This compilation of Tribune-Review film critic Ed Blank's reviews of the film noir DVDs on which Eddie Muller provides the audio commentary or interviews:
"Fallen Angel" Unrated but PG in nature; 1945; 
Drifter Dana Andrews wants the slatternly Linda Darnell. He marries nice Alice Faye to finance his plans with Darnell, who is coveted by every guy in town from sadistic cop Charles Bickford to homely diner operator Percy Kilbride. And then, murder.
The long-neglected film noir gem reunited several members of the "Laura" production team including director Otto Preminger, whose supple use of the camera emphasizes long panning shots over the standard cutting back and forth
Film historian Eddie Muller's DVD commentary highlights contrasting heroines Darnell and Faye - the latter being so unhappy with the de-emphasis on her character that she abandoned her film career. Muller shares his commentary with Susan Andrews, Dana's daughter.
"No Way Out" Unrated but PG-13 in nature; 1950; 
Virulently racist criminal Richard Widmark all but flips out when he believes his injured brother's death was caused by young black doctor Sidney Poitier. Linda Darnell, widow of the dead brother, vacillates between her better instincts and Widmark, with whom she had been involved.
On the DVD audio commentary, Muller, the most informative and least pretentious of the folks providing historical perspectives on film classics, describes how Widmark resisted being cast in the venomous role, a type he was afraid of getting locked into.
Muller quotes Poitier's autobiographies on how Widmark was the first Hollywood celebrity to invite Poitier to his home, how they became life-long friends and how Widmark, portraying "sneering insolence," apologized repeatedly, if unnecessarily, to Poitier between takes. The film's ending was changed before release to make it much less bleak than the one intended.
"House on Telegraph Hill" Unrated but PG in nature; 1951;
As World War II winds down, a Polish relocation camp survivor (Italy's Valentina Cortese) swaps identities with a friend who has just died. Cortese heads for a Victorian home in San Francisco to be "reunited" with the deceased's young son and to marry into the family with major consequences.
DVD commentator Muller notes plot similarities to a then-recent film noir called "No Man of Her Own" about the dangers of a woman assuming an identity and moving in with an unfamiliar family.
Muller also discloses salaries and says Cortese was the filmmakers' only choice for the heroine but that Richard Basehart, who plays her dangerous bridegroom, was well down the line of contenders for his part. The two launched an off-screen affair and were married for several years, with Basehart moving to Europe when Cortese spurned her Hollywood career.
"The House on 92nd Street"
Unrated but G in nature; 1945
An inexpensively produced sleeper whose success astonished everyone, it is most interesting now as a mid-1940s artifact that shows in semi-documentary style how the FBI nailed a New York City Fifth Column spy ring during World War II. The house involved, by the way, was on 93rd Street, not 92nd.
Muller notes on his DVD audio commentary that the film's point of view is "all over the place," but the picture was a breakthrough in filming on location at a time when camera equipment was cumbersome and candid shots were tough to get. Casting Lloyd Nolan and William Eythe eased the location shooting because they were relatively unrecognizable to star-struck passersby.
"Somewhere in the Night"
Unrated but PG in nature; 1946
Muller does an audio commentary for the mystery about an amnesiac (native Pittsburgher John Hodiak) during World War II who hides his temporary disability while using clues (a note, a wallet and an angry letter) to figure out his identity.
It has a strong supporting cast that includes Richard Conte, Lloyd Nolan, Jeff Corey, Josephine Hutchinson, Henry Morgan and especially Nancy Guild - a provocative, classy, smoldering actress clearly coached to emulate Lauren Bacall and Lizabeth Scott.
As Muller notes, the plot, which involves Nazi loot, sometimes is indecipherable. A key part was recycled in "Angel Heart" 41 years later.
"Where the Sidewalk Ends" PG in nature; 1950;
One of the most neglected of the best film noirs. Dana Andrews plays a tough cop repeatedly disciplined for excessive brutality.
When he scuffles with yet another suspect and inadvertently kills him, he takes exhaustive pains to cover his tracks and then to investigate the death. His tricky double mission becomes that much more complicated when he falls for his victim's widow, Gene Tierney.
The film reunites Andrews and Tierney with their "Laura" director, Otto Preminger. DVD commentator Muller explains well Preminger's technique for long takes that impose an unusual objectivity on his subjects.
"Born to Kill"unrated but PG-13 in nature; 1947
Unreasonably neglected, it stars Lawrence Tierney as a murderer who marries nice newspaper heiress Audrey Long but prefers her no-good foster sister Claire Trevor.
DVD commentator Muller says that Tierney was as tough and troublesome a brawler off screen as he was on and that Tierney was still extremely feisty in his 80s when he accompanied Muller to a public screening of "Born to Kill." Note the peculiarly homoerotic on-screen subtext of Tierney's relationship with Elisha Cook, a pair Muller describes as "a sociopathic Mutt and Jeff."
"Kansas City Confidential"
PG-13 in nature; 1952
Before there was a "Reservoir Dogs" or "The Thomas Crown Affair," a neat little 1952 crime thriller called "Kansas City Confidential" depicted participants in a perfect crime do not know each other's identities.
The latter was based on the unsolved Boston Brink's robbery, which spawned such direct descendants as "Six Bridges to Cross" and "The Brink's Job."
"Kansas City Confidential" posits that an embittered ex-police chief (Preston Foster) hired three unrelated slugs (classic villains Jack Elam, Neville Brand and Lee Van Cleef) to help him rob an armored truck but with a layered agenda.
John Payne is the innocent ex-con who gets fingered for the job and spends the rest of the film trying to vindicate himself.
Thrown away on double bills when it was new, "Kansas City Confidential" has appreciated since, even though it is not truly film noir as billed. The DVD contains an amusingly stilted nine-minute interview by Muller with Colleen Gray, who was too sweet to make it in the dark films, like this one, in which was leading lady.
"Too Late for Tears"
Unrated but PG-13 in nature; 1949;
Made cheaply even by the standards of film noir, "Too Late the Hero" delivers two prototypes of the genre - satiny Lizabeth Scott as a relentlessly duplicitous golddigger and Dan Duryea as a heel who at some point stops being one step ahead.
Here, Scott and honest husband Arthur Kennedy accidentally acquire money belonging - OK, wrong word - to Duryea. The dough is such an aphrodisiac to Scott that she's prepared to sacrifice one whole gender to keep it for herself. And then Don DeFore surfaces under false pretenses.
A new DVD from Dark City Classics seems to have been copied from a substandard print. We can live with the occasional jump caused by missing frames, but exterior scenes set outdoors black-out completely where they should be merely shadowy, turning "Too Late for Tears" into a radio show where you're missing some visual information.
If the picture has fallen into the common domain, we may never see a better copy.
The DVD contains five-minute discussions of Scott and Duryea by Muller.
