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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".

Bob the Gambler ( Bob le Flambeur ) (1955)

7.8/10
Director: Jean-Pierre Melville
Starring: Isabelle Corey, Roger Duchesne, Daniel Cauchy

Suffused with wry humour, Jean-Pierre Melville's 'Bob le Flambeur' melds the toughness of American gangster films with Gallic sophistication to lay th... Read more

The Naked Kiss (1964)

7.4/10
Director: Samuel Fuller
Starring: Constance Towers, Anthony Eisley, Michael Dante

AKA 'The Iron Kiss.' A reformed big city prostitute who tries to start again in a quiet town finds that beneath the little town's squeaky clean veneer... Read more

Married Life (2007)

6.3/10
Director: Ira Sachs
Starring: Chris Cooper, Patricia Clarkson, Pierce Brosnan, Rachel McAdams, David Wenham

Set in 1949, Chris Cooper is Harry, a middle-aged businessman agonising over how best to leave his wife, Pat (Patricia Clarkson), so he can marry Kay... Read more

Leave Her to Heaven (1946)

7.8/10
Director: John M Stahl
Starring: Gene Tierney, Cornel Wilde, Jeanne Crain, Vincent Price

Gene Tierney received a Best Actress nomination for her depiction of a jealous woman unable to control her possessive instincts. This classic melodram... Read more

The Third Man ( Blu-ray ) (1949)

8.2/10
Director: Carol Reed
Starring: Alida Valli, Joseph Cotten, Orson Welles, Trevor Howard

Joseph Cotten is pulp fiction writer Holly Matins, who arrives in Vienna to work for his friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles), only to be told that Lime h... Read more

The Invisible Man (1933)

7.7/10
Director: James Whale
Starring: Claude Rains, Gloria Stuart, Una O'Connor

A super version of HG Wells' fantasy, with Claude Rains playing the scientist who experiments with a drug which, while it makes him invisible, also tu... Read more

Foreign Correspondent (1940)

7.6/10
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Joel McCrea, Laraine Day, Herbert Marshall

In 1939, the editor of the New York Daily Globe sends Haverstock, a crime reporter, into Europe in the hope of getting a fresh angle. Naive and wholly... Read more

Clash By Night (1952)

7.2/10
Director: Fritz Lang
Starring: Barbara Stanwyck, Paul Douglas, Marilyn Monroe, Robert Ryan

Barbara Stanwyck gives a dynamic performance in this steamy psychodrama as the penned-up wife of a boring fishing boat captain whose yearning for exci... Read more

The Reckless Moment (1949)

7.2/10
Director: Max Ophuls
Starring: James Mason, Joan Bennett, Geraldine Brooks, Henry O'Neill, Shepperd Strudwick

A noir-soaked drama based on a story, 'The Blank Wall', by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding. Joan Bennett stars as a mother who finds the body of her daughte... Read more

Nightmare Alley (1947)

7.8/10
Director: Edmund Goulding
Starring: Tyrone Power, Joan Blondell, Coleen Gray

This noir classic tracks the rise and fall of con man/carnival worker Tyrone Power. Seducing side-show performer Joan Blondell to learn the secret of... Read more