The Woman in the Window (1944)

Directed by Fritz Lang

This is one of the best film noir that Fritz Lang directed.  Much better than the over-hyped Scarlet Street which had the same main cast of Ed G. Robinson, Joan Bennett and Dan Duryea.  A great example of the genre, it has all the identifiers associated with film noir and builds to a conversation piece of a conclusion.  Some love it some hate it (the ending that is).  Worth seeing so as to judge for yourself.

Lady In The Lake (1947)

Directed by Robert Montgomery

This Philip Marlowe hard-boiled detective (or whatever you call Marlowe) story is seriously underrated in my oh-so-humble opinion.  It relies on a somewhat gimmicky first person camera technique which some people don't care for.  I thought it was actually done very well (considering the limits of the technology it's amazing really).  Robert Montgomery is a fairly decent Marlowe, he leans heavy on the wise-cracking but that's his wheelhouse and it works for him.  It also doesn't hurt that there's a lot of great looking women in the movie.

Isle of the Dead (1945)

Directed by Mark Robson

This is one of a few horror movies that were produced by Val Lewton.  It's an interesting psychological sort of horror film.  You're never sure if things are what they seem or if everyone's just going crazy.

Scarlet Street (1945)

Directed by Fritz Lang

Fritz Lang film-noir that would be all but forgotten if not for a shocking murder scene that got the movie banned in the US for years. The usually dependable Ed G. Robinson puts in one of the poorer performances of his career.

White Heat (1949)

Directed by Raoul Walsh

Great action movie. Strange that this often gets categorized as noir though. There's nothing really noir about it, it's sort of the prototypical action movie with a cop after the psycho master criminal.

Mildred Pierce (1945)

Directed by Michael Curtiz

Often categorized under noir and while it's true that it has a noir frame story, the main narrative itself is not particularly noir.  This is really one of those grand rise and fall epics in a style once typical of golden-age hollywood.  Joan Crawford is just brilliant here.  This movie remade her career at a time when she was thought of as "over the hill".

They really don't make movies like this anymore.  It is just a giant and a classic in my opinion that seems to get unjustly overlooked these days.

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)

Directed by Lewis Milestone

It seems old-fashioned and slow at first.  Just hang in there, because it pays off in the end.  You need to be very careful about reading too much plot info beforehand on this one because it is easily spoiled.  It's about a man who returns to the town where he grew up.  His childhood friends are now of prominent status in the town, but they don't seem so happy to see him.  Barbara Stanwyck plays a powerful business woman which is an unusual role for a woman at this time.  But of course Stanwyck is always great in these "tough broad" types.  Kirk Douglas puts in a very strong performance in this, his screen debut.

The Treasure of The Sierra Madre (1948)

Directed by John Huston

John Huston won a Best Director Oscar for this film.  And he absolutely deserved it because it's a superbly directed film.  My opinion differs somewhat on the story, but others love it.  Over the course of the movie the characters go from rags to riches, or so it seems.  There is trouble brewing ahead.  You can see how this influenced the genre of the heist film.  Stanley Kubrick's The Killing being one example.

Leave Her to Heaven (1945)

Directed by John M. Stahl

Even though it's in color, it has a foreboding tone so is often classified as noir.  Full of melodramatics, it's a rather tedious domestic drama.  It's not your dark shadows and gritty toughguys, sort of noir.  A typically lifeless performance by Cornel Wilde.  The color cinematography certainly looks great.

The Glass Key (1942)

Directed by Stuart Heisler

Highly recommended. Some seriously enjoyable sequences in this movie. Very pulp fiction quality to the dialogue and story, which figures since it's based on a story by Dashiell Hammett. Unfortunately in this adaptation things start to get a bit muddled at the end. There's a particular scene in this movie though that I think makes it a must watch, I won't spoil it, but it is a stunner.

I do think there are some noir qualities here, there is a moral ambiguity to it. The bad guys are fairly one-dimensionally bad but the good guys' status is a little more murky.