Noirvember
30 Episodes
Whether you’re just getting started on your journey into film noir’s dark world of glamorous femme fatales and down-on-their-luck average Joes, interested in exploring new avenues, or just want to rewatch your favorites, there’s no better time of year to soak in the atmosphere of Hollywood’s shadowiest crime pictures than Noirvember. Inaugurated in 2010 by critic Marya E. Gates, Noirvember is a yearly, monthlong celebration of all things noir. Bringing together stone-cold classics like THE MALTESE FALCON and LAURA, genre-bending gems like THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, and innovative indies like MURDER BY CONTRACT, this collection will lead you down a few of noir’s darkest alleys.
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1:35:04Episode 1
They Drive by Night
Episode 1
Directed by Raoul Walsh • 1940 • United States
Starring George Raft, Ann Sheridan, Ida LupinoHumphrey Bogart and George Raft share a driving ambition in this feisty tale of brothers trying to make a go of their independent trucking enterprise. After ten years of the Great Depression, scrappy Jo...
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1:40:01Episode 2
High Sierra
Episode 2
Directed by Raoul Walsh • 1941 • United States
Starring Ida Lupino, Humphrey Bogart, Alan CurtisMarking the moment when the gritty gangster sagas of the 1930s began giving way to the romantic fatalism of ’40s film noir, HIGH SIERRA also contains the star-making performance of Humphrey Bogart, w...
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1:40:34Episode 3
The Maltese Falcon
Episode 3
Directed by John Huston • 1941 • United States
Starring Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, Mary AstorA cinematic landmark for a number of reasons—it was the first film directed by John Huston, the film that launched Humphrey Bogart to stardom, and one of the first true noirs—this breathlessly entert...
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1:08:13Episode 4
The Face Behind the Mask
Episode 4
Directed by Robert Florey • 1941 • United States
Starring Peter Lorre, Evelyn Keyes, Don BeddoeDirected 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...
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1:47:55Episode 5
Double Indemnity
Episode 5
Directed by Billy Wilder • 1944 • United States
Starring Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. RobinsonHas dialogue ever been more perfectly hard-boiled? Has a femme fatale ever been as deliciously wicked as Barbara Stanwyck? And has 1940s Los Angeles ever looked so seductively sordid? Wo...
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Laura
Episode 6
Directed by Otto Preminger • 1944 • United States
Starring Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton WebbOne of the most sophisticated noirs of the 1940s, Otto Preminger’s classic mystery stars Gene Tierney as Laura Hunt, a Manhattan advertising executive who is murdered just before she is set to mar...
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Detour
Episode 7
Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer • 1945 • United States
Starring Tom Neal, Ann SavageFrom Poverty Row came a movie that, perhaps more than any other, epitomizes the dark fatalism at the heart of film noir. As he hitchhikes his way from New York to Los Angeles, a down-on-his-luck nightclub pianist ...
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Gilda
Episode 8
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...
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1:36:15Episode 9
The Man I Love
Episode 9
Directed by Raoul Walsh • 1946 • United States
Starring Ida Lupino, Robert Alda, Andrea KingBathed in a downbeat noir mood and smoky jazz-lounge atmosphere, this haunting melodrama stars Ida Lupino as husky-voiced singer Petey Brown, who takes a job performing in a divey nightclub. She’s carryi...
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1:36:00Episode 10
Desert Fury
Episode 10
Directed by Lewis Allen • 1947 • United States
Starring John Hodiak, Lizabeth Scott, Burt LancasterLurid Technicolor, deep-dish melodrama, and gay subtext abound in this pulpy noir firecracker. In the desert town of Chuckawalla, Nevada, tempers flare, passions spark, and violence erupts when Pa...
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1:56:16Episode 11
Odd Man Out
Episode 11
Directed by Carol Reed • 1947 • United Kingdom
Starring James Mason, Kathleen Ryan, Robert NewtonTaking place largely over the course of one tense night, Carol Reed’s psychological noir, set in an unnamed Belfast, stars James Mason as a revolutionary ex-con leading a robbery that goes horribly ...
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1:40:54Episode 12
Brute Force
Episode 12
Directed by Jules Dassin • 1947 • United States
Starring Burt Lancaster, Hume Cronyn, Charles BickfordAs hard-hitting as its title, BRUTE FORCE was the first of Jules Dassin’s forays into the crime genre, a prison melodrama that takes a critical look at American society as well. Burt Lancaster ...
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1:35:29Episode 13
The Big Clock
Episode 13
Directed by John Farrow • 1948 • United States
Starring Ray Milland, Charles Laughton, Maureen O’SullivanOne of the finest suspense thrillers of the 1940s, THE BIG CLOCK stars Ray Milland as a hapless crime-magazine editor plunged into a web of danger when he begins being systematically framed ...
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1:38:48Episode 14
The Naked City
Episode 14
Directed by Jules Dassin • 1948 • United States
Starring Barry Fitzgerald, Howard Duff, Dorothy Hart“There are eight million stories in the Naked City,” as the narrator immortally states at the close of this breathtakingly vivid film and this is one of them. Master noir craftsman Jules Dassin a...
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1:32:37Episode 15
Brighton Rock
Episode 15
Directed by John Boulting • 1948 • United Kingdom
Starring Richard Attenborough, Hermione Baddeley, William HartnellOne of darkest and most sordid of all British noirs, this startlingly bleak, violent adaptation of the novel by Graham Greene delves into the seedy underbelly of the seaside reso...
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1:28:15Episode 16
The Woman in Question
Episode 16
Directed by Anthony Asquith • 1950 • United Kingdom
Starring Jean Kent, Dirk Bogarde, John McCallumFortune teller Agnes Huston (Jean Kent), a.k.a. Madame Astra, has been murdered—but that’s about all anyone can agree on as five different perspectives on the dead woman’s personality come to ligh...
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1:15:54Episode 17
The Killer That Stalked New York
Episode 17
Directed by Earl McEvoy • 1950 • United States
Starring Evelyn Keyes, Charles Korvin, Dorothy MaloneBased 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...
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1:21:53Episode 18
On Dangerous Ground
Episode 18
Directed by Nicholas Ray • 1951 • United States
Starring Robert Ryan, Ida Lupino, Ward BondWhen hardened big-city police detective Jim Wilson (Robert Ryan) roughs up one too many suspects, he’s sent to the countryside to cool his heels and help search for the murderer of a small-town schoolg...
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1:26:06Episode 19
So Long at the Fair
Episode 19
Directed by Terence Fisher and Antony Darnborough • 1950 • United Kingdom
Starring Jean Simmons, Dirk Bogarde, David TomlinsonMystery and menace are afoot at the 1889 Paris Exposition in this tense thriller from the studio that made atmospheric period dramas its specialty, Gainsborough Pictures...
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1:28:05Episode 20
The Sniper
Episode 20
Directed by Edward Dmytryk • 1952 • United States
Starring Adolphe Menjou, Arthur Franz, Gerald MohrBlacklisted 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...
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1:29:43Episode 21
The Big Heat
Episode 21
Directed by Fritz Lang • 1953 • United States
Starring Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Lee MarvinFritz 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)...
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1:30:55Episode 22
Human Desire
Episode 22
Directed by Fritz Lang • 1954 • United States
Starring Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Broderick CrawfordIn 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...
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1:46:27Episode 23
MR. ARKADIN: The Comprehensive Version
Episode 23
Directed by Orson Welles • 1955 • United States
Starring Orson Welles, Paola Mori, Robert ArdenOrson Welles’s MR. ARKADIN (a.k.a. CONFIDENTIAL REPORT) tells the story of an elusive billionaire who hires an American smuggler to investigate his past, leading to a dizzying descent into a cold-war ...
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1:32:57Episode 24
The Night of the Hunter
Episode 24
Directed by Charles Laughton • 1955 • United States
Starring Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian GishTHE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER—incredibly, the only film the great actor Charles Laughton ever directed—is truly a stand-alone masterwork. A horror movie with qualities of a Grimm fairy tale, i...