The Blue Dahlia
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This came out in 1946, but I didn't see it until 2026, during my Summer of film noir. The screenplay was written by Raymond Chandler, whose novels, I believe, had a habit of being adapted into films noir. I thought the movie was fairly good.

It begins with three Navy buddies returning from war: Johnny Morrison (Alan Ladd), Buzz Wanchek, and George Copeland. They arrive in Hollywood, where Johnny's wife, Helen, lives in a bungalow (which I think is part of a sort of hotel complex, or something). While Johnny goes to the bungalow to surprise Helen, Buzz and George move into an apartment together. Johnny finds a drunken Helen hosting a party, and her guests include a man named Eddie Harwood, who owns a nightclub called the Blue Dahlia. The film seems to imply that Helen and Eddie are having an affair, though I don't feel like that was ever made an explicit certainty. Whatever their relationship, it at the very least bordered on inappropriate. Anyway, after all the guests leave, Helen confesses something to Johnny about their late son, which causes him to walk out on her, in the pouring rain. He's eventually given a ride by a woman named Joyce (Veronica Lake), unaware that she's Eddie's wife. During the course of their banter, Jooyce tries to guess his name, based on the initials JM, on his suitcase. He then jokingly suggests "Jimmy Moore", and it will be some time before Joyce learns that that's not his real name. (He'll also later use it as an alias, while trying to avoid the police.)

Helen calls Buzz, whom she's never met, and tells him about Johnny leaving her. Buzz goes looking for Johnny, and meets Helen at a bar, unaware of her identity. They go to her bungalow for a drink, but if I recall correctly, we didn't see much of what happened there. The next day, a maid finds Helen dead. Johnny becomes the prime suspect, in part because a "detective" called "Dad", who is employed by the hotel which I guess Helen's bungalow is a part of, had witnessed a scuffle between Helen and Johnny. (He told Johnny to close the drapes if he was going to knock his wife around, which was a problematic thing to say, but probably typical for the time.) After leaving Joyce, Johnny stays at an inn, and the next morning discovers that Joyce had spent the night at the same inn. They plan to take a walk together, but Johnny hears a news report on the radio, from which he learns that Helen is dead and he's wanted by the police. So he takes off. Joyce deduces that he's really Johnny Morrison, but believes he is innocent. Johnny wants to evade the police, but at the same time investigates his wife's murder, considering Eddie to be the most likely killer.

Well, plenty of other stuff happens that I'm not going to go into detail about, except to say that Buzz also becomes a suspect in Helen's murder. He's shell shocked from the war, where he got a metal plate in his head, which often causes him terrible headaches. He also seems to have memory problems, and he's easily angered. One of his triggers is jazz, which he calls "monkey music". (I'm not sure what he meant by that, but I did think it might be racist. Or maybe not, I dunno.) Anyway, he himself comes to believe he may have killed Helen and forgotten about it. And... yeah, I guess that's all I want to reveal about the plot. Naturally, I won't reveal who the killer turned out to be, but at least I didn't find it too predictable. I think the film had some reasonably interesting characters, and a story that was just complex enough, without being overly convoluted.