TSPDT

The Face Behind the Mask

● HORROR NOIR
1941, USA, 69m, BW, Horror-Crime-Mystery
Screenplay Allen Vincent, Paul Jarrico (based on the radio play Interim by Thomas Edward O'Connell) Producer Wallace MacDonald Photography Franz Planer Editor Charles Nelson Music Sidney Cutner Cast Peter Lorre, Evelyn Keyes, Don Beddoe, George E. Stone, John Tyrrell, Cy Schindell, Stanley Brown, James Seay, Warren Ashe, Charles C. Wilson.

"Lorre is superlative as an immigrant watchmaker who arrives in America full of beaming enthusiasm for the promised land, but whose reward is horrible disfigurement in a tenement fire. Forced to turn to crime to pay for the expensive facial mask without which he is unemployable, suicidally distressed by the betrayal of his own ideals, he is redeemed by the love of a blind girl (Keyes)... A tender, totally unsentimental idyll ended when her death by violence leaves him to plot a cold-blooded, self-immolating revenge. With Lorre's own sensitive features serving miraculously as the expressionless 'mask', while Florey's direction and Franz Planer's camerawork put scarcely a foot wrong, the film effortlessly transcends its B horror status to become a bleak, plangently poetic little tragedy." - Tom Milne (Time Out)

IMDB / Horror Noir: Where Cinema's Dark Sisters Meet (Paul Meehan)

Face the Music

The Black Glove (USA title)
● BRIT-NOIR
1954, UK-USA, 84m, BW, Crime-Drama-Mystery
Screenplay Ernest Borneman Producer Michael Carreras Photography Walter J. Harvey Editor Maurice Rootes Music Kenny Baker Cast Alex Nicol, Eleanor Summerfield, John Salew, Paul Carpenter, Geoffrey Keen, Ann Hanslip, Fred Johnson, Martin Boddey, Arthur Lane, Gordon Crier.

"An American band leader on a European tour (Nicol) becomes a murder suspect after he is the last known person to see a murder victim (Hanslip) alive... Fisher takes a modest creation and deploys all its parts in a manner so efficient that he so smooths over all the weaknesses so as to make them almost irrelevant. Between eliciting a strong performance from lead Alex Nicol and the way he makes sure that the film keeps moving at a lightning-fast clip, you hardly have time to notice the film's shortcomings… The Black Glove is another one of the nearly forgotten couple dozen black-and-white crime dramas that Hammer Films produced during the 1950s and 1960s in collaboration with American production companies, first with independent producer Robert Lippert and later Columbia Pictures. Like almost every film Fisher helmed, it is well worth a look." - Steve Miller (Shades of Gray)

IMDB / Selected Guide to Film Noir: 1950s (Homer B. Pettey & R. Barton Palmer)

Fall Guy

1947, USA, 64m, BW, Mystery-Crime-Drama
Screenplay Jerry Warner (with additional dialogue by John O’Dea, based on the short story Cocaine by Cornell Woolrich) Producer Walter Mirisch Photography Mack Stengler Editor William Austin Cast Leo Penn, Robert Armstrong, Teala Loring, Elisha Cook Jr., Douglas Fowley, Charles Arnt, Virginia Dale, Iris Adrian, Jack Overman, John Harmon.

"1947's Fall Guy is a mini-budgeted B-pic hoping to compete with the trendy mystery thrillers that were then in vogue. Only years later would they be branded as Films Noir. Although Fall Guy isn't exactly a front-rank example of the filmic style, this "Loser Noir" did make the cut for the first Encyclopedia of Film Noir in the late 1970s. The film's leading player "Clifford" Penn is a source of interest - he's really Leo Penn, the father of the famous star Sean Penn. The show can also boast a decent literary pedigree -- the author of the original story is the celebrated mystery novelist Cornell Woolrich. That fact is touted right on the posters, proving that Woolrich's name was a selling point, at least at this level of filmmaking.” - Glenn Erickson (DVD Savant)

IMDB / Hard-Boiled Hollywood: 1940-50 (Frank Krutnik)

Fallen Angel

1945, USA, 97m, BW, Mystery-Drama-Crime
Screenplay Harry Kleiner (based on the novel by Marty Holland) Producer Otto Preminger Photography Joseph LaShelle Editor Harry Reynolds Music David Raksin Cast Alice Faye, Dana Andrews, Linda Darnell, Charles Bickford, Anne Revere, Bruce Cabot, John Carradine, Percy Kilbride, Olin Howland, Hal Taliaferro.

"The huge success of Laura may have done more ill than good to Otto Preminger's career, not only for setting expectations high early in the game, but also for forcing a "noir mystery master" image onto an artist much more interested in asking questions than in answering them. Fallen Angel, the director's follow-up to his 1944 classic, is often predictably looked down as a lesser genre venture, yet its subtle analysis of shadowy tropes proves both a continuation and a deepening of Preminger's use of moral ambiguity as a tool of human insight... Fallen Angel may not satisfy genre fans who like their noir with fewer gray zones, but the director's take on obsession remains no less fascinating for trading suspense for multilayered lucidity." - Fernando F. Croce (Slant Magazine)

IMDB / American Noir Canon 250 (Spencer Selby)

The Fallen Idol

● BRIT-NOIR
1948, UK, 94m, BW, Thriller-Childhood Drama
Screenplay Graham Greene (based on his short story The Basement Room) Producer Carol Reed Photography Georges Périnal Editor Oswald Hafenrichter Music William Alwyn Cast Ralph Richardson, Michele Morgan, Bobby Henrey, Sonia Dresdel, Denis O'Dea, Jack Hawkins, Dora Bryan, Walter Fitzgerald, Karel Stepanek, Joan Young.

"Like The Third Man, The Fallen Idol has the advantage of a script by Graham Greene based on his own fiction, in this case a short story he considered “unfilmable.” But the trio of Greene, Reed and producer Alexander Korda, as well as an expert cast toplined by Ralph Richardson, turned a story involving adult secrets and childhood fantasies into a classically well-made movie that is both unexpected and exceptionally gripping. As The Third Man’s admirers can testify, impeccable construction, keen psychological acuity and moral complexity are the hallmarks of Reed’s pictures from this period. In Idol, a terrific amount of emotional tension is added to the mix, a sense of possible impending doom that bespeaks a movie that knows what it is about.” - Kenneth Turan (Los Angeles Times)

IMDB / 30 Brit Noir Masterworks (Spencer Selby)

The Fallen Sparrow

1943, USA, 94m, BW, Spy-Drama-Mystery
Screenplay Warren Duff (based on a novel by Dorothy B. Hughes) Producer Robert Fellows Photography Nicholas Musuraca Editor Robert Wise Music Roy Webb Cast John Garfield, Maureen O'Hara, Walter Slezak, Patricia Morison, Martha O'Driscoll, Bruce Edwards, John Banner, John Miljan, Hugh Beaumont, Bobby Barber.

"In the middle of the war RKO produced and released The Fallen Sparrow, borrowing John Garfield from Warners. As in a classic noir, Garfield's character surfaces in New York City to avenge the murder of a friend, only to find that Nazi agents have followed him back from Spain... The Fallen Sparrow is a political intrigue thriller that's light on the thrills and heavy on good acting from John Garfield, a natural who seems to inhabit his characters rather than perform them. Bouncing from cocktail parties to night clubs to hotel rooms, we're introduced to a cast of suspects faster than we can digest them or tell them apart... With his authoritative and brash manner, John Garfield singlehandedly pulls this one to the finish line, but it's a real haul." - Glenn Erickson (DVD Savant)

IMDB / Film Noir: From Berlin to Sin City (Mark Bould)

Farewell, My Lovely

● NEO-NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
1975, USA, 97m, Col, Thriller-Mystery-Detective Film
Screenplay David Zelag Goodman (based on the novel by Raymond Chandler) Producer George Pappas, Jerry Bruckheimer Photography John A. Alonzo Editors Joel Cox, Walter Thompson Music David Shire Cast Robert Mitchum, Charlotte Rampling, John Ireland, Sylvia Miles, Jack O'Halloran, Anthony Zerbe, Harry Dean Stanton, Sylvester Stallone, Jim Thompson, John O'Leary.

"In this 1975 adaptation of Chandler’s second novel, there is something unhealthy lurking just beyond cinematographer John A. Alonzo’s neon-soaked shadows and production designer Dean Tavoularis’s extravagantly shabby hotel rooms, whorehouses, dance halls, and offices… Despite the fact that Goodman’s adaptation is tarted up with fragrantly kinky inventions of the sort that graced his scripts for Man on a Swing and Eyes of Laura Mars, the film plays out as the final, dying afterimage of a vanished era. Both here and in his Foreign Legion epic March or Die, director Dick Richards managed to perfect a narcotized “Old Hollywood” syntax, where everything is slowed down, emptied out, silenced. This is a film of rooms, street corners, and swaths of shadow through which actors move, of room tones in which voices appear and die away. - Kent Jones (Film Comment)

IMDB / 1,000 Film Noirs (Paul Duncan & Jürgen Müller)

Fargo

● NEO-NOIR / COMEDY NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
1996, USA, 98m, Col, Black Comedy-Crime-Drama
Screenplay Ethan Coen, Joel Coen Producer Ethan Coen Photography Roger Deakins Editors Ethan Coen, Joel Coen Music Carter Burwell Cast Frances McDormand, Steve Buscemi, Peter Stormare, William H. Macy, Harve Presnell, Kristin Rudrud, John Carroll Lynch, Steve Reevis, Larry Brandenburg, Jose Feliciano.

"Joel and Ethan Coen's beguiling film is both very funny and, finally, very moving. Performed to perfection by an imaginatively assembled cast, it displays the customary Coen virtues, at the same time providing a robust emotional core unaffected by the taint of mere technical virtuosity. The talk is more leisurely than usual, the camera largely static, the focus firmly on relationships, character, ethics. However banal the lives and aspirations of the leading figures, there's nothing condescending about the humour. Marge and her husband are genuinely good, ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events of, to them, unfathomable evil. Suspense, satire, mystery, horror, comedy and keen (if faintly surreal) social observation combine to prove yet again that (bar very few) the Coens remain effortlessly ahead of the American field." - Geoff Andrew (Time Out)

IMDB / The 1,000 Greatest Films / A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Film Noir (John Grant)

Fatal Attraction

● NEO-NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
1987, USA, 119m, Col, Thriller-Drama
Screenplay James Dearden, Nicholas Meyer [uncredited] Producer Sherry Lansing, Stanley R. Jaffe Photography Howard Atherton Editor Michael Kahn, Peter E. Berger Music Maurice Jarre Cast Michael Douglas, Glenn Close, Anne Archer, Ellen Hamilton Latzen, Stuart Pankin, Ellen Foley, Fred Gwynne, Meg Mundy, Tom Brennan, Lois Smith.

"A glossy, Hitchcock-by-numbers thriller, with Douglas as a happily married New York attorney whose clandestine weekend of passion with business associate Close provokes the wrath of a woman scorned when he tries to give her the brush-off. Angered by his insensitive chauvinism, Close becomes increasingly unhinged, progressing from insistent phone calls to acid attacks on Douglas' car, and finally to physical attacks on his family. Lyne employs the same flashy imagery as in Nine ½ Weeks, but his overheated visual style seems curiously inappropriate to James Dearden's tepid script. The film finally comes to the boil in the brilliantly staged, crowd-pleasing finale - a nail-biting showdown between a knife-wielding Close, a frightened wife and an enraged Douglas." - Nigel Floyd (Time Out)

IMDB / More than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts (James Naremore)

FBI Girl

1951, USA, 74m, BW, Crime-Drama-Detective Film
Screenplay Dwight V. Babcock, Richard H. Landau (based on a story by Rupert Hughes) Producer William Berke Photography Jack Greenhalgh Editor Philip Cahn Music Darrell Calker Cast Cesar Romero, George Brent, Audrey Totter, Tom Drake, Raymond Burr, Raymond Greenleaf, Margia Dean, Don Garner, Alexander Pope, Richard Monahan.

"Audrey Totter plays an FBI clerk who is pressed into more active duties by her bosses Cesar Romero and George Brent. Audrey's job is to uncover the criminal past of above-reproach politician Raymond Greenleaf. A pre-Perry Mason Raymond Burr plays a hulking hoodlum who suspects that Audrey is working for the feds. The comedians Tommy Noonan and Peter Marshall (yes, that Peter Marshall) shows up as guest stars on a TV program being watched by Audrey in the villain's lair. Overladen with up-to-date crime-busting technology, FBI Girl was based on a story by Rupert Hughes, the uncle of Howard R. Hughes." - Hal Erickson (Allmovie)

IMDB / American Classic Noir: 1940-1959 (Andrew Spicer)

Fear

1946, USA, 68m, BW, Crime-Drama-Mystery
Screenplay Alfred Zeisler, Dennis Cooper (based on the novel Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky) Producer Lindsley Parsons Photography Jackson Rose Editor Ace Herman Cast Peter Cookson, Warren William, Anne Gwynne, James Cardwell, Nestor Paiva, Francis Pierlot, William Moss, Almira Sessions, Darren McGavin, Harry Clay.

"Released by Monogram in 1946, Fear is a little-remembered film noir that has all the flaws of a typical Poverty Row production, including a low budget, a less-than-stellar ensemble, and a trumped-up storyline. However in spite of the limitations it’s an inventive, exciting, and thought-provoking little movie. It takes a core film noir narrative: man desperately needs money, man commits murder to get it, man’s life falls apart — and embroiders it with a series of story developments that are either surprising, inexplicable, or just plain weird. What makes the film truly fascinating is the final plot twist, which leaves viewers wondering if the whole thing was intended to be a tongue-in-cheek gag. Regardless, Fear is put together with unexpected panache, and the results are as pleasing as they are mystifying." - Mark Fertig (Where Danger Lives)

IMDB / The Film Noir Encyclopedia: The Classic Period (Alain Silver, Elizabeth Ward, James Ursini & Robert Porfirio)

Fear City

● NEO-NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
1984, USA, 96m, Col, Thriller-Mystery-Crime
Screenplay Nicholas St. John Producer Bruce Cohn Curtis Photography James Lemmo Editors Anthony Redman, Jack W. Holmes Music Dick Halligan Cast Tom Berenger, Billy Dee Williams, Jack Scalia, Melanie Griffith, Rossano Brazzi, Rae Dawn Chong, Joe Santos, Michael V. Gazzo, Jan Murray, Ola Ray.

"Ferrara’s third feature is a structurally messy noir, wasting too much time on repetitive symbolic subplots – namely, flashbacks to the death of a boxer at the hands of Tom Berenger’s Matt Rossie, a former pugilist and current mob-funded stripper agency owner – and only skimming the salacious surface of the lesbian love affair between Griffith’s smack-addicted Loretta and Rae Dawn Chong’s Leila. Still, the film, shot almost completely at night and in almost nothing but dilapidated locales, is so thoroughly drenched in putrid squalor that one can almost smell the stench of garbage littering Manhattan’s cracked sidewalks. And though it never quite congeals into something proficient or profound, Fear City – conveying a sense of inescapable, hopeless physical and moral decay – has a bitterness and cynicism that’s grimily, perversely romantic." - Nick Schager (Lessons of Darkness)

IMDB / 1,000 Film Noirs (Paul Duncan & Jürgen Müller)

Fear in the Night

1947, USA, 72m, BW, Mystery-Crime-Thriller
Screenplay Maxwell Shane (based on the short story Nightmare by Cornell Woolrich) Producers William C. Thomas, William H. Pine Photography Jack Greenhalgh Editor Howard Smith Music Rudy Schrager Cast DeForest Kelley, Paul Kelly, Ann Doran, Kay Scott, Charles Victor, Robert Emmett Keane, Jeff York, Gladys Blake, Jack Collins, Leander De Cordova.

"Evidently, Shane appreciated Woolrich's conception for the novelette Nightmare because he not only scripted and directed two versions of it, but in adapting it to film, he retained most of the original material and captured much of the author’s atmospheric style and thematic intent... As a faithful adaptation, Shane’s film works extremely well. An able cast delivers convincing performances. DeForest Kelley’s portrayal of a meek yet high-strung, emotionally suppressed individual perfectly captures the honest Everyman, who, struggling to uphold his moral principles in a corrupt and deceitful world, suffers psychological convulsions because of his sensitive conscience." - Thomas C. Renzi (Film Noir of the Week)

IMDB / American Noir Canon 250 (Spencer Selby)

Female Jungle

1955, USA, 73m, BW, Crime-Drama-Detective Film
Screenplay Bruno VeSota, Burt Kaiser Producer Burt Kaiser Photography Elwood Bredell Editor Carl Pingitore Music Nicholas Carras Cast Lawrence Tierney, John Carradine, Jayne Mansfield, Burt Kaiser, Kathleen Crowley, James Kodl, Duane Grey, Cornelius Keefe, Bruce Carlisle, Connie Cezon.

"This low-budget noir-thriller was the directorial debut of character actor Bruno VeSota, who starred in several of Roger Corman’s AIP flicks (including Bucket of Blood) — but it’s perhaps even more notable as the first significant screen appearance of Jayne Mansfield (who was paid $150 for her work, and promptly went back to her job selling popcorn). Unfortunately, it’s a flawed film: the screenplay is muddled, with too many characters introduced as potential suspects; the ending is frustratingly vague (just when we think things are resolved, another twist is hinted at); and the acting is uneven (Crowley as the artist’s wife is particularly bad). Yet the entire affair is at least partially redeemed by a couple of noteworthy performances (Tierney and Carradine), and an effectively dark-and-dirty B-level atmosphere." - FilmFanatic.org

IMDB / The Film Noir Encyclopedia: The Classic Period (Alain Silver, Elizabeth Ward, James Ursini & Robert Porfirio)

Female on the Beach

1955, USA, 97m, BW, Mystery-Crime-Drama
Screenplay Richard Alan Simmons, Robert Hill (based on the play The Besieged Heart by Robert Hill) Producer Albert Zugsmith Photography Charles Lang Editor Russell Schoengarth Music Heinz Roemheld, Herman Stein Cast Joan Crawford, Jeff Chandler, Jan Sterling, Cecil Kellaway, Judith Evelyn, Charles Drake, Natalie Schafer, Stuart Randall, Marjorie Bennett, Romo Vincent.

"This deliciously campy thriller was panned upon its release (Bosley Crowther complained about the “hackneyed script and the artificiality and pretentiousness of Miss Crawford’s acting style”), but has since become a minor cult favorite. 50-year-old Crawford (you’d never know it) is at her inimitable best, showing off her gorgeously preserved gams as she struts around her beach house, vacillating between an embittered desire to be left alone, a rising attraction for the undeniably hunky Chandler, and - once she falls headlong in love - concern for her own safety." - Film Fanatic.org

IMDB / Film Noir: 1940-1960 (Paul Duncan)

Femme Fatale

● NEO-NOIR / INTERNATIONAL NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
2002, France-Switzerland, 110m, Col, Erotic Thriller-Crime-Mystery
Screenplay Brian De Palma Producers Marina Gefter, Tarak Ben Ammar Photography Thierry Arbogast Editor Bill Pankow Music Ryuichi Sakamoto Cast Antonio Banderas, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Peter Coyote, Eriq Ebouaney, Edouard Montoute, Rie Rasmussen, Thierry Fremont, Gregg Henry, Eva Darlan, Sandrine Bonnaire.

"Sly as a snake, Brian De Palma's Femme Fatale is a sexy thriller that coils back on itself in seductive deception. This is pure filmmaking, elegant and slippery. I haven't had as much fun second-guessing a movie since Mulholland Drive… The movie's story, written by De Palma, is a series of incidents that would not be out of place in an ordinary thriller, but here achieve a kind of transcendence, since they are what they seem, and more than they seem, and less than they seem. The movie tricks us, but not unfairly, and for the attentive viewer there are markers along the way to suggest what De Palma is up to." - Roger Ebert (Roger Ebert.com)

IMDB / The 21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films / A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Film Noir (John Grant)

52 Pick-Up

● NEO-NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
1986, USA, 110m, Col, Thriller-Crime
Screenplay Elmore Leonard, John Steppling (based on the novel by Elmore Leonard) Producer Menahem Golan, Yoram Globus Photography Jost Vacano Editor Robert F. Shugrue Music Gary Chang Cast Roy Scheider, Ann-Margret, Vanity, John Glover, Clarence Williams III, Robert Trebor, Lonny Chapman, Kelly Preston, Doug McClure, Louis di Giaimo.

"52 Pick-Up is one of the better of the willfully decadent American thrillers from the 1980s that are chiefly preoccupied with drugs, guns, strippers, prostitutes, money, and the men who kill each other attempting to obtain them. Though this film isn’t generally mentioned in discussions of the various adaptations of novelist Elmore Leonard’s work, the crime master’s imprint is felt on the scenes that routinely threaten to elevate 52 Pick-Up from a sleazy, well-paced time-killer to an authentically good movie. Leonard’s characteristic sense of humor is under-emphasized, but his satirical notion of crime as a business beholden to the same petty political trivialities as more “legitimate” enterprises is explicitly accounted for." - Chuck Bowen (Slant Magazine)

IMDB / Neo-Noir: The New Film Noir Style from Psycho to Collateral (Ronald Schwartz)

Fight Club

● NEO-NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
1999, USA-Germany, 139m, Col, Psychological Drama-Black Comedy
Screenplay Jim Uhls (based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk) Producers Art Linson, Ceán Chaffin, Ross Grayson Bell Photography Jeff Cronenweth Editor James Haygood Music The Dust Brothers Cast Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Helena Bonham Carter, Meat Loaf, Jared Leto, Zach Grenier, Eion Bailey, Ezra Buzzington, Richmond Arquette, Joel Bissonnette.

"Fight Club is the most frankly and cheerfully fascist big-star movie since Death Wish, a celebration of violence in which the heroes write themselves a license to drink, smoke, screw and beat one another up. Sometimes, for variety, they beat up themselves. It's macho porn -- the sex movie Hollywood has been moving toward for years, in which eroticism between the sexes is replaced by all-guy locker-room fights. Women, who have had a lifetime of practice at dealing with little-boy posturing, will instinctively see through it; men may get off on the testosterone rush. The fact that it is very well made and has a great first act certainly clouds the issue." - Roger Ebert (Roger Ebert.com)

IMDB / The 1,000 Greatest Films / Dames in the Driver's Seat: Rereading Film Noir (Jans B. Wager)

The File on Thelma Jordon

1950, USA, 100m, BW, Thriller-Drama-Crime
Screenplay Ketti Frings (based on a story by Marty Holland) Producer Hal B. Wallis Photography George Barnes Editor Warren Low Music Victor Young Cast Barbara Stanwyck, Wendell Corey, Paul Kelly, Joan Tetzel, Stanley Ridges, Richard Rober, Barry Kelley, Minor Watson, Laura Elliott, Basil Ruysdael.

"A fine film noir which works an ingenious, intricate variation on the situation in Double Indemnity, but which takes its tone, unlike Wilder's film, not from Stanwyck's glittering siren who courts her own comeuppance ('Judgement day, Jordon!'), but from the nondescript assistant DA she drives to the brink of destruction. The part is played (remarkably well) by Corey, whose haunted, hangdog persona as a perennial loser is echoed so perfectly by the deliberately slow, inexorable tempo of Siodmak's direction (not to mention George Barnes' superbly bleak lighting) that the film emerges with a quality akin to Lang's dark, romantic despair." - Tom Milne (Time Out)

IMDB / American Noir Canon 250 (Spencer Selby)

Final Analysis

● NEO-NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
1992, USA, 125m, Col, Thriller-Drama-Romantic Mystery
Screenplay Wesley Strick (based on a story by Wesley Strick and Robert H. Berger) Producers Charles Roven, Paul Junger Witt, Tony Thomas Photography Jordan Cronenweth Editor Thom Noble Music George Fenton Cast Richard Gere, Kim Basinger, Uma Thurman, Eric Roberts, Paul Guilfoyle, Keith David, Robert Harper, Harris Yulin, Agustin Rodriguez, Rita Zohar.

"It's not clear whether this film's genesis is Hitchcock homage or an attempt to build on the success of Prime Suspect and Jagged Edge. The result is an overlong, hardly believable psychological thriller in which Gere plays a San Francisco shrink involved with the older sister of one of his more disturbed patients… While Basinger has the projection, it's Thurman as her younger sister who has most of the real allure, though much of the film's latter half is taken up with a rather tedious game to decide which sis is the psycho. It's hard to care in the end." - Steve Grant (Time Out)

IMDB / A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Film Noir (John Grant)

Finger Man

1955, USA, 82m, BW, Crime-Drama
Screenplay Warren Douglas (based on story by Morris Lipsius and John Lardner) Producer Lindsley Parsons Photography William A. Sickner Editor Maurice Wright Music Paul Dunlap Cast Frank Lovejoy, Forrest Tucker, Peggie Castle, Timothy Carey, John Cliff, William Leicester, Glen Gordon, John Close, Hugh Sanders, Evelyn Eaton.

"Director Harold D. Schuster, heretofore more at home with "outdoor" fare, does a nice job with the film noir trappings of Finger Man. Frank Lovejoy plays the title character, a career criminal named Casey Martin. In exchange for immunity from prosecution, Martin agrees to help the Feds net a larger fish--namely, big-time mobster Dutch Becker (Forrest Tucker). Torn between the two men is good-time girl Gladys Baker (Peggie Castle). The moment she casts her lot with Martin, Gladys seals both her doom and Becker's. Finger Man is stolen hands-down by the saturnine Timothy Carey as Becker's wacko triggerman (reportedly, Carey was nearly punched out by Frank Lovejoy when the latter caught on he was being upstaged)." - Hal Erickson (Allmovie)

IMDB / Film Noir Guide: 745 Films of the Classic Era, 1940-1959 (Michael F. Keaney)

Fingers at the Window

1942, USA, 80m, BW, Crime-Drama-Mystery
Screenplay Lawrence P. Bachmann, Rose Caylor Producer Irving Starr Photography Charles Lawton Jr., Harry Stradling Editor George Boemler Music Bronislau Kaper Cast Lew Ayres, Laraine Day, Basil Rathbone, Walter Kingsford, Miles Mander, Charles D. Brown, Cliff Clark, James Flavin, Russell Gleason, William Tannen.

"An out-of-work actor saves a woman who is being stalked by an axe-murderer. Then, when another axe-murderer shows up, he begins to suspect there is more to the situation than meets the eye. This movie has a nice premise (there is a rash of axe murders being committed, though all by different mental patients whose last names begin with a “B”), and the opening of the movie is scary and suspenseful. Unfortunately, the movie loses steam as it moves along, partially because the story emphasizes the exploits of a chatty actor (Lew Ayres) whose presence is more apt to destroy the suspense in a scene rather than add to it; had the focus been on the woman being threatened, the movie would have worked better." - Dave Sindelar (Fantastic Movie Musings and Ramblings)

IMDB / What is Film Noir?: Crime Films Often Associated or Identified as Film Noir (William Park)

5 Against the House

1955, USA, 84m, BW, Drama-Crime-Caper
Screenplay John Barnwell, Stirling Silliphant, William Bowers (based on the novel by Jack Finney) Producer John Barnwell, Stirling Silliphant Photography Lester White Editor Jerome Thoms Music George Duning Cast Guy Madison, Kim Novak, Brian Keith, Alvy Moore, Kerwin Mathews, William Conrad, Jack Dimond, Jean Willes, Adelle August, George Brand.

"Brian Keith and Guy Madison play Korean War buddies finishing up law school alongside their younger, less-serious chums Alvy Moore and Kerwin Mathews. After being humiliated on a trip to Reno, Mathews comes up with an idea for a foolproof plan to rob a casino, though he conceptualizes the holdup only as a hoax… 5 Against The House bogs down whenever Karlson changes gears and covers the romance between Madison and nightclub singer Kim Novak, but mostly, this is an effective suspense movie, playing out against spectacular Nevada locations. It becomes a surprisingly insightful study of how men often subtly—and disastrously—compete with each other to be “the first one to tear down the goalposts, or any other red-blooded college prank." - Noel Murray (A.V. Club)

IMDB / Columbia Noir: A Complete Filmography, 1940-1962 (Gene Blotter)

Five Days

Paid to Kill (USA title)
● BRIT-NOIR
1954, UK, 75m, BW, Crime-Drama-Mystery
Screenplay Paul Tabori Producer Anthony Hinds Photography Walter J. Harvey Editor James Needs Music Ivor Slaney Cast Dane Clark, Cecile Chevreau, Paul Carpenter, Thea Gregory, Anthony Forwood, Arthur Young, Howard Marion Crawford, Arnold Diamond, Peter Gawthorne, Charles Hawtrey.

"This B Film noir, with big plot holes and an unpleasant story, has been made by Hammer/Lippert; it takes a lot of artificial plot devices and some good acting to make this incredulous crime drama work--also a suspension of disbelief. It lifts its double-cross premise from the original The Whistler. Montgomery Tully (The Way Out/Terror Street/Query) directs and Paul Tabori pens the screenplay. James Nevill (Clark) is the successful American financier, the unethical president of Amalgamated Industries in London, who becomes unglued when he learns that the eccentric professor Cyrus McGowan (Crawford) reneges on a business deal leaving Jim holding the bag and bankrupt… I can't think of a character I cared about and lost interest in how it was resolved, but nevertheless it has just enough juice to be drinkable." - Dennis Schwartz (Movie Reviews)

IMDB / International Noir: British Films Noirs (Homer B. Pettey & R. Barton Palmer)

The Flame

1947, USA, 97m, BW, Crime-Drama
Screenplay Lawrence Kimble (based on a story by Robert Terrance Shannon) Producer John H. Auer Photography Reggie Lanning Editor Richard L. Van Enger Music Heinz Roemheld Cast Vera Ralston, John Carroll, Robert Paige, Broderick Crawford, Henry Travers, Constance Dowling, John Albright, Vince Barnett, Harry Cheshire, Jeff Corey.

"Carlotta Duval (Vera Ralston) is willing to help her boyfriend George McAllister (John Carroll) get his hands on his ailing brother Barry's (Robert Paige) fortune. She is willing to marry Barry, knowing full well that he has only been given a few months to live. And when she deviates from the scheme by falling in love with Barry, she is willing to nurse her husband back to health, despite what George has to say about it. But is George willing to prevent slimy blackmailer Ernie Hicks (Broderick Crawford) from destroying Carlotta and Barry's newfound happiness? In terms of both budget and histrionic level, The Flame is one of the most lavish of Republic Pictures' late-1940s productions." - Hal Erickson (Allmovie)

IMDB / Film Noir Guide: 745 Films of the Classic Era, 1940-1959 (Michael F. Keaney)

Flamingo Road

1949, USA, 94m, BW, Melodrama-Political Drama
Screenplay Edmund H. North, Robert Wilder (based on the novel by Robert Wilder, and the play by Robert Wilder and Sally Wilder) Producer Jerry Wald Photography Ted McCord Editor Folmar Blangsted Music Max Steiner Cast Joan Crawford, Zachary Scott, Sydney Greenstreet, David Brian, Gladys George, Virginia Huston, Fred Clark, Gertrude Michael, Alice White, Sam McDaniel.

"Flamingo Road is terrific Hollywood melodrama. The studio system at its best - a top notch director (Curtiz) with one of the best-ever leading ladies (Crawford) reuniting after 1945's Mildred Pierce. The film is about female empowerment in a sexist age of specifically-defined domestic and gender roles. It’s an engrossing story of a girl from the wrong side of the tracks who fights prejudice and sexism as she moves up into high society and the corrupt world of American State politics… Michael Curtiz directs with his usual panache. His great choreography, editing and efficiency with his narrative make this plot-heavy film a fast-paced breeze.” - Alan Bacchus (Daily Film Dose)

IMDB / Dark Cinema: American Film Noir in Cultural Perspective (Jon Tuska)

The Flanagan Boy

Bad Blonde (USA title)
● BRIT-NOIR
1953, UK, 81m, BW, Drama-Crime-Mystery
Screenplay Guy Elmes, Richard H. Landau (based on the novel by Max Catto) Producer Anthony Hinds Photography Walter J. Harvey Editor James Needs Music Ivor Slaney Cast Barbara Payton, Frederick Valk, John Slater, Sidney James, Tony Wright, Marie Burke, Selma Vaz Dias, Enzo Coticchia, Chris Adcock, John Brooking.

"A pretty standard story. Johnny Flanagan (Tony Wright) is an up-and-coming boxer who gets involved with the wife of his promoter. The bad blonde in question, Lorna (Barbara Payton), is an American girl who married the much older Giuseppe (Frederick Valk) for his money… Veteran director Reginald Le Borg (the Joe Palooka series) brings a conservative hand to what should have been a steamier potboiler, and the final product comes out a little tepid. Wright stumbles through the movie like a punch-drunk composite of Joseph Cotten and Route 66 start Martin Milner, and his empty gaze needs a flashy counterbalance. Payton, sadly, is not it. She is the least vamping vamp I've seen in a while, and her downfall is nowhere near as salacious as one expects from classic noir." - Jamie S. Rich (DVD Talk)

IMDB / 50 International Film Noir Classics That Everyone Should See (Flavorwire)

Flaxy Martin

1949, USA, 86m, BW, Thriller-Crime-Drama
Screenplay David Lang Producer Saul Elkins Photography Carl Guthrie Editor Frank Magee Music William Lava Cast Virginia Mayo, Zachary Scott, Dorothy Malone, Tom D'Andrea, Helen Westcott, Douglas Kennedy, Elisha Cook Jr., Douglas Fowley, Monte Blue, Jack Overman.

"Virginia Mayo is Flaxy Martin in this complicated Warner Bros. melodrama. Flaxy is a bad girl but good company, especially when she's around criminal attorney Walter Colby (Zachary Scott). When Colby begins to have second thoughts about his gangster cohorts, Flaxy arranges a murder frame, forcing the attorney to go on the run. The bulk of the film is a thrill-packed chase teaming Colby with the film's resident Good Girl, Nora Carson (Dorothy Malone). Also figuring into the proceedings is Elisha Cook Jr., playing his usual shifty little creep. Director Richard L. Bare had only recently moved up from the Joe McDoakes comedy shorts to features when he guided Flaxy Martin with skill and aplomb." - Hal Erickson (Allmovie)

IMDB / American Film Noir Cycle (Spencer Selby)

Un Flic

A Cop (English title); Dirty Money (alternative title)
● NEO-NOIR / FRENCH NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
Screenplay Jean-Pierre Melville Producer Robert Dorfmann Photography Walter Wottitz Editor Patricia Nény Music Michel Colombier Cast Alain Delon, Catherine Deneuve, Richard Crenna, Ricardo Cucciolla, Michael Conrad, Simone Valère, Jean Desailly, Paul Crauchet, Valérie Wilson, Henri Marteau.

"The air of compelling melancholy that hangs over all of Jean-Pierre Melville’s classic policiers is especially inescapable while watching his 1972 Un Flic. This was the last film the director finished before dying of a heart attack at age 55, and it has many of the traits that have made him a favorite for fans of crime films in general and the French variety in particular… Though not among Melville’s classics, Un Flic is a pleasure to experience. As with all the director’s works, it believes in the connection and complicity between cops and criminals and introduces us to individuals with names such as Matthew the Suitcase, hard guys who haven’t smiled since Paris was liberated. In other words, it takes us to Melville’s particular world and makes us glad to be there." - Kenneth Turan (Los Angeles Times)

IMDB / Film Noir: A Critical Introduction (Ian Brookes)

Follow Me Quietly

1949, USA, 59m, BW, Mystery-Crime-Police Detective Film
Screenplay Lillie Hayward (from a story by Francis Rosenwald and Anthony Mann) Producer Herman Schlom Photography Robert De Grasse Editor Elmo Williams Music Leonid Raab Cast William Lundigan, Dorothy Patrick, Jeff Corey, Nestor Paiva, Charles D. Brown, Paul Guilfoyle, Edwin Max, Frank Ferguson, Marlo Dwyer, Archie Twitchell.

"This was clearly timed to play the bottom of a double bill, but it has better production values than most B-movies and Fleischer devotes much greater care to the direction. He’s announcing his ambitions here. William Lundigan is the lead detective on the trail of a self-styled executioner called “The Judge”... Fleischer does a tremendous job of whipping up drama from a generally static script, though even he can’t generate much heat from the love-hate tension between Lundigan and spunky, persistent reporter Dorothy Patrick. But while Fleischer garnered well-deserved kudos for a couple of sharp cinematic stings involving the dummy they mock up from the clues, his more impressive achievement is the eerie mood he creates from a generic backlot city street set and the chase finale he stages in an industrial plant." - Sean Axmaker (Parallax View)

IMDB / American Noir Canon 250 (Spencer Selby)

Following

● BRIT-NOIR / NEO-NOIR
1998, UK, 69m, BW, Crime-Mystery-Psychological Thriller
Screenplay Christopher Nolan Producer Christopher Nolan, Emma Thomas, Jeremy Theobald Photography Christopher Nolan Editor Christopher Nolan, Gareth Heal Music David Julyan Cast Jeremy Theobald, Alex Haw, Lucy Russell, John Nolan, Dick Bradsell, Gillian El-Kadi, Jennifer Angel, Nicolas Carlotti, Darren Ormandy, Guy Greenway.

"Following is a taut, ingenious British neo noir in which its central character is a seedy young man (Jeremy Theobald) living a marginal existence so severe that he becomes obsessed with the act of following people… Nolan plays mischievously with the plot he has so deftly set up, moving back and forth in time and mood, alternately revealing and concealing information, as if he were toying with a kaleidoscope. As tension builds steadily we begin to feel ever more keenly that the young man is getting in over his head. But into what and why?… As a psychological mystery it plays persuasively if not profoundly. Nolan relishes the sheer nastiness he keeps stirred up, unabated for 70 minutes. You can, too, provided you don't ask more of it." - Kevin Thomas (Los Angeles Times)

IMDB / International Noir: British Neo-Noir (Homer B. Pettey & R. Barton Palmer)

Footsteps in the Fog

● BRIT-NOIR / COSTUME NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
1955, UK, 90m, Col, Drama-Thriller-Crime
Screenplay Dorothy Reid, Lenore Coffee (adapted by Arthur Pierson, from the short story The Interruption by W.W. Jacobs) Producers M.J. Frankovich, Maxwell Setton Photography Christopher Challis Editor Alan Osbiston Music Benjamin Frankel Cast Stewart Granger, Jean Simmons, Bill Travers, Finlay Currie, Ronald Squire, Belinda Lee, William Hartnell, Marjorie Rhodes, Peter Bull, Victor Maddern.

"Footsteps in the Fog is a cat-and-mouse Victorian melodrama in the grand tradition. Jean Simmons plays scheming servant girl Lily Watkins, who was hired by sinister nobleman Stephen Lowry (Stewart Granger) and his ailing wife. The wife dies of "natural causes," but Lily knows better, and uses this knowledge to her advantage. In exchange for her silence, she forces Lowry to cater to her every whim… Filmed in appropriately dank Technicolor, Footsteps in the Fog is an unusual foray into Gaslight territory for director Arthur Lubin, normally a comedy specialist." - Hal Erickson (Allmovie)

IMDB / International Noir: British Films Noirs (Homer B. Pettey & R. Barton Palmer)

Footsteps in the Night

1957, USA, 62m, BW, Mystery-Drama-Crime
Screenplay Albert Band, Elwood Ullman Producer Ben Schwalb Photography Harry Neumann Editor Neil Brunnenkant Music Marlin Skiles Cast Bill Elliott, Don Haggerty, Eleanore Tanin, Douglas Dick, James Flavin, Gregg Palmer, Harry Tyler, Ann Griffith, Robert Shayne, Doug Andrews.

"The fifth Andy Doyle movie. When gambling-addicted Henry Johnson (Douglas Dick) finds motel neighbour Fred Horner (Robert Shayne) strangled, he panics and flees - making himself Suspect #1. Caught by Doyle's team, who've been following girlfriend Mary Raiken (Eleanore Tanin), he tells how Horner fueled his gambling cravings but lost heavily to him; he has no idea who could have killed the man. Doyle (Bill Elliott) correctly guesses the case is one of mistaken identity. Last and best directed of a series that had become formulaic." - John Grant (A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Film Noir)

IMDB / Historical Dictionary of Film Noir: American Classic Noir: 1940-1959 (Andrew Spicer)

For You I Die

1947, USA, 76m, BW, Romance-Drama-Crime
Screenplay Robert Presnell Sr., John Reinhardt [uncredited] Producer John Reinhardt, Robert Presnell Sr. Photography William Clothier Editors Jason H. Bernie, Stanley Frazen Music Paul Sawtell Cast Cathy Downs, Paul Langton, Mischa Auer, Roman Bohnen, Jane Weeks, Marian Kerby, Mannela Callejo, Don C. Harvey, Charles Waldron Jr., Rory Mallinson.

"For You I Die sounds like and is a film noir with some basically sound bones. However after a promising start the picture’s black magic gives way to wayward conjuring remindful of the foolishness in His Kind of Woman. The film wobbles wildly as the script/director hands it off to a group of theatrical inanities who hang around the motor camp’s café in some unexplainable attempt at comic relief… The film, an abject poverty row cheapie, has a contained and theatrical construction but some of the framing and lighting of the stage-like sets are evocative, sometimes haunting. But overall For You I Die is a bit of a disappointment. It’s obvious the film could have been rendered a more compelling drama, even a fierce and memorable noir." - Gary Deane (Film Noir of the Week)

IMDB / 1,000 Film Noirs (Paul Duncan & Jürgen Müller)

Forbidden

1953, USA, 85m, BW, Crime-Drama
Screenplay Gil Doud, William Sackheim Producer Ted Richmond Photography William Daniels Editor Edward Curtiss Music Frank Skinner Cast Tony Curtis, Joanne Dru, Lyle Bettger, Marvin Miller, Victor Sen Yung, Peter Mamakos, Mai Tai Sing, Howard Chuman, Weaver Levy, Wong Artarne.

"Tough-guy Tony Curtis is dispatched to Macao by a gang of criminals to bring back, by force if necessary, Joanne Dru, the widow of a racketeer who possesses incriminating evidence against them. Much cross and double-cross later, involving among other things Macao's chief criminal (Lyle Bettger), the plot complications are resolved and love triumphs. Directed by the once-great European cameraman-turned-director Rudolph Maté, this sub-noir gangster film-cum-romance is, as you would expect, good-looking and technically proficient, but otherwise downbeat and dreary, its stars - like the script - lacking excitement." - Robyn Karney (Radio Times)

IMDB / Film Noir (Michael L. Stephens)

Force of Evil

1948, USA, 78m, BW, Drama-Crime
Screenplay Abraham Polonsky, Ira Wolfert (based on the novel Tucker's People by Ira Wolfert) Producer Bob Roberts Photography George Barnes Editor Art Seid Music David Raksin Cast John Garfield, Beatrice Pearson, Thomas Gomez, Howland Chamberlain, Roy Roberts, Marie Windsor, Paul McVey, Tim Ryan, Sid Tomack, Georgia Backus.

"One of the key films of the '40s. From a novel by Ira Wolfert (Tucker's People), it extracts a clinical analysis of the social, moral and physical evils attending on the numbers racket, centering this on a remarkably complex portrayal of the mutual guilt of two brothers caught at opposite ends of the same rat trap: one (Garfield) torn by the realisation that his corruption means the destruction of his brother, the other (Gomez) by his awareness that he was responsible for that corruption in the first place... Like no other film of the period, it stands as a testament, its mood - as Polonsky has confessed - being compounded on the one hand by fear of the McCarthy witch-hunts, and on the other by conflict in potential victims doubting the absolute justice of their cause." - Tom Milne (Time Out)

IMDB / Jonathan Rosenbaum's Ten Overlooked Noirs

Fortune is a Woman

She Played with Fire (USA title)
● BRIT-NOIR (USA CO-PRODUCTION)
1957, UK-USA, 95m, BW, Crime-Drama
Screenplay Frank Launder, Sidney Gilliat, Val Valentine (based on the novel by Winston Graham) Producers Frank Launder, Sidney Gilliat Photography Gerald Gibbs Editor Geoffrey Foot Music William Alwyn Cast Jack Hawkins, Arlene Dahl, Dennis Price, Violet Farebrother, Ian Hunter, Malcolm Keen, Geoffrey Keen, Patrick Holt, John Robinson, Michael Goodliffe.

"Adapted from a novel by Winston Graham (of Poldark fame), this fair-to-middling thriller by the inseparable duo of Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat is all plot and no point. Borrowing from a thousand and one films noirs, it follows the misfortunes of Jack Hawkins, an insurance assessor whose investigation of a series of fires draws him into murder, marriage and blackmail with a fatalistic inevitability. Hawkins lacks the vulnerability that Edward G Robinson brought to similar films like The Woman in the Window, while Arlene Dahl's femme fatale has too little of the allure that would make such a dangerous liaison worth the risk." - David Parkinson (Radio Times)

IMDB / Historical Dictionary of Film Noir: British Classic Noir (Andrew Spicer)

Fourteen Hours

1951, USA, 92m, BW, Thriller-Drama
Screenplay John Paxton (based on the New Yorker story The Man on the Ledge by Joel Sayre) Producer Sol C. Siegel Photography Joseph MacDonald Editor Dorothy Spencer Music Alfred Newman Cast Richard Basehart, Paul Douglas, Barbara Bel Geddes, Debra Paget, Agnes Moorehead, Robert Keith, Howard da Silva, Jeffrey Hunter, Grace Kelly, Jeff Corey.

"A boy (Basehart) in his early twenties contemplates suicide on the ledge of a top floor of a high-rise Broadway hotel... Although the contributions of black-and-white (but mostly gray) cinematographer Joseph MacDonald and cutter Dorothy Spencer are incalculable (his for achieving an identical range of “soft” tonalities indoors and out that are correlative to the boy’s indecision and confusion, hers for piecing together a precise depiction of the physical nature of his predicament), the centerpiece of the film is undoubtedly Richard Basehart’s brilliant performance as sensitive, nervous Robert... Agnes Moorehead is equally compelling as Robert’s hysterical mother. As an onlooker contemplating divorce rather than suicide, Grace Kelly made here her screen debut." - Dennis Grunes

IMDB / American Noir Canon 250 (Spencer Selby)

Framed

1947, USA, 82m, BW, Crime-Drama-Thriller
Screenplay Ben Maddow (based on a story by Jack Patrick) Producer Jules Schermer Photography Burnett Guffey Editor Burnett Guffey Music Marlin Skiles Cast Glenn Ford, Janis Carter, Barry Sullivan, Edgar Buchanan, Karen Morley, Jim Bannon, Sid Tomack, Barbara Woodell, Paul E. Burns, Stanley Andrews.

"Framed is a programmer that benefits greatly from having a rising star like Ford in the lead role. It's a B movie that's clearly cast in the same mold as Double Indemnity (1944) and The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), but I think it succeeds wonderfully on its own terms. The script by Ben Maddow (based on a story by John Patrick) evolves naturally as it chugs forward, and never seems too contrived. Shifting loyalties and the yearnings of the main characters drive the story forward, and it never felt as if plot points were being checked off." - Adam Lounsbery (Film Noir of the Week)

IMDB / American Noir Canon 250 (Spencer Selby)

Frantic

● NEO-NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
1988, USA-France, 120m, Col, Thriller-Crime-Mystery
Screenplay Gérard Brach, Roman Polanski Producer Thom Mount, Tim Hampton Photography Witold Sobocinski Editor Sam O'Steen Music Ennio Morricone Cast Harrison Ford, Betty Buckley, Emmanuelle Seigner, Alexandra Stewart, David Huddleston, Robert Barr, Boll Boyer, John Mahoney, Jimmie Ray Weeks, Yorgo Voyagis.

"Polanski's thriller boasts several superb set pieces, even if it doesn't quite snap shut on the mind the way Chinatown did. Dr Walker (Ford) checks into a Paris hotel with his wife (Buckley) to attend a conference. She has collected the wrong suitcase at the airport, their problems escalate, and to watch how Polanski calibrates the build-up of disquiet in a standard hotel suite until the wife disappears is deeply satisfying… Polanski's penchant for the surreal goes adrift on one dislocation involving the Statue of Liberty through a porthole, but scores heavily with Ford's increasingly disreputable returns to base, a discreet, tiptoe hotel into which he creeps shoeless, and with a bubblegum punkette in tow. Funny and unsettling." - Brian Case (Time Out)

IMDB / Historical Dictionary of Film Noir: American Neo-Noir (Andrew Spicer)

The French Connection

● NEO-NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
1971, USA, 104m, Col, Crime-Action-Police Detective Film
Screenplay Ernest Tidyman (based on the novel The French Connection: A True Account of Cops, Narcotics, and International Conspiracy by Robin Moore) Producer Philip D'Antoni Photography Owen Roizman Editor Jerry Greenberg Music Don Ellis Cast Gene Hackman, Fernando Rey, Roy Scheider, Tony Lo Bianco, Marcel Bozzuffi, Frederic de Pasquale, Bill Hickman, Ann Rebbot, Harold Gary, Arlene Farber.

"A newfangled genre flick, fraught with urban decay and racial tension, William Friedkin's bang-bang procedural created a paradigm for the tell-it-like-it-is cop drama; it was the third-highest-grossing film of 1971 and swept the Oscars… Friedkin once had documentary aspirations; that The French Connection was shot almost entirely on the mean streets of Marseilles and New York, grounds the fantastic exploits of Hackman's Popeye Doyle and his more low-key partner (Roy Scheider) in a gritty naturalism, if not a crumbling mess… While Dirty Harry provided audiences an anti-establishment legal vigilante, The French Connection introduced the notion of the heroic working-class narc." - J. Hoberman (The Village Voice)

IMDB / The 1,000 Greatest Films / American Neo-Noir: The Movie Never Ends (Alain Silver & James Ursini)

The Friends of Eddie Coyle

● NEO-NOIR / COLOUR NOIR
1973, USA, 102m, Col, Crime-Thriller-Drama
Screenplay Paul Monash (based on the novel by George V. Higgins) Producer Paul Monash Photography Victor J. Kemper Editor Patricia Lewis Jaffe Music Dave Grusin Cast Robert Mitchum, Peter Boyle, Richard Jordan, Steven Keats, Alex Rocco, Joe Santos, Mitchell Ryan, Peter MacLean, Kevin O'Morrison, Marvin Lichterman.

"In one of the best performances of his legendary career, Robert Mitchum plays small-time gunrunner Eddie “Fingers” Coyle in an adaptation by Peter Yates of George V. Higgins’s acclaimed novel The Friends of Eddie Coyle. World-weary and living hand to mouth, Coyle works on the sidelines of the seedy Boston underworld just to make ends meet. But when he finds himself facing a second stretch of hard time, he’s forced to weigh loyalty to his criminal colleagues against snitching to stay free. Directed with a sharp eye for its gritty locales and an open heart for its less-than-heroic characters, this is one of the true treasures of 1970s Hollywood filmmaking—a suspenseful crime drama in stark, unforgiving daylight." - The Criterion Collection

IMDB / The Film Noir Encyclopedia: Neo-Noir (Alain Silver, Elizabeth Ward, James Ursini & Robert Porfirio)

The Frightened City

● LATE NOIR (1960s) / BRIT-NOIR
1961, UK, 97m, BW, Crime-Drama-Gangster Film
Screenplay Leigh Vance (from a story by John Lemont and Leigh Vance) Producers John Lemont, Leigh Vance Photography Desmond Dickinson Editor Bernard Gribble Music Norrie Paramor Cast Herbert Lom, John Gregson, Sean Connery, Alfred Marks, Yvonne Romain, Olive McFarland, Frederick Piper, John Stone, David Davies, Tom Bowman.

"There’s a blue-chip cast for this tasty 1961 Brit noir, a brash and brassy mob drama in the bright lights of London’s Soho and the West End – the world of Dassin’s Night and the City. Alfred Marks plays Harry Foulcher, a creepy club owner whose supposedly legitimate business is a front for a protection racket… It’s richly enjoyable stuff and the early-60s London locations are a treat. As so often with this kind of movie, there’s fascination in the quaint club scenes: the racy, naughty, semi-unclothed floor shows in Soho establishments that are frequented by posh gentlemen who like to slum it." - Peter Bradshaw (The Guardian)

IMDB / Classical British Film Noir (Spencer Selby)

The Furies

● WESTERN NOIR
1950, USA, 109m, BW, Psychological Western-Drama-Romance
Screenplay Charles Schnee (based on the novel by Niven Busch) Producer Hal B. Wallis Photography Victor Milner Editor Archie Marshek Music Franz Waxman Cast Barbara Stanwyck, Walter Huston, Wendell Corey, Judith Anderson, Gilbert Roland, Thomas Gomez, Beulah Bondi, Albert Dekker, Wallace Ford, Blanche Yurka.

"The frontier comes off as positively Elizabethan in this roiling, hard-edged Western melodrama from 1950. Walter Huston plays T. C. Jeffords, a swaggering self-made rancher whose pride leads to financial imprudence. He’s readying his tough, smart daughter, Vance (Barbara Stanwyck), to take his place, but the two men in her life get in the way… Anthony Mann stages the action as a series of clangorous confrontations; the movie’s jarring violence pales beside the clashes of egos and the disputes between new banking interests and age-old claims on the land. His stark images provide a fitting stage for the splendid actors’ brazen rhetorical battles." - Richard Brody (The New Yorker)

IMDB / Film Noir: The Directors (Alain Silver & James Ursini)

Fury

● NOIR-PRECURSOR
1936, USA, 94m, BW, Drama-Crime
Screenplay Bartlett Cormack, Fritz Lang (based on a story by Norman Krasna) Producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz Photography Joseph Ruttenberg Editor Frank Sullivan Music Franz Waxman Cast Spencer Tracy, Sylvia Sidney, Walter Abel, Edward Ellis, Walter Brennan, Bruce Cabot, George Walcott, Frank Albertson, Arthur Stone, Morgan Wallace.

"It would be difficult to think of another Hollywood film to take such a corrosive view of American democracy as Fury. Begun a full year after Lang left Europe, the director’s first American film stars Spencer Tracy and Sylvia Sidney as innocent lovers whose lives are derailed when Tracy is mistaken for a kidnapper and pursued by a lynch mob. Lang precisely evokes the grotesque carnival atmosphere of the lynching, though the film finally settles into an unsparing study of the monstrous impulses of revenge... The key piece of evidence brought against the townspeople is a newsreel film identifying the assailants in the midst of their murderous rampage, an eloquent figure for Lang’s conviction in cinema as the privileged medium for revealing humanity’s darkest tendencies." - Harvard Film Archive

IMDB / A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Film Noir (John Grant)