American Film Noir: 5 Classic Movies You Must See

Call it what you will:  American Film Noir, Cold War Film Noir, Classic Noir, or just plain Film Noir. If it’s dark and brooding and shot in black and white, we’re probably talking about the same thing.

American Film Noir and the Cold War

I’m not a cinephile, so I shouldn’t be surprised that I got this wrong. I always thought that film noir was purely a 1930s and early 1940s thing but, as I’m learning, this is not altogether correct. In articles I’ve come across recently, I’ve discovered that American film noir actually took shape and flourished during the Cold War, an era defined by alleged communist conspiracy, paranoia, and the rise of the national security state.

According to the website, Classic Film Noir, between 1945 and the mid-1950s, both Soviet and American filmmakers used the medium to vilify their Cold War adversaries. Noir was where the tension between the US and the Soviet Union was made visible to the general public and policymakers alike, informing audiences of ‘new global threats and villainies’.

In the US this involved portraying ‘a free and fun and prosperous America, and a blocky, horrid, and miserabilist Russia.’ In the Soviet Union, movies like The Russian Question, Meeting on the Elbe (1949), and The Secret Mission portrayed American leaders as warmongers with imperialistic ambitions, linking them to the vanquished Nazi regime.

That said, it’s interesting to note that the first film to dramatize and propagandize the Cold War was made not in the United States or in the Soviet Union, but in Canada. Released in 1948 and titled The Iron Curtain, the film is based on the break-up of a real Canadian spy ring shortly after the end of World War 2.

Dive into the shadows with The Iron Curtain and 4 other films listed below.

The Iron Curtain (1948)

The Iron Curtain tells the story of Igor Gouzenko, a Russian code clerk, who (along with his family) defects to Canada with proof of Soviet espionage activities in that country. The film ‘highlights the internal threat of communism and equates Soviet governance with that of the Nazis, suggesting a similarity in their authoritarian methods.’

The movie captures the tension of the Cold War period, reflecting the real-life events that were unfolding at the time. In fact, what’s labeled “the Gouzenko Affair” is often referred to as “the start of the Cold War.”

Dana Andrews’ portrayal of Gouzenko offers a window into the life of a man torn between duty to his country and the pursuit of personal freedom. The film’s semi-documentary style lends it an air of authenticity, distinguishing it from the more sensationalized narratives of the era.

The Iron Curtain achieved commercial success, securing the number one spot at the box office for two consecutive weeks. The film’s reception and performance reflect the complex interplay between cinema, politics, and public sentiment during the early Cold War period.

You can watch the movie for free on YouTube.

If you love movies, you’ll want to download The Cold War Watchlist. With 11 categories and 74 movies, there’s plenty to keep you busy. Click here to sign up and get your free download.

The Third Man (1949)

Sometimes I just don’t get the intimations detailed in movie reviews but, in the case of The Third Man, the Cold War context is clear – both explicitly and implicitly. First there is postwar Vienna itself, a dark and bombed out city, divided into zones of influence by World War 2’s victorious, but mutually suspicious Allies.

The film’s two main characters are the supposed friends, Harry Lime (played by Orson Welles) and Holly Martins (played by Joseph Cotton).

Lime is a US businessman prominent in the black market  and ready to make a profit at all costs, in this case by diluting penicillin, an action responsible for death and chronic ill health, especially among children. It’s said that

Lime, who makes money from mutilated children in Vienna, personifies the predatory capitalism of post-war US big business . . .

In a key scene Lime states: . . . brotherly love, peace, and democracy in Switzerland brought nothing but the cuckoo clock.

Martins, by contrast, writes classic shoot ‘em up cowboy novels where morality always prevails, implicitly referencing US cold war good versus evil policy.

Lime has invited Martins to Vienna to write copy for his criminal enterprises, but when Martins arrives he’s told that Lime is no longer alive. Ostensibly, he was hit by a car and didn’t survive. But to Martins, the death is mysterious. The rest of the film revolves around his search for the truth.

Written by Graham Greene, the UK website Culture Matters argues that

The Third Man is the Cold War in microcosm and a critique of its politics, accurately capturing the tension, mistrust and fear characteristic of Europe post -1945. Characters and their relationships assume the symbolism of economic and political forces . . .

Indictment of postwar corporate capitalism as some reviewers assert? Or just a movie about a mystery? What do you think?

The Third Man makes most Film Noir top ten lists, and is also known for its theme. I watched the movie on my local PBS channel. If you can’t find it there, you can watch the movie for free on YouTube.

The movie’s theme music has over 4 million listens on YouTube. Check it out using the link below.

You can watch the movie for free on YouTube.

If you love movies, you’ll want to download The Cold War Watchlist. With 11 categories and 74 movies, there’s plenty to keep you busy. Click here to sign up and get your free download.

Pickup on South Street (1953)

Pickup on South Street is a good example of how the threat of communism and the McCarthy driven red scare ran through much of the entertainment of the 1950s. The Guardian calls it “a masterly film noir.”

In Pickup’s opening sequence set on a packed Manhattan subway, an unknowing petty criminal steals a wallet containing scientific secrets from a flashy woman as two middle-class men look on. The woman (named Candy) is innocently carrying microfilm for Russian agents. The thief is a cocky opportunist. The older men are FBI agents pursuing a spy ring.

The thief, Skip McCoy, and his acquaintances are then hunted by US Federal agents as well as an unsavory jerk  hoping to make a buck from the Russians, and Soviet agents.

McCoy is perplexed about what’s happening, but  after a friend — a stoolie played by Thelma Ritter — is murdered by the Soviets he’s torn, and all sorts of complicated situations follow.

Thelma Ritter was Oscar-nominated as the sympathetic stool pigeon who sells underworld information to the cops but refuses to betray the whereabouts of a fellow minor criminal to the communists.

As recently as 2015, this film was getting good reviews from The Guardian and The Paris Review. In fact, The Paris Review notes:

Though most of the era’s anticommunist films were too vulgar and outlandish to survive as anything other than hilarious artifacts—or as evidence of the ever-imperialist, state-serving agenda of the Hollywood apparatus, depending on which side of the bed you woke up on—a few, Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly and Samuel Fuller’s Pickup on South Street among them, are truly great works of cinema. . . Both are tense, pulpy noirs, both center around the sale of nuclear secrets, and both take anticommunism more as a genre then a narrative drive.

In 2021, the Film Noir Board  said

PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET is one of the most affecting instances of this variety of noir filmmaking. It is also one of the most intriguing film noirs to focus on characters driven by their own internal moral devices, society’s laws and norms of behavior notwithstanding.

I thoroughly enjoyed this film. You can watch it for free on YouTube.

If you love movies, you’ll want to download The Cold War Watchlist. With 11 categories and 74 movies, there’s plenty to keep you busy. Click here to sign up and get your free download.

Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

Kiss Me Deadly is often mentioned as a partner to Pickup on South Street, but it’s often more highly rated. The Internet Movie Database calls it one of the best film noirs of the 1950s. Unfortunately, finding it to stream is like searching for a needle in a haystack. I finally found it on Internet Archive.

The movie begins with private detective Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) picking up a woman named Christina who is standing on the highway barefoot and wearing only a trench coat. They’re stopped farther on by strangers who knock out Mike and murder Christina.

Although warned not to investigate by the police, Mike can’t resist, and like Skip McCoy, he eventually stumbles across a case of nuclear espionage.

If you like Mickey Spillane, you’ve chosen the right film; it’s rated 98% on Rotten Tomatoes. That’s all I’m going to tell you.

Both Pickup on South Street and Kiss Me Deadly illustrate how easily Cold War tensions could be used for narrative rather than ideological purposes.

Take a look at the trailer below and then watch the movie.

If you love movies, you’ll want to download The Cold War Watchlist. With 11 categories and 74 movies, there’s plenty to keep you busy. Click here to sign up and get your free download.

The Deadly Affair (1967)

The Deadly Affair doesn’t fit a mold. It’s filmed in color, not the black and white of classic noir, but it still presents a darkly sinister picture of Cold War intrigue.

Labeled neo noir,  the movie is based on John le Carré’s first novel, Call for the Dead (which introduced spymaster George Smiley).  Since it’s a Columbia Pictures production and Paramount owned the film rights to the name George Smiley, the main character is renamed Charles Dobbs. The police liaison Mendel and Smiley’s wife Ann are able to keep their original names.

The Deadly Affair sees an ageing British secret agent  set out to uncover the truth behind a government employee’s apparent suicide. Circumstances evolve and Dobbs (James Mason) resigns in disgust. When it becomes clear that the man’s death may have been a murder, he launches an independent investigation with the help of his protege, and a police detective named Oliver Mendel.

For more about the Dobbs — really Smiley — character, you’ll want to read Meet George Smiley: Le Carre’s Spy Extraordinaire.

The film is available to rent or buy on most of the popular streaming platforms, and you can watch the trailer below.

If you love movies, you’ll want to download The Cold War Watchlist. With 11 categories and 74 movies, there’s plenty to keep you busy. Click here to sign up and get your free download.

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Just published: 10 Election Movies You’ll Want to Watch Now.

For more detail on The Iron Curtain and great black and white photos, check out the Classic Film Noir website.

If you’d rather read than watch, you can find a list of Cold War noir novels on CrimeReads, one of my favorite websites.

More in Movies:
The 1960s saw a shift in cinematic themes, reflecting the mounting anxiety over nuclear technology and its apocalyptic potential. The scary Cold War continue to evolve with an emphasis on invasion from within and without as portrayed in science fiction.  Selected themes include:

• Alien Invasion and Infiltration
• Nuclear Anxiety and Annihilation
• Technological Advances and Paranoia
• Communism as an Alien Threat
• Space Race and Exploration including Extraterrestrial Travel

You can check them out here.