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Top 10 Film Noir Movies of All Time
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Tags: film, noir, film noir, top 10, movies
Film Noir is the dark side of the human experience, stories of doomed love, violence, and betrayal with cynical anti-heroes and sexy "femme fatales."
| 1. | Detour 1946 (Edgar Ulmer) Many critics and film historians regard Detour as the finest low budget movie ever made. Shot in just six days with a cast (Tom Neal, and Patricia Savage) of hungry unknowns, and on a budget that would have severely challenged Ed Wood ($20,000), the film tells an incredible story using just a few sets, two major actors, and one unexpected (and tragic) plot twist after another. Ulmer’s apprenticeship under Murnau and his work with other German Expressionism directors during the twenties had a large influence on his visual style and direction. The melancholy tone (and fatalism) of Detour influenced Truffaut, Godard, and other new wave directors. I saw this film the first time when I was eleven years old, with my Dad, at a Saturday Matinee. | | 2. | The Big Sleep 1946 (Howard Hawks) Screenplay by William Faulkner & Leigh Brackett from the novel by Raymond Chandler. Humphrey Bogart, & Lauren Bacall. Bogie plays Private Eye Phillip Marlowe, hot on the trail of blackmailers, murderers, and missing persons. This film has a complex plot, with devious characters, gorgeous dames, and perverted pornographers, the movie is a classic Warner Brothers thriller. | | 3. | This Gun For Hire 1941 (Frank Tuttle) From the novel by Graham Greene. Alan Ladd & Veronica Lake. Ladd, in his first major role, plays a cold-blooded, hired killer out to get the client who double-crossed him. He spends much of the film hiding from the cops with Lake as his hostage. | | 4. | The Maltese Falcon 1941 (John Huston) From Dashiell Hammett’s classic 1929 novel. Humphrey Bogart, Sidney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, and Mary Astor. The hard-boiled dialog was taken directly from the novel. Surrounded by betrayal, deception, false identities, and desperate characters, Bogie, as Private Eye Sam Spade, pursues the killer of his partner. This film was Huston’s debut as a director. Generally regarded as the first true film noir. | | 5. | Double Indemnity 1944 (Billy Wilder) From a short story by James M. Cain, screenplay by Wilder and Raymond Chandler. Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, and Edward G. Robinson. Stanwyck convinces Insurance Salesman MacMurray to help her kill her husband for the insurance money. If they can make it look like an accident she collects double. | | 6. | The Narrow Margin 1952 (Richard Fleisher) The cops must transport mob widow Marie Windsor from Chicago to Los Angeles, where she is to testify against a powerful mobster. The mob is out to stop her at all costs, and the train trip from Chicago to L.A. is filled with one exciting twist after another, with an incredible surprise ending. | | 7. | Out of the Past 1947 (Jacques Tourneur) Best known for his atmospheric horror films, Cat People and I Walked With a Zombie, Tourneur created one of the best film noirs of all time, with Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas, and Jane Greer. Betrayal, double cross, and triple cross, nothing in this tense thriller is what it seems. | | 8. | D.O.A. 1950 (Rudolphe Mate) Edmund O’Brien stumbles into a police station and says “I want to report a murder”. “Who got killed?” asks the cop on duty, “Me” says O’Brien. He’s been poisoned and has only a short while to live, the rest of the story is told in flashback, as O’Brien tries to figure out who fed him a slow acting poison, and why. | | 9. | The Postman Always Rings Twice 1946 (Tay Garnett) From the Novel by James M. Cain. Staring John Garfield and Lana Turner as illicit lovers who plot to kill Turner’s husband. Adultery, lust, greed, murder, and blackmail, this fast-paced movie has it all, plus a wonderfully twisted surprise ending. | | 10. | The Big Heat 1953 (Fritz Lang) The director of Metropolis and M was one of the leading auteurs of the German Expressionism movement when he fled Nazi Germany for Hollywood. In this movie honest Police Detective Glen Ford embarks on a violent one-man campaign of bitter vengeance against the mobsters who killed his wife. In a stunning finale Ford learns that he is becoming what he hates most, a monster, little different from those he is trying to destroy. |
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