The Big Sleep (1946)

This smart adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s 1939 novel offers tremendous writing and acting.

The convoluted plot is difficult to follow but it doesn’t really matter because Humphrey Bogart (as private detective Philip Marlowe) and Lauren Bacall (as Vivian Rutledge) are so magnetic. 

It looks stunning and some of the dialogue is dynamite.

The Razor's Edge (1946)

Strange drama directed by Edmund Goulding. It was adapted from the novel by Somerset Maugham, who is actually portrayed as a character in the story. 

Tyrone Power stars as a World War I veteran who puts his marriage on hold to deal with the trauma of military conflict. He goes travelling and “discovers himself” through spiritual enlightenment in India, with big implications for his personal life. 

Gene Tierney plays the woman who loves him and who has no time to acknowledge his PTSD. Instead, she repeatedly tells him he has to help American prosperity by earning as much money as possible. Anne Baxter gives the most interesting performance, as a bereaved woman who becomes an alcoholic. The slightly postmodern trick of having Somerset Maugham himself wandering in and out of the story adds little.

Gilda (1946)

Rita Hayworth is hugely charismatic in the title role of this noir-ish melodrama. Glenn Ford is the small-time gambler she shares a love/hate past with, while George Macready plays the sinister new husband who tells her “Hate is the only thing that has ever warmed me”. (His best “friend” is a dagger-tipped cane.) It’s an intense love triangle set against a backdrop of the wealthy Argentinean underworld.

The script is perfect, with characters often cleverly conveying double meanings in their lines.

Hayworth singing “Put the Blame on Mame” in a slinky black dress is seductive and almost disturbingly magnetic.