Movies: Your Top 10 Film Noir

[PocketNines]

Where do you rank something like Drive? And where/when will you be publishing the list? Don't hesitate to DM.

Though I have a spreadsheet tab with thousands of lines of notes, I still have a lot to formally write so I'll probably focus more on where to publish when I am in heavy writing.

Drive will make the list. I have it 83 overall currently and one of four that makes the list since 2010. I just saw In A Lonely Place again for about the 4th time a few nights ago and the dooms are similar. Once she sees the violence in the man, it is over and he has to know it. Just sitting here thinking about it, this is the kind of film that a 2032 reranking would possibly move higher.

In the current draft I have it the 4th best doom noir since 2010. Anything so current has a difficult time competing because there is a timelessness factor in both the overall execution of any film as well as its ideas of why we are doomed.

No Sudden Move, Shutter Island, Inherent Vice and Drive. (Inherent Vice is one of only three satires I have allowed and the other two are the two best Marlowe films, Long Goodbye and Big Lebowski).

My all time favorite noir is Miller's Crossing (have seen The Glass Key also) but the list is disciplined and I have it in the 110s.

Would love to discuss noir at any length, DM or in thread. Right now I think about it every single day sometimes all day as I watch & rewatch. I would love to be challenged by someone with comprehensive viewing and thought in the genre.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Though I have a spreadsheet tab with thousands of lines of notes, I still have a lot to formally write so I'll probably focus more on where to publish when I am in heavy writing.

Drive will make the list. I have it 83 overall currently and one of four that makes the list since 2010. I just saw In A Lonely Place again for about the 4th time a few nights ago and the dooms are similar. Once she sees the violence in the man, it is over and he has to know it. Just sitting here thinking about it, this is the kind of film that a 2032 reranking would possibly move higher.

In the current draft I have it the 4th best doom noir since 2010. Anything so current has a difficult time competing because there is a timelessness factor in both the overall execution of any film as well as its ideas of why we are doomed.

No Sudden Move, Shutter Island, Inherent Vice and Drive. (Inherent Vice is one of only three satires I have allowed and the other two are the two best Marlowe films, Long Goodbye and Big Lebowski).

My all time favorite noir is Miller's Crossing (have seen The Glass Key also) but the list is disciplined and I have it in the 110s.

Would love to discuss noir at any length, DM or in thread. Right now I think about it every single day sometimes all day as I watch & rewatch. I would love to be challenged by someone with comprehensive viewing and thought in the genre.

Good stuff. But what do you mean by Miller's Crossing being your favorite noir and the list being disciplined so you have it lower? I understand that you've set yourself some rules but that seems like a really big fall.

At any rate, I fully agree. I think Miller's Crossing is probably the best noir I've seen (though I'm nowhere near as knowledge as others regarding the genre and it wouldn't make my general top 10-20) but it flat out has my favorite line of dialogue in cinema with Bernie Bernbaum's 'If Casper ain't stiff in three days, I start eating in restaurants.' That entire scene is a masterstroke (hence the off-handed way the line is delivered really making the most magical of impacts) and I think it's the Coen brothers' best film.

 

[PocketNines]

Good stuff. But what do you mean by Miller's Crossing being your favorite noir and the list being disciplined so you have it lower? I understand that you've set yourself some rules but that seems like a really big fall.

At any rate, I fully agree. I think Miller's Crossing is probably the best noir I've seen (though I'm nowhere near as knowledge as others regarding the genre and it wouldn't make my general top 10-20) but it flat out has my favorite line of dialogue in cinema with Bernie Bernbaum's 'If Casper ain't stiff in three days, I start eating in restaurants.' That entire scene is a masterstroke (hence the off-handed way the line is delivered really making the most magical of impacts) and I think it's the Coen brothers' best film.

We could probably spend hours showering love on that film. The ending is deliberately evocative of The Third Man (as is Departed which is a gangster film).

If you saw the 20 films that rank 101-120 right now, most of them people would think belong in the top 100. I am continually second-guessing, even Miller's Crossing. The list is REALLY dense at this point. Being in the top 140 means you are a damn good film.

Miller's Crossing's protagonist trip is not contributing original or timeless ideas about why we are doomed. Miller's Crossing's attorney arguing its case would respond that the top 10 Maltese Falcon's protag has a similar experience, he does right by his code at the expense of the girl and hence is the doom.

But the other attorneys for all the other films would reply first that the doom at the end of Maltese is one of its least believable elements (really, he's in love with her already?), and furthermore that the counselor protag is more of a gangster (eg, Tom Hagen is still in the mafia). I have been really strict about letting gangster films in since there is a lot of crossover and a lot of good gangster films. For example maybe the perfect doom arc for a protagonist in a stylized crime drama can be found in Scarface (1983) but I had to hold the line lest I open the floodgates which then swamps the list. I'd have to let on films like Carlito's Way and Donnie Brasco and so on and so forth. I struggled with what to do with Scarface.

Having said all that I have two exceptions on gangster protag on the list in its bottom half. (1) The Long Good Friday, where the protagonist is a crime lord who is on the #1 doom noir trip – compelled to get to the bottom of it – but is doomed because of the reactionary social milieu which is the Troubles that dragged at Thatcher Britain. (2) proto-noir Pepe le Moko our protag is a crime boss but his essential doom arc is lust and a doomed longing to escape life choices that have him stuck in a trap.

Relatedly, assassins are the wrong protagonist also but the one exception is Murder by Contract because the protag is an ambitious everyman trying to reach his American Dream and the entire film is a philosophical exploration of what you can justify in that pursuit.

 

[PocketNines]

Neo-Noir

Chinatown
LA Confidential
The Long Goodbye
The Grifters
The Late Show
Night Moves
Blood Simple
Body Heat
Brick
Point Blank

HM: Mulholland Drive, Blade Runner, Memento, Blue Velvet, Sin City, The Usual Suspects

This has a ton of overlap with my list which is smaller than neo-noir, it's doom neo-noir.

Chinatown (1) and The Long Goodbye (2) ARE correctly way up there on your list. Night Moves, Point Blank and Body Heat are absolute all-timers. I have Memento fourth all time. Self-deception is a towering true doom.

Adds: Cutter's Way (third all time, oil men who floated untouchably above Vietnam are absolutely the right villains), Days of Heaven, The Conversation, Get Carter, The Parallax View, The Limey (like Night Moves and Get Carter had a baby and it was made three years BEFORE the Phil Spector murder), Taxi Driver, No Country for Old Men (the protag here is Tommy Lee Jones and it switches in the middle of the film ala In A Lonely Place), A Simple Plan and Badlands.

Not on my doom cut of noir list:
LA Confidential and The Late Show are great but have happy endings. Sin City I don't have on my list but I completely get it and I like the film. Brick is my only disagreement; the falsest noir. It's an incredible film school project to show you know a genre and I think Rian Johnson's Ozymandias is the greatest hour of television in history but there isn't an ounce of truth in Brick which I have seen multiple times. It's not satire. But it's also not real. It left me cold. I am completely convinced that Johnson has read a lot of the noir novels and can frame and compose beautiful shots. But we aren't doomed because "high school is like a noir" because that isn't a very important thought.

 

[PocketNines]

Devil in a Blue Dress

Great choice. In list draft form, 74th overall doom noir and 9th best doom noir of the 1990s. Well above average execution plus a provocative doom noir idea contribution subverting the femme fatale concept; it's her very identity which is dangerous owing not to her own behavior but rather to the fact that human beings are a moral disaster and create racist codes to make her existence a problem. Soderbergh's exceptional No Sudden Move (2021) makes clear homage to it given the Cheadle overlap.

 

[PocketNines]

Because it is formulaic.

Just like I love the first half of horror movies but the conclusions have me turn them off.

What I value in film or print are original concepts.

I agree with you about not liking formula films and I very much value and prize original concepts.

However, as a lifelong film fan (I'm 50), I started getting on a noir run just about a year ago. I organically came to find incredible resonance in what I also thought was an older, dustier genre.

Having seen hundreds and hundreds of mediocre-to-bad noir films in the last year I concur that a lot of the average noirs aren't worth very much. But the best noirs are true human gems of insight about just what we have done and are doing to ourselves. The real ending to humanity is bleak and soon, and that gives the very best art which held a mirror up to ourselves incredible value. Just look at Kurosawa's Drunken Angel and the depressing morass of humanity who mock doctors trying to save them from the communicable pandemic diseases tuberculosis and typhoid. Or Endfield's The Sound of Fury (also called Try and Get Me!) whose final 10 minutes are among the most shattering in all noir and anyone who watched January 6 will find extremely relevant.

Film noir is also one of the few genuinely American art forms along with jazz and the western, which makes it significant.

In recent years, film noir has really become prestige TV noir: Breaking Bad is the greatest noir series and there are plenty of others like The Wire, Better Call Saul, Ozark, The Sopranos (gangster more than noir), etc. The desire to reflect our chiaroscuro selves back to us is extremely American. That said, the genre is definitely alive and still vibrant. The Coens are probably the third greatest noir directors ever behind Wilder and Huston, and they contribute many fresh ideas to the genre.

It's your very complaint that made me want to do a "recut" of noir to highlight the extremely vital part of the genre. Nobody has to like it and you definitely do not. I just wanted to offer thoughts that go to the heart of your complaint and give my take.

 

[PocketNines]

Would Mulholland Drive be considered film noir?

One of the very best. I have it in draft form the 12th best all time neo noir, 34th best overall and the second best of the 2000s behind only Memento. This is a film that validates the noir style as the right genre to tell these stories.

[Some people consider Lost Highway a great neo-noir. I think it's a messy rough draft being rewritten as it was being made and in search of an idea that soon became Mulholland Drive.]

 

[PocketNines]

I do want to give one film special attention: The Big Heat.

This film is widely misunderstood. It does not have a noir protagonist. It has a western protagonist. A lone man of violence who has a code and takes full grasp of his own agency to live out the code no matter what it costs him. The western protag gunslinger with his violence code in this film undergoes no change and at no point considers bending his code, which in the end triumphs and is validated by his colleagues. The woman dies validating the man; Gloria Grahame, while her "sisters under the mink" line is world-class noir dialogue, knows that her identity is defined by her inability to share in the identity of this great man since she is a mere tainted whore whereas he is Right and Good, and she dies only wanting to hear him talk about how much he loved his wife, so she can at least have proximity to Moral Right and Wrong. There is literally not an ounce of noir in that. That's substantively a straight-down-the-line no moral grey universe western protagonist. He has suffered, but he has responded with full abuse and been fully validated.

People think of it as a noir but people repeat what they have heard from previous critics too. It's very obviously a western law and order film set in the city and filmed in noir style. Films belong in their substantive genre. It's Lethal Weapon without Danny Glover. A brutal cop is validated for his individual code of brutality because he does it for the right reasons. Just, no. We saw for certain throughout summer 2020 that we are infinitely more doomed that the Glenn Ford characters even exist than because of anything that happens to him in this film.

Compare and contrast On Dangerous Ground's cop with the one from The Big Heat.

 

[Stealth JD]

I do want to give one film special attention: The Big Heat.

This film is widely misunderstood. It does not have a noir protagonist. It has a western protagonist. A lone man of violence who has a code and takes full grasp of his own agency to live out the code no matter what it costs him. The western protag gunslinger with his violence code in this film undergoes no change and at no point considers bending his code, which in the end triumphs and is validated by his colleagues. The woman dies validating the man; Gloria Grahame, while her "sisters under the mink" line is world-class noir dialogue, knows that her identity is defined by her inability to share in the identity of this great man since she is a mere tainted whore whereas he is Right and Good, and she dies only wanting to hear him talk about how much he loved his wife, so she can at least have proximity to Moral Right and Wrong. There is literally not an ounce of noir in that. That's substantively a straight-down-the-line no moral grey universe western protagonist. He has suffered, but he has responded with full abuse and been fully validated.

People think of it as a noir but people repeat what they have heard from previous critics too. It's very obviously a western law and order film set in the city and filmed in noir style. Films belong in their substantive genre. It's Lethal Weapon without Danny Glover. A brutal cop is validated for his individual code of brutality because he does it for the right reasons. Just, no. We saw for certain throughout summer 2020 that we are infinitely more doomed that the Glenn Ford characters even exist than because of anything that happens to him in this film.

Compare and contrast On Dangerous Ground's cop with the one from The Big Heat.

MSN

In case there are any on this list that you've missed (doubtful).

 

[Scandale du Jour]

I do want to give one film special attention: The Big Heat.

This film is widely misunderstood. It does not have a noir protagonist. It has a western protagonist. A lone man of violence who has a code and takes full grasp of his own agency to live out the code no matter what it costs him. The western protag gunslinger with his violence code in this film undergoes no change and at no point considers bending his code, which in the end triumphs and is validated by his colleagues. The woman dies validating the man; Gloria Grahame, while her "sisters under the mink" line is world-class noir dialogue, knows that her identity is defined by her inability to share in the identity of this great man since she is a mere tainted whore whereas he is Right and Good, and she dies only wanting to hear him talk about how much he loved his wife, so she can at least have proximity to Moral Right and Wrong. There is literally not an ounce of noir in that. That's substantively a straight-down-the-line no moral grey universe western protagonist. He has suffered, but he has responded with full abuse and been fully validated.

People think of it as a noir but people repeat what they have heard from previous critics too. It's very obviously a western law and order film set in the city and filmed in noir style. Films belong in their substantive genre. It's Lethal Weapon without Danny Glover. A brutal cop is validated for his individual code of brutality because he does it for the right reasons. Just, no. We saw for certain throughout summer 2020 that we are infinitely more doomed that the Glenn Ford characters even exist than because of anything that happens to him in this film.

Compare and contrast On Dangerous Ground's cop with the one from The Big Heat.

Don't you think that the Noir protagonist and the Western hero have a lot of similarities? I think that, at their heart, they are deeply American. They do have their own particularity, but I think their "brand" of heroism is essentially the same.

 

[PocketNines]

Don't you think that the Noir protagonist and the Western hero have a lot of similarities? I think that, at their heart, they are deeply American. They do have their own particularity, but I think their "brand" of heroism is essentially the same.

I don't think I can agree with that.

I definitely disagree with noir's only (mediocre) encyclopedia which states noir is specifically and uniquely American. In no way can that argument hold up. I'm actually shocked that these gatekeepers thought they could get away with that kind of unsupportable laziness, but the streaming age blows that myth away. All we can say that is American about noir was that over a five year period from 46-50 America's studios were overtaken by the material and America both produced and consumed noir at higher rates than elsewhere.

But the stories are about human damage, It is just not possible to argue that the substance of noir – the lusts, greeds, prides, wraths and envies – are exclusively and definitively American. Moreover the first noirs were not American, they were European and they were directed and photographed by Europeans. Things like Pepe le Moko (1937) and Port of Shadows (1938). Scarlet Street (1945) by European director Fritz Lang is one of America's proudest and most defining noirs – it is literally a remake of Jean Renoir's La Chienne (1931). There are incredible noirs from all around the world in each era. Did you know that the mediocre encyclopedia, trapped by its own randomly opted definition of noir as only American, is therefore unable to list The Third Man (1949) as noir? That is insane. But it does list Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Them! and Rancho Notorious noirs. That is a failure, completely. Rancho Notorious is a 1952 sing along revenge western that has the exact same plot as The Big Heat one year later. They were directed by Fritz Lang.

The noir protagonist and the acid western protagonist like in The Shooting (1966) or Ride in the Whirlwind (1966) share a lot in common. I would say that The Ox-Bow Incident (1938) is a noir/western hybrid thematically. The grandaddy of all Westerns, McCabe & Mrs Miller (1971), has a noir type protagonist. But the overwhelming majority of westerns are not acid westerns. They have happy endings, black and white characters, and thematically the good guys are the ones pushing west for manifest destiny. We are fighting for the future and hope in westerns.

 

[PocketNines]

MSN

In case there are any on this list that you've missed (doubtful).

Thanks for the link. Of these 10, six are way, way, way up on my favorites list. As an absolute experienced expert on both noir and smoking bowls I would not agree that "stoner noir" is either a thing nor do half these films they picked belong in it if it were. Cutter's Way and Night Moves are not stoner noir, but they are two of the greatest 20 noirs ever made, and so is The Long Goodbye, which I recently moved from #11 to #9 on my list. Cutter's Way is 14th (I just saw it fresh for the 5th or 6th time and am working on the review now) and Night Moves is 20th. Inherent Vice and The Big Lebowski are the two greatest noir satires that have ever been made whjch are not named The Long Goodbye. I'd add Altman's The Player (1992) a little lower but worth a mention.

The Limey is not a stoner noir at all, but it is the very best neo noir of the 1990s, and IMO one of the five best noir revengers ever made (Memento (2000), Point Blank (1967), Act of Violence (1949), Get Carter (1971), The Limey (1999)). The Limey is a beautiful film that says at the bottom of revenge lies disappointment. And at the bottom of disappointment lies disappointment in yourself. I find that profound. Everyone in this film is disappointed, it suffuses the film.

Under the Silver Lake (I do love the Zelda map part) and The Late Show (Carney and Tomlin are great)I both considered for the list with multiple viewings. The Nice Guys, meh. The Big Fix ... I don't know why they chose to say that it's like Cutter's Way re: post-Watergate malaise. No, Cutter's Way is a core disillusioned veteran noir. Noir's basis is a traumatized veteran trying to make his way in the aftermath of social cataclysm that exposed so many human lies and hypocrisies. There's crime and corruption involved. Cutter's Way is the pure stuff. Yes disillusionment of the 70s hangs over the film but what is driving it all is the betrayal of the individual protagonist by the society and by the society's winners. Cutter's Way is the purest post-Vietnam rage film. Alex Cutter does not give one shit about Nixon, Nixon was eventually held accountable and disgraced. Cutter cares about people like Cord astriding his palace overlooking the sea while he loses an arm and a leg for lies told.

 

[PocketNines]

Because it is formulaic.

Just like I love the first half of horror movies but the conclusions have me turn them off.

What I value in film or print are original concepts.

Counterpoint: noir isn't formulaic. I value noir because of its world of concepts. There are lots of noir arcs and lots of social milieus to set them in. There is an array of substance and an array of stylization (once we get to neo noir especially).

 

[PocketNines]

Here is my DRAFT very subject to changes of the top 100 doom noir ever:

 

[kihei]

Here is my DRAFT very subject to changes of the top 100 doom noir ever:

View attachment 733677

Great list but some Japanese noir could be on there.

 

[PocketNines]

Great list but some Japanese noir could be on there.

Drunken Angel is #50. Stray Dog was but after repeated viewings it dropped off.

I watched a bunch like Cruel Gun Story which seems like Reservoir Dogs obviously saw. Among them Pale Flower, High and Low, Endless Desire, The Bad Sleep Well.

House of Bamboo (off list) and The Yakuza (on list) are set in Japan. The Crimson Kimono features a storyline involving a white cop and a Japanese-American cop (who knew the problem in 1959 was reverse racism? sneaky, that ole reverse racism).

Keep in mind I am looking for films that don't have gangster protagonists which is what hurts a lot of these titles. Because then I have to let in Scarface (1983) since it has the same rise and fall of the intelligent hustler arc as Nightmare Alley and Night and the City, and if I let in Scarface I have to let in Carlito's Way and The Long Good Friday and then all of a sudden I'm flooded with gangster films. This is why Pepe le Moko didn't make the cut. He is doomed directly because of his gangster kingpin related activity. The Long Good Friday was on the list (perfect ending, great film) but I had to be disciplined and cut it. Assassins are the same thing. otherwise Blast of Silence would be way up there and Le Samourai would be too. And High and Low is kind of a happy ending, and long. Stray Dog is definitely too long and kind of a happy ending (he successfully solves the case and begins a chosen career in earnest).

But I am eager to watch ones you think I am overlooking, please point me to some. I have considered about 800 films for this pursuit. I am certain there is no way I have seen every film which would deserve to be on the list. There are films being restored all the time, the streaming era is a bounty. In 10 years the list will be different. Plus it's in draft form for the exact reason that I have to remain open minded to new films. It's going to take me at least a year to write all these reviews with the available time I have, so it will shift around and is shifting around every month. This latest draft is as of the last three weeks. I am not loyal to any film. I am loyal to the list being the best it could possibly be.

 

[PocketNines]

A handful of controversial leave offs:

The Grifters (1990) – it's in the 101-110 range. Over the past 30+ years since it's been out it leaves me wanting something more every time I've seen it, probably a dozen.

Gun Crazy (1950) – yes, yes, the man who hates to shoot a bunny is goaded into killing people only because he is coerced into it by a gun crazed woman. So true, so timelessly true. Incredible style values though, I get it.

Raw Deal (1950) – also great style values but an absurd plot. Absurd. The final line is laugh out loud.

DOA (1950) – This film is not that great. Not a fan.

The Big Knife (1955) – a little maudlin but it was strongly considered.

Moonrise (1948) – Magic Negro, and also the Southern person wandering around the long abandoned plantation house doomed by birth at the hands of his peers facing prejudice is a white man, eh?

Mildred Pierce (1945) – This film mirrors the times when women were making advances. Here our hardworking protagonist hardworks her way to the top despite being dragged down by an overspending daughter and a few disappointing men. Right next to her the entire time is her black employee, who eventually graduates to presumably supreme maid of the mansion. But how come two equally hard working women have such different outcomes, one remaining the permanent employee of the other? Well, in an escalating series of six scenes we finally learn that even at the end she is too stupid to know which end of the telephone you speak out of or listen out of. Too dumb. Everyone laughs at the stupid lady with the extreme childish voice. Ha ha, Joan laughs. Look how stupid the black lady is. Now it makes sense why one became a business owner. A lot of noir's racism was merely in the overall industry-wide absence of black representation, whether in stories or acting roles, much less production authority. However, I discovered that it's rarely actually overt. In Mildred Pierce it is overt.

Insomnia (1997) – Ambiguity in an ending is permissible. However it is devalued compared to doom. It's probably in the next 20 films after this list. I really don't like when dogs are hurt in films. So this one is harsher than the slightly different Christopher Nolan remake which depicts no live animal hurt.

Insomnia (2002) – If Pacino doesn't tell Swank the last thing he says to her this would probably be on the list. Just remember how central corruption is to film noir. Corruption is indispensable. So it's just a little splash basically.

 

[Catanddogguitarrr]

White Heat by Raoul Walsh, 1949
Maybe the best movie with James Cagney. Naked Gun 33 /3 the Final Insult is a parody of this movie.

 

[NyQuil]

4) Appeared after WW2 after a traumatic last 20-25 years (WW1, the prohibition, the great depression and WW2). It is not a coincidence. Film noir is about hardships and the ugly underbelly of society (which was exposed during prohibition and the great depression).

So, to me, film noir is a very interesting genre aesthetically, thematically and, well, historically. I find it entertaining, but that's far from the reason why I like it and study it. It is such an interesting contrast to 1950s American tv which was very conservative and "positive" (Daddy Knows Best and stuff like that). So, it might not feel "original" (originality to me is greatly overrated, but that's a whole other subject), but it sure is an highly interesting case study.

I thought I remember reading somewhere that a great deal of the impetus behind making noir films (in black and white) is that film budgets were necessarily low in the immediate post-war era, and it was easier to do noir films on the cheap as they didn't require a lot in the way of sets or effects.

It wasn't so much about aesthetic as it was about budget and financial constraints.

Sometimes restriction can lead to innovation and opportunity.

 

[Scandale du Jour]

I thought I remember reading somewhere that a great deal of the impetus behind making noir films (in black and white) is that film budgets were necessarily low in the immediate post-war era, and it was easier to do noir films on the cheap as they didn't require a lot in the way of sets or effects.

It wasn't so much about aesthetic as it was about budget and financial constraints.

Sometimes restriction can lead to innovation and opportunity.

I agree.

I'd say that with film noir, the aesthetics were developped under similar conditions in Europe AND imported by directors like Lang and Siodmak. But, yes, the Noir aesthetic was build out of necessity, I agree with that statement.

 

[Catanddogguitarrr]

Bullitt (my avatar McQueen) is a neo noir movie disguised as an action movie. It paved the way to cop movies such as Dirty Harry, French Connection and The Conversation.

 

[TheAngryHank]

Mad max

 

[Seattle King]

Sunset Boulevard (1950) seems a glaring omission here. One of Billy Wilder's best, and one of the defining films of the noir genre. Its a great movie.

 

[tarheelhockey]

@kihei @Bogart

Did you guys read The Big Sleep? I love the film, but the book is so much better. Much more disturbing.

I came around to Chandler in a roundabout way, because I read an article about the influences that formed…

The Big Lebowski

… which led me to pick up The Big Sleep. Needless to say I had that moment of revelation as the plot unfolded. I knew Lebowski was an homage to noir, but never realized it was an outright spoof of specific works.

I thought The Big Sleep was a fantastic read, and that took me down a Chandler rabbit hole for a while, and then on to Hammett and Ellroy and others.

 

[sr edler]

My favourite straight up crime noir film is probably Born to Kill by Robert Wise from 1947. Walter Slezak's really nice in a supporting detective role, there's a believable edge to the female lead, and there are other nice supporting roles as well. I remember even liking it cinematographically.

As far as other noir films, I don't really have a list.