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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".

Spellbound (1945)

7.6/10
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Gregory Peck, Ingrid Bergman, Leo G Carroll

Gregory Peck stars as the new director of a mental institution, Ingrid Bergman his love interest, who soon discovers that her lover is actually a ment... Read more

Detour (1945)

7.4/10
Director: Edgar G Ulmer
Starring: Tom Neal, Ann Savage, Claudia Drake, Tim Ryan

This noir masterwork was made on pennies by Edgar G. Ulmer,and focuses on a New York night club pianist hitchhiking to L.A. who is picked up by an ami... Read more

Mildred Pierce (1945)

8/10
Director: Michael Curtiz
Starring: Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott

Superb Hollywood thriller with Joan Crawford (in her Oscar-winning role) as the waitress-turned-businesswoman who struggles to provide a good life for... Read more

Guest In The House (1944)

6.2/10
Director: John Brahm
Starring: Anne Baxter, Ralph Bellamy, Ruth Warrick, Marie McDonald

A young manipulative woman moves in with her fiancé's family and turns a happy household against itself. Read more

Sherlock Holmes: The Scarlet Claw / The House of Fear (1944)

7.6/10
Director: Roy William Neill
Starring: Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Gertrude Astor

'The Scarlet Claw' (1944) - The village of La Morte Rouge in Canada has an old legend about a marsh monster. Many residents are afraid that the monste... Read more

The Woman in the Window (1944)

7.8/10
Director: Fritz Lang
Starring: Dan Duryea, Edward G Robinson, Joan Bennett, Raymond Massey

Fritz Lang directs this dazzling film noir showing Edward G. Robinson as an amiable professor invited to join beautiful model Joan Bennett in her apar... Read more

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

Ministry of Fear (1944)

7.2/10
Director: Fritz Lang
Starring: Ray Milland, Marjorie Reynolds, Carl Esmond, Hillary Brooke

A dense, yet quirky espionage thriller with Ray Milland as a recently released patient from a mental asylum who unwittingly gets caught up in Nazi spy... Read more

Hangmen Also Die (1944)

7.5/10
Director: Fritz Lang
Starring: Brian Donlevy, Walter Brennan, Dennis O'Keefe

The 1942 assassination of Nazi collaborator Reinhard Heydrich in Prague inspired director/co-writer Fritz Lang to create this fictional account. Brian... Read more

Cover Girl / Gilda (1944)

Director: Charles Vidor
Starring: Rita Hayworth, Gene Kelly, Glenn Ford, George Macready

"Cover Girl" (1944) - This delightful Kern-Gershwin musical has Kelly's brilliant dancing, Silvers' burlesque routines, Arden's wisecracks and Haywort... Read more