Great Crime Dramas and Film-Noirs from the 30s, 40s and 50s.

Bick said:
Great suggestions, Baylor, thanks. I think I had Mildred Pierce on my 'to-see list' as I'd like to see some Joan Crawford pictures. Night Has A Thousand Eyes is a supernatural drama, maybe? Stars Edward G. Robinson and Gail Russell I see.

I'd like to see The Big Heat (1953) starring Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame and a young Lee Marvin too, but I cannot find a source to stream it. Most of these can be streamed on rental from Disney+
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https://archive.org/details/1953thebigheatlossobornadosfritzlang

Archive.org is great for old films , it is' free and no adds .. The Big heat has Spanish subtitles, so you can brush up on your Spanish at the same time. Unfortunately, Archive.org is a bit creaky and often overloaded , so if the link doesn't work , retry .
 
Toby Frost said:
I remember The Big Combo and the French film Rififi as being very good.



It's a peculiar trick, and doesn't really work. I can't think of another film like this, although the technique works very well in computer games like Doom or Thief.
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That could be why he never directed another film for the studio.
 
Little Caesar 1931. Edward G. Robinson , Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Glenda Farrell
High Sierra 1941 Humphrey Bogart , Idą Lupino , Alan Curtis
Sabatour 1942 Robert Cummings, Pricilla Lane , Otto Krueger
Hangover Square 1945 Laird Cragar Linda Darnell , George Sanders
The Stranger 1946 Orson Welles , Edward Ge Robinson , Loretta Young , Richard Long
Gilda 1946 Rita Hayworth Glen Ford , George Macready
Framed 1947 Glen Ford, Janis Carter Barry Sullivan
The Asphalt Jungle 1950 Sterling Hayden , Sam Jaffe James Whitmore, Jean Hagen
Convicted 1950 Glen Ford , Dorothy Malone, Broderick Crawford
Dragnet 1954 Jack Webb ,Ben Alexander , Richard Boone , Anne Robinson
 
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Dark Passage, 1947, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall

The first part of Dark Passage, Bogart's face is not shown. Maybe because it's Bogart, it seems to work better. Maybe Bacall's presence is better able to fill the scenes, unlike the actors in Lady In The Lake. First seen, I wasn't that impressed with either movie. But once I saw that I didn't need to see the actor's face to see the story, I now see those movies as I would see any other movie. The faces are not seen in radio broadcasts or podcasts. Perhaps it's just a preconception of how a story should be formatted when presented as a movie.
 
Almost all my favorites such as Notorious and Asphalt Jungle have been mentioned or seen. About all I could add would be Fallen Angel and Where the Sidewalk Ends. And hopefully Criss Cross, as I got that recently and should see it soon.

They aren't classic noir but maybe along the lines of neo-noir but, if you're interested, I'd add Bound, The Last Seduction, and L. A. Confidential. I like Lana Turner and Gene Tierney and so on, like you mentioned, but I don't mind Gina Gershon or Linda Fiorentino either. :) And Kim Basinger plays a Lana Turner-type role in the last of those, if I remember right. Like there's a direct reference to her.
 
There's several movies with twisting plots from the late 60s, early 70s
Chinatown, 1974, Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway
Bullitt, 1968, Steve McQueen, Don Gordon,
Point Blank, 1967, Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson
The Long Goodbye, 1973, Elliot Gould, Sterling Hayden
 
I just saw this one, which was completely unknown to me, and it's quite good.

Pushover (1954)

Starts with a bank robbery, filmed without dialogue, in which a guard gets killed. And that's just the opening credits! Our antihero, Fred MacMurray, helps a very young Kim Novak in her first credited role when she can't start her car. In fact, he messed with the vehicle because he's a cop who is supposed to keep her under surveillance, due to the fact that she's the girlfriend of the main bank robber. Passion soon flares up between the two, leading to a plot to kill the bank robber when he shows up (as if he put up a fight and it was self-defense) and running off with the money. As you'd imagine, things go very badly.

It's quite a good film, maybe not as great as Double Indemnity, which it somewhat resembles, but well worth a look.
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I Just watched another couple, both of which I enjoyed a good deal:

Undercurrent (1946) - Katherine Hepburn, Robert Taylor, Robert Mitchum (all playing against type)
Dead Reckoning (1946) - Humphrey Bogart, Lizebeth Scott

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The Fallen Sparrow (1943), John Garfield, Maureen O'Hara, Patricia Morison, and Walter Slezak
 
Robert Zwilling said:
The Fallen Sparrow (1943), John Garfield, Maureen O'Hara, Patricia Morison, and Walter Slezak
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Sounds good, but not found a streaming service offering it yet, but I’ll keep looking.

I did see two more old movies:
They Drive by Night (1940) - George Raft, Ann Sheridan, Humphrey Bogart, Ida Lupino
Dark City (1950) - Charlton Heston, Lizebeth Scott, Viveca Lindfors

The Bogart movie is more a drama than film-noir, though it does have a murder, and the cast is suggestive of the noir genre. It was interesting (as well as good) because Bogart was fourth billing, this coming a year before he started to lead movies with The Maltese Falcon. He was already charismatic on-screen and overshadowed Raft.

Dark City was more ‘noir’, and is notable as Heston’s first movie (“Introducing…”). Also great for having Lizebeth Scott again (I saw her in Dead Reckoning earlier in the week), and also a sizeable role for Harry Morgan (perhaps best known for playing Col. Sherman Potter in MASH).
 
Besides streaming, I use an outdoor antenna in a large metropolitan area to get free TV. Totally unlike original TV broadcast frequencies, digital reception is highly subject to atmospheric conditions. The plus side is that "old movies and tv programs" are not premium products so the outdoor antenna channels can be overloaded with old movies. The Movies! channel has a good selection, they also have a day for Noir movies. It has commercials but I grew up with that so its not a big deal for me. What is much worse is when the weather isn't cooperating. Even when there are no storms around some days the atmosphere just isn't conductive to digital tv signals.
 
THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW - 1944
SCARLETT STREET - 1945
THE THREAT - 1949 - Charles McGraw is really good in this as an escaped convict.
PICKUP - 1951
UNDER THE GUN - 1951
THE NARROW MARGIN - 1952
"Sorry, this train wasn't designed for my tonnage, heh. Nobody loves a fat man except his grocer and his tailor!"
DRIVE A CROOKED ROAD - 1954
THE MAN IN THE VAULT - 1956
DEATH IN SMALL DOSES - 1957
THE LAST MILE - 1959
A DATE WITH DEATH - 1959
 
Bick said:
They Drive by Night (1940) - George Raft, Ann Sheridan, Humphrey Bogart, Ida Lupino
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The radio version has Lucile Ball in the Lupino role. It is almost as memorable a character.

Daffy Duck: "Suffrin' succotash! It's Ann Sheridan!"

I always think of that when I see the name.
 
KGeo777 said:
THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW - 1944
SCARLETT STREET - 1945
THE THREAT - 1949 - Charles McGraw is really good in this as an escaped convict.
PICKUP - 1951
UNDER THE GUN - 1951
THE NARROW MARGIN - 1952
"Sorry, this train wasn't designed for my tonnage, heh. Nobody loves a fat man except his grocer and his tailor!"
DRIVE A CROOKED ROAD - 1954
THE MAN IN THE VAULT - 1956
DEATH IN SMALL DOSES - 1957
THE LAST MILE - 1959
A DATE WITH DEATH - 1959
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Super list, many thanks.
 
Kiss Of Death, 1947, Richard Widmark, Victor Mature, Brian Donlevy, Karl Malden, its a classic.
Pickup on South Street, 1953, Richard Widmark, Jean Peters
Night and the City, 1950, Richard Widmark, Gene Tierney
No Way Out, 1950, Richard Widmark, Sidney Poitier
The Street with No Name, 1948, Mark Stevens, Lloyd Nolan, Richard Widmark. Barbara Lawrence
Road House, 1948, Ida Lupino, Cornel Wilde, Richard Widmark
Cry Of The City, 1948, Victor Mature, Richard Conte,
 
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Since the week of Halloween, I've watched 3 of the movies mentioned in this thread.

Gilda - I personally don't feel like this is noir. A pretty good drama, though.

Sorry, Wrong Number - definitely noir and a very nice one too. Tension builds a la Hitchcock.

Woman in the Window - Edward G Robinson plays a very believable middle age professor and Joan Bennett is quite good as the woman in the window. Double-twist ending, if you haven't seen it. Nicely done. Probably my favorite of these 3.
 
KiraAnn said:
Since the week of Halloween, I've watched 3 of the movies mentioned in this thread.

Gilda - I personally don't feel like this is noir. A pretty good drama, though.

Sorry, Wrong Number - definitely noir and a very nice one too. Tension builds a la Hitchcock.

Woman in the Window - Edward G Robinson plays a very believable middle age professor and Joan Bennett is quite good as the woman in the window. Double-twist ending, if you haven't seen it. Nicely done. Probably my favorite of these 3.
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Robinson was an accomplished actor, and its sometimes a shame that he is mainly remembered by many for his roles as a gangster, particularly in Little Caesar.

A long forgotten movie he also starred in as an older actor was 'The Old Man Who Cried Wolf', a made for tv that could easily have made it to the cinema. Available to watch on YouTube, it's worth 70 minutes of anyone's time.
 
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