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.

The Killing (1956)

Kubrick's 1956 racetrack robbery. Sterling Hayden. Non-linear structure that became Tarantino's vocabulary. Lionel White novel.

Crime • Film Noir • Heist

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Rififi (1955)

Jules Dassin's 1955 French heist. Thirty-two-minute silent jewelry heist sequence. Template for every heist procedural since.

Crime • Film Noir • Foreign Movies • Heist

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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.

Crime • Film Noir • Gangster

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The Third Man (1949)

Carol Reed's 1949 post-war Vienna thriller. Joseph Cotten investigates Orson Welles. Zither score. The sewer chase is canonical.

Film Noir • Mystery

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The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Huston's 1941 directorial debut. Bogart as Sam Spade. The film that established American film noir as a coherent style.

Crime • Film Noir

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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.

Crime • Film Noir

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Chinatown (1974)

Polanski's 1974 Los Angeles neo-noir. Nicholson, Dunaway, Huston. Robert Towne screenplay. The water-rights conspiracy that defined New Hollywood pessimism.

Crime • Film Noir

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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.

Drama • Film Noir

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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.

Crime • Film Noir

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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.

Crime • Film Noir

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