All Through the Night (1942)

This piece starts out like a standard-issue crime drama, like one of the hundreds churned out on a regular basis by the studios back in the day. A gambler get set up for a murder, has to prove his innocence (at least on that crime), there's a bunch of noirish goings-on...but wait! Actually, there's something else going on--the year of release is a big hint--and the proceedings turn out to be fairly entertaining, with a hefty amount of nostalgic appeal. The bad guys turn out to be even worse than run-of-the-mill crooks, the hoods (including a couple of later very famous faces, Phil Silvers and Jackie Gleason, no less) turn into heroes, and a simpler, black-and-white world (in a number of senses) lives again, for at least the running time. It's also worth noting that you get to watch two hours of Humphrey Bogart doing his thing, in his inimitable way, and that elevates the proceedings as well. In fact, in certain ways, this movie is almost a prequel to Casablanca. It's not that good, of course, but it's not bad, and--with the exception of some clumsy comic relief--most of this film works very well. You can do a lot worse than this trip down memory lane.