What is film noir? Sounds like an easy question….but it turns out that is a very complicated question with many different answers from many different people. Here is my strange way I define film noir. The beginning of David Lynch’s modern day film noir classic, Blue Velvet (1986), shows a white picket fence…bright red and yellow roses…school kids happily walking to school…..a man happily watering his lawn while inside his wife is drinking coffee watching television…basically your wholesome Leave It To Beaver home. This was how the most popular movies of the 1930s and 1940s showed life….All sweet and innocent from the Abbott and Costello movies to Bing Crosby’s Father O’Malley movies.
Well just when you think all is right in this Lynch world…..the water hose the man was using gets tangled up….the water pressure starts forcing the water out of the spigot… suddenly the man has a seizure and falls down. Lynch’s camera then dives into the grass and, at the roots, finds a swarm of ravenous black bugs. The savage world of the bugs was right beneath the noses of everybody in this peaceful and serene neighborhood. That is what a film noir movie is to me. They are movies that show unscrupulous people doing unscrupulous things right beneath the surface of the Leave It To Beaver crowd. Movies like Double Indemnity, Gun Crazy and Kiss of Death showed women using sex to manipulate men to get their way and showed men using violence to get their way.
Ok…enough of my thoughts on film noir. Last week I wrote a page that took a statistical look at over 260 film noir movies. Well through some comments and some constructive criticism it was suggested I fine tune my list of film noir movies. In my previous page I used 11 film noir sources. If a movie was mentioned in 5 of those sources it made the page. For this updated page….we found 3 more sources and used the criteria that the movie had to be mentioned in 10 different sources. This knocked my list of film noir movies down to 108. I then whittled that 108 to the following 100 Film Noir movies. There are lots of stats for each movie…including box office grosses, critic and audience reviews, awards and yearly box office rank. Hope you enjoy this page.
Top 100 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 Top 100 Film Noir movies by the stars or director of movie.
- Sort Top 100 Film Noir movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Top 100 Film Noir movies by yearly domestic box office rank
- Sort Top 100 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 Top 100 Film Noir movie received and how many Oscar® wins each Film Noir movie won.
- Sort Top 100 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. 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.
Great list and happy to say I have seen them all and own many of them as well!
Very cool….my percentage is actually a pretty low 42% seen…hiding my face in shame
Hey Bruce, that’s a start!!!
Only 58 more to go.
I didn’t see Kiss of Death on the list. A great film and Victor Mature’s best
Hey David….it is there…sitting at #40. I did not have Mature listed as one of the stars…but I just added him to the table. Kiss of Death was one of the movies that got listed by all 14 sources I used.
Hi
I was pleased to see that you revised your list. I think some of the films in the previous page were a bit suspect. I’ve seen all top 10 movies, delighted to see 2 of my favourite are 1 and 2. As much as I love Notorious, my favourite Bergman movie, I wouldn’t immediately rank it as film noir, more spy thriller.
For me, film noir has certain ingredients, black and white, character narration, always a body somewhere, whether it be murder or suicide and of course, always a Dame. Lust for money or power, as a rule, little room for real love. I mentioned it before, Out of the Past is brilliant and definitely should be in the top 10. There’s certain actors who lend themselves to film noir, Bogart, Ladd, Mitchum, Douglas, Lancaster. Crawford and Stanwyck were perfect for all that shadow and light. The really good thing about all these movies is that you watch them over and over again. In Double Indemnity, the dialogue is just fantastic. Stanwyck and McMurray just crackle together.
Thanks for redoing the page, appreciate its hard work but I’m sure you’ll say it’s a labour of love.
Hey Chris…..the good news is these two film noir pages….have been very popular….the bad news is the comments have been somewhat “testy”. I agree with you about Notorious….but almost every source (13 actually of 14) list it as not only film noir but one of the best film noir ever.
I like your thinking on what film noir is…sounds logical to me. Happy to say I have pages on all of the actors you mentioned….and they are indeed the best of the film noir actors and actresses. Stanwyck and MacMurray are awesome together in Double Indemnity. I am actually finishing up a page on MacMurray…..75 movies…with Indemnity sitting on top.
Thanks for checking out my new list…it is appreciated.
What about Rififi? That safe cracking scene was the one that started it all and still one of the best.
Hey PJ….Rififi is all the way down in 96th place. But if you sort the movies by critic and audience rating it jumps all the way to 22nd place. It is indeed one of the best film noir movies ever.
I like this grocery story shot from DOUBLE INDEMNITY. The movie makers had to constantly watch so people wouldn’t steal the food on the shelves.
Very interesting….no wonder it does not look like a real store…I managed grocery stores for years…and noticed how good the shelves looked….normally those customers always destroy the shelves….lol