CJ, can you name a black-and-white crime drama from the 40's or 50's that is not a noir?
Confidence Girl is one.
I've never heard of that movie (I see that it only has 36 votes on IMDB, so it must be one of those impossible-to-find movies).It seems to me that just about every crime drama of the Noir Period (roughly '41 - '59) is labeled a "noir." Many of the so-called "sun baked noirs" of the 50's would just be called "crime dramas" if they were released in a later time period; they would not be called "neo noirs." eg. The Lineup (1958) and Suddenly (1954) would not be called "neo noirs" if they were made in 1980. So basically, any crime drama of the 40's and 50's is called "noir," but later films are only called "neo noir" if it has real noir visual characteristics.
There are a lot of them for sure, straight police procedurals usually aren't though.
Virtually all the ones I've seen are labeled "noir" by some outfit or another
TCM just released "Glenn Ford: Undercover Crimes DVD" http://shop.tcm.com/detail.php?p=434142&ecid=PRF-TCM-100208&pa=PRF-TCM-1002085 movies never-before released on dvd, at least in America. (Not all are considered noirs, but some are):The Lady in Question (1939)Framed (1947)The Undercover Man (1949)Mr. Soft Touch (1949)Convicted (1950)if anyone has seen these movies and could give ratings/recommendations, that would be awesome. If there are really some solid movies here and they are unavailable anywhere else, maybe I'd consider buying 'em sometime
The Letter (1940) 7.5/10It's done well, though the plot lacks the imaginative twists and turns you'd expect for a murder/legal mystery. The final scene was (obviously) added to the original script to please the Hays OfficeI'm not sure who decided that The Maltese Falcon was the first noir; this movie was released in 1940, a year before The Maltese Falcon, and has all the visuals you'd expect from a film noir
On TCM the other day, I caught a few minutes of another 1940 movie: Stranger on the Third Floor. Definitely look as visually noir as any movie you'll see. I see on wikipedia, there's some brief discussion (in the second paragraph on the page) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_on_the_Third_Floor with some sources RE: whether this is the first film noir