Genre: Film Noir
Film noir is shadow and moral fog — hard-boiled characters, fatal attractions, and cities where everyone’s compromised and no one’s clean.
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The Killing (1956)
Kubrick's 1956 racetrack robbery. Sterling Hayden. Non-linear structure that became Tarantino's vocabulary. Lionel White novel. -
Rififi (1955)
Jules Dassin's 1955 French heist. Thirty-two-minute silent jewelry heist sequence. Template for every heist procedural since. -
White Heat (1949)
Raoul Walsh's 1949 noir gangster. Cagney as psychopathic mama's boy Cody Jarrett. Made it Ma, top of the world. Genre climax. -
The Third Man (1949)
Carol Reed's 1949 post-war Vienna thriller. Joseph Cotten investigates Orson Welles. Zither score. The sewer chase is canonical. -
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Huston's 1941 directorial debut. Bogart as Sam Spade. The film that established American film noir as a coherent style. -
Double Indemnity (1944)
Wilder's 1944 insurance-fraud noir. MacMurray, Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson. Chandler co-wrote with Wilder. The template every later noir borrowed from. -
Chinatown (1974)
Polanski's 1974 Los Angeles neo-noir. Nicholson, Dunaway, Huston. Robert Towne screenplay. The water-rights conspiracy that defined New Hollywood pessimism. -
Sunset Boulevard (1950)
Wilder's 1950 Hollywood gothic. Holden as a screenwriter, Swanson as the silent star who refuses to fade. Narrated by a corpse from a swimming pool. -
L.A. Confidential (1997)
Curtis Hanson's 1997 neo-noir on 1950s LAPD corruption. Three lead cops with actual arcs. The rare adult crime film that respects its audience. -
Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950)
Otto Preminger's 1950 film noir with Dana Andrews. Detective accidentally kills suspect then frames innocent man. Among the great noir achievements.