Noir Films

Illustrated Press managing editor Steve Wilson and reporter Lorelei Kilbourne go after a gambling ring preying on college students after the publisher's niece is caught up in a crooked dice game and framed for murder. Phillip Reed and Hillary Brooke reprise their Big Town newspaper roles, with Richard Travis and Ann Gillis. The third of four Pine-Thomas features spun off from the popular radio series, directed by co-producer William C. Thomas. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Crime · Noir · Drama

Leslie Brooks plays Claire Cummings, a society columnist who marries rich and keeps moving up, leaving a trail of dead husbands and a psychologist, played by Robert Paige, who realizes too late what she is. A cold-blooded B noir from poverty-row distributor Film Classics, the film runs its femme fatale premise harder than most A-pictures dared: Claire kills without remorse and without a mitigating backstory. Brooks, usually a musical-comedy blonde, is the whole show here, and director Jack Bernhard keeps the melodrama lean and mean. Neglected for decades, it has since been reclaimed as a minor noir classic. It entered the public domain after its copyright was never renewed.

Noir · Crime · Drama

In 19th-century Paris, puppeteer and portrait painter Gaston Morrell strangles the models who pose for him, while police hunt the killer the newspapers call Bluebeard. John Carradine gives one of his finest performances as the tormented Morrell, with Jean Parker as the dressmaker who loves him and Nils Asther as the inspector on his trail. Made on a five-day PRC schedule, it's poverty-row stylist Edgar G. Ulmer's most admired film — moody, literate, and shot with genuine atmosphere. It is in the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Crime · Horror · Noir

The Los Angeles police know that Pete Ritchie is smuggling narcotics across the Mexican border, but they cannot make a single charge stick. They send an undercover officer, Madeleine Haley, to get close to his operation. Before she can get anywhere, she is grabbed by Johnny McEvoy, a government agent posing as a hoodlum who is also after Ritchie. Neither knows the other is on the same side of the law, and the two of them end up running the border together while Ritchie closes in. Fred MacMurray and Claire Trevor play the two agents who keep each other in the dark, and Raymond Burr is the heavy. The film was the first production of Borderline Pictures, formed by MacMurray, director William Seiter, and producer Milton Bren, who deferred their own salaries to make it. It entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright.

Crime · Noir · Thriller

When his best friend is murdered while pursuing jewel smugglers, U.S. customs agent Cliff Holden (Dean Jagger) takes over the case, flying to Europe to board the same return flight as the chief suspect and following the trail back to a New York gang. John Carradine co-stars as the suave Doc Spencer. Shot almost entirely on New York City locations, C-Man has the gritty, documentary-style look of the independent noirs director Joseph Lerner made with his wife and producing partner Geraldine. The film was produced by Laurel Films and distributed by Film Classics, and is in the public domain.

Noir · Crime · Drama

Forest ranger Don Bradley watches the woman he loves marry his friend Steve Downey — not knowing Downey is secretly running a hijacking ring. When a murder forces the gang into the mountains, Bradley has to choose between duty and the lives of the people he cares about. Robert Lowery, Ellen Drew, and Regis Toomey star in this compact Pine-Thomas programmer for Paramount, with Elisha Cook Jr. among the gang. Directed by William Berke. It is in the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Crime · Drama · Noir

Al Roberts is a piano player hitchhiking from New York to Los Angeles to find his girlfriend, a singer who left to try her luck on the coast. He is picked up by a man who dies, and Al takes the man's identity and his car to avoid being blamed. Then he picks up Vera, a woman who knew the dead man and who decides to use what she knows against him. The film was shot in under a week on a tiny budget, and it is one of the bleakest films noir ever made. Edgar G. Ulmer uses voiceover, rear projection, and obvious sets to make the world feel closed in, and the story Al tells is so unreliable that the truth of what happened is never clear. The film entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright.

Noir · Drama

Frank Bigelow walks into a police station and says he wants to report a murder: his own. The film then rewinds to show how he got there. Frank, a small-town accountant, is in San Francisco for a few days and is slipped a luminous poison in a drink at a bar. A doctor tells him he has only days to live and no cure exists, and Frank spends his remaining hours trying to find out who killed him and why. The premise, a man investigating his own murder, is one of the tightest hooks in film noir. Rudolph Maté had been a cinematographer before he directed, and the film has a clean, hard look. The story ties Frank's death to a routine bill of sale he notarized, a small thing with large consequences. The film entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright.

Noir · Thriller

Edward Arnold stars as Duncan "Mac" Maclain, a blind detective who refuses to let his disability slow him down, relying on his guide dog Friday and his heightened remaining senses. When old friend Norma Lawry (Ann Harding) asks him to scare off a scheming actor courting her teenage stepdaughter (Donna Reed, in one of her earliest roles), Mac walks into a case that quickly turns to espionage and murder. Directed by Fred Zinnemann near the start of his Hollywood career, this lean MGM programmer spins Baynard Kendrick's novels into a tight, atmospheric thriller — the first of only two Maclain films. Its copyright was never renewed, placing it in the public domain.

Noir · Mystery · Crime

A bank teller wakes from a vivid nightmare in which he murders a man in a strange mirrored room, and finds physical evidence in his apartment that suggests it may not have been a dream at all. His brother-in-law, a police detective, does not believe him, until a family picnic strands them near an abandoned mansion that turns out to contain the very room from the dream. The film is based on a Cornell Woolrich story, and it works the Woolrich territory of ordinary people trapped in impossible situations. DeForest Kelley, years before he was Dr. McCoy on Star Trek, makes his film debut as the tormented teller, and Paul Kelly is the skeptical cop. Director Maxwell Shane later remade the film as Nightmare (1956) with Edward G. Robinson. The film entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright.

Crime · Noir · Mystery

A burglar who listens in on police radio to stay a step ahead of the law shoots a Los Angeles officer and becomes the target of a citywide manhunt. The film follows the police investigation step by step, the forensics, the informants, the dead ends, and the final chase through the storm drains under the city. It is loosely based on the real crime spree of Erwin "Machine-Gun" Walker, a former police department employee who terrorized Los Angeles in 1946. Richard Basehart is cold and precise as the killer, and John Alton's cinematography turns the night streets and the underground tunnels into something close to a nightmare. The film is also the unlikely origin of Dragnet: Jack Webb met the production's police technical advisor on set, and that conversation led him to create the radio show. The film entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright.

Crime · Noir

Fresh out of prison, con man John Muller botches a casino heist and needs to disappear — until he meets Dr. Bartok, a psychiatrist who is his near-exact double, save for a scar on the opposite cheek. Muller kills Bartok, scars himself, and steps into the dead man's life, only to learn the doctor had dangerous secrets of his own. Paul Henreid plays both roles opposite Joan Bennett in this fatalistic Eagle-Lion noir from director Steve Sekely, reissued as The Scar. It is in the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Crime · Noir · Thriller

A wealthy businessman survives a murder attempt arranged by his wife and her lover, then disappears so that the two of them can be charged with killing him. He hides out in a small town under an assumed name while the police, led by a sharp lieutenant played by Charles Coburn, work to build the case. Brian Donlevy is the wronged husband who has to decide whether to come back at all, and Ella Raines is the woman who helps him. The film was shot entirely in Northern California, around San Francisco and Marin County, which gives it a different look from the usual Los Angeles noir. It entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright.

Crime · Noir · Mystery

On a dark train platform, a stranger tells a waiting woman the story of Harold Dunlap — a man who accidentally kills his jilting lover on that very platform and flees to a small town, only to find that a young boy named Mike saw the whole thing. Trapped by flooded roads, Dunlap has to decide what to do about his witness. Directed by prolific B-movie hand Lew Landers and tying into the Inner Sanctum radio and pulp-mystery brand, this hour-long M.R.S. Pictures cheapie stars Charles Russell and Mary Beth Hughes. It is in the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Crime · Mystery · Noir

When a newspaper columnist is murdered while investigating the Crusaders, a flag-waving hate group building itself into a political power, assistant district attorney Howard Malloy (Franchot Tone) is named special prosecutor and digs into the shadowy organization. The film is famous for its uncredited cameos — Marlene Dietrich, Henry Fonda, John Garfield, Burgess Meredith, and Everett Sloane all turn up in small roles as a favor to director Fletcher Markle. Produced by the Danziger brothers and released by United Artists, Jigsaw is in the public domain.

Noir · Crime · Mystery

A former convict is framed for a bank robbery he had nothing to do with and, to clear his name, infiltrates the gang of masked thieves on their way to a heist in Mexico. Phil Karlson's taut, hard-edged noir was a touchstone for later heist films. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Noir · Crime

Stockbroker Nicholas Lawrence embezzles a million dollars from his firm and boards a plane bound for Shanghai, figuring he has one free weekend before the theft is discovered. On the flight he meets Cynthia Strong, a socialite fleeing a blackmailer, and when the plane goes down their problems — and the money — get a lot more complicated. Star Gene Raymond also directs, with Osa Massen and Francis Lederer in support. A compact late-40s crime picture with a lighter touch than most noir of the era, it is in the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Comedy · Noir · Thriller

Bank robber Steve Clark stashes nearly $200,000 in a safety deposit box and lays low in a small town driving a cab, where he woos and marries Julie Saunders — niece of a wealthy invalid — to give himself the perfect cover. When Julie discovers who her husband really is, she is pulled into a tightening web of greed, blackmail, and murder as the law closes in. Hugh Beaumont, later famous as Ward Cleaver on Leave It to Beaver, plays against type as the cold-blooded killer, with Frances Rafferty as Julie. Directed by B-movie workhorse Sam Newfield. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Crime · Noir · Thriller

The fifth of Columbia's Whistler films. A shady private detective named Don Gale is hired by an old shopkeeper to find a young woman from his past so he can leave her a fortune, but the case is a setup, and Gale is soon framed for murder. As the Whistler's narration reminds us, the detective's own greed set the trap, and the film watches him scramble to stay ahead of the police and the real killer. Richard Dix plays his seventh Whistler lead, with Barton MacLane as the cop on his trail and Mike Mazurki as a menacing thug. William Castle directed. Released in 1946, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Mystery · Noir · Crime

When a string of notorious criminals walks free on suspiciously easy parole, the federal government sends undercover agent Richard Hendricks to find out who is selling the state's leniency. Posing as wanted convict Rick Carson, Hendricks works his way into the gang run by the cunning Barney Rodescu — until his cover is blown and the racket turns on him. Directed by Alfred Zeisler and starring Michael O'Shea, Turhan Bey, and Evelyn Ankers, this lean Eagle-Lion release is a brisk Poverty Row noir built on an early version of the undercover-cop story. The film is in the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Crime · Noir · Thriller

Dan Brady is a garage mechanic who wants to impress a waitress, so he borrows twenty dollars from the till at work, intending to pay it back before anyone notices. He does not. One small bad choice leads to another, and within a day Dan has stolen a car, robbed a nightclub, and talked himself deeper with every lie. Mickey Rooney plays him as a normal guy who keeps making the wrong decision under pressure, and the film watches a petty theft snowball into serious crime with a kind of grim inevitability. Peter Lorre is the amusement-pier owner who pulls Dan further in. The film was shot on a low budget with Rooney and Lorre helping to finance it themselves. It entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright.

Crime · Noir

During the bloodiest days of the French Revolution, a mysterious operative known as Charles D'Aubigny infiltrates Paris to recover Robespierre's "black book" — a list of intended victims whose executions would cement his dictatorship — before it can be used. Robert Cummings plays the double agent, with Richard Basehart a chilling Robespierre and Arlene Dahl as the woman caught between them. Anthony Mann shot it like a noir despite the period setting, all shadows and paranoia, on a shoestring budget for Walter Wanger. Reissued as The Black Book. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

History · Thriller · Noir

A mild-mannered middle-aged cashier and amateur painter is manipulated by a cynical young woman and her hustler boyfriend, who pass his work off as her own and sell it to a dealer. Fritz Lang's first of three films with Joan Bennett and Dan Duryea is a bleak noir of guilt and doom. The film entered the public domain when its copyright was not renewed.

Drama · Noir

From her hotel window, Janet Stewart witnesses Dr. Richard Cross (Vincent Price) murder his wife — and the sight leaves her in a catatonic state. Worse, she's committed to Cross's own sanitarium, where the doctor must decide whether to cure her or make sure she never recovers. Shock was Vincent Price's first real stab at a psychological thriller, and he plays the charming, increasingly desperate psychiatrist with silky menace. Made at 20th Century Fox on a B-picture budget, it's in the public domain.

Noir · Thriller · Drama

Singer Angie Evans gives up her own rising career to marry struggling crooner Ken Conway, and when his star finally ascends she finds herself alone with a baby, a bottle, and a husband who's never home. Susan Hayward earned her first Academy Award nomination as the wife sliding into alcoholism, with Lee Bowman, Eddie Albert, and Marsha Hunt in support. Walter Wanger produced and Stuart Heisler directed this stark melodrama, released by Universal-International. It is in the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Drama · Noir

Haunted by a recurring dream in which a suave stranger seduces his widowed mother, teenager Paul Cartwright (Jimmy Lydon) becomes convinced that the man — Brett Curtis (Warren William) — murdered his father. Edgar G. Ulmer's poverty-row Hamlet, made on PRC's tiny budgets with his signature hallucinatory style, proves atmosphere doesn't require money. Curtis's oily charm does the rest. One of the most admired of Ulmer's "stylish cheapies," the film is in the public domain.

Noir · Mystery · Thriller

A professional assassin and his men take over a quiet house in the small town of Suddenly, California, planning to shoot the President of the United States when his train stops there. The family living in the house becomes hostages, and the town sheriff, who is sweet on the daughter, stumbles into the trap and has to find a way to stop it. Frank Sinatra plays the killer as a jittery, sneering psychopath who genuinely enjoys the prospect of murder, a long way from his usual smooth persona. Sterling Hayden is the upright sheriff who matches wits with him. The whole film plays out almost entirely inside one house, which keeps the tension coiled. The film entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright. It is one of the more tense and compact crime thrillers of the 1950s, and Sinatra's performance is the reason it is still watched.

Crime · Noir · Thriller

A wealthy widow is convinced she hears her late husband's voice on the beach, and a suave spiritualist seems to confirm it, while her skeptical sister and a psychiatrist try to expose him as a fraud. Turhan Bey stars in this atmospheric noir, also released as The Spiritualist. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Noir · Mystery · Thriller

An out-of-work veteran takes a job as a chauffeur to a mobster and falls for the gangster's girlfriend, getting swept into a nightmare of murder, mistaken identity, and a dreamlike escape across Cuba. Robert Cummings and Peter Lorre star in this offbeat Cornell Woolrich adaptation. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Noir · Thriller · Crime

A vaudeville sharpshooter is manipulated by his beautiful assistant and her alcoholic husband into killing the husband on stage, only to realize he has been set up. Erich von Stroheim stars in this early Anthony Mann noir. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Noir · Drama

Two friends on a fishing trip in Mexico pick up a hitchhiker who turns out to be a wanted killer on the run. He forces them to drive him toward the border and lets them know that as soon as they stop being useful he will kill them. The hitchhiker has a paralyzed eye that never closes, even when he sleeps, so the two men can never tell when it is safe to try an escape. The film is based on the real-life case of Billy Cook, who killed several people on a similar spree. Ida Lupino directed, one of the few women directing Hollywood features at the time, and she keeps the film tight and tense, almost entirely inside the car. The film is a lean, real-time thriller about men trapped with someone who has nothing to lose. The film entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright.

Noir · Thriller

A wealthy woman in the middle of a divorce shoots her husband, and calls the one person she trusts to help her cover it up: her boyfriend, a San Francisco police lieutenant. He helps her hide the body, and then has to keep the investigation away from the crime, which is hard because the detective assigned to the case is his own younger brother. Lee J. Cobb plays the lieutenant who bends the law for love and then watches the walls close in, and Jane Wyatt is the woman who pulls him down with her. The film was shot on location in San Francisco, and the city's hills and stairways become part of the chase. It was the first independent production of Phoenix Films, run by Jack M. Warner, the son of Warner Bros. chief Jack L. Warner. The film entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright.

Crime · Noir

A card-dealing junkie fresh out of prison tries to go straight as a drummer, but his wheelchair-bound wife and old dealer pull him back toward heroin. Otto Preminger fought the Production Code to release the film, which broke the taboo on depicting drug addiction. Frank Sinatra gives one of his most serious performances. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Drama · Noir

The second of Columbia's eight Whistler films, drawn from the popular radio mystery series in which an unseen narrator who "knows many things" walks the listener through a story of fate and guilt. Richard Dix plays a drifter who stumbles into a dormant bank account left in his name by a dead man, and tries to pass himself off as the depositor's long-lost son to collect the money. The scheme draws in a woman who may know more than she lets on and a killer waiting in the background. William Castle directed, working from a Cornell Woolrich story, and the film carries Woolrich's signature dread of ordinary people trapped by coincidence. Released in 1944, the film is in the public domain in the United States.

Mystery · Noir · Crime

A Poverty Row oddity and proto-noir, this pre-Code melodrama opens with twenty-one-year-old Nora Moran (Zita Johann, fresh from *The Mummy*) in the death house — the first woman executed in twenty years — then unwinds her life in a dreamlike spiral of flashbacks, narrated fragments, and memories within memories. Orphaned, assaulted, and passed between a traveling circus and a married governor, Nora goes to the electric chair for a murder she did not commit, making the film a surprisingly bleak argument against capital punishment. Its fractured structure anticipated noir techniques by a decade, and Alberto Vargas's poster art became more famous than the picture itself. Majestic Pictures collapsed soon after and the film's copyright was never renewed; it is in the public domain in the United States.

Crime · Drama · Noir

A young woman with a dark childhood secret has grown into a powerful industrialist married to a weak, alcoholic district attorney. When a childhood friend returns to town, the past threatens to unravel. Kirk Douglas's film debut, alongside Barbara Stanwyck and Van Heflin. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Noir · Drama

Tom Durling is framed for a bank robbery and a killing he didn't commit, then escapes custody to hunt down the real gang before the police close in. Robert Lowery and Barbara Britton star in this tight hour-long programmer from Pine-Thomas Productions — Paramount's "dollar bills," the B-unit famous for fast, cheap, profitable pictures — directed by William C. Thomas himself. It is in the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Crime · Noir · Thriller

An ex-con noir shot on location in postwar Italy. Frank Keeler (Lloyd Bridges) did four years in a military prison for a payroll robbery and never revealed where he hid the money. Now out, he returns to the small Italian town to recover his loot — but the cash has been moved, his old flame Elena (Lea Padovani) has questions, and the gang he double-crossed is waiting. Directed by W. Lee Wilder (Billy's brother), the film pairs Italian neorealist locations with hard-boiled American crime conventions. Released through United Artists, its copyright was not renewed; it is in the public domain in the United States.

Crime · Drama · Noir

A bag of stolen cash is thrown into the back seat of a couple's car by mistake, and the wife, hungry for a better life, decides to keep it, dragging her husband into a spiral of deceit and murder. Lizabeth Scott and Dan Duryea star in one of the bleakest noirs of the era. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Noir · Crime · Thriller

A batch of freshly printed counterfeit bills traced to imprisoned counterfeiter Tris Stewart sends the U.S. Treasury Department scrambling, so agents engineer his escape and turn him loose — betting he will lead them to the engraving plates. Stewart plays both sides, rekindling things with his girlfriend Meg while undercover agent John Downey closes in. Lloyd Bridges is the slippery counterfeiter, with Barbara Payton as Meg and John Hoyt as the agent on his tail. Richard Fleischer directs this lean semi-documentary noir in the style of T-Men, shot on location around Los Angeles. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Crime · Noir · Drama

Mary (Ava Gardner) returns to her small whistle-stop hometown and reignites an old rivalry between two men who never got over her — bitter, jobless Kenny Veech (George Raft) and slick nightclub owner Lew Lentz (Tom Conway). When Kenny gets pulled into a robbery scheme aimed at Lentz, old jealousy turns to murder. An early starring role for Gardner and a moody small-town noir from Russian émigré director Léonide Moguy, produced by Seymour Nebenzal (M) for United Artists release. The film is in the public domain.

Noir · Crime · Drama

A woman who has drifted apart from her husband must track him down through San Francisco after he witnesses a gangland murder and goes into hiding, with a reporter and a killer both following her. Ann Sheridan stars in this tight, location-shot noir. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Noir · Crime · Thriller