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.

This gun for hire (Frank Tuttle 1942)

Willard Gates: Don't you trust me?
Philip Raven: Who trusts anybody?

Ruthless killer Philip Raven (Alan Ladd) has just finished a “job”. He has got rid of a blackmailer and he is paid with “hot” money. Willard Gates (Laird Cregor), the man who had hired him is involved in a plot to sell poison gas to the nazis. Gates himself, who is also a night club owner, reports Raven to the police.

Raven, escaping from the police, takes a train to L.A. to revenge from Gates. During the journey he meets Ellen Graham (Veronica Lake) a night club artist who is going to perform at Gates’ club. Ellen’s boyfriend (Robert Preston) is a police lieutenant that’s after the killer.

Raven takes Ellen as a hostage and slowly a feeling of sympathy grows between them.
Although they belong to different sides there is a growing complicity between Ellen and Raven. In a way she is a femme fatale who gets involved in the killer's life, but she also redeems him and makes him more humane.

There is an atmosphere of moral ambiguity as the film develops. We progressively see Raven as a victim rather than as a cold-blood killer. He has been an ill-treated, isolated character since his early childhood. Probably that’s why he has a liking for cats: “they don’t need anybody”. He is also highly individualistic:

Ellen Graham: Why don't you go to the police?
Philip Raven: I'm my own police

The film is based on Graham Greene’s novel “A Gun for Sale” and noir style novelist W.R Burnett worked in the script.

We have to highlight J. F. Seitz photography. The dark shots in the gas works and at the freight yard are unforgettable.

Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake’s ambiguous performances are another key point in the film. In fact we are facing one of the classic noir best known couples in their best movie.

High Sierra (Raoul Walsh, 1941)

Marie: …”just rushing toward death”

Marie's remark to Roy defines his doomed character. Gangster Roy Earle is taken out of prison by Big Mac, an old colleague who wants him to participate in a hold-up.

Just out of the prison Earle wants to go to the park to see “if the grass is still green and the trees still grow”. There is a big contrast between country and city in all the film: The country stands for freedom and the purity of man while the city is a symbol of corruption – an idea that will be present in other noir films.

Humphrey Bogart plays the role of Roy Earle – a hardboiled gangster with good feelings (the movie was a turning point in Bogart’s career). In fact we see him as a good-hearted man longing for purity – in nature, in his vision of Velma – the lame girl he helps…

Roy has to take part in a robbery in Tropic springs – then he will be able to return to the simple life he lived as a boy in Indiana. However things go wrong and he ends up chased by the police in the high sierra. His final companions, Marie (Ida Lupino) and Pard – a dog that brings bad luck to his owners - see him die and also become "free" in a dramatic ending.

The film was produced by Mark Hellinger and the script was written by John Huston and William Ripley Burnett. These names would be important in future noir films. In the same way actors like Cornel Wilde (Mendoza) or Barton McLane (Kramer) would appear in other noir movies.

Maybe High Sierra is not strictly a noir film but it was one of the key movies in the transition from gangster pictures to noir movies.