Director Fritz Lang adds plenty of sizzle to Clifford Odets’ play about a love triangle in a coastal town. A wash-out in New York, Barbara Stanwyck returns home to Monterey, where fisherman Paul Douglas takes a shine to her - but she’s a lot more compatible with cynical film projectionist Robert Ryan. Marilyn Monroe charms in a small role as a cannery worker smitten with Stanwyck’s brother.

Bertolt Brecht co-wrote this story about a Czech man (Brian Donlevy) on the run after killing a brutal SS officer during the Nazi occupation. Frequent Brecht collaborator Hanns Eisler supplied the Oscar-nominated score, and cinematographer James Wong Howe gave this tense thriller plenty of noir atmosphere. With Gene Lockhart and Walter Brennan.

Fritz Lang’s classic film noir reunited his WOMAN IN THE WINDOW stars Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett and Dan Duryea in a reworking of Jean Renoir’s 1931 LA CHIENNE. Robinson’s middle-aged bookkeeper and amateur artist becomes hopelessly ensnared by the seductive Bennett and her lover-pimp, Duryea. The result is a psychological thriller, with Robinson’s increasing desperation contrasting with his predators’ unremitting ruthlessness. As with WOMAN IN THE WINDOW, Lang reveals the potential criminal in the average citizen.