Critics Imogen Sara Smith and Farran Smith Nehme explore the style and sensibility that Columbia Pictures brought to film noir.

Directed by Charles Vidor • 1946 • United States
Starring Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford, George Macready

“Gilda, are you decent?” Rita Hayworth tosses her hair back and slyly responds, “Me?” in one of the great star entrances in movie history. GILDA, directed by Charles Vidor, features a sultry Hayw...

Directed by Blake Edwards • 1962 • United States
Starring Lee Remick, Glenn Ford

Following the success of BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S, producer-director Blake Edwards took a detour into noir territory with this ultra-stylish, mood-drenched thriller. Lee Remick plays a San Francisco bank clerk who is ...

Directed by Fritz Lang • 1953 • United States
Starring Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Lee Marvin

Fritz Lang’s hard-boiled cop vs. criminals yarn stars Glenn Ford as Dave Bannion, a police detective and family man driven by grief to conduct a relentless vendetta against a mobster (Alexander Scourby)...

Directed by Fritz Lang • 1954 • United States
Starring Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Broderick Crawford

In this adaptation of Emile Zola’s “La bête humaine,” veteran Jeff Warren (Glenn Ford) returns from Korea to his job as a railroad engineer and quickly succumbs to the advances of his boss's wif...

Directed by John Gilling • 1957 • United Kingdom, United States
Starring Victor Mature, Anita Ekberg, Trevor Howard

International location shooting in handsome black-and-white CinemaScope sets this globe-trotting noir thriller, alternately titled INTERPOL, apart from the pack. Following the deat...

Directed by Charles Vidor • 1941 • United States
Starring Ida Lupino, Louis Hayward, Evelyn Keyes

Ida Lupino is at her hard-edged best in this mood-drenched tale of murder and madness in a remote mansion on the English moors. She plays Ellen Creed, the full-time housekeeper and companion to Leon...

Directed by Irving Lerner • 1958 • United States
Starring Vince Edwards, Phillip Pine, Herschel Bernardi

Vince Edwards stars as a hired assassin whose latest “assignment” (Caprice Toriel) is about to testify against the mob. But this particular target is not so easy to get at. So he waits . . . ...

Directed by Jacques Tourneur • 1956 • United States
Starring Brian Keith, Aldo Ray, Anne Bancroft

Directed by Jacques Tourneur from one of the masterful, despairing novels of David Goodis, NIGHTFALL is the tale of an innocent man trapped in a senseless and lethal web of seduction and crime. The...

Directed by Hugo Haas • 1952 • United States
Starring Hugo Haas, Cleo Moore, Mona Barrie

One of a string of intriguing low-budget noirs directed in Hollywood by Czech actor turned gutter auteur Hugo Haas, STRANGE FASCINATION stars the filmmaker himself as a renowned concert pianist whose relatio...

Directed by Samuel Fuller • 1959 • United States
Starring Victoria Shaw, Glenn Corbett, James Shigeta

Pulp maestro Samuel Fuller lends his slam-bang stylistic punch to this complex, fascinating noir that doubles as a trenchant social document of 1950s America. When a stripper is murdered in LA’s...

Directed by Robert Florey • 1941 • United States
Starring Peter Lorre, Evelyn Keyes, Don Beddoe

Directed with striking expressionist flair by French émigré filmmaker Robert Florey, this poisonous tale of the American dream turned sour stars Peter Lorre as Janos, a Hungarian immigrant who arrives...

Directed by Earl McEvoy • 1950 • United States
Starring Evelyn Keyes, Charles Korvin, Dorothy Malone

Based on a true story, this race-against-the-clock thriller follows the frantic efforts to stop a potentially deadly epidemic before it turns catastrophic. Jewel smuggler Sheila Bennet (Evelyn Ke...

Directed by Edward Dmytryk • 1952 • United States
Starring Adolphe Menjou, Arthur Franz, Gerald Mohr

Blacklisted director Edward Dmytryk—one of the original Hollywood Ten—made his return to filmmaking with this disturbingly prescient psychological thriller. Shot with gritty, documentary-style re...