1950s noir
see all genres ›Stylish pulp crime cinema continued to flourish after noir's founding decade, often taking more baroque or lurid directions as censorship slowly relaxed.
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Genres / Film noir / 1950s noir
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House by the River
After a two-year filmmaking hiatus, Fritz Lang emerged at B-film factory Republic Pictures with this entertainingly myopic tale of a pompous writer turned conniving murderer. The ever-charming, always-sleazy Stephen Byrne (Louis Hayward) might have a high-society wife and a...Watch Movie
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Blackout
A down-on-his-luck American in London emerges from a drunken haze knee-deep in murder in Terence Fisher’s atmospheric Hammer noir, one of several made by the studio in collaboration with American producer Robert Lippert. The Hammer studio provided the behind-the-camera talent and Lippert provided...Watch Movie
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The Man from Cairo
Hollywood icon George Raft's final starring role finds the gangster icon swept-up in espionage and intrigue in the mean streets of Algiers as an American tourist mistaken for a spy. Rome supplied an atmospheric stand-in for Algiers, with the film shot almost entirely in Italy,...Watch Movie
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Stolen Face
Hollywood A-listers Paul Henreid and Lizabeth Scott crossed the pond for this bizarre English noir melodrama involving a lovestruck plastic surgeon, the beautiful pianist he loves but cannot have and the disfigured female convict whose face he crafts into hers. Famed and conscientious surgeon Dr....Watch Movie
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Story of a Love Affair
STORY OF A LOVE AFFAIR is the legendary Michelangelo Antonioni's debut feature, a powerful statement on the delusions and violence sparked by a passionate love. This deeply tragic romance already exhibits the astonishing formal control and penetrating insights into the human...Watch Movie
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Home to Danger
This trim Brit noir casts prim "English rose" type Rona Anderson as the estranged daughter of a reprobate Colonel who dies under circumstances that ought to bring more suspicion than they do. Left to distribute a small fortune to charity after his death, she's protected by an upper-class suitor...Watch Movie
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New York Confidential
Crime becomes corporate in Russell Rouse's 1955 thriller NEW YORK CONFIDENTIAL, which finds the free-and-easy hoodlums of 1930s and 1940s gangster films suddenly calling the shots (or taking them) from the boardrooms instead of the back alleys. Character-actor veterans...Watch Movie
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Heat Wave
An American hack writer in England finds himself tempted by the lure of the idle rich (and by a wealthy man's wife in particular) in this hardscrabble British noir, one of many collaborations between the independent U.S. producer Robert Lippert and Britain's Hammer Studios. Hoping to find...Watch Movie
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The Unholy Four
Amnesia, intrigue and murder make up three of the ingredients of Hammer mainstay Terence Fisher's surpisingly witty noir; the fourth is actress Paulette Goddard, once a Hollywood staple and Charles Chaplin favorite (co-star of MODERN TIMES and THE GREAT DICTATOR) but, here, on the downside of her...Watch Movie
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Portland Exposé
The Rose City shows off its thorns in this hard-hitting, pseudo-documentary film noir so damning of corruption that most Pacific Northwest theaters controversially refused to show it. "Vice threatened to inundate this beautiful city," intones a narrator over an opening montage of Portland’s...Watch Movie
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Pier 23
Two more "brushes with crime" for ace private detective Dennis O'Brien (Hugh Beaumont). In the first, he gets mixed up with a crooked wrestling referee, an equally corrupt arena owner and murderous grappler Mike Mazurki. Next is a case involving a murdered cop and film noir's ultimate femme...Watch Movie
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Man Bait
"Look if you want, but LOOK OUT!" cried the posters for this entertaining femme-fatale noir which solidified its teenaged, full-figured star Diana Dors as one of England’s top sex symbols. A middle-aged bookstore owner (a stolid, solid George Brent) finds his head (and his lips) turned by his...Watch Movie
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The Hitch-hiker
A classic, tension-packed, three-way dance of death about two middle-class American homebodies (Edmond O'Brien and Frank Lovejoy) on vacation in Mexico on a long-awaited fishing trip. Suddenly their car and their very lives are commandeered by psychopathic serial killer Emmett Myers (William...Watch Movie
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Bad Blonde
The notorious Barbara Payton stars as the titular "bad blonde" in this British noir, a coproduction between Hammer Studios and the American-based Lippert Productions. Fresh from Liverpool, nice-guy boxer Johnny Flanagan is about to join forces with big-shot Italian boxing manager Giuseppe Vecchi,...Watch Movie
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Danger Zone
When you deal with dames, you are in the DANGER ZONE, as the character of crime detector Dennis O'Brien (Hugh Beaumont) learns in his inaugural mystery-drama. The private eye first cracks a case involving a smuggling ring, then tackles an assignment that involves blackmail, murder and film noir's...Watch Movie
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Mask of the Dragon
An American soldier in Korea (Richard Emory) agrees to deliver a porcelain dragon to a curio shop in L.A.'s Chinatown, but soon after his return to the States, he is murdered. Determined to solve the crime, his private-detective buddy Richard Travis and Travis' girl Sheila...Watch Movie
