Ascenseur Pour l’Échafaud (Louis Malle, 1958)

Florence: “Je t’ai perdu dans cette nuit Julien… Mais il faut que tu reviennes. Il faut que tu sois là, vivant, à côté de moi… Julien… il faut, il faut…"

Florence (a gorgeous Jeanne Moreau) is walking alone along the half deserted Paris boulevards. We can hear Miles Davis trumpet. Its sound is cold, somewhat distant, cutting the Paris night. She walks the dim-lit, damp streets from café to café in search of his lover who will not appear.
Florence is looking for Julien Tavernier (Maurice Ronet). Julien has killed his employer – and Florence’s husband - Simon Carala (Jean Wall).
The two of them had planned the perfect crime making it look as if it was a suicide. But Julien gets caught in an elevator and his car is stolen by a young dissatisfied couple who want to live fast… (this film was made just two years before Godard filmed “À Bout de Souffle”).
The “nouvelle vague” directors were admirers of the American film noir and they created some gems of the genre with some “European” touches. Louis and Véronique, he young couple, remind us of those doomed fugitives in the movies of the 30s and 40s but with something of an existentialist emptiness.

Louis: “Reveille-toi, on se’n va…”
Véronique: “Mais Louis, tu es fou?”

I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (Mervyn LeRoy 1932)

Helen: Jim, why haven't you come before?
Jim: I couldn't, I was afraid to.
Helen: But you could have written. It's been almost a year since you escaped.
Jim: But I haven't escaped. They're still after me. They'll always be after me. I've had jobs but I can't keep them. Something happens. Someone turns up. I hide in rooms all day and travel by night. No friends. No rest. No peace.
…
Helen: How do you live?
James Allen: I steal.

In the famous last scene of this film James Allen (excellent acting by Paul Muni) appears from the shadows of the night to bid farewell to her lover before disappearing in the dark The prison system hasn’t given him any chances and has broken his life and respectability.

Allen, a war veteran had refused to work in a routine factory job because he wanted something else in life: “I don't want to be spending the rest of my life answering a factory whistle instead of a bugle call… I want to do something worthwhile… life is more important than a medal on my chest or a stupid, insignificant job”

His ambition was to build bridges as an engineer, however he had a difficult start and in the south he was involved in a crime. In spite of being innocent he was sentenced to ten years of hard labour.

After some months of harsh conditions he manages to escape with the help of some inmates and later moves to Chicago where he finds a good job and respectability.

But Marie (Glenda Farrell) - a primitive femme fatale – blackmails him and he returns to the south to serve for some weeks to get his pardon.

However the southern justice doesn’t keep its promise and he is confined for years in a tougher camp. Eventually he manages to escape together with inmate Bomber (Edward Ellis) but he will be a chased character, forced to live in the shadows…

The film (based on an autobiographic novel by Robert Elliot Burns was controversial at the time of its release – especially in the Southern States - and it contributed to the abolition of forced labour in the US. As one of the tagline of the film reads: "Six sticks of dynamite that blasted his way to freedom...and awoke America's conscience!"

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

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.