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. I have seen 85 of these movies, Bruce.

    Of the ones I am missing, I have never had access to them.

    In particular, Rafifi is never aired on TCMCanada although it did air overnight in TCM USA .

    More precise list here. Good work, Bruce.

    Flora

    Reply

    1. Hey Flora. Tall count….Flora 85 Steve 65 and me 42. Closer but still the same results. I have not seen Rififi either…but it is high on my list of movies to watch. Thanks for the comment and the visit.

      Reply

  2. This is more like it Bruce, plenty of lovely, gloomy, doomy film noir here. A far more useful list than your previous ‘more expansive’ edition. 😉 This is the real deal.

    Ironically most of the film noir cult favorites don’t even make the top 20 on the UMR chart, after you’ve factored in the critical and Oscar scores. Movies like – Criss Cross, Pickup on South Street, They Live By Night, Nightmare Alley, In a Lonely Place, The Big Heat and arguably the greatest of them all – Out of the Past (retitled ‘Build My Gallows High’ here in the UK) – the quintessential film noir.

    Looking at the adjusted dollars box office chart – wow Notorious was a huge hit for Hitch, Gilda never stood a chance, the top 3 all from 1946.

    I’ve seen 65 of the 100 listed here, maybe more I can’t remember them all. Movies I’ve missed include Mildred Pierce, Martha Ivers, Calcutta, Kansas City Confidential and Chicago Deadline.

    Too many favorites here including all the Hitchcocks, Third Man, Double Indemnity, Out of the Past, White Heat, The Big Sleep, Maltese Falcon and Key Largo.

    Excellent work Bruce. I have a feeling you’re done with noir, back to the safety of John Wayne westerns. 😉

    Voted Up!

    Reply

    1. Hey Steve….glad you like this list better. I think box office results hurt the scores of some of the best known film noir movies….but that was to be expected. Still there are some pretty big monster hits here. 1946 was the best year in the history of movies….so the fact that the Top 3 at the box office came from 1946 was not too surprising.

      Tall count….Flora 85 Steve 65 and me 42……much closer this time around…but still the same finishing spots. I have seen all of the favorites that you mentioned…and enjoyed all of them. Of the ones you missed….I would say Mildred and Martha are the ones you need to see….Martha has one of the earliest Kirk Douglas roles.

      Yeah….I am done with film noir. Seems no matter how I present these movies somebody is unhappy….but I am glad I did both pages….no turning my attention to either western movies or a “what if” page on James Dean. Thanks for checking out my latest.

      Reply

  3. Out of The Past, greatest film noir ever. Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer are the iconic film noir characters.

    Reply

  4. Out of the Past deserves the photo. For some, it is the definitive film noir (along with Double Indemnity). Certainly it deserves to be higher than #35.

    Reply

      1. Plus Out of the Past’s lighting, compositions, plot structure…everything. And it is lower on the list than Calcutta?

        Reply

          1. Hey Chris and Michael….I agree with your comments….the rankings are based on how the movies did statistically…Both are great…especially Out of the Past. I made the default setting my UMR Score…..I think you will like the results better if you sort by the critic audience rating. I used that in the first massive page…and this time I wanted to use a different setting.

          2. It is rarely shown on TV, that is why. Few people have seen it because of rights issues.

    1. Hey Chris….they are both great….there are different ways to sort the movies….but I agree the current default setting our UMR Score (which combines the stats) does not treat either movie well. Much better when you use the critic audience rating column…then Out of the Past is right outside the Top 10…in 14th…and K.C. Confidential moves up to 68th…..up 30 spots.

      Reply

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