Friday Fiction... in the "Library Without Walls"

--by Peg White
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One of our goals at the Copper Queen Library is to deliver high-quality content of all sorts to Bisbee's readers, movie viewers, and program attendees. One way we accomplish this is by featuring many interesting speakers on a variety of subjects and by adding more books, CDs, DVDs, newspapers, and magazines to our carefully cultivated collections.
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In the Tech Age, the Internet helps us expand our on-site collections in many ways -- letting us link out to full-text magazines, downloadable audiobooks, and, in this post, to feature-length film noir titles from the Internet Archive -- and helps us stretch our limited dollars.
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So, from time to time in our "What's New?" blog, we plan to share information about (and links to) some of the excellent content available on the web and, by doing so, to open the door to the "library without walls."
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The films listed in this week's "Friday Fiction" post are just a few of the many full-length feature fiction titles available in the "Film Noir Collection" at the Internet Archive. The Archive is also home to many more non-noir movies -- as well as music, books, audiobooks, podcasts, documentaries, television shows, speeches, games, software, and the Wayback Machine (earlier versions of web pages), as well as a wide variety of other fascinating material. To watch, just click on the title, follow Archive instructions, and enjoy! (Depending on your home computer and media set-up, you might even be able to view these on your home TV screen...)
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Beat the Devil (John Huston) - This movie has not become a cult classic for nothing. Among its other merits, it is one of the few films where a film noir is mixed with a comedy. It’s a who's who of actors of its vintage -- including Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Gina Lollobrigida, Robert Morley and Peter Lorre.
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The Big Combo (Joseph Lewis) - Police captain Peterson (Robert Middleton) storms into the office of police Lt. Leonard Diamond (Cornel Wilde), critical of Diamond's spending exorbitant amounts of the city budget and his own personal money in an attempt to arrest a crime boss Mr. Brown (Richard Conte). Peterson says it is a waste of time trying to find something incriminating to bring Mr. Brown to justice because his crime combo does business without accounting books...
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D.O.A. (Leo C. Popkin) - Directed by Rudolph Maté, D.O.A. is considered a noir classic. The frantically-paced plot revolves around a doomed man's quest to find out who has poisoned him – and why – before he dies. The film begins with a scene called "perhaps one of cinema's most innovative opening sequences" by a BBC reviewer. The scene is a long, behind-the-back tracking sequence featuring Frank Bigelow (O'Brien) walking through a hallway into a police station to report his own murder...
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Fear in the Night (L.B. Merman, William H. Pine, William C. Thomas) - A film noir shocker, based on the story Nightmare by Cornell Woorlich, in which average Joe Vince Grayson (De Forest Kelley) dreams he murders someone and wakes up to find it may not have been a dream. This is worth it for the clever plot twists alone.
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He Walked By Night (Bryan Foy) - Gripping film noir crime drama about a manhunt for a ruthless killer who plays a deadly cat and mouse game with the police. Starring Richard Basehart, Scott Brady, Whit Bissell, and Jack Webb, this movie was the basis for "Dragnet."
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Kansas City Confidential (Edward Small) - Four robbers hold up an armored truck, getting away with over a million dollars in cash. Joe Rolfe (John Payne), a down-on-his-luck flower delivery truck driver, is accused of being involved and is beaten up by the local police. Released due to lack of evidence, Joe, following the clues to a Mexican resort, decides to look for the men who set him up and get revenge.
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Panic In The Streets (Elia Kazan) - One night in the New Orleans slums, vicious hoodlum Blackie (Jack Palance) and his friends kill an illegal immigrant who won too much in a card game. Next morning, Dr. Clint Reed (Richard Widmark - this time not seen pushing little old ladies in wheelchairs down the stairs) of the Public Health Service confirms the dead man had pneumonic plague...
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Please Murder Me (Jack J. Gross) - How's that for a title? Lawyer Raymond Burr (seeming very much like Perry Mason) brilliantly defends Angela Lansbury, who seems certain to be found guilty of murdering her husband, who was Burr's best friend. Instead of spoiling it for you, I'll just say that a couple of surprises lie ahead for him...
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Scarlet Street (Fritz Lang) - "A sultry woman's boyfriend has her hook a middle-aged clerk for his money, leading first to ironic and then tragic complications. Second of a pair of closely related middle-class nightmares directed by Fritz Lang. (Remake of Jean Renoir's 1931 French film, La Chienne.)" (quotation from noir expert Spencer Selby)
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Shock (Aubrey Schenck) - This post-World War II suspense thriller sets off an emotional roller coaster after the psychologically fragile wife of a POW (Anabel Shaw) witnesses a brutal murder from a hotel window while waiting to be reunited with her husband (Frank Latimer). By the time he arrives, she's nearly comatose with shock. The hotel's psychiatrist (Vincent Price) is called in to help... Film noir classic, noted for its dark themes, stark camera angles and high-contrast lighting.
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The Stranger (Sam Spiegel) - Set in Connecticut after World War II, The Stranger is a cat and mouse game between Wilson (Edward G. Robinson), a member of the Allied War Crimes Commission and Franz Kindler (Orson Welles), a Nazi who has assumed the false identity of Dr. Charles Rankin. To complete his new intelligentsia disguise, Kindler marries Mary Longstreet, daughter of a Supreme Court justice.
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Too Late for Tears (Byron Haskin) - This is pure noir. Lizabeth Scott and Arthur Kennedy are a couple who receive a satchel full of money that was intended for someone else (Dan Duryea). He wants to turn the cash over to the authorities; she wants to keep it---no matter what the consequenses: "Jane, Jane, what's happening to us -- what's happening? The money sits down there in an old leather bag and yet it's tearing us apart. It's poison, Jane..."
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If these whet your whistle to explore more, connect to the Internet Archive and see what you can find!