Want to know the best Film Noir movies? How about the worst Film Noir movies? Curious about Film Noir’s box office grosses or which Film Noir movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Film Noir movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
What is Film Noir? One definition of film noir is….a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly such that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Film noir in French means black film. Before researching this page…we pretty much thought a film noir movie was a black and white, dark, crime movie. Well after researching these movies for the last couple of months we no longer have any idea what a film noir movie really is anymore.
Part of our research was finding and reading lots of film noir books and lots of internet lists that named the best film noir movies. We found Film Noir Guide by Michael F. Keaney. Encyclopedia of Film Noir by Geoff Mayer and Brian McDonnell, Dark Cinema: American Film Noir in Cultural Perspective by Jon Tuska and Film Noir and the Cinema of Paranoia b
So how did we come up with these 263 movies on the following table? First of all we picked one timeline…..1940-1959. Any movie labeled a film noir that was not made in those 19 years was excluded from our table. This rule pretty much destroyed many of the internet film noir lists. We actually found one internet list that only had 6 movies made before 1970 on their all-time film noir list. Next we created a excel spreadsheet. We used 11 different sources (books and internet resources). Once a movie was labeled a film noir movie in 5 different sources…it made our table.
Film Noir Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort Film Noir movies by the stars or director of movie.
- Sort Film Noir movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Film Noir movies by yearly domestic box office rank
- Sort Film Noir movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations each Film Noir movie received and how many Oscar® wins each Film Noir movie won.
- Sort Film Noir movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score
And finally: This is obviously not every single film noir movie ever made. There are 1000s and 1000s of movies that many people consider film noir. We made 250 movies as our cut off point. Hopefully we have included the most popular film noir movies…though I am sure the good folks at the TCM message boards will find another 250 movies that need to be on the list. This was a request from Flora Breen Robison. Hey Flora….this was officially the most difficult requested page ever…but well worth the effort considering how supportive you are of our little old website.
So are you thinking….250 Film Noir movies is nice but I want more. Then check out this wonderful Film Noir page by the people at TheCinemaCafe.com. Plundering The Genre: Film Noir.
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Robert can you please comment for me on this: Eddie Muller – who seems to know a thing or two about noir depending on who and what you believe – says of Leave Her To Heaven (also colour) that Ellen’s (Tierney) behavior “leads to two of the most notorious – and memorable – scenes in all noir” and talks about her hand in the death of Danny. [And what a great scene that was and Muller describes Ellen as a vicious and deranged femme fatale]. He gives some space to this move in his book Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir. Is Muller wrong when he classifies Leave Her To Heaven as noir, despite all the elements that do exist in it apart from it being B&W? Is there absolutely no latitude in this view at all? Muller (and I imagine others) seem to think there is?
That’s a great film, and Ellen is totally evil..a true femme fatale if there was….the femme who comes close to that is Nicole Kidman in Malice. Now, MALICE also has a great scene w/Anne Bancroft, and that film, accoridng to your criteria, should make that as a film noir…BUT there have been others who are calling for western film noir, war film noir, and so on. I can show a lot of latitude in a lot of things but color is not one of them. I;m sure there are a lot of critics who would disagree w/Muller and say for a film to be noir it must have noir..and noir being the type of film(color vs b and w) as oppose to noir being a study in darkness, subterfuge, moral ambiguity and such. For me, as I said, it has to be in black and white.
Thanks for your reply Robert . . . makes perfect sense and absolutely appreciate what you say. I was looking at a definition from the perspective of “noir being a study in darkness, subterfuge, moral ambiguity” as you have framed it so perfectly. But can see that there is a place for definitions based on celluloid type as well.
Well said…Robert and David….thanks for the further comments.
Love this page. Enjoyed the comments as well, though they seem to some people taking this way too serious. The “definition” of film noir is pretty much wide open and can be seen different ways by different people. I might raise an eyebrow to a few movies on the page but if I really think about it I can see why movies like Rawhide and Ruby Gentry made your list. Keep up the good work.
Ok. Well, at least I tried to CORRECT you Bruce Cogerson. Now you’re adding Black Widow (A COLOR FILM) to Classic Film Noir. Just because David John Terelinck thinks it’s CLASSIC Film Noir, he sells you so well, you add it to your list. Gentlemen, to put it bluntly, you’re (what we call here) a couple of Noir Revisionists. So is the idiot who labeled it Film Noir @ IMDb. Look at the pinned post at the top of the page. I had this out last summer with another dumbbell Noir Revisionist. Quite simply, if you think any COLOR film is Noir, you’re in the wrong group. But it’s ok. You can believe me or not. You can leave the group or not. I’m not WASTING anymore of my time trying to explain it. Been there done that. So the next time I see yet ANOTHER NOIR REVISIONIST post cluttering up my group page I’ll just block you. But please don’t take it personally. I’ve been BLOCKING Revisionists all along since last summer so that my group page only has Classic Film Noir enthusiasts. That’s WHY I joined THIS group. Obviously you guys joined just to stir up a Brouhaha. Gentlemen, I don’t play that game. Goodbye and have a nice day.
Hey Lou. I have a friend in London who is telling me the same stuff as you. He has requested a CrimeNoir-BlackandWhite Top 100. So I am going to work on that after I finish up a Warren Beatty page that I am currently working on. I think you will find that page more to your liking.
Hey Lou. You do not know me and I do not know you. I am not trying to “stir up a Brouhaha” as you out it. I love film noir and for stimulating discussion about the genre. You can infer that I am a dumbbell and state that I am a revisionist but that does not make it so. I respect and appreciate your personal opinion about film noir, but not your manner in expressing it. I do not respect you name calling and dismissing a valid opinion I might have because it doesn’t align with yours. By all means agree to disagree but there is no need to stoop to labeling and name calling.
You are behaving as if your opinion is the only one that matters. My having an opinion about a handful of films does not automatically make me a revisionist. It’s simply a personal opinion and I did not ask you or anyone else to side with me. I felt it was a valid discussion point. Is it so bad to be challenged by a different viewpoint? Why should that threaten anyone? And I feel I did not express my opinion in a way that was insulting or demeaning to anyone.
I didn’t realise that we all had to have the same opinion in this group and think the same like robots.
No way have you said anything inappropriate. Hey you sold me on the Black Widow….so it made the page. I think Stanwyck is the most popular film noir actress out there. That now gives here 14 movies on the page. Bogart has the most with 18…Mitchum has 11….and Robinson has 13….pretty sure that is the Top 5.
Originally, there are the French critics who invented “film noir”, just after the second world war, when they discovered the “Maltese Falcon” by John Huston. At the time, the vast majority of movies were in black and white, as the term “film noir” does not refer to the color, but the atmosphere of the movie: dark, hard, violent, tacky, disillusioned or desperate . Besides “The Maltese Falcon” does not end well. Moreover, in France “noir” refers not only to a color in common language, but also an ambiance. In France such films as “Chinatown” by Roman Polanski or “party girl” of Nicolas Ray are classified in the category of “film noir”, although they are in color. I know because I’m french.
Hey Laurent…thanks for your French viewpoint of Film Noir. I find it fascinating how that French critic’s term “film noir” has taken off. Seems some people have take black to strictly mean a black and white movie…while others are going with the atmosphere you mention. I had no idea there were so many film noir types. You learn something new every day.
Interesting comment in this thread earlier about “how can a film in color be considered noir?” I want to comment on that from a personal perspective. Black Widow (1954) with Ginger Rogers, Van Heflin and Gene Tierney is definitely noir. Its themes are deeply noir, it has a delicious femme fatale, betrayal and murder, frame-ups and a raft of classic noir actors (including George Raft). It is also widely considered noir by aficionados of the genre – expert and amateur alike. Yet it is shot in wonderful DeLuxe colour.
Yet Dial M for Murder (1954) and Midnight Lace (1960), who could easily fall into coloured noir, are not widely accepted as being noir. Both have noir themes, noir lighting, and are within cooee of the noir years.
There is also Rear Window (1954) which I find, and perhaps many others do to, heavily laced with noir themes and undertones, wonderful noir lighting, and that noir social commentary of people living on top of each other but not really seeing each other (only the voyeur with the camera sees everyone else). Again we have murder and mystery and a cast made for classic noir. And directed by Hitchcock (also directed Dial M) who was no stranger to noir.
It is interesting that Rear Window was made the same year as Witness to Murder starring Stanwyck. Both have almost identical themes . . . someone believes they have seen a murder from their window, but the police do not believe them. But the killer knows they know . . . and the drama unfolds. Both have a cast skilled in noir. Both have noir lighting effects. But only one is really considered noir – the B&W movie. Is that because Rear Window is knocked out by virtue of it being filmed in colour? How then does that explain how Black Widow, again made in 1954, is more widely accepted as noir?
I think film noir, at times, has such a fluid definition. And there is much of a viewer’s personal experience that goes into defining what film noir is to them. Like everything there are guidelines that assist our definition, but these too are probably not engraved in stone. Personally for me there will always be a small clutch of wonderful colour films, from the mid-fifties to the early sixties, that sits very comfortably in my definition of the genre of film noir.
Great comment. David John Terelinck You have sold me on Black Widow….it is now on the page. Black Widow was the 40th biggest hit of 1954 (that trivia did not make into the page)….it is sitting in 215th place on the table. I agree with you about Rear Window. All of Hitch and Fritz Lang movies could be considered film noir movies. Seems the only difference between Rear Window and Witness To Murder is that was in black and white. I like your fluid definition of film noir. I think Johnny Guitar is another one that is in color….that makes people upset that it is listed….in color and a western…..but many of the “experts” thought not only Johnny Guitar was film noir…it was one of the best film noir movies made. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on film noir,
Yes, I saw your time frame of 40 – 59 and that is the same time frame I use for the ‘classic’ noir era. But of course noir themes and \or visuals can be found in films before and after those years.
I do find it interesting that so many of those noir sources list films I don’t view as noir as well as the source I use Film Noir (Ward \ Silver). Now this book does provide details about mixed genre films; e.g. westerns that have noir themes like two Mitchum made, Pursued and Blood on the Moon.
But hey, there is no ONE agreed upon definition of noir and the films you list above clearly have either noir themes and \ or visuals. It all comes down to if they are noir enough (or how large of a book one wishes to write!).
PS: I’m one of those folks that feel a color film can be a noir. But of course those films are more noir theme driven then visually driven (another endless debate, but all for the fun of it).
Hey Jamesjazzguitar….I like your comment….and I agree with it 100%. Everybody has a way to define “film noir”. Not thinking my list has too many color movies..but like you…I do not think a film noir movie has to be black and white. Thanks for taking the time to check out my latest page and for commenting.