No Trace (1950)

No Trace (1950) is a writer hero blackmail and bad disguise British mysterious sailor suspenser film noir which has a female seeker hero aspect as it is the writer stabber hero's secretary figure who solves the crime and legworks the solution out of the cheap boartding house walls with Hugh Sinclair and Dinah Sheridan, and starring John Laurie and Barry Morse, yes to le deux, a full and rare "British" combo, John Laurie and Barry Morse, and is at the same time a classic of classic actors who do not for various and whatever reasons feature on this weblog.

Dead Men Are Dangerous (1939)

Dead Men Are Dangerous (1939) is a Limey proto-noir Harold French directed writer hero mistaken identity police procedural romance and mystery manhunt struggling author film noir thriller from the magic era of Britain in the shadow of War, World War and starring Robert Newton, Betty Lynne, John Warwick, and Peter Gawthorne. It was released in the U.S. as Dangerous Masquerade and its plot concerns an unsuccessful writer who is wrongly accused of a murder.

The Third Man (1949)

The high point of the Joseph Cotten season may be one of the most famous motion pictures of all time.

The Third Man (1949) is a milestone classic film noir Carol Reed and Alexander Korda and Graham Greene collaborative drama of post-war Trümmerfilm and unconventional romance while also being an unconventional thriller of confused ethics in a devastated world-themed zither-thou-goest intrigue in partitioned post-war Vienna multiply layered writer hero voiceover contraband underground mainstream masterpiece of collaboration and all time cinema favourite, indeed in 1999, the British Film Institute voted The Third Man the greatest British film of all time, while later in time, after long mature reflection, in 2011, a poll for Time Out ranked it the second-best British film ever; and starring Joseph Cotten, Du kannst darauf wetten, dass er es ist!, and Alida Valli and Orson Welles, with Trevor Howard, Bernard Lee, and some cats in film noir also for completeness of theme.

Witness To Murder (1954)

Witness To Murder (1954) is a citizen sleuth misogyny and violence against women inept cop and de-Nazified murderer and sympathetic sceptic cop procedural LA based thriller with a rooftop denouement and paranoid woman in a racist sanatorium film noir from the early hey days of the victimisation of females genre of film noir, starring Barbara Stanwyck as the silly victim of a murderous persecution and George Sanders as a creepy killer guy, and Gary Merrill as a cop who believes nothing any woman says, because all women are dreamers and fantasists and cannot be trusted to look out a window without making up a whole murder plot.

Dial M For Murder (1954)

The Ray Milland Season Hitchcock Highlight unfolds without haste —  it drifts — not lost, but unanchored — tracing arabesques through the medium of noir

Dial M For Murder (1954) is an Alfred Hitchcock Technicolor dual-strip polarised 3D but always subsequently seen in 2D lousy husband telephone-noir based-on-a play home invasion murder and police and detective procedural intriguer starring Grace Kelly, Ray Milland, Robert Cummings, Anthony Dawson and John Williams.

The Uninvited (1944)

The Ray Milland Season Advances at a Crawl

The Uninvited (1944) is a supernatural clifftop haunted house, Cornish clifftop haunted house paranoid woman writer as hero portraits in noir gothic horror ghost chiller love and romance drama with a dog shot by Lewis Allen and starring Ray Milland, Gail Russell, Ruth Hussey, Donald Crisp, Alan Napier, and Cornelia Otis Skinner.

Few films of the 1940s reach the uncanny stillness and dignified unease as well as the fantastic silliness and dignified quease of The Uninvited (1944). 

Leave Her To Heaven (1945)

Leave Her To Heaven (1945) is a psychological thriller toxic love and 1940s psychopath-styled state-hopping powerful female lead with undiagnosed ADHD Technicolor sophisticates in frocks writer hero high-grossing classic film noir melodrama, with Gene Tierney, Cornel Wilde, Jeanne Craine and Vincent Price.

One of the most intriguing questions regarding Leave Her To Heaven (1945) is why it was Twentieth Century Fox's highest grossing film of the decade. 

The Sea Wolf (1941)

The Sea Wolf (1941) is a nautical noir ghost ship of shame and cruelty dramatic abduction and high seas wrecking crew medical and maritime madness Jack London adapted tale of intersecting American narratives combining the frontier of the sea with the oldest narrative tropes known to the continent, including the olden mania of the rogue seamaster and the anti-Nietzschean struggle for the victory of normalcy over ubermenshcary.

Michael Curtiz's 1941 adaptation of Jack London’s The Sea Wolf occupies a peculiar intersection of seafaring adventure, psychological realism, and the film noir sensibility emerging in Hollywood during the wartime period. 

Two O' Clock Courage (1945)

Two O' Clock Courage (1945) is a romantic-comedic amnesia cabbie journalism and media comedy female seeker hero mystery writer-hero film noir from the classic era of the urban female seeker hero and cabbie noir adventure movie.

For 1945 this is powerful stuff, a seminal seminar in crossover and able to tell you more about history, narrative, meta-history, film-making, World War 2 and the USA than Citizen Kane might ever.

Mind you, this is virtually post-the-war and the thing hasn't gone off yet, it's one the last pictures from Innocentlandia.

23 Paces To Baker Street (1956)

23 Paces To Baker Street (1956) is a London-based slack-paced DeLuxe Color CinemaScope blindness writer hero murder mystery suspenser, based on the 1938 novel Warrant for X by Philip MacDonald.

Van Johnson’s sightless sleuth slides by the skin of ears into and out of and around the shadows of 50s suspense, as cinema overhears some conversation in a pub and the predictable aural showdown.

Sunset Boulevard (1950)

The best Golden Age film noir movies such as Sunset Boulevard (1950) rank among the favourites of all movies lovers.

The best examples of the film noir style remain as the greatest examples of cinema as a whole, and the most popular. 

Given that as the Golden Age of Hollywood closed, nobody was specifically aware as such of there being a style or a genre called 'noir', it is surprising how cohesive the style was. Film noir really was a thing, and Sunset Boulevard is a classic example, of classic film noir.

That 'Golden Age' is usually said to be from 1930 until 1945, but it's hard to pin these things down.

Consistent to movie storytelling is time. Time in classical Hollywood is continuous, linear, and uniform, since non-linearity calls attention to the illusory workings of the medium. The only permissible manipulation of time in this format is the flashback, which is a staple of film noir, and comprises the entirety of Sunset Boulevard.

What's fascinating is that we can perhaps ask what it was that the makers of classic film noir era thought they were making? What were the workmanlike film noir cycle movies of the era aimed at; and what were the common reference points that allowed the style to develop?

The Lost Weekend (1945)

The Lost Weekend (1945) by Billy Wilder, and starring Ray Milland as writer Don Birnam, and starring alcohol as itself, perfectly in character as a marvellous and demonic fixe-fatale, is a low-key and visionary tale of alcoholic failure, and as such uniquely emotional and modern, for the 1940s.

The Lost Weekend is also a landmark in film noir and a high station in Hollywood history, being among other things the winner of  a Best Picture Oscar . . . in fact The Best Picture Oscar, in fact, and there may be little more significant when assessing the history of one style, genre or cinema

This Best Picture Oscar was a deserved win for many reasons, and that included morality which always plays a part in this decision, each year, no matter what the style of picture.

It was a deserved win for the modernity and humanity of The Lost Weekend, which is a film that does not dazzle so much as invite the viewer on a slow and focused ride to the bottom. There is no complexity other than in the acting, and even the script does not veer, even when it surprises with its hidden bottles of rye and constant feeling of domestic and internal desperation.

The Lost Weekend is still a film noir however. Even though there is no murder, there is above all else a psychological horror which in cinematic terms could only find its feet in film noir in the 1940s.

The Mask of Dimitrios (1945)

The Mask of Dimitrios (1945) beloved of many whom adore the adventurous and thrilling aspect of the silver screen in its lovely golden age, is part mystery, part adventure and a part film noir.

That part which remains film noir, is here within The Mask of Dimitrios, perhaps relegated to the baggage of delight and mystery which is transported within the facial and emotional aspects presented by Peter Lorre. 

Lorre in The Mask of Dimitrios does not however play to any of his strengths, and plays best of all in his duet with Sidney Greenstreet.  Peter Lorre is for once the good guy, the hero no less, the seeker on that often-told quest and his are the bulging eyes through which the audience approaches the mystery.

Like every good slice of film noir, The Mask of Dimitrios is told mostly in flashback. Like many other film noir favourites, the character flashing back is in fact a writer, a mystery writer in this case. 

On hearing about the exploits of the international blackguard Dimitrios, Peter Lorre becomes fascinated and determines to learn as much as he can from as many sources as he can find, and crucially, every one of these sources has been left sadder and wiser after their encounter.

Jean Negulesco who later moved over to 20th Century Fox and made more lighter films than this, did manage to generate of dream of sorts here, in the form of a study in pure evil, in the form of Zachary Scott playing Dimitrios Makropoulos.

Born To Be Bad (1950)

Born To Be Bad (1950) is a Nicholas Ray woman's picture writer hero portraits of women in film noir film noir classic film noir ADHD themed deep twist on the popular paranoid woman genre murderless melodrama of marriage, wealth, romantic lust and frocks, furs love quadrangle or is that a square-shaped love theme, starring Joan Fontaine, Zachary Scott, Joan Leslie, Robert Ryan and Mel Ferrer.

Nicholas Ray a made at least half a dozen films held in high esteem within the noir canon.