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.

Hollow Triumph, aka The Scar (Steve Sekely, 1948)

Evelyn Hahn: “It’s a bitter little world…”

The fatalism of a bitter little world is ever present in this movie. Former medical student John Muller (Paul Henreid) has just been released from prison. He has planned a robbery at a casino which turns out to be a failure. Muller has to escape to L.A. where he takes a job but the menace of being caught casts a permanent shadow on his life.
He comes to know by chance that he looks almost exactly like psychiatrist Victor Bartok. He sees a chance of escaping his fate if he can impersonate the doctor: He has a good psychiatry practice and a nice secretary (Joan Bennet).
This becomes Muller’s objective and he plans carefully how to “become” Dr Bartok. To make this resemblance more likely he manages to reproduce a facial scar and later he kills and gets rid of the doctor.
When Muller has succeeded impersonating Dr Bartok he suddenly has to face the troubles of the dead man. Muller will be a victim and pay, not for his crimes but for the doctor’s past troubles… His fate was following him all the way…
This is not one of the great films of the noir style (it is not usually in the top lists), however it has the essence of the genre… there is a fatalistic quality in the movie with a menacing shadowy photography (great work by John Alton).

John Muller: “It’s too late and what’s the use? You can never go back and start again… You don’t see what’s happening to you. It just happens”

Criss Cross (Robert Siodmak, 1949)

Steve Thompson: She's all right, she's just young.
Mrs. Thompson: (about Anna) Huh! Some ways, she knows more than Einstein.

Steve Thompson (Burt Lancaster) comes back to LA. He had left some months ago after divorcing Anna (Yvonne de Carlo). She is now involved with the gambler and gangster Slim Dundee (Dan Duryea).

Steve, who has got back to his job as an armoured-car payroll guard, is still in love with Anna and realises that he can get her away from Slim if he manages to make a lot of money from a bank robbery. So taking advantage of his job he plans a hold-up together with Slim only to betray him later.

In “The Killers” - also directed by Robert Siodmak - Burt Lancaster is hopelessly waiting for some gangsters who will come and kill him. The scene is somehow repeated in Criss Cross. In the robbery, Steve (Burt Lancaster) tries to double-cross Slim to get away with Anna afterwards. However his obsession with this femme fatale will lead to his own destruction.

He is wounded in the heist and Slim gets to know about his plans and sooner or later he will get the couple.

The robbery sequences, the scenes at the hospital and the final ones (shot with a powerful use of dark and light) are film noir at its best – with a sense of tragedy in the final embrace of the two lovers.

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."

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.

Detour (E. G. Ulmer, 1945)

Al Roberts: That's life. Whichever way you turn, Fate sticks out a foot to trip you.

There is a fatalistic quality in Detour. In fact the movie is like a nightmare: The events seem to roll inevitably to a fatal end. The film opens with a road… in a bar Al Roberts (Tom Neal) hears the song I can’t believe you’re in love with me and his thoughts are taken to the past.

He had begun a hitch-hiking trip from New York to L.A. (where his girlfriend was waiting for him). A driver called Charles Haskell Jr. offered to take him directly to LA. However his sudden death took Al by surprise:

Al Roberts: (narrating the story) Until then I had done things my way, but from then on something stepped in and shunted me off to a different destination than the one I'd picked for myself.

Thinking that the police will never believe his version and he may be accused of murder he hides the body and goes away with the car using Haskell's identity. Later he gives a lift to Vera (Ann Savage) who happened to know Charles and blames Al for his death… He is trapped by her and is just a puppet in her hands..

Vera’s accidental death is another destiny trap surrounding Al. The narrator is always surrounded by a dark or foggy atmosphere and never seems to have a chance:

Al Roberts: Yes. Fate, or some mysterious force, can put the finger on you or me for no good reason at all.