The Asphalt Jungle (John Huston 1950)

Police Commissioner Hardy:  People are being cheated, robbed, murdered, raped. And that goes on twenty-four hours a day, every day in the year... But suppose we had no police force, good or bad...  The battle's finished. The jungle wins.

At the beginning of the movie Commissioner Hardy portrays the policemen as heroes, as the guardians of society.  However as director John Huston narrates the preparations for a robbery and we sympathise with some of the thieves - especially with the lower class ones, losers with good feelings:  We are told about their families and their dreams.  In contrast to them the upper classes and some of the policemen are seen as individualistic and corrupt.
The movie reflects one of the main themes present in W.R.Burnett novels: The city, the asphalt jungle is a place of corruption and sin whereas the country is associated with purity, with the innocence that's lost in the city.  Dix Handley - a country man who is forced to rob to escape from poverty - says: One of these days, I'll make a real killin' and then I'm gonna head for home. First thing I do when I get there is take a bath in the creek, and get this city dirt off me.
However the odds are against them.  Our characters are doomed:  What can you do against blind accidents? - Doc says.  Things will turn out wrong, sometimes because of just bad luck, fate:  Ciavelli is wounded when a gun is dropped.  Doc is arrested after watching a young girl dance for too long when he was escaping. 
When Dix - wounded after a gun incident - reaches his farm he dies with his dream because as Dr. Swanson says: He hasn't got enough blood left in him to keep a chicken alive.

Caged (John Cromwell 1950)

Georgia: Do you hear that train? People are going home on that train. Let me out of here! I don’t belong here!


Marie Allen (Eleanor Parker), a naïve and frightened 19-year-old is sent to prison for being an accomplice in an armed robbery. Marie – a pregnant widow – looks completely helpless and innocent (at the beginning it is difficult to believe that she is a convict).

The promises of the prison head (Agnes Moorehead) for a fair treatment and a possible parole after some months become nothing but good intentions. Under the surveillance of the menacing prison guard (Hope Emerson) Marie learns about the hard life in the penitentiary and she realises that behaving honestly she just has no possibility of being free.

As Kitty tells her: In this cage you get tough or you get killed.

The vision of the justice and society in this film is deeply negative. The underprivileged ones never have a chance: Marie has to give her child on adoption because nobody – no even her mother – wants to take care of him.
The judicial system appears to be corrupt and at the service of the wealthy classes. Besides the prison system proves to be not only useless but also damaging for the individuals.

Marie Allen: For that forty bucks I heisted I sure got myself an education.

So Marie Allen can only get the parole when she makes a deal with the crooked, powerful ones. But her future will be a life of crime…
Prison's secretary: What shall I do with her file?
Ruth Benton: Keep it active. She'll be back

D.O.A (Dead on Arrival, Rudolph Maté 1950)

Frank Bigelow: I want to report a murder.
Homicide Captain: Sit down. Where was this murder committed?
Frank Bigelow: San Francisco, last night.
Homicide Captain: Who was murdered?
Frank Bigelow: I was.

At the beginning of the film (as we read the titles) Frank Bigelow is walking down corridors in the police headquarters. He is going to report his own murder.

From that scene a flashback takes us to Frank’s short holiday in San Francisco. While he was at a jazz club he was poisoned with Iridium.

After a visit to the doctor he slowly becomes aware of his fatal situation: (Dr. MacDonald tells him: I don't think you fully understand, Bigelow. You've been murdered).

He has a short time to live and the movie becomes a desperate search for who has poisoned him and why – part of this search takes place in typically noir settings as in an abandoned factory.

After his quest Frank finds himself an innocent victim of a plot filled with other people’s ambitions. He was poisoned by mischance, as he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Therefore there is a fatalistic element in the movie, a certain determinism which is present in many noir films.

This fatalism finds its final expressions at the end of the movie when Frank dies at the police station: The policemen don’t find it easy to explain what has happened to him and just find an easy solution to the case…

Deputy: How shall I make out the report on him, Captain?
Captain: Better make it "dead on arrival."

Gun Crazy (Joseph H. Lewis 1950)

Annie Laurie Starr: Bart, I've been kicked around all my life, and from now on, I'm gonna start kicking back.

At the beginning of the film we are introduced to the early life of Bart Tare (John Dall) – a sharpshooter. He meets Annie Laurie Star (Peggy Cummings), a strong-willed and ambitious woman.

They begin a series of bank robberies - a special mention should be made to the bank heist sequence which was shot in just one long take. Gradually they become outcast characters blinded by they desire to be together and their ambition - there is a strong relationship between guns and sex all along the story: As Bart states - We go together, Annie. I don't know why. Maybe like guns and ammunition go together

Annie Laurie could seem a femme fatale – the original movie title would point in that direction - in the sense that she drags Bart to destruction, - as Bluey-Bluey says: she ain't the type that makes a happy home. However she also feels love for him. It’s their passion that leads them to destruction.

Therefore the fugitive couple are doomed by their destructive love, by the spinning violence. Bart tries to go back to his hometown, to his childhood but he can’t find salvation there either.

As in other noir films nature is the last shelter where the characters try to escape from the corruption of the city. However trackers manage to follow them and they die there – just like Roy Earle in High Sierra or Eddie and Jo in You Only Live Once