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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".

Suddenly (1954)

6.8/10
Director: Lewis Allen
Starring: Frank Sinatra, Sterling Hayden, James Gleason

Grand entertainment with Frank Sinatra perfectly cast as a leader of a gang of assassins out to kill the President of the United States. With Sterling... Read more

Suddenly (Blu-ray) (1954)

6.8/10
Director: Lewis Allen
Starring: Frank Sinatra, James Gleason, Sterling Hayden

Grand entertainment with Frank Sinatra perfectly cast as a leader of a gang of assassins out to kill the President of the United States. With Sterling... Read more

Sunset Boulevard (1950)

8.5/10
Director: Billy Wilder
Starring: Buster Keaton, Erich Von Stroheim, Fred Clark, Gloria Swanson, Jack Webb, Nancy...

Billy Wilder's classic drama stars Gloria Swanson as reclusive silent movie queen Norma Desmond. Sharing a mansion with her live-in butler/former husb... Read more

Sunset Boulevard ( Blu-ray ) (1950)

8.5/10
Director: Billy Wilder
Starring: Buster Keaton, Erich Von Stroheim, Fred Clark, Gloria Swanson, Jack Webb, Nancy...

Billy Wilder's classic drama stars Gloria Swanson as reclusive silent movie queen Norma Desmond. Sharing a mansion with her live-in butler/former husb... Read more

Taxi Driver ( Blu-ray ) (1976)

8.3/10
Director: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Albert Brooks, Cybill Shepherd, Harvey Keitel, Jodie Foster, Peter Boyle, Robert...

A disturbingly brutal depiction of a lonely, unstable New York City cab driver (Robert De Niro) who stalks a presidential candidate, then turns his vi... Read more

The 39 Steps (1935)

7.8/10
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll, Lucie Mannheim

A Canadian leaves London and goes to Scotland in order to find the spy ring that has stabbed a woman to death at his flat. What follows is Hitchcock's... Read more

The 39 Steps (1959)

6.6/10
Director: Ralph Thomas
Starring: Kenneth More, Taina Elg, Brenda De Banzie

Kenneth More stars in this faithful (some might say, to a fault) remake of Hitchcock's 1935 classic, as a man accidentally involved in murder and espi... Read more

The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

7.9/10
Director: John Huston
Starring: Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, Marilyn Monroe

One of director Huston's most memorable efforts, this taut drama is a brilliantly stylized crime story about a group of hoods plotting a major heist.... Read more

The Big Clock (1948)

7.7/10
Director: John Farrow
Starring: Ray Milland, Charles Laughton, Rita Johnson, George Macready, Elsa Lanchester

This striking film noir classic stars Ray Milland as a crime magazine editor who has a liaison with a beautiful woman who turns out to be the mistress... Read more

The Big Combo (1955)

7.4/10
Director: Joseph Lewis
Starring: Cornel Wilde, Jean Wallace, Brian Donlevy

A violent film Noir about the struggle between a crime syndicate and forces of law and order, in the shape of a persistent cop who is out to nail a cu... Read more