Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylized Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and motivations. The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of American film noir. Film noir of this era is associated with a low-key, black-and-white visual style that has roots in German Expressionist cinematography. Many of the prototypical stories and much of the attitude of classic noir derive from the hardboiled school of crime fiction that emerged in the United States during the Great Depression.
Ray Milland was a Welsh-American actor and film director. He is often remembered for his portrayal of an alcoholic writer in Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend (1945), which won him Best Actor at Cannes, a Golden Globe Award, and ultimately an Academy Award—the first such accolades for any Welsh actor.
Charles Laughton was an English actor. He was trained in London at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and first appeared professionally on the stage in 1926. In 1927, he was cast in a play with his future wife Elsa Lanchester, with whom he lived and worked until his death.
Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid is a 1982 American neo-noir mystery comedy film directed, co-written by, and co-starring Carl Reiner and co-written by and starring Steve Martin. Co-starring Rachel Ward, the film is both a parody of and a homage to film noir and the pulp detective films of the 1940s. The title refers to Martin's character telling a story about a woman obsessed with plaid in a scene that was ultimately cut from the film.
Elsa Sullivan Lanchester was a British actress with a long career in theatre, film and television.
Maureen O'Sullivan was an Irish actress who played Jane in the Tarzan series of films during the era of Johnny Weissmuller. She starred in dozens of feature films across a span of more than half a century and performed with such actors as Laurence Olivier, Greta Garbo, Fredric March, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Marie Dressler, Wallace Beery, Lionel Barrymore, the Marx Bros. and Woody Allen. In 2020, she was listed at number eight on The Irish Times list of Ireland's greatest film actors.
Kenneth Flexner Fearing was an American poet and novelist. A major poet of the Depression era, he addressed the shallowness and consumerism of American society as he saw it, often by ironically adapting the language of commerce and media. Critics have associated him with the American Left to varying degrees; his poetry belongs to the American proletarian poetry movement, but is rarely overtly political. Fearing published six original collections of poetry between 1929 and 1956. He wrote his best-known poems during the late 1920s and 1930s.
Richard Owen Fleischer was an American film director whose career spanned more than four decades, beginning at the height of the Golden Age of Hollywood and lasting through the American New Wave.
John Villiers Farrow, KGCHS was an Australian film director, producer, and screenwriter. Spending a considerable amount of his career in the United States, in 1942 he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for Wake Island, and in 1957 he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Around the World in Eighty Days. He had seven children by his wife, actress Maureen O'Sullivan, including actress Mia Farrow.
Night Has a Thousand Eyes is a 1948 American horror film directed by John Farrow and starring Edward G. Robinson, Gail Russell and John Lund. The screenplay was written by Barré Lyndon and Jonathan Latimer. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Cornell Woolrich, originally published under the pseudonym George Hopley.
Black Bart is a 1948 American Western Technicolor film directed by George Sherman and starring Yvonne De Carlo, and Dan Duryea as the real-life stagecoach bandit Charles E. Boles, known as Black Bart. The movie was produced by Leonard Goldstein with a screenplay written by Luci Ward, Jack Natteford and William Bowers. The film, also known under the alternate title Black Bart, Highwayman, was released by Universal Pictures on March 3, 1948.
Jonathan Wyatt Latimer was an American crime writer known his novels and screenplays. Before becoming an author, Latimer was a journalist in Chicago.
Where Danger Lives is a 1950 American film noir thriller directed by John Farrow and starring Robert Mitchum, Faith Domergue and Claude Rains.
The Big Clock is a 1946 novel by Kenneth Fearing. Published by Harcourt Brace, the thriller was Fearing's fourth novel, following three for Random House and five collections of poetry. The story, which first appeared in abridged form in The American Magazine as "The Judas Picture", was adapted for three films: The Big Clock (1948) starring Ray Milland, Police Python 357 (1976) starring Yves Montand, and No Way Out (1987) starring Kevin Costner.
Payment Deferred is a 1932 American pre-Code crime drama film, starring Charles Laughton as a man so desperate for money, he resorts to murder. It was based on the 1931 play of the same name by Jeffrey Dell, which was in turn based on the 1926 novel of the same name by C. S. Forester. Laughton also played the lead role in the play, which opened on Broadway on September 30, 1931 and ran for 70 performances.
Alias Nick Beal is a 1949 American film noir mystery film retelling of the Faust myth directed by John Farrow and starring Ray Milland, Audrey Totter and Thomas Mitchell. The picture is also known as Dark Circle, Strange Temptation and Alias Nicky Beal.
Captain Carey, U.S.A. is a 1949 American crime film noir directed by Mitchell Leisen and starring Alan Ladd and Wanda Hendrix. An American returns to post–World War II Italy to bring a traitor to justice.
A Life of Her Own is a 1950 American melodrama film directed by George Cukor and starring Lana Turner and Ray Milland. The screenplay by Isobel Lennart focuses on an aspiring model who leaves her small town in the Midwest to seek fame and fortune in New York City. The film was produced by Voldemar Vetluguin and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
The Man on the Eiffel Tower is a 1950 American Ansco Color film noir mystery film starring Charles Laughton, Franchot Tone, Burgess Meredith, and Robert Hutton. Ultimately directed by Meredith, it is based on the 1931 novel La Tête d'un homme by Belgian writer Georges Simenon featuring his detective Jules Maigret. The film was co-produced by Tone and Irving Allen as A&T Film Productions and released by RKO Radio Pictures. Much of the outdoor action occurs in familiar Paris locales, including the Eiffel Tower, the Seine, and Pigalle.
So Evil My Love is a 1948 British and American Gothic psychological thriller film directed by Lewis Allen and starring Ray Milland, Ann Todd and Geraldine Fitzgerald.
