Essential Films Noir
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- May 14, 2024
FilmsNoir.Net’s list of the 235 essential films noir. Titles with an asterisk have been reviewed on FilmsNoir.Net – full reviews here and capsule reviews here.
The list is not definitive. There are gaps. Missing are neo-noirs, a few French noirs, and directors such as Hitchcock. There are varied reasons but mostly the gaps are due to my personal preference, or because some films are not fresh enough in my mind and need to be watched again with their candidacy here in mind.
The list is in two parts:
- The 71 all-time great films noir – rated 5-stars
- The 164 runners-up – rated 4 or 4.5 stars
| 5 star Noirs | ||
| *La Nuit du Carrefour | 1931 France | Aka ‘Night at the Crossroads’. Early Jean Renoir poetics. Magically delicious femme-noir and a brilliant car chase at night. Moody and bizarrre! |
| *You Only Live Once | 1937 US | Fritz Lang and Hollywood kick-start poetic realism! Henry Fonda and Sylvia Sidney are the doomed lovers on the run. |
| *Hotel du Nord | 1938 France | Poetic realist melodrama of lives at a downtown Paris hotel. As moody as noir with a darkly absurd resolution. |
| *Port of Shadows | 1938 France | Aka Le Quai des brumes. Fate a dank existential fog ensnares doomed lovers Jean Gabin and Michèle Morgan after one night of happiness. |
| *I Wake Up Screaming | 1941 US | Early crooked cop psycho-noir. Redolent noir motifs, dark shadows, off-kilter framing and expressionist imagery. |
| *The Maltese Falcon | 1941 US | Bogart as Sam Spade the quintessential noir protagonist. A loner on the edge of polite society, sorely tempted to transgress but declines and is neither saved nor redeemed. |
| *Ossessione | 1942 Italy | Demands and rewards multiple viewings. Visconti has taken a hard-boiled story and imbued it with intelligence, polemic, a humanist outrage, and above all, a deep compassion for the human predicament. |
| *Journey Into Fear | 1943 US | Moody Orson Welles’ noir. Exotic locales, sexy dames, weird villains, politics, wisdom, philosophy, and a wry humor. |
| *The Seventh Victim | 1943 US | “Despair behind, and death before doth cast”. The terror of an empty existence. Brilliant Lewton gothic melodrama. |
| *Christmas Holiday | 1944 US | Director Robert Siodmak smashes genre conventions by unleashing a wild expressionist ambience in a bizarre story of obsession and guilt thathas you appalled yet enthralled. Full of bizarre surprises. |
| *Double Indemnity | 1944 US | All the elements of the archetypal film noir are distilled into a gothic LA tale of greed, sex, and betrayal. |
| *Laura | 1944 US | Gene Tierney is an exquisite iridescent angel and Dana Andrews a stolid cop who nails the killer after falling for a dead dame. |
| *Murder, My Sweet | 1944 US | (Aka Farewell, my Lovely). The most noir fun you will ever have. Raymond Chandler’s prose crackles with moody noir direction from Edward Dmytryk. |
| *The Way You Wanted Me | 1944 Finland | “Sellaisena kuin sinä minut halusit” (original title). A dark frenzied tale of a fallen woman, The Way You Wanted Me careens across roads of melodrama at the speed of light. Hyper-expressionism and a tragedy played out in dark nights of the soul. |
| *Mildred Pierce | 1945 US | Joan Crawford in classy melodrama by Michael Curtiz lensed by Ernest Haller. Self-made woman escapes morass of greed. |
| *The Lost Weekend | 1945 US | ‘Most men lead lives of quiet desperation. I can’t take quiet desperation.’ Ray Milland against type on a bender. |
| *Ride the Pink Horse | 1946 US | Disillusioned WW2 vet arrives in a New Mexico town to blackmail a war racketeer. Imbued with a rare humanity. |
| *Scarlet Street | 1946 US | Classic noir from Fritz Lang. Unremitting in its pessimism. A dark mood and pervading doom of devastating intensity. |
| *The Big Sleep | 1946 US | Love’s Vengeance Lost. Darker than Dmytryk’s Murder, My Sweet. Bogart is tougher, more driven, and morally suspect. |
| *The Killers | 1946 US | Siodmak’s classic noir. Burt Lancaster’s masterful debut performance in a tragedy of a decent man destroyed by fate. |
| *The Postman Always Rings Twice | 1946 US | Fate ensures adulterous lovers who murder the woman’s husband, suffer definite and final retribution. |
| *Body and Soul | 1947 US | A masterwork. Melodramatic expose of the fight game and a savage indictment of money capitalism. Garfield’s picture. |
| *Brighton Rock | 1947 UK | Greatest British noir is dark and chilling. A cinematic tour-de-force: from the direction and cinematography to top cast and editing. |
| *Nightmare Alley | 1947 US | Predatory femme-fatale uses greed not sex to trap her prey in a hell of hangmen at the bottom of an empty gin bottle. |
| *Nora Prentiss | 1947 US | Doctor is plunged into a dark pool of noir angst in a turbo-charged melodrama of tortured loyalty and thwarted passion. |
| *Odd Man Out | 1947 UK | Betrayal, avarice, and spirituality are all given a place in this tale of an IRA heist gone wrong. The poetry is in the dark yet glistening visuals as we follow fugitive James Mason on his path through Ulster at night and in the rain. |
| *Out of the Past | 1947 US | Quintessential film noir. Inspired direction, exquisite expressionist cinematography, and legendary Mitchum and Greer. |
| *The Gangster | 1947 US | Hell of a b-movie. Very dark noir ‘opera’ brutally critiques the ‘entrepreneurial spirit’. Bravado Dalton Trumbo script. |
| *The Lady From Shanghai | 1947 US | Orson Welles’ brilliant jigsaw noir with a femme-fatale to die for and a script so sharp you relish every scene. |
| *T-Men | 1947 US | Mann and Alton offer a visionary descent into a noir realm of dark tenements, nightclubs, mobsters, and hellish steam baths. |
| *Act of Violence | 1948 US | Long-shot and deep focus climax filmed night-for-night on a railway platform: the stuff noirs are made of. |
| *Drunken Angel | 1948 Japan | Aka ‘Yoidore tenshi’. Kurosawa noir. A loser doctor with soul takes on the fetid moral swamp of Yakuza degradation. |
| *Force of Evil | 1948 US | Polonsky transcends noir in a tragic allegory on greed and family. Garfield adds signature honesty and gritty complexity . |
| *Hollow Triumph | 1948 US | Baroque journey to perdition traversing a noir topography redolent with noir archetypes. Audacious and enthralling. |
| *Raw Deal | 1948 US | Sublime noir from Anthony Mann and John Alton. Knockout cast in a strong story stunningly rendered as expressionist art. |
| *They Live by Night | 1948 US | Nicholas Ray’s first feature. A tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions which transcends film noir. |
| *Too Late For Tears | 1948 US | Preposterous chance event launches wild descent into dark avarice and eroticised violence as relentless as fate. |
| *Bitter Rice | 1949 Italy | Aka ‘Riso Amaro’. Classic neo-realist socialist melodrama. Homme-fatale destroys a passionate innocent. A bad girl is redeemed and homme-fatale meets a gruesome noir end in an abattoir. |
| *Border Incident | 1949 US | Subversive expressionist noir from Dir Anthony Mann DP John Alton and writer John C Higgin indicts US agribusiness. |
| *Criss-Cross | 1949 US | Accomplished noir showcased by Siodmak’s masterful aerial opening shot into parking lot onto a passing car exposing the doomed lovers to thespotlight. |
| *Stray Dog | 1949 Japan | Aka ‘Nora inu’. Kurosawa’s ying and yang take on reality informs this 5-star noir: the pursuer could as easily have been the pursued. |
| *The Reckless Moment | 1949 US | Max Ophuls takes a blackmail story and infuses it with a complexity and subtlety rarely matched in film noir. |
| *The Set-Up | 1949 US | Robert Ryan is great as washed-up boxer in Robert Wise’ sharp expose of the fight game. Brooding and intense noir classic. |
| *The Third Man | 1949 UK | Sublime. An engaging cavalcade of characters in a human comedy of love, friendship, and the imperatives of conscience. |
| *Thieves’ Highway | 1949 US | Moody Richard Conte hauling fruit to Frisco. Rich socio-realist melodrama from Jules Dassin and A.I. Bezzerides. AAA. |
| *Une Si Jolie Petite Plage | 1949 France | Aka ‘Riptide’. Iron in the soul: savage irony, withering subversion, and desolation mark the rain-sodden angst of a young man’s end. |
| *White Heat | 1949 US | Fission Noir. Taut electric thriller straps you in an emotional strait-jacket released only in the final explosive frames. |
| *Breaking Point | 1950 US | Great John Garfield vehicle with strong social subtext. Much stronger than from the same source To Have and Have Not. |
| *Caged | 1950 US | Eleanor Parker leads a great female cast in a dark women’s prison picture with a savage climax and a gutsy downbeat ending. |
| *D.O.A. | 1950 US | Gritty on-the-street in-your-face melodrama of innocent act a decent man’s un-doing. Edmund O’Brien is intense. The goons rock! |
| *In A Lonely Place | 1950 US | Nick Ray deftly explores effect of isolation, frustration, and anxiety on the creative psyche as noir entrapment. |
| *Night And the City | 1950 US/UK | Dassin’s stark existential journey played out in the dark dives of post-war London as a quintessential noir city. |
| *Sunset Boulevard | 1950 US | Wilder’s sympathetic story of four decent people each sadly complicit in the inevitable doom that will engulf them. |
| *The Asphalt Jungle | 1950 US | Quintessential heist movie transcends melodrama and noir. A police siren wails: “Sounds like a soul in hell.” |
| *The Sound of Fury | 1950 US | Great noir! Outdoes Lang’s Fury and brilliantly prefigures Wilder’s Ace in the Hole. Climactic mob scenes mesmerise. |
| *On Dangerous Ground | 1951 US | City cop battling inner demons is sent to ‘Siberia’. A film of dark beauty and haunting characterisations. |
| *The Prowler | 1951 US | Van Heflin is homme-fatale in Trumbo thriller. Director Losey is unforgiving. Each squalid act is suffocatingly framed. |
| *Ace in the Hole | 1952 US | A savage critique of a corrupted and corrupting modern mass media. Billy Wilder’s best movie. Kirk Douglas owns it. |
| *Clash By Night | 1952 US | Cheating wife Stanwyck faces the music. Fritz Lang puts sexual license and existential entitlement on trial and wins. |
| *The Big Heat | 1953 US | Gloria Grahame as existential hero in Fritz Lang’s brooding socio-realist noir critique. |
| *Crime Wave | 1954 US | Andre de Toth noir masterwork set on the streets of LA is so authentic it plays for real with each character deeply drawn. |
| *Kiss Me Deadly | 1955 US | Anti-fascist Hollywood Dada. Aldrich’s surreal noir a totally weird yet compelling exploration of urban paranoia. |
| *Rififi | 1955 France | Dassin’s classic heist thriller culminating in the terrific final scenes of a car desperately careening through Paris streets. |
| *The Big Combo | 1955 US | “I live in a maze… a strange blind backward maze’. Obsessed cop hunts down a psychotic crime boss in the best noir of 50s. |
| *Sweet Smell of Success | 1957 US | DP James Wong Howe’s sharpest picture. As bracing as vinegar and cold as ice. Ambition stripped of all pretense. |
| *Touch of Evil | 1958 US | Welles’ masterwork is a disconnected emotionally remote study of moral dissipation. Crisp b&w lensing by Russell Metty. |
| *Odds Against Tomorrow | 1959 US | A work of art from Rober Wise. New York City and its industrial fringe are quasi-protagonists that harbor the angst and desperation of lifeoutside the mainstream – sordid dreams of the last big heist that will fix everything. |
| *Underworld USA | 1961 US | Fast and furious pulp from Sam Fuller. Revenge finds redemption in death up a back alley the genesis of dark vengeance. |
| *Requiem For A Heavyweight | 1962 US | Rod Serling’s screenplay is lucid and economical. A washed-up boxer scenario in just under 82 minutes builds a closely realised character study, supported by a cast that delivers soulfully and with a leanness that is rarely matched. |
| *The Pawnbroker | 1964 US | The screenplay weaves the past and the present by juxtaposition and is economic when words are needed. Rod Steiger’s portrayal of Nazi death-camp survivor is a tour-de-force and his nominations for an Oscar and other accolades richly deserved. |
| *A Colt is My Passport | 1967 Japan | Aka ‘Koruto wa ore no pasupoto’. Hip acid Nikkatsu noir with surreal spaghetti-western score. |
| *Klute | 1971 US | Alan J. Pakula’s signature reworking of classic noir motifs in a masterly study of urban paranoia and alienation. Jane Fonda earned an Oscar for her brilliant portrayal of articulate b-girl the target of mystery psychopath. |
| 4/4.5 star NoirsAll movies have a snap review . | ||
| *La Chienne | 1931 | France |
| *City Streets | 1931 | US |
| *Fury | 1936 | US |
| *Guele d’Amour (aka Ladykiller) | 1937 | France |
| *Pépé le Moko | 1937 | France |
| Stolen Death | 1938 | Finland |
| La Bête Humaine | 1938 | France |
| *Blind Alley | 1939 | US |
| Le Jour se Lève | 1939 | France |
| *Macao,L’enfer Du Jeu (aka ‘Gambling Hell’) | 1939 | France |
| *Stranger on the 3rd Floor | 1940 | US |
| *Blues in the Night | 1941 | US |
| *High Sierra | 1941 | US |
| *The Face Behind the Mask | 1941 | US |
| Cross of Love | 1942 | Finland |
| *This Gun For Hire | 1942 | US |
| *The Fallen Sparrow | 1943 | US |
| *The Ghost Ship | 1943 | US |
| *Betrayed (aka ‘When Strangers Marry’) | 1944 | US |
| *Moontide | 1944 | US |
| *Phantom Lady | 1944 | US |
| The Mask of Dimitrios | 1944 | US |
| *The Woman in the Window | 1944 | US |
| *Cornered | 1945 | US |
| *Detour | 1945 | US |
| *Fallen Angel | 1945 | US |
| Leave Her to Heaven | 1945 | US |
| *My Name Is Julia Ross | 1945 | US |
| *Black Angel | 1946 | US |
| *Deadline at Dawn | 1946 | US |
| *Deception | 1946 | US |
| *Decoy | 1946 | US |
| *Gilda | 1946 | US |
| *High Wall | 1946 | US |
| *Night Editor | 1946 | US |
| Panique | 1946 | France |
| Suspense | 1946 | US |
| *The Blue Dahlia | 1946 | US |
| *The Chase | 1946 | US |
| *The Dark Corner | 1946 | US |
| *The Dark Mirror | 1946 | US |
| *The House on 92nd Street | 1946 | US |
| *Jigsaw | 1946 | US |
| *The Locket | 1946 | US |
| *The Strange Love of Martha Ivers | 1946 | US |
| *The Stranger | 1946 | US |
| *Born to Kill | 1947 | US |
| Brute Force | 1947 | US |
| *Dark Passage | 1947 | US |
| *Dark | 1947 | US |
| *Dead Reckoning | 1947 | US |
| *Desperate | 1947 | US |
| *Kiss of Death | 1947 | US |
| *The Devil Thumbs a Ride | 1947 | US |
| Odd Man Out | 1947 | US |
| *Railroaded | 1947 | US |
| *Shoot To Kill | 1947 | US |
| *The Long Night | 1947 | US |
| *The Unsuspected | 1947 | US |
| *The Woman On the Beach | 1947 | US |
| *They Made Me a Fugitive | 1947 | UK |
| *Secret Beyond the Door | 1948 | US |
| *Blood on the Moon | 1948 | US |
| *They Won’t Believe Me | 1947 | US |
| *Bob le Flambuer | 1956 | France |
| *Call Northside 777 | 1948 | US |
| Cry of the City | 1948 | US |
| *I Love Trouble | 1948 | US |
| *I Walk Alone | 1948 | US |
| *Key Largo | 1948 | US |
| *Kiss the Blood Off My Hands | 1948 | US |
| *Moonrise | 1948 | US |
| *Night Has a Thousand Eyes | 1948 | US |
| *Pitfall | 1948 | US |
| *Road House | 1948 | US |
| *Ruthless | 1948 | US |
| Senza pietà (Aka Without Pity) | 1948 | Italy |
| *The Amazing Mr. X | 1948 | US |
| *The Big Clock | 1948 | US |
| *The Iron Curtain | 1948 | US |
| *The Naked City | 1948 | US |
| *A Woman’s Secret | 1949 | US |
| *Alias Nick Beal | 1949 | US |
| *Caught | 1949 | US |
| *Follow Me Quietly | 1949 | US |
| *I Married a Communist | 1949 | US |
| *The Big Steal | 1949 | US |
| *The Bribe | 1949 | US |
| *The Clay Pigeon | 1949 | US |
| *The Man Who Cheated Himself | 1949 | US |
| *Salón México | 1949 | Mexico |
| *The Window | 1949 | US |
| *Whirlpool | 1949 | US |
| *Armored Car Robbery | 1950 | US |
| *Gambling House | 1950 | US |
| *Gun Crazy | 1950 | US |
| *Manèges | 1950 | France |
| *No Man of Her Own | 1950 | US |
| *No Way Out | 1950 | US |
| *Panic In the Streets | 1950 | US |
| *Side Street | 1950 | US |
| *Tension | 1950 | US |
| *The File On Thelma Jordan | 1950 | US |
| *The Killer That Stalked New York | 1950 | US |
| *The Second Woman | 1950 | US |
| *The Tattooed Stranger | 1950 | US |
| *Union Station | 1950 | US |
| *Walk Softly, Stranger | 1950 | US |
| *Where Danger Lives | 1950 | US |
| *Where the Sidewalk Ends | 1950 | US |
| *Woman on the Run | 1950 | US |
| *Young Man with a Horn | 1950 | US |
| *Detective Story | 1951 | US |
| *He Ran All the Way | 1951 | US |
| His Kind of Woman | 1951 | US |
| *I Can Get It for You Wholesale | 1951 | US |
| *I was a Communist for the FBI | 1951 | US |
| *Roadblock | 1951 | US |
| *The Big Night | 1951 | US |
| *The Well | 1951 | US |
| *Tomorrow Is Another Day | 1951 | US |
| *Angel Face | 1952 | US |
| Kansas City Confidential | 1952 | US |
| *Scandal Sheet | 1952 | US |
| *The Narrow Margin | 1952 | US |
| *The Sniper | 1952 | US |
| *The Thief | 1952 | US |
| *99 River Street | 1953 | US |
| *Pickup On South Street | 1953 | US |
| Split Second | 1953 | US |
| *The Blue Gardenia | 1953 | US |
| *The Glass Wall | 1953 | US |
| *The Hitch-Hiker | 1953 | US |
| *Human Desire | 1954 | US |
| *Pushover | 1954 | US |
| *The Good Die Young | 1954 | UK |
| Touchez pas au Grisbi | 1954 | France |
| *Witness to Murder | 1954 | US |
| *The Burglar | 1955 | US |
| *World For Ransom | 1955 | US |
| Bob le Flambeur | 1956 | France |
| *The Phenix City Story | 1955 | US |
| *Patterns | 1956 | US |
| People of No Importance (aka ‘Gens san Importance’) | 1956 | France |
| *Ubiytsy (‘The Killers’) | 1956 | USSR |
| The Wrong Man | 1956 | US |
| *The Killing | 1956 | US |
| *Voici le temps des assassin (aka ‘Deadlier Than the Male’) | 1956 | France |
| While the City Sleeps | 1956 | US |
| *Elevator to the Gallows | 1958 | France |
| *Endless Desire | 1958 | Japan |
| *Tread Softly Stranger | 1958 | UK |
| Underworld Beauty (aka ‘Ankokugai no bijo’) | 1958 | Japan |
| *The Crimson Kimono | 1959 | US |
| *Deux hommes dans Manhattan (aka ‘Two Men in Manhattan’) | 1959 | France |
| The Bad Sleep Well (aka ‘Warui yatsu hodo yoku nemuru’) | 1960 | Japan |
| Shoot the Piano Player | 1960 | France |
| Blast of Silence | 1961 | US |
| *Le Doulos | 1962 | France |
| *The Trial | 1962 | France |
| *High and Low (aka Tengoku to jigok) | 1963 | Japan |
| *The Naked Kiss | 1964 | US |
| *Memento | 2000 | US |
