The Big Sleep (1946)

Even Humphrey Bogart said he didn't know what was happening scene-to-scene in this adaptation of Raymond Chandler's hardboiled private eye crime story, and having just read the book, I can attest that the film is faithful to its sprawling mess of a plot - sprawling because Chandler in fact wrote it by fusing two previously published short stories, merging characters, renaming others, caring less about resolving plot threads and more about building not so much a mystery as a noir character study of criminal California circa 1940, delivered in hilarious deadpan and steeped in worldweary immorality.

★★★★☆

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Shock (1946)

A woman witnesses murder and suffers such a shock, she is admitted to a psychiatric facility in a catatonic state and of course the doctor-in-charge turns out to be Vincent Price's Dr Richard Cross, the murderer, but luckily for our catatonic patient, the dastardly doctor dispenses with the hefty candlestick he used on his wife's head (beside an open apartment window) and in the hospital decides  far more cautious methods are needed to overcome obstacles to his securing a wife-free future: he does things like rap on the beside table rhythmically as he whispers in the woman's ear, trying to confuse her. 

★★☆☆☆

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The Red House (1946)

This dreary 1946 film is about an abandoned red farmhouse that conceals a dreadful secret, but given no one can find the house, most of the movie is taken up with the characters in-the-know, like Edward G Robinson's histrionic farming family man, being annoyingly, whiningly circumspect about the importance of not visiting the house while all the other characters not-in-the-know, like adopted daughter Meg and her farmhand chum Nath, make repeated attempts to find it, walking in circles and talking in circles through the woods, padding out the dreariness before a final underwhelming reveal.

★★☆☆☆

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The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)

Film noir often ends feeling inconsequential - why did anyone need to know that grubby little crime story? - but this 1946 classic, featuring the debut film performance of Kirk Douglas and another perfectly-cast sneering, icy performance from Barbara Stanwyck in the title role, in a story of guilt, fear, shame, and love spanning decades, is not just cynical and dark but elicits strong interest in the fates of a trio of kids, two of whom harbor a murderous secret.

★★★★☆

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The Chase (1946)

Surely the Cornell Woolrich book doesn't unfold in the way this adaptation does, starting enterprisingly with a chump (perhaps in the book a traumatised drug-addled chump?) landing a job as a driver for a ruthless crime boss - a surprisingly ruthless crime boss, for 1947 - but, after a brief noone-believes-him moment a la The Lady Vanishes and a false murder charge a la a lot of other Hitchcock movies, about-facing in very confusing fashion - think a The Woman In The Window's it-was-all-a-dream type of about-face - rendering irrelevant all that has happened in the first half, a bit like saying to an audience halfway through a movie, "OK, forget all that...here's a quick rundown of what actually happened..."

★★★☆☆

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The Spiral Staircase (1946)

Based on Ethel Lina White's Some Must Watch, a book I have just finished reading, this thriller I found available to watch for free on Youtube tells the terrifically creepy story of a lady-help in a remote mansion who comes to believe a murderous lunatic has found his way into the house!

★★★★☆

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Terror By Night (1946)

This time, in number thirteen of the fourteen movies in the series, Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes boards a train to Scotland that is transporting the Star of Rhodesia, a jewel of great value, and although he succeeds in thwarting would-be thieves, a body turns up in one of the carriages.

★★★☆☆

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The Stranger (1946)

Edward G Robinson's detective sets a Nazi criminal free from prison hoping this one will lead him to another hiding out in smalltown Connecticut, and from this opening scene, Orson Welles' thriller sets such a furious pace, in the end we feel like we have only cursorily looked in on these characters - one played by Orson Welles (the nazi (read 'generic bad guy' - he could have been simply a psychopath or criminal - he is not a political figure)) on the run and doing everything he can, even murder, to remain undetected - and one, a detective hot on the nazi's trail, who turns the thriller into something closer to a melodrama when he insists on commentating the various character's psychological states, including that of Loretta Young's just-married wife of the nazi.

★★★★☆

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Detour (1946)

"An ordinary healthy guy" (a piano player in a bar) hitchhikes across America to reunite with an "ordinary healthy girl" (who used to sing in the bar) but when the man who gives him a ride winds up dead, the piano player finds himself on a grim film noir detour from the happy life with his girlfriend that awaited him, instead driving around in a stolen car trying to dream up ways out of his predicament before the body turns up and before the grimfaced femme fatale he has picked up gets her own ideas about benefitting from the situation.

★★★★☆

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Dressed To Kill (UK: Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Code) (1946)

By 1946, Basil Rathbone had starred as Sherlock Holmes alongside Nigel Bruce's Doctor Watson fourteen times and perhaps some weariness is on display in this last one, Dressed To Kill, but to be fair, the plot about a criminal gang's race to obtain three identical wooden music boxes, based on Conan Doyle's The Adventure of the Six Napoleons, gives Sherlock Holmes no opportunity to dazzle with his brilliant methods of deduction because the audience knows pretty much what it needs to know right from the beginning and remains always several steps ahead of the great detective.

★★☆☆☆

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The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)

Like Double Indemnity, this 1946 noir thriller is based on a James M Cain novel about a grubby affair and murder: this time, Frank the handyman drifter and blonde bombshell Cora fall in love and plot to do away with Cora's husband, the roadhouse owner Nick, even though living happily ever after conducting their affair right under his nose seems a possible, less controversial life choice.

★★★★☆

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