genuinely fall for her. The two develop a romantic connection, complicating Nick's plans to deceive her. As the con unfolds, Nick faces internal conflicts between his desire for a new, honest life and the pressures of his criminal past.

Hangmen Also Die! (1943)

At the height of the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, four German exiles in Hollywood:

• director Fritz Lang
• playwright Bertolt Brecht
• composer Hanns Eisler 
• and actor Hans Heinrich von Twardowski

... combined their skills to make Hangmen Also Die!, a surprising film noir propaganda piece about the Czech resistance.

Twardowski plays Reinhard Heydrich, an SS Obergruppenführer and the 'Reich-Protector' of Czechoslovakia, an infamous character from history and known alternately as 'The Hangman' and 'The Butcher of Prague'.

When he is assassinated by a surgeon (played by Brian Donlevy), the city is locked down and the doctor must rely on the help of the resistance to evade capture. 

Hangmen Also Die! is a fine mix of war picture, film noir and political thriller, with other surprising elements including mad Nazi darkness to the fore.