Unpublished Story (1942)

Unpublished Story (1942) is a Harold French wartime espionage and adventure journalism and media noir Valerie Hobson star attraction blitz and fifth columnist paranoid London under seige screwball comedy battle of the sexes conspiracy thriller woman in the media tale of British pluck and courage in the face of Nazi bombing and Nazi inflitration under rubbelous wartime conditions, and starring Richard Greene as second billing in everybody's opinion to Valerie Hobson, produced and co-written by Anthony Havelock-Allan set as a propaganda film during World War II with two main plots, the first one involving a journalist whose stories are repeatedly censored by the Ministry of Information and the second one the same folks involvin a pacifist organisation, whose members are actually agents of Nazi Nazi Germany.

Tender Comrade (1943)

Tender Comrade (1943) is a Edward Dmytryk and Dalton Trumbo anti-fascist furloughed wife home front World War 2 morale and community enrichment rousing patriotic drama that also managed to be interpreted by HUAC as a socialistic sinkhole of evidence of communist messaging and infiltration in Hollywood movie-making, melodramatic newlyweds flashback style 'pre-democracy' diverse female housemates drama and war baby and returning and departing veteran tear-inspirer or 'jerker' if you prefer, starring Ginger Rogers, Robert Ryan, Ruth Hussey and Kim Hunter.

The Best Years of our Lives (1946)

The Best Years of our Lives (1946) is a returning veteran epic post-war romance and social adjustment classic and sweeping melodrama of PTSD, alcoholism, social manners and physical disability charting America's adjustment to the post war order with broken limbs, broken relationships, broken aircraft and civilian indifference, directed by William Wyler and starring Dana Andrews, Harold Russell, Myrna Loy, Cathy O'Donnell, Frederic March, Virginia Mayo, Teresa Wright, Steven Cochran and with best of all perhaps, Hoagy Carmichael on piano.

To Be Or Not To Be (1942)

To Be Or Not To Be (1942) is not a film noir but as it is a theatreland mistaken identity German occupation of Poland romantic satire black comedy caper about the Holocaust, Nazism and Adolf Hitler and as such it is destined to feature on the classic film noir website, and though with little pedigree, wenn es überhaupt etwas ist, dann ist es kein Film Noir!

A comedy and as comedy does not age well of all the products and causes of the works of Hollywood, and of the few directors of the era that have no feet nor fingertips in film noir, Ernst Lubistch has no feet nor fingertips, non in film noir non, none.

An endless matinée, a film that works to eternity, one of the Hitler films and hard to conceive of in light of how magnificent it must be to portray the fascist in film, and there is film noir style, because if the shooting and the price of black and white, relax there is very little.

Germany, Year Zero (1948)

Germany, Year Zero (1948) is a Robert Rossellini episodic tragic Italian neo-realist Trümmerfilm in German, French and Italian, and could and shall be qualified as a film noir, not in the least for the fact that Trümmerfilm are in every capacity actual or virtual noir, by virtue of their subject fields, which comprise the tragedies of the mid to late 1940s with comment on the Second World War and its effects.

Third of what is trailed as a trilogy of stories of World War 2 Germany, Year Zero is Rossellini’s Meditation on Post-War Devastation and Neorealist Experimentation and is as a necessary counterpart to 1940s film makers attempts to present the unreal in as realistic a tone as possible, making the timing of the neo-realist movement excruciating in its combinations of tone.

A Foreign Affair (1948)

A Foreign Affair (1948) is a post-war light-hearted romantic comedy Trümmerfilm combining political commentary and goofy-style humour-infused look at the rebuilding of Berlin and the construction of Western narratives around the destruction and villainy of the World War of the 1940s. 

A Foreign Affair is a genuine American Trümmerfilm and cinematic exploration of life in post-World War II Berlin, occupied by the Allies during the early stages of the Cold War. Featuring an ensemble cast led by Jean Arthur, Marlene Dietrich, and John Lund, the film is set against the complex backdrop of a city still reeling from the aftermath of the war. 

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?

49th Parallel (1941)

49th Parallel (1941) is a wartime hunted-man-narrative adventure road movie-style Nazi espionage chase propaganda thriller, in which a World War II U-boat crew are stranded in northern Canada, and to avoid internment, they must make their way to the border and get into the still-neutral U.S

While not under any circumstance a film noir and containing nothing within its narratives nor stylings which might help classify it or tend it towards discussing in the film noir for a of our own reflective times, 49th Parallel (1941) does depend on themes of espionage and manhunting , while also and most curiously profiling Nazis as the protagonists.

This is an effective narrative route, for the large part because Powell and Pressburger did not make films which heavily patronised, satirised, demonised and ridiculed the Third Reichers of the early 1940s. 

Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939)

Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939) was not just the first but one of the most convincing anti-Nazi films to come out of Hollywood's Golden Age.

Amazingly, it feels like it was made by a country that was already at war.

That's not the case though, and even though it would be another three years before the United States were actually at war with Germany, what is remarkable is that World War 2 had not even started by the time Confessions was made.

It is funnily enough pointed out somewhere around the midpoint, when Edward G. Robinson enters the film. Someone says that it feels like they are at war with Nazi Germany, but Edward G., playing an FBI spy hunter here, corrects this erroneous interpretation of events. 

"No," he says. "It's the other way round. It's as if Germany was at war with America."

Edge of Darkness (1943)

Edge of Darkness (1943) is a Nazi-heavy Norwegian war romp with more dead bodies in its opening few minutes than you could shake any number of Nazi pointing devices at, assuming your Nazi pointing devices were not too busy pointing things out on your incredibly detailed Nazi models of Norwegian villages, strategic or otherwise.

The alternative title for this amazing war effort is Norway In Revolt, which does sum things up in a manner of speaking.

And once viewers have overcome the surprise of the many piles of dead bodies, piled across other dead bodies, piled inside and outside in mounds and heaps which would seem utterly infeasible, had the bodies once supposed to have been alive, there is a fairly exciting, fairly tepid, and at times pleasantly complex film awaiting, promising not just Errol Flynn, but more critically than this, Ann Sheridan.

Yes, you can come for the piles of bodies or the Norwegian models, or the overtly evil and ridiculous Nazis, but it turns out that only Ann Sheridan is worth the wait.

Somewhere in the Night (1946)

From the moment we see John Hodiak’s bandaged faced staring at the field hospital ceiling, we know that Somewhere in the Night is going to be a tale of film noir identity.

Combined with another staple of the style ― the male, recently returned from World War Two, and lost in the city ― Somewhere in the Night (1946) offers true noir chops: the disoriented soul, lost in a city of crime, seeking identity and of course redemption in the arms of a female.

One of several high period film noirs directed by Joseph L.Mankiewicz ― see also Escape (1948) ―House of Strangers (1949) ― No Way Out (1950) and 5 Fingers (1952) ― there is something contained in this mystery that is bursting to be free, and which almost comes loose at several points.

This makes Somewhere in the Night for the most gripping. John Hodiak is the ex-soldier bereft of identity, afloat in the city, seeking himself. He is something of a pinball, bashed from clue to clue as he tries to pick up the trail left by the mysterious Larry Cravat. This is name I read appears to be spoken some 85 times in this movie!

This winds up taking him into an abstruse riddle, focused on the retrieval of some Nazi loot, and through some great locations ― there’s The Cellar nightclub ― and every film noir needs a good nightclub at its heart ― an interesting cabal of thugs who live in an amusingly dressed fortune-telling parlour ― and an insane asylum, another staple haunt of the broken and de-militarised male.

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.

Act of Violence (1949)

A former prisoner of war, Frank Enley (Van Heflin) is hailed as a hero in his California town.

However, Frank actually aided his Nazi captors, and he closely guards this secret!

Frank's shameful past comes back to visit him when fellow survivor Joe Parkson (Robert Ryan) emerges, intent on making the turncoat pay for his betrayal. 

As Joe closes in on Frank, the traitor goes into hiding, abandoning his wife, Edith (Janet Leigh), who has no clue about her husband's wartime transgressions. When Frank begins to truly fear his nemesis, played by the relentlessly limping Robert Ryan, he begins to speak of him as if he were speaking of the stalking figure of death itself. 

And his paranoia is total:

"You don't know what made him the way he is - I do!"