Film Noir Movies

Film-Noir-WallpaperWant 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 by Wheeler Winston Dixon very useful.  Every book we read had a different definition of film noir.  At one point it seemed that every movie ever made was a form of film noir.

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.

Double Indemnity is the best reviewed film noir movie on our page.
Double Indemnity is the best reviewed film noir movie on our page.

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

FINAL

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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179 thoughts on “Film Noir Movies”

  1. your list is refreshing,the westerns you included,the man with the golden arm and a few others like Black Magic were interesting calls . Ima purist what ever that means and a definitive list is a ridiculous endeavor Noir is one of those concepts like Jazz.Attempts at definition are a waste of time. You know when you saw a noir,you are usually knocked out and made to feel ashamed to be part of the human race.Grouping and attempting to sorts all this out is fun and I have found films i never knew about ,the year cutoff also intrigues me ,tell me Macbeth with Orson Welles isn’t noir or Once a Thief with Palance ,Delon and Chandler[early 60s]The Hustler,etcLabels only work so well they are attempts to categorize,but like the Duke said about music paraphrasing,”either its hip or it aint”.deep in your gut you know when love seen a real film noir no matter what criteria we use.thanks for your hard work

    Reply

    1. Hey ted twist….thanks for checking out our Film Noir page. We admit we are not film noir experts. We just found a ton of books….and a ton of internet lists….and used those to compile our list. At first we were throwing movies out left and right….but in the end they worked their way back into the table.

      As for the cutoff time….we read in one book that some “experts” said the film noir era ended with Touch of Evil….so we added a year….and called it 1959…..essentially so the table would not get too big. You make a great point about Macbeth, Once A Thief, and The Hustler. We will make sure to include those movies if we re-visit this page with movies made after 1959.

      I like your logic about knowing film noir when you see it….it reminds me of the Supreme Court on pornography….”We know it when we see it”. Thanks for a great comment.

      Reply

  2. Prodigious work – thank you. I am the first to promote the idea of stretching the definition boundaries for film noir, and I usually argue with those who say “it’s not noir.” So I appreciate that there are so many films that are not considered noir by rigid definitions (i.e. if the film doesn’t have Mitchum in a trench coat, forget about it). But this list has so many of those, that it pushed some of the most often-discussed noirs (for example, DETOUR, MURDER MY SWEET, NIGHT AND THE CITY, T-MEN) pretty far down. A couple of corrections: it’s SCARLET STREET not SCARLETT STREET and the Orson Welles film is THE STRANGER, not THE STRANGERS.

    Reply

    1. Hey Michael…..thanks for the headsup on Scarlet Street and The Stranger….both have been fixed. Sadly I had that wrong on my Edward G. Robinson for a very long time. I fixed it over there too. I agree that some of the fringe “noir” movies pushed ones like Detour and Gun Crazy further down the list. My page is pretty much a statistical look…versus saying which ones are the best. I had to have a default setting…I picked the critic and audience column…..you can also sort by box office, awards or our combo score.

      Reply

  3. Some surprising entries, but as you say the further you delve into the definition of noir the murkier things become, and I appreciate that you only included movies listed in five sources as noirs. Would include Possessed (1947) and A Woman’s Face (1941), both starring Joan Crawford. Well done, appreciate the legwork and research.

    Reply

    1. Hey Leslie…thanks for the kind words. Coming up with a film noir list has lots of murky water to get through. A Woman’s Face sits at number 60…while Possessed sits at 90….so they both got spots in the Top 100. Glad you found and liked our Film Noir page.

      Reply

  5. This is a great list.I would add the Hitchcock film Rebecca as Gothic noir.I also stumbled across a great book called Pocket Essential Film Noir by Paul Duncan (2006)

    Reply

    1. Hey Bob Wiley….I will add Rebecca into the table. It was actually a last minute cut….but I easily falls into the Gothic noir grouping….thanks for the suggestion.

      Reply

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