Phantom Lady (1944)

Not everything that they say is film noir, may be film noir. It depends on what you consider to the elements of film noir to be, although you’d generally be looking for some luckless, dark and erotic tale of crime, generally in what is known as society’s underbelly. In Phantom Lady (Robert Siodmark, 1944, starring Franchot Tone, Ella Raines, Alan Curtis, Elisha Cook, Jr, Thomas Gomez and Regis Toomey) we have most of that on show. It’s one of the most purely enjoyable noirs out there — unpretentious, fast and pleasing to watch. It has a frantic ‘rape by jazz’ drum scene, and is a high point of the sub-genre I call ‘The Wifelet Seeker Hero.’