A 70 min b-feature  from Republic Pictures, Double Jeopardy,  is an unpretentious thriller, only tangentially noir, and  with a high sleaze factor. The good guys are wooden and boring, and the bad guys irredeemably bad. A boozy blackmailer and his cheap wife are the focus and carry the picture. Pulp heaven.

You Came Along (1945)
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)
Dead Reckoning (1947)
Desert Fury (1947)
I Walk Alone (1948)
Pitfall (1948)
Too Late For Tears (1948)
Dark City (1950)
Two of a Kind (1951)
The Racket (1951)
Stolen Face (1952)
Scared Stiff (1953)

An on-going feature in no particular order…

Robert Cumbow of the Parallax View blog has posted a very interesting article on film noir music scores discussing its origins, development,  and major composers from the early noirs to recent neo-noirs:

The sound of noir—plaintive sax solos, blue cocktail piano, the wail of a distant trumpet through dark, wet alleyways, hot Latin beats oozing like a neon glow from the half-shuttered windows of forbidden nightspots. You walk the sidewalks of big, lonely towns, with no destination in mind, following only the sounds, guided by them, wondering where they come from, what hurt souls cry out with such tones.

Mr Cumbow also highlights CD compilations of note.

The Garment Jungle, a contemporary expose of New York garment employers’ use of racketeers to keep unions out, disappoints. Finished by director Vincent Sherman after Robert Aldrich (Kiss Me Deadly) left production towards the end of shooting, for a Columbia a-feature it is largely set-bound, and suffers for it.

The whole affair sags and ends with a weak resolution. Lee J. Cobb in the lead is sadly flat.  Robert Loggia as an Italo-American union organiser is strong and the performance of the tragic Gia Scala as his young wife dominates the picture.  She is palpably alive on the screen and thoroughly immersed in her role. The sequence where she is introduced is the film’s highlight. Shot at a union dancing-class on a steamy-night where the dance music is a dissonant counterpoint to the drama, she is by turns sensual, fiery, gentle, and despairing. Here and in the external shots on the streets of  NY, when they are used, the mise-en-scene and cinematography are truly inspired.  We can commend cameraman Joseph F. Biroc, but who directed these scenes? My bet was Aldrich.

Silver and Ward list the movie in Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference, and to my mind ‘invent’ some film noir connections in the mise-en-scene and the lighting of some scenes. But For me The Garment Jungle is strictly melodrama.

Double Indemnity (1944)

Double Indemnity (1944)
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)
The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947)
Cry Wolf (1947)
Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)
The File On Thelma Jordan (1950)
No Man of Her Own (1950)
The Furies (1950)
Clash By Night (1952)
Witness to Murder (1954)
Crime of Passion (1957)

An on-going feature in no particular order…

The Studebaker skidded on the rain-slicked asphalt and hit the gravel on the verge of the road. A blown tire.

I killed the lights. The night loomed in over the windscreen. A cold moon lit the deserted highway. I got out of the car and lit a cigarette. The hoot of an owl penetrated the drizzle. I needed to move. The cops were wise by now. Never trust a dame with attitude and a fur. I was wise too late. Framed. On the lam.

I pulled up my coat collar and headed down the road – there must be a house hereabouts. All I heard were my shoes scraping the gravel.

She came at me from behind. At first all I heard was panting, a wild orgasmic moan. A blonde running down the road and naked under a trench coat. Hysterical, crazy, and calling out “the big what’s-it!”. Figures. Of all the highways in all the world to hit the skids. A crazy beatnik in an open sports rod screeches past chasing that dizzy broad shouting “va-va-vroom”. His headlights lit up a California bungalow off the side of the road. I head for it. Big mistake.

The cloying fragrance of honey-suckle. I hit the bell. A dame in a towel and a crazy blonde wig pulls open the door. “You’re not selling insurance are you”, she says all aglow.

“Lady, I’m selling whatever you’re buying.”

A former member of the US Communist Party in a management
job on the San Francisco waterfront is blackmailed by the Party

It is with some irony that 60 years on it is the greed of bankers and not the ideology of  leftists that has brought global capitalism to the brink of collapse, so take the red-menace propaganda here with a good dose of salt and you have a top film noir.

The Woman on Pier 13 (original title I Married a Communist) was a pet project of RKO boss Howard Hughes and it is said by some was a litmus test to sniff out reds in the ranks.  His meddling delayed the movie’s release until 1951 after HUAC’s halycon days were past, and it bombed at the box office.

The screenplay, which despite criticism by most film critics as being far-fetched, to my viewing is quite solid, has the ‘commies’ work as a bunch of hoods. This conceit makes the script and the story compelling, with both melodramatic and thriller arcs.  RKO stringer Robert Stevenson (Walk Softly, Stranger) does a solid job of directing, with stunning noir visuals by veteran noir cameraman Nicholas Musuraca.

The cast is particularly strong.  Robert Ryan plays the former commie, and the lovely Laraine Day (The Locket) his wife.  Thomas Gomez is a ruthless commie boss, with Janis Carter (Night Editor, Framed, I Love Trouble) as an undercover commie femme-fatale who mixes politics and love, and William Talman (Armored Car Robbery, The Racket, The Hitch-Hiker, City That Never Sleeps, Big House USA ) is convincing as a carnie moonlighting as a commie hit-man – in his first role.

The story never flags, and eroticized and violent noir pyrotechnics make for an enthralling and wild roller-coaster ride.  When Ryan is first confronted by his Party blackmailer at a warehouse,  a Party member suspected of treason is trussed and thrown in the Bay to drown while Ryan watches. Later a protagonist is run down by a car in cold blood by hit-man Talman. That same night Gomez pushes a woman out of an apartment window, and the sister of the guy run-down by Talman tracks him down and poses as a wife who needs her husband out-of-the-way Double-Indemnity style.  The scenes between the two are erotic dynamite, and the perversity of  Talman as the wise-cracking hit-man on the make boasting about his latest job make Tommy Udo (Kiss of Death) look like a kindergarten teacher.

A solid downbeat ending after a spectacular shoot-out on the wharves satisfies and has a redemptive focus.