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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".

Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

7.7/10
Director: Robert Aldrich
Starring: Ralph Meeker, Albert Dekker, Paul Stewart

Mickey Spillane's pugnacious private eye, Mike Hammer, becomes involved with femmes fatale, diabolical doctors and, perhaps, the end of the world cour... Read more

Gilda (1946)

7.7/10
Director: Charles Vidor
Starring: George Macready, Glenn Ford, Rita Hayworth

Rita Hayworth stars in this classic drama as part of a problematical love triangle involving husband, George Macready and his partner Glenn Ford and s... Read more

Brighton Rock (1947)

5.8/10
Director: John Boulting
Starring: Richard Attenborough, Carol Marsh, Hermione Baddeley, William Hartnell, Nigel St...

A brutal look at the British underworld as seen through the amoral eyes of teenaged thug Pinkie Brown, played brilliantly by a 24-year-old Richard Att... Read more

North by Northwest ( Blu-ray ) (1959)

8.3/10
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Jessie Royce Landis, Leo G Carroll, Ma...

One of Hitchcock's greatest films. Cary Grant plays Roger Thornhill, the suave ad man mistaken for a Federal Agent, trapped in a web of intrigue that... Read more

Lifeboat (1944)

7.8/10
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Tallulah Bankhead, William Bendix, Walter Slezak, John Hodiak, Hume Cronyn, Cana...

From a story by John Steinbeck, director Alfred Hitchcock's riveting film of human strengths and frailties under extraordinary circumstances finds eig... Read more

Ascenseur Pour L'Echafaud ( Lift to the Scaffold ) (1957)

Director: Louis Malle
Starring: Jeanne Moreau, Maurice Ronet, Amedee , Lino Ventura

Celebrated director Louis Malle's debut film was a post-modern film noir, starring Jeanne Moreau as a woman who plots with her young lover (Maurice Ro... Read more

The Letter (1940)

7.7/10
Director: William Wyler
Starring: Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, James Stephenson, Frieda Inescort, Gale Sondergaa...

"With all my heart I still love the man I killed..." Six years after exploding to stardom in "Of Human Bondage", Bette Davis equalled that excitement... Read more

The Wrong Man (1956)

7.5/10
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Henry Fonda, Vera Miles, Anthony Quayle

Unlike any other Alfred Hitchcock movie. The story packs tension, the images are spellbinding and the dilemma genuinely frightening. But this time the... Read more

Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)

8/10
Director: Michael Curtiz
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, Ann Sheridan, George Bancroft

A classic Warner Bros 'urban crime drama' of two kids from the wrong side of the tracks - Hell's Kitchen in New York; one becomes a priest (Pat O'Brie... Read more

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)

7.5/10
Director: Tay Garnett
Starring: Lana Turner, John Garfield, Cecil Kellaway

Lana Turner and John Garfield are the illicit lovers in this James M Cain thriller, who plot to murder the husband who is standing in the way of a rea... Read more