Directed by Jules Dassin • 1947 • United States
Starring Burt Lancaster, Hume Cronyn, Charles Bickford
As 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 is the timeworn Joe Collins, who, along with his fellow inmates, lives under the heavy thumb of the sadistic, power-tripping guard Captain Munsey (a riveting Hume Cronyn). Only Collins’s dreams of escape keep him going, but how can he possibly bust out of Munsey’s chains? Matter-of-fact and ferocious, BRUTE FORCE builds to an explosive climax that shows the lengths men will go to when fighting for their freedom.
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The Big Clock
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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The Naked City
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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Brighton Rock
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...
