Ask me how much I love these movies—the black and white cinematography, tales that begin in police department interrogation rooms, hard-boiled detectives, rotten scoundrels and conniving dames.  They reek of atmosphere, melodrama, and the kind of lines you just don't hear anymore.  You can say we've become more sophisticated, that today's noir has more depth, more intricacy, more realism.  But I can't help my fondness for the beleaguered bad guys and gals of the past, their crackling metaphors, broad-shouldered suits and gowns, the cops who dog them, and those amazing hats they all wear.  And I simply can't resist the shadows they cast in every scene....

Murder, My Sweet  (1944) Dir. Edward Dmytryk

Double Indemnity (1944) Dir. Billy Wilder

The Maltese Falcon (1941) Dir. John Huston

The Big Sleep (1946) Dir. Howard Hawks

The Third Man (1949) Dir. Carol Mann

I Wake Up Screaming (1941) Dir. H. Bruce Humberstone

A Woman's Face  (1941)  Dir. George Cukor

The Glass Key (1942) Dir. Stuart Heisler

The Woman in the Window (1944) Dir. Fritz Lang

The Blue Dahlia (1946) Dir. George Marshall

The Dark Mirror  (1946) Dir. Robert Siodmak

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers  (1946) Dir. Lewis Milestone

Lady in the Lake (1947) Dir. Robert Montgomery

Out of the Past (1947) Dir. Jacques Tourneur

The Big Clock (1948) Dir. John Farrow

The Night Has a Thousand Eyes  (1948) Dir. John Farrow

Sorry, Wrong Number (1948) Dir. Anatole Litvak