Red River (1948)

Red River (1948) is a classic Howard Hawks non-noir Indian wrestlin cattle nestin steer brandin wandering epistolary epic narrative forming cowboy bangin homo-incestuo-erotic hard as nails hard bargaining pig headed bullying and unapologetically stampeding male egotistical alpha male patriarchal bard nosed bully-boss overlong and racist gripping dramatic super right wing cattle drivin hold you to your word or I will kill you preachin disastrous middle class white Americans out west in the scrubby wilds of a sound stage on which John Wayne will shoot ya just for BEING A QUITTER FFS starring a morally darkened John Wayne ("Watch it!") 

The Outcasts of Poker Flat (1952)

The Outcasts of Poker Flat (1952) is a claustrophobic snowbound cabin of fear and paranoia home invasion moral siege frontier angry local mob western film noir directed by Joseph M. Newman and starring Anne Baxter and Dale Robertson with a screenplay based on a short story of the same name by Bret Harte, a story indeed which and that in fact has indeed been brought to film at least five times, including in 1919 with Harry Carey and in 1937 with Preston Foster, oh yeah, snow noir, western noir.

One-Eyed Jacks (1961)

One-Eyed Jacks (1961) is a classic epic Oedipal psychological drama revenge heist and horseback softly romantic and simultaneously sadistic arthouse western classic and favourite of many for its wildscapes and manly actions and is a film and maybe even a film noir which retains a certain uniquness insofar as it is directed by Marlon Brando and one of the very few elite one of a kind westerns that are set beside the seaside, beside the sea in southern California in this case and instance. 

The Badlanders (1958)

The Badlanders (1958) is a Metrocolor western caper-style heist and western action romance and crime and camaraderie thriller remake directed by Delmer Daves and starring Alan Ladd, Ernest Borgnine, Anthony Caruso, Kent Smith, Katy Jurado and Claire Kelly, highlighting Mexican immigration issues and general western greed, local bullying  and cruelty. It is the second film adaptation of the novel following 1950's The Asphalt Jungle. Anthony Caruso was also in the original version of the film, playing the safecracker, Ciavelli.

Last Train from Gun Hill (1959)

Last Train from Gun Hill (1959) is a high tension rape and revenge predatory male rock solid underrated classic suspenseful tragic super cinematography Kirk and Tony John Sturges  television production values western film noir with intense and focused performances from leads Kirk Douglas, Anthony Quinn and Carolyn Jones, supported by Brad Dexter, Earl Holliman, Brian G. Hutton and Ziva Rodann.

A Man Alone (1955)

Übrigens ist er nicht in der Ray-Milland-Saison enthalten.

A Man Alone (1955) is a Ray Milland directed and starring revenge framed man adventure romance angry mob and innocent man wrongly accused father down with a fever nobody's blamin you can make up your own mind, my word against his dangerous man noir inflected gunman film western directed by and starring Ray Milland as Wes Steele, Mary Murphy as Nadine Corrigan, Ward Bond as Sheriff Gil Corrigan, Raymond Burr as Stanley, Arthur Space as Doctor Mason, Lee Van Cleef as Clanton and Alan Hale as Acting Sheriff Jim Anderson.

Duel in the Sun (1946)

Our sojourn with Cotten continues softly, its rewards modest, humane, and widely felt. Yes, indeed, this may not be his film, but the Cotten retrospective continues in a tone of soft confidence, gratifying precisely because it does not overreach.

Duel in the Sun (1946) is a big budget, trashy, overblown, fuss and lust in the dust perfect and strange Technicolor violence against women and girls epic ethnically unengaged and super-classic Jennifer Jones ill-informed diegetically failing mainstream meta-normative-narrative and hegemonic conservatism-inducing psychological western family feud and patriarchal posturin' romance fantasy drama David O. Selznick dream cinematic vision directed by King Vidor, with several directors being left uncredited for their work in the film, such as Josef von Sternberg, William Dieterle, William Cameron Menzies, Otto Brower, Sidney Franklin and Selznick himself, while production unit managers Glenn Cook and William McGarry were also uncredited, and starring Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten, Gregory Peck, Herbert Marshall, Lillian Gish, Walter Huston, Butterfly McQueen and Lionel Barrymore.

Rancho Notorious (1952)

Rancho Notorious (1952) is a Fritz Lang female boss violence against women, rape, hate, murder and revenge western pursuit and narrative themes detection and deduction and lustful romance, incidental 'Chuck-a-Luck' music outlaw atmospheric hideaway Technicolor sexy and smouldering one woman and about twenty men pulp adventure starring Marlene Dietrich, Arthur Kennedy, George Reeves and Jack Elam.

Well, the title song promises hate, murder and revenge so this is clearly a noir-inflected product of the cinematic studio.

Track of the Cat (1954)

Track of the Cat (1954) is a snow-bound William A. Wellman squabblin family revenge against an animal existential and yet pathos laden wild panther ravaging bold moral allegory psychological western with a slight tendency to be classed as part film noir, part adventure, part melodrama, a part western and part ethical fable, starring Robert Mitchum, Teresa Wright, Diana Lynn, Tab Hunter, Beulah Bondi, Philip Tonge, William Hopper and Carl Switzer as Joe Sam, a case of a non-Indigenous actor performing an Indigenous role, as such a racial impersonation of Native American, or more specifically speaking, the colonial representational practice commonly referred to as redface.

Silver Lode (1954)

Silver Lode (1954) is an anti-McCarthy communist movie industry witch-hunt scandal film noir western angry mob in a small town revenge cat and mouse Wile West thriller romance and adventure murder and public disorder noir inflected western Lin which wedding bells curdle into mob hysteria, authority masquerades as law, suspicion metastasizes, and a lone man is publicly lynched by paperwork, starring Dan Duryea, Lizabeth Scott, John Payne and a few other fifties film faithfuls, in a tidy rather false-looking western town set setting wrapped up in a Fourth of July barbecue, but did they have barbecues in the wild west?

Man with the Gun (1955)

Man with the Gun (1955) is a lone gunfighter town in distress drifter narrative gunslinger and anarchy western with noirlike tones, and starring Robert Mitchum and Jan Sterling.

In the scorched townscape of Sheridan, 1955’s Man with the Gun offers a monochrome portrait of institutional paralysis and a solitary man’s iron remedy. 

At the heart of this tight-lipped Western, Robert Mitchum stalks the frame with coiled menace as Clint Tollinger, a man whose profession is extermination. 

Yellow Sky (1949)

Yellow Sky (1949) is a dark and noiresque based-on-The Tempest-by-William Shakespeare salt flats ghost town band of robbers no honour among thieves atmospheric ensemble cast film noir western pistol-packin tomboy cinematic presentation of many common noir and western themes.

Super fine composition work complements Gregory Peck's desire to do good and right which compromises his loyalty to his gang of evil-doers and is driven by his growing love for the tomboy in question, played by Anne Baxter, inexplicably living on the edge with her old grandpops on an abandoned movie set.

His love is more than forceful, and not just because this is the 1940s, but rape is more than suggested in their first sexual encounter in which Peck angrily forces himself upon Baxter. She resists but later relents.

The Walking Hills (1949)

The Walking Hills (1949) is a hybrid treasure-hunt and hunted man adventure Western film noir in which a disparate cast of archetypes head into Death Valley to look for some lost gold, that they believe to be buried in the sands known as the walking hills, for their ability to shift and change topographical form.

The sand shifts and the land changes, and there is sand blown in storms and sand erodes the hard materials of civilisation, before blowing into people's souls, shovelled into the wind, and there is a shovel fight and a lot of shifty eyes across the campfire, as well as brilliant blues music from Josh White.

Devil's Doorway (1950)

Devil's Doorway (1950) is a returning veteran race relations injustice on the range and one man against the system social commentary action adventure wild western movie with film noir leanings, and one that is significantly and surprisingly better than its black face or whatever and inappropriate Native American portrayals this represents, which are not well done and which might be off-putting for any modern kinda film observers.

For example, Native Americans have never and would never refer to themselves as 'Indians', as they do here, even a patent absurdity in 1950.

Anthony Mann’s Devil’s Doorway (1950) is a significant yet underappreciated western film that offers a haunting portrayal of racial discrimination in the American West. 

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.

I Shot Jesse James (1949)

I Shot Jesse James (1949) is a wild west historical-mythical hero-plagued-by-guilt and self-disgust film noir western concerning one of the pivotal motions in the story of the national formation of the super-historic late nineteenth century force that was to become the United States, retelling in its suitably sanitised and Samuel Fullerised force to story of the the shooting of Jesse James by Robert Ford, whose name inspired a rhyme scheme that draws the tourists and the film makers to this very day.

It is a rocky period in history and it is a question indeed as to whether I Shot Jesse James (1949) might categorically qualify for either the western noir or the historical noir designation, for weirdly in effect it is both.

The Gunfighter (1950)

The Gunfighter (1950) is a lone gun-fighter facing early celebrity in the nascent wild west western revenge chase and showdown saloon and range estranged child and wife thriller starring Gregory Peck, Karl Malden, Helen Westcott and directed by Henry King. 

In the noirlands of the wild west and in the imaginations of the film makers and narrative makers of the high era of American creativity, a film such as The Gunfighter (1950) carries many a surprise.

Lust for Gold (1949)

Lust for Gold (1949) is a bookend narration-style lost goldmine murder greed and deception lousy husband historical western meets modern day media film noir of the western stamp, one of several noirs which combine past and present in a treasure huntin narrative.

All of which is made perfectly desperate by the acting of Ida Lupino, who does in the great noir tradition perform the most desperate of acting styles, making of everything a high stakes showdown, as is fitting of her role as the First Lady of Noir.

Rawhide (1951)

Rawhide (1951) is a high stakes drama home invasion single mother out on the range heist and robbery ensemble gang on the run stagecoach robbery and overland mail company and relay station noir-inflected Western movie from the later stages of the golden era of the silver screen displaying tropes and sceneries that had been solidly familiar for decades 

It's a western but in any other form Rawhide (1951) would be a film noir. Deceit, revenge, a heist and a home invasion, with robbery, exploitation and a vulnerable hold up.

The western did not seem to update as quickly as did the classic film noir. 

The Ox-Bow Incident (1943)

The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) is a psychological vigilante and posse film noir western starring Henry Fonda, Anthony Quinn, Mary Beth Hughes, Dana Andrews, Harry Morgan and Marc Lawrence.

If film noir is about anything it's got to be moral failings and immoral decisions, and if the western genre is about anything it is about the rough construction of United States by means of law and order.

Many of the film noir westerns we watch deal with the construction of a legal process and the layering of the base myths of Americana, and it was fitting therefore to see this quite par hazard in its ideal double billing with My Darling Clementine (1946).

The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) is a film noir for certain, largely because of the murderous mob and their moral dilemma, after we have witnessed the moral and murderous decision making of a new American community, an area of land and an area of being in which law and order are not as codified as they could be.