Top 100 Film Noir Movies – Statistically Speaking

One of my favorite film noir movies is 1950's Gun Crazy
One of my favorite film noir movies is 1950’s Gun Crazy

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.

One of the greatest film noir movies of all-time...1944's Double Indemnity
One of the greatest film noir movies of all-time…1944’s Double Indemnity

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.
Out of the Past is the 35th best UMR movie...but 13th if you sort by reviews.
Out of the Past is the 34th best UMR movie…but 14th if you sort by reviews.

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.

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76 thoughts on “Top 100 Film Noir Movies – Statistically Speaking”

  1. Niagara, Leave Her to Heaven, Desert Fury, Inferno, Party Girl, The Trap, and Violent Saturday are just some of the other films one is going to have to contend with as far as knocking them off the film noir list because they were shot in color.

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    1. Hey Arthur…they are still on my main Film Noir list. I attached your Film Noir link to both of my pages. The only movie that got bumped from the list because they were color were Bad Day At Black Rock and Johnny Guitar…..and that was they both seemed out of place with the ones listed here. Speaking of Bad Day At Black Rock….what genre is this movie. I have seen lists saying it is one of the greatest westerns ever made….and lists saying it is one of the greatest film noirs ever made. I put it in the same boat as In The Heat of the Night and Crossfire

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      1. It’s in the genre of great films… Ha Ha… It’s a cross genre piece that’s for sure. Since it *focuses on* the psychologies of its characters, (including the investigator, Tracy), mixed up in crime, I would say it qualifies as film noir. To the naysayers I would just remind them that NO film was made intentionally as noir. ALL of them must be approached “after the fact” and are therefore subject to debate. I disagree with those who say that film noir is defined by its setting (as you probably know) although that can certainly make a strong contribution. As to western, I would say no, unless you wanted to call it a modern day western, which is funny because I think a western IS defined by its setting.

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        1. Oh and thank you, thank you for posting my article and list there. That was very kind and special. I also liked the “more” introduction you provided

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          1. You are more than welcome….your film noir list is awesome….and a resource I will be using now and in the future.

        2. Hey Arthur…they are still on my main Film Noir list. I attached your Film Noir link to both of my pages. The only movie that got bumped from the list because they were color were Bad Day At Black Rock and Johnny Guitar…..and that was they both seemed out of place with the ones listed here. Speaking of Bad Day At Black Rock….what genre is this movie. I have seen lists saying it is one of the greatest westerns ever made….and lists saying it is one of the greatest film noirs ever made. I put it in the same boat as In The Heat of the Night and Crossfire

          Reply

        1. Thanks Flora….still debating if I am going to include it in my western page…when and if I ever get around to doing that.

          Reply

  3. Why should Oscars be a factor? Don’t we like Film Noir because it’s an affront to the uplift and tidy White Elephant sensibility associated with the Oscars? And box office?

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    1. Hey Bill…..my entire website is based on sharing the statistical information on movies…in one net line of information. I agree in this film noir subject….box office and Oscars are not too important to define the greatness of a film noir movie…..but I wanted to include the stats….because a fan of a movie of Detour might be interested in how it did statistically. Thanks for checking out my film noir page.

      Reply

  4. Good list, a lot more noir films. I disagree w/ a lot of the rankings, but that’s how it usually is w/someone’s list.

    Reply

    1. With the sort button you can rank them 4 different ways….Double Indemnity is first in reviews….second in Oscar love…..fifth in box office and 1st in my collective formula. Using the sort and search button makes it very interactive. I changed the default setting so the table would look different than the last one.

      Reply

    1. It just depends on which stat you sort them by. If looking at critic and audience rating..which was the first page….Out of the Past has moved up to 14th….and I gave it a picture too….that has to count for something…lol.

      Reply

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