Film Noir Of Anthony Mann (1947) Rating: Starring: Dennis O'Keefe, Mary Meade, Alfred Ryder, Wallace Ford, June Lockhart Director: Anthony Mann Category: Suspense / Thriller Studio: Roan Group Subtitles: [None] Length: 79 mins Want to buy?           A Two Disc Set Director Anthony Mann and noted cinematographer John Alton were key practitioners of Forties film noir. This DVD set includes three of their toughest and most sought-after crime films: T-Men and Raw Deal (both 1947), along with He Walked By Night (which Mann directed without credit in 1946). Film noir is not a specific genre like the Western of the Horror Film. It's a balance of mood and visual style (night photography, strange camera angles and stark black and white). Mann, Alton and writer John C. Higgins created foggy landscapes full of low-life characters, despair and paranoia. The cities in these films seem to be populated entirely by criminals. Everyone has an angle. And a price. In T-Men, cops blend a little too well with crooks, a moral ambiguity that forms the backbone of many noirs. Dennis O'Keefe's crook is the closest thing to a hero you'll find in Raw Deal. And we follow a cop killer in the semi-documentary style He Walked By Night (which provided an inspiration for Dragnet). Anthony Mann went on to direct a stable of psychological Fifties Westerns. But his films here with Alton, Dennis O'Keefe and Richard Basehart remain some of his strongest work.