Bogart and Bacall's finest hour (that hour being eternally 'round midnight). Also one of the great smoking movies, for which Bogart paid the price. But in Philip Marlowe, he gave us one of the coolest private dicks in cinema.
Stanley Kubrick's first feature-length outing, centring on a failed racecourse heist, set a stylish post-modern precedent for directors like Quentin Tarantino, with its pitch-black humour and non-linear plotting. Also stars the seriously cool actor-director Timothy Carey.
Don't mess with the press: Alexander Mackendrick's fast-talking depiction of the media sees Burt Lancaster's columnist trying to ruin his sister's relationship with her jazz-musician lover. The hipster dialogue is so cool it could be carved out of ice.
François Truffaut's semi-autobiographical portrait of troubled youth. Among the first rumblings from the unimpeachably cool French New Wave, which was about to leave an indelible thumbprint on the tour guide with...
The title of Jean-Luc Godard's Paris-set debut is truly apt; a tale of cop killing and doomed romance, this film never pauses for breath. "What is your greatest ambition in life?" "To become immortal. And then die." Pass the Gauloises.
