Night and the City (1950)

"This is a key noir film. Filmed in London in 1949, Darryl F. Zanuck, the head of production at Twentieth Century-Fox, sent director Jules Dassin to Britain as he was about to be expelled from the studio following orders from New York because of his left-wing political sympathies. Zanuck told Dassin to start filming Jo Eisinger’s script for Night and the City as soon as he could and he also told Dassin to film the most expensive scenes first so that it would be costly for the studio to remove him from the film. Zanuck also asked Dassin if he could develop a role for one of the studio’s most important female stars, Gene Tierney, as he wanted to get her away from Hollywood following a failed romance."
Noir of the Week, Wikipedia, YouTube, Twenty Four Frames, amazon, The Spinning Image, The film wot I watched

The Killing (1956)

Wikipedia - "Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden) is a veteran criminal planning one last heist before settling down and marrying Fay (Coleen Gray). His plan is to rob the money-counting room of a racetrack of two million dollars during a featured race, and to do this he assembles a team consisting of a corrupt cop (Ted de Corsia); George Peatty (Elisha Cook Jr.), a betting window teller at the track to give access to the backroom; a sharpshooter (Timothy Carey) to shoot the favorite horse during the race, distracting the crowd; a wrestler (Kola Kwariani, born 1903, Republic of Georgia) to provide another distraction by provoking a fight at the track bar, and the bartender (Joe Sawyer)."
Wikipedia, The Stop Button, Noir of the Week, amazon, Twenty Four Frames, YouTube

Cornered (1945)

"In 1945’s Cornered Dick Powell plays a man exhausted, angry, and with little hope for the future. Though almost fatally marred by its serpentine plot, Cornered is worth seeing — it’s even an important film noir. It offers an extraordinarily bleak worldview, precocious even for noir, and helped pave the way for the spate of neurotic, cynical, and dark movies that would define the post-war classic period."
Noir of the Week, Wikipedia, YouTube - Cornered (1945) - 01

Gun Crazy (1950)

"That fact that Gun Crazy comes in at #48 only reiterates the glaringly obvious observation that I’ve pointed out a lot recently – it’s getting really, really hard to separate some of these films. From here on in, we’re dealing what I consider to be the cream of the crop of film noir. For me it, means sifting through longstanding and deserved classics and personal favorites that I feel deserve greater attention in a series like this. I might be repeating myself with this little preamble, but it’s just meant to emphasize the fact that from here on in we’re dealing with classics – if not universally recognized classics, then at least in the mind of this inveterate list-maker! Personal taste comes in huge now."
Goodfella's Movie Blog, Wikipedia, amazon, YouTube, "Shadows of Film Noir: Gun Crazy", New Yorker - "Gun Crazy", Noir of the Week

The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

"The Asphalt Jungle (1950) is a naturalistic film noir crime film classic (resembling numerous B-films) of the early 1950s from A-list director John Huston. The realistic, documentary-like, urban crime/heist film - advertised as 'A John Huston Production' - was one of the first films that completely and specifically detailed how to pull off an authentic-looking heist - something usually considered morally improper under the Production Code. The sparse, gritty and tense film with a linear narrative is often considered the definitive heist or caper film, often copied and paid homage to by later films, many made during the sub-genre's flourishing in the 1950s..."
AMC, Wikipedia, amazon, YouTube, Noir of the Week, Culture Court, Bobby Wise Criticism, Movie Zeal

The Film Noir Foundation

"The Film Noir Foundation is a non-profit public benefit corporation created as an educational resource regarding the cultural, historical, and artistic significance of film noir as an original American cinematic movement. It is our mission to find and preserve films in danger of being lost or irreparably damaged, and to ensure that high quality prints of these classic films remain in circulation for theatrical exhibition to future generations."
The Film Noir Foundation

In a Lonely Place (1950)

"Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place, released by Columbia in 1950, was long regarded as one of star Humphrey Bogart’s lesser films, as were most of the Columbia released Santana productions he made both during and after his lengthy and legendary tenure at Warner Bros. It was the cult status bestowed upon director Ray in the following decades that led to a reevaluation of this moody, ambiguous character study and noir thriller. Now, Bogart’s portrayal of short-tempered, possibly homicidal screenwriter Dixon Steele is regarded as one of his best roles, one giving play to most of the qualities that made Bogart the archetypal figure he remains today. There’s the trace of paranoia in those expressive eyes that were equally capable of conveying a profound world weary sadness, an emotion he draws upon in his Steele characterization."
Angel Fire, Wikipedia, amazon, moviediva, senses of cinema, Bright Lights Film, Village Voice, YouTube

D.O.A. (1950)

"Incredulous, exhausted, and reeling from his shockingly nightmarish medical prognosis, Frank Bigelow rests against a corner newsstand (prominently displaying issues of 'LIFE') and gazes up at a sun whose nurturing rays seem to have turned toxic and cruelly disorienting. The viewer half-expects our doomed protagonist to address the heavens with an echo of his opening line, 'I'd like to see the man in charge..'- but no higher power is evidenced in 'D.O.A.', in which the apathetic and the duplicitous far outnumber the righteous, and a nondescript everyman can morph into a violent, fearless equalizer."
Noir of the Week, Wikipedia, amazon, YouTube, The Night Editor, The Lightning Bug's Lair

The Big Combo (1955),

Grant Tracey - "The Big Combo (1955), Allied Artists' seedy B-noir directed by Joseph H. Lewis and photographed exquisitely by John Alton, opens with Susan Lowell (Jean Wallace) splashed in slanting shadows as she runs through tunnels along a boxing ring. She's chased by two hitmen, Fanty and Mingo, who are hired by her Napoleonic lover, Mr. Brown (Richard Conte), to keep an eye on her. Cornered, she emerges from Alton's poetic darkness and agrees to stop running. By contrast, the hitmen remain in the evil dark, shapeless. Susan, centered in an almost spot-effect, looks stark, pale and naked."
images journal, Wikipedia, Noir of the Week, amazon

This Gun for Hire (1942)

senses of cinema - "This Gun For Hire has been described as 'one of the most important early films noir', and one that 'helps to establish a number of conventions of the genre'. The film's enduring significance lies in its influence on a particular subset of classic and post-classic noir films featuring the figure of the lone assassin. Directed by Frank Tuttle, himself something of a Paramount Studios gun for hire, the film's exploration of the last days of a solitary, embittered hitman reverberates through everything from Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samourai (France, 1968) to more recent meditations on the form - Luc Besson's The Professional (USA, 1994) and Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog (USA, 1999)."
senses of cinema, Wikipedia, amazon, THIS GUN FOR HIRE and THE MYSTERIOUS VERONICA LAKE, Noir of the Week, The Long Voyage Home

The Big Heat (1953)

The Big Heat / Grant Tracey - "A third of the way through Fritz Lang's brutally beautiful The Big Heat, Glenn Ford as detective Dave Bannion returns to his now bare home and stands separate, alone. He looks toward the kitchen, where his wife once cooked steaks and took drags off his cigarettes, sips off his beer. She's dead, blown up in a dynamited car, dynamite meant for him. Lang's eyeline match captures the noir mood of alienation and more importantly devastates the audience as he closes it off with a medium close up of Ford, eyes watered. Bannion was investigating the suicide of Tom Duncan and the evidence had lead him to the mobster, Lagana. Lagana's men took the corruption of the mean streets and spilled them into the detective's home, destroying his domestic space. Angry and alienated from humanity, the invasion spins Bannion in a new direction of personal revenge."
Images Journal, Wikipedia, amazon, Culture Court, senses of cinema

Kiss of Death (1947)

Wikipedia - "Kiss of Death is a 1947 film noir movie directed by Henry Hathaway and written by Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer from a story by Eleazar Lipsky. The story revolves around the story of the film's protagonist and antagonist (played by Victor Mature and Richard Widmark respectively). The movie also starred Brian Donlevy and introduced Coleen Gray in her first billed role."
Wikipedia, Noir of the Week, amazon

"The Development of Post-war Literary and Cinematic Noir" - Lee Horsley

Double Indemnity
Crimeculture - "The years immediately following the end of World War Two marked the start of a crucial phase in the creation, definition and popularising of both literary and cinematic noir. There were several concurrent developments: the Hollywood production of a growing number of pessimistic, downbeat crime films, the post-war release in Europe of a large backlog of American films, the publication in France of a new series of crime novels and the appearance in America of a new kind of book, the paperback original. Films released in America just before the end of the war, such as Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity and Edward Dmytryk's Murder, My Sweet (both 1944), were taken as evidence, when they appeared in France, that 'the Americans are making dark films too'."
Crimeculture