Film noir, a French term meaning “black” or “dark” film, was coined by Italy-born French film critic Nino Frank in 1946. It’s a term that is applied to the stylish Hollywood crime dramas that were prevalent from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Many of these films were not major hits at the time of their release, but have since come to be appreciated more than some of the biggest hits of their day.

Two of the better known films noir, Delmer Daves’ Dark Passage and Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place, both starring Humphrey Bogart, have been given pristine Blu-ray upgrades as have two lesser known noirs, Byron Haskin’s Too Late for Tears starring Lizabeth Scott, and Norman Foster’s Woman on the Run starring Ann Sheridan.

The third of four films in which Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall co-starred, 1947’s Dark Passage is oddly the least known of the four, which also include To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, and Key Largo. I say oddly because I’ve always considered it the best of the four. It’s the only one in which Bacall is Bogart’s equal. It has the best cinematography, its San Francisco locations rivaling those in any film including Hitchcock’s Vertigo a decade later. It also has one of the best supporting performances of any of the Bogart-Bacall films, that of Agnes Moorehead as a venomous harpy who finds her greatest pleasure in the unhappiness of others.

The film itself is a classic tale of a wrongly accused man trying to prove he is innocent of the murder for which he has been framed. Bogart plays him, an escapee from San Quentin, who has plastic surgery to hide his identity. Bacall is the only person who believes in him.

It’s easily the best film ever directed by the underrated Delmer Daves whose credits also include Cowboy, Kings Go Forth, The Hanging Tree, and Spencer’s Mountain.

The Warner Archive Blu-ray features several extras from the previously released DVD, but no commentary.

Criterion has done its usual first-rate job of bringing 1950’s In a Lonely Place to Blu-ray. Extras include a newly recorded commentary from film scholar Dana Polan, the 1975 documentary I’m a Stranger Here Myself about director Nicholas Ray, a radio adaptation of the original 1948 novel, a 2002 piece from director Curtis Hanson, an essay by critic Imogen Sara Smith, and, best of all, a new interview with Vincent Curcio, Gloria Grahame’s biographer.

Bogart plays a man who may or may not have murdered a one-night stand. Grahame is his neighbor and sometimes lover. Both stars give extraordinary performances. Grahame, who seems to be in a trance throughout, was hiding a big secret at the time. While filming A Woman’s Secret for director Ray in 1948, the two had an affair which led the pregnant Grahame to obtain a quick divorce from actor Stanley Clements and marry Ray. During the filming of In a Lonely Place, Ray did not go home every night, which led to Grahame’s sleeping with his 13-year-old son Tony from a previous marriage. The two would divorce in 1952 after the senior Ray discovered his wife and son in bed together. A year later she won an Oscar for her supporting role in Vincente Minnelli’s The Bad and the Beautiful. The year after that Grahame married writer-producer Cy Howard with whom she had a second child. After she divorced him, she married Tony Ray in 1960 causing a huge scandal that resulted in both Nick Ray and Cy Howard suing for custody of their children with her. Her fourteen-year marriage to Tony Ray produced another two children. Nothing in In a Lonely Place approached the scandalous level of Grahame’s personal life but its amorality was fairly shocking in its day.

Flicker Alley has released both Too Late for Tears and Woman on the Run from the Film Noir Foundation. Both were restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Woman on the Run had been in particularly bad shape.

Lizabeth Scott’s portrayal of a cold-blooded psychopathic liar and killer in 1949’s Too Late for Tears is probably the hallmark of her legendary, if short-lived, career. She is almost matched by Dan Duryea whose typically mean character seems like a saint in comparison. Arthur Kennedy and Don Defore co-star in the film produced by Hunt Stromberg, directed by Byron Haskin with a screenplay by Roy Huggins form his Saturday Evening Post story.

The commentary is by writer, historian and programmer Alan K. Rode. Special features include two documentaries on the film, a 24-page souvenir booklet, and a DVD as well as the Blu-ray.

Ann Sheridan was so frustrated by the direction her career at Warner Bros. was taking that she paid Jack L. Warner $35,000 to get out of her contract. She then made 1949’s I Was a Male War Bride opposite Cary Grant for Howard Hawks at Fox, which became one of the biggest hits of her career. That film’s success allowed her to become an independent producer as well as the star of 1950’s Woman on the Run, which was released through Universal.

Sheridan plays a San Francisco woman whose husband (Ross Elliott) witnesses a mob hit and disappears fearing his own safety. A veteran detective (Robert Keith) and a reporter (Dennis O’Keefe) are on her tail; the detective to get to the killer, the reporter to get the story. Complications ensue and the killer is revealed about half way into the film after which it becomes a game of cat and mouse. It all ends in a carnival by the sea.

The screenplay is credited to Alan Campbell (Dorothy Parker’s ex-husband) and director Norman Foster, but legend has it that Sheridan, Keith and O’Keefe all had a hand in it as well. Foster, a protégé of Orson Welles who had been married to Claudette Colbert and one of Loretta Young’s sisters, directs in Welles’ style. Foster had been the director of the Mr. Moto series and some of the Sidney Toler Charlie Chan films at Fox, as well as 1943’s Journey into Fear for which co-writer and co-star Welles is erroneously thought to have done most of the directing himself.

The commentary is by author, cinema historian, and “noirchaeologist” Eddie Muller. Special features include two documentaries on the making of the film, another on “noir city,” a 24-page souvenir booklet, and a DVD as well as the Blu-ray.

This week’s new releases include the Blu-ray upgrades of The Player and The Sum of Us.