THE FOUNTAINHEAD (1949) dir. King Vidor

“You know, you do awful good. Put Christmas in your eyes and keep your voice low. Tell me about paradise and all the things I’m missing. I haven’t had a good laugh since before Johnny was murdered.”

DEAD RECKONING | 1947, John Cromwell

Jane Greer in Out of the Past, 1947

LOS ANGELES NOIR: Sunset Boulevard (1950) dir. Billy Wilder Double Indemnity (1944) dir. Billy Wilder This Gun for Hire (1942) dir. Frank Tuttle In a Lonely Place (1950) dir. Nicholas Ray Somewhere in the Night (1946) dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz The Big Sleep (1946) dir. Howard Hawks Mildred Pierce (1945) dir. Michael Curtiz Murder, My Sweet (1945) dir. Edward Dmytryk Too Late for Tears (1949) dir. Byron Haskin The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) dir. Tay Garnett

Lizabeth Scott for Dead Reckoning, 1947

It’s so easy to be smug and wear a badge on your mind, isn’t it? You must feel very proud of yourself. Ella Raines as Carol “Kansas” Richman in Phantom Lady (1944) dir. Robert Siodmak

Robert Mitchum and Jean Simmons in a publicity photo for the film noir Angel Face (1953)

Rita Hayworth as Chris Emery in Affair in Trinidad (1952)

A Femme Fatale is a mysterious and seductive woman. Whose charms ensnare her lovers in bonds of irresistible desire, often leading them into compromising, dangerous, and deadly situations.

You can never help anything, can you? You’re like a leaf that the wind blows from one gutter to another.

Out of the Past (1947) dir. Jacques Tourneur

The Big Sleep (1946) dir. Howard Hawks 

Foggy Night at Land’s End, a photo by Fred Lyon, San Francisco, 1953

The Narrow Margin (1952), Richard Fleischer

Fallen Angel | Otto Preminger | 1945

“The very best screenplay I was ever sent was `Double Indemnity.’ It’s brilliant, but what’s amazing is that not one word was changed while we were shooting. Billy had it all there, and I mean all - everything you see on the screen was in the script. The moves, the business, the atmosphere, all written. When I mention `atmosphere’ in `Double Indemnity’ - that gloomy, horrible house the Dietrichsons lived in, the slit of sunlight slicing through those heavy drapes - you could smell that death was in the air, you understood why she wanted to get out of there, away, no matter how. And for an actress, let me say that the way those sets were lit, the house, Walter’s apartment, those dark shadows, those slices of harsh light at strange angles -all that helped my performance.” — Barbara Stanwyck

Joan Crawford in Sudden Fear (1952)