THE GLASS ALIBI (1946)/ THE BIG BLUFF (1955)

Billy Wilder's brother W. Lee Wilder made the same film (based on a screenplay by Mindret Lord) twice. He tweaked some character and story elements the second time 'round but otherwise held close to the earlier production's basic storyline and actually-clever ending.

Both movies are plain-Janes but certainly engaging enough - exactly the kind of brisk hour-long suspensers which lovers of cheap-seats B-noirs take to like Lindsay Lohan to party drugs.

'The Big Bluff' is up at the Internet Archives. 'The Glass Alibi' is available otherwise.

THE RED MENACE (1949),POST OFFICE INVESTIGATOR (1949), FEDERAL AGENT AT LARGE (1950), WOMAN FROM HEADQUARTERS (1950), TRIAL WITHOUT JURY (1950), MISSING WOMAN (1951).

Here's four serviceable B-noirs from Republic Studios that are well worth watching. The bracing little programmers share the cinematography of John MacBurnie, a veteran lensman who was behind the camera on hundreds of movies and television episodes. They're low-rent masterclasses in intricate noir-at-night set-ups and tableaux that never fail to surprise. 'Trial Without Jury' probably is the least of them but even it has sequences that are startlingly well-composed.     

RETOUR DE MANIVELLE AKA THERE'S ALWAYS A PRICE TAG (1957)

Crimewriter James Hadley Chase was reviled by the English critical establishment for his tawdry, violent thrillers such as 'No Orchids for Miss Blandish' (a movie to be condemned upon its release in the British Parliament). 

The French had no such qualms and director Denys de La Patellière with screenwriter Michel Audiard took Chase's murderous novel and made it into one of the most stylishly disturbing Gallic film noirs of the classic period. 

Starring a glacial Michelle Morgan as the one of the deadliest of femme fatales...

THE MADONNA'S SECRET (1946)

A mid-line production directed by B-meister William Thiele, this noir-stained melodrama can be enjoyed both for its glamorous cast and the especially vibrant B&W cinematography by John Alton. 

This was the picture that really got Alton noticed, leading to his lensing of some of the most insistently expressive film noirs of the classic period.

MONEY AND THE WOMAN (1940)

Noir-flecked eyes may see 'Money and the Woman' as too flat and de-natured an example of the cycle - all the more so as it's based a James M. Cain story 'The Embezzler' which tells a much more lurid version of workaday folly and desperation.

Well, yes, the movie is guilty of some stodgy dramatics and the romantic fancifulness typical of many post-code/ pre-noir crime films of the mid and later ‘30’s.  However 'Money and the Woman' does zip along at a rate and as programmers go, is really not all that bad.  

Plus if you look hard enough you'll see that the essential schematics of film noir are there. So if nothing else you can re-imagine the movie as made at a later time when more of the right shots could have been called.

Your move, your movie...

CHAIR DE POULE AKA HIGHWAY PICK-UP (1963)

Based on a novel by James Hadley Chase, few if any films in the classic American noir canon are so bitter and twisted as the French-produced 'Chair de poule'. 

The film, directed by Julien Duvivier, stars Robert Hossein and Catherine Rouve as une femme fatale to die for. And many do...

 

JERICHOW (2008), WOMAN IN BERLIN (2008), BARBARA (2012)

The first is a modern but classically-established noir; the second, a noir war drama set during the Russian invasion of Berlin; the third, a noir-stained story of political repression in '70's East Germany. 

All films are superb and feature German actress and star Nina Hoss who - like Cherlize Theron - is ready forego glamour and actorly pretext in favor of exposed, fugitive performances...