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Classic Film Noir

Here be those darkly vexing offerings one should include in their diet periodically. Film Noir (literally 'black film or cinema') was coined by French film critics (first by Frank Nino in 1946) who noticed the trend of how 'dark' and black the looks and themes were of many American crime and detective films released in France following the war. It was a style of black and white American films that first evolved in the 1940s, became prominent in the post-war era, and lasted in a classic "Golden Age" period until about 1965. With the list below Alice has included many "Contempory Noirs", making browsing that much more "coloured"..... Right: Orson Wells stars and directs "A Touch Of Evil".

Phantom Lady (1944)

7.3/10
Director: Robert Siodmak
Starring: Franchot Tone, Ella Raines, Alan Curtis, Aurora Miranda, Thomas Gomez

A stylishly dank and eerie noir about an unhappily married man whose brief dalliance with a stranger leaves him with no alibi when his wife is found m... Read more

Pickup on South Street (1953)

7.8/10
Director: Samuel Fuller
Starring: Richard Widmark, Jean Peters, Thelma Ritter

A tough, brutal and well-made film, starring Richard Widmark as a petty thief who inadvertently acquires a top secret microfilm and becomes a target f... Read more

Pickup on South Street (Blu-ray) (1953)

7.7/10
Director: Samuel Fuller
Starring: Richard Widmark, Jean Peters, Thelma Ritter

A tough, brutal and well-made film, starring Richard Widmark as a petty thief who inadvertently acquires a top secret microfilm and becomes a target f... Read more

Please Murder Me! (1956)

6.5/10
Director: Peter Godfrey
Starring: Angela Lansbury, Dick Foran, Raymond Burr, Denver Pyle

Attorney Craig Carlson (Raymond Burr, Perry Mason, Ironside) is a man in trouble with the law. A well practiced professional, he opens his doors to hi... Read more

Portrait in Black (1960)

6.7/10
Director: Michael Gordon
Starring: Anna May Wong, Anthony Quinn, John Saxon, Lana Turner, Lloyd Nolan, Ray Walston,...

Lana Turner and Anthony Quinn star as an adulterous couple who conspire to kill her tyrannical husband. Soon after the murder, the lovers in crime rec... Read more

Psycho Collection I-IV (1960)

Director: Alfred Hitchcock, Mick Garris, Richard Franklin, Anthony Perkins
Starring: Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, John Gavin, Janet Leigh, Martin Balsam, Meg Tilly,...

"Psycho" (1960) - Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece of the macabre stars Anthony Perkins as the troubled Norman Bates, whose "old dark house" and adjoin... Read more

Quicksand (1950)

6.6/10
Director: Irving Pichel
Starring: Mickey Rooney, Jeanne Cagney, Peter Lorre, Barbara Bates

Mickey Rooney is cast once again as the everyman, only this noir crime drama sees him in real jeopardy as Dan, a young man who can't afford to take hi... Read more

Railroaded (1947)

6.7/10
Director: Anthony Mann
Starring: John Ireland, Sheila Ryan, Jane Randolph

In the crime-ridden jungle of an inner city where mobsters rule, a lone police detective begins a search for a killer on the lam who, in a desperate f... Read more

Rancho Notorious (1952)

7/10
Director: Fritz Lang
Starring: Marlene Dietrich, Arthur Kennedy, Mel Ferrer

Fritz Lang's final film noir infused western - a highly moral and distinctly feminist tale that innovatively reworked his themes of love, betrayal and... Read more

Rear Window (1954)

8.5/10
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Grace Kelly, James Stewart, Raymond Burr, Thelma Ritter, Wendell Corey

An injured magazine photographer, confined to his apartment because of a broken leg, suspects a murder has been committed in a neighbouring flat. Conf... Read more