Movies: Your Top 10 Film Noir

[Stealth JD]

@PocketNines

I just watched Klute. Young (hot) Jane Fonda & Donald Sutherland - 1971. Very good performances; the script was so-so.
Did not see it on your list of top-100, or 'controversial' leave-offs. Fonda won an Academy Award for it. Where is that on your ranking?

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

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

View attachment 733677

No clue how I missed the existence of this thread. Great, impressively diverse list. My only gut reaction is no Seijun Sezuki?

Seen 79 of 100.

Edit: ah just caught up and saw your no gangster protagonist rule, which would knock out most Suzuki movies.

 

[The Waffler]

Does Sin City count?

 

[PocketNines]

@PocketNines

I just watched Klute. Young (hot) Jane Fonda & Donald Sutherland - 1971. Very good performances; the script was so-so.
Did not see it on your list of top-100, or 'controversial' leave-offs. Fonda won an Academy Award for it. Where is that on your ranking?

I have it sitting at #110 right now and #17 of the (strong 1970s). I watched it closely four times to evaluate it for the list but ultimately it didn't make it because its strongest part is Jane Fonda's character and the weakest part is the noir script of it. The corruption element is weak here. I love Sutherland and only days before he passed watched one of my all time favorites Ordinary People for the umpteenth time. Fonda is tremendous in Klute and by far its strongest aspect. Most of the noirs on my list end in doom and only some are ambiguous. This one is ambiguous plus not quite strong enough of a plot. But it's in consideration. Max and the Junkman (1971) is also not on the list and just above it for the decade. I have 15 from the 70s that made it.

Keep in mind I watched close to a thousand different noir titles and to be #110 is to be a strong film, relatively speaking

 

[Neutrinos]

Sin City

 

[johnjm22]

No mention of Dark City in this thread.

2049 also deserves some recognition as a neo noir film.

I consider The Proposition (2005) a western noir and one of my personal favorites.

 

[PocketNines]

No clue how I missed the existence of this thread. Great, impressively diverse list. My only gut reaction is no Seijun Sezuki?

Seen 79 of 100.

Edit: ah just caught up and saw your no gangster protagonist rule, which would knock out most Suzuki movies.

Thank you so much! I used to use all of this attention to hockey prospects but then the Blues went and finally won the Cup so now it is elsewhere. My inspiration was the extended top 100 NHL players of all time debate that was held on the history of hockey forum some years ago. I didn't participate, but in reading how it was done, multiple people gave their very best arguments literally spot by spot starting at 1 and going all the way down. And every spot was treated as important, like it was an important debate to parse #53 from #54. That is what I tried to do, I tried to mentally conjure advocates for each film, and then imagine advocates for the other films raising objections to that film being listed ahead of its own film. And then it marinated daily for years. I last adjusted the list in Sept last year, and The Yakuza dropped off after a fifth rewatch. Ultimately there was too much redemption in the end to count it in a doom listing. Also I am growing some balls and moving The Rover (2014) up the list despite its recency. Here is the most current list which is pretty similar to the last one. I am a mere 13 reviews in, with 87 to go. We are moving to Tacoma area in about 10 days from the Emerald Triangle of California so I have been a bit busy.

I am looking to find a book publisher to ultimately publish my list and its associated 100 reviews and accompanying essays. It's slow going because my writing standards are high, and then the standard of what a first book would look like is very high. I treat the reviews like they are open book law school exams. I gather tons of notes and try to assemble an outline, then I spend three hours on the review as if I have to hand it in for evaluation. Otherwise I will endlessly tinker.

You are an ideal person for feedback since you have seen 79 of these, you can then completely see the prism through which I am choosing them. I'd love any thoughts on overrated/underrated/omissions from someone familiar with the diversity and breadth here. In return you get 21 films to see that you can bet are pretty good! I'm curious which 21 they are too.

last edit 9/10/23:

 

[PocketNines]

No mention of Dark City in this thread.

2049 also deserves some recognition as a neo noir film.

I consider The Proposition (2005) a western noir and one of my personal favorites.

I watched Dark City a few times and considered it. It has a happy ending, which flat eliminates it from the list. Also a long extended sci-fi sequence that isn't noir. (I assume you aren't referring to the Charlton Heston noir Dark City (1950) with Lizbeth Scott, Jack Webb, Harry Morgan and Ed Begley Sr.)

As for the Batman ilk, Batman is the opposite of a noir protagonist. They are not super empowered billionaires, in this genre. Just a note there. One of the fundamental realizations I had watching all this old genre is it is very specifically about the grimy world of real people doing damage to each other and being unable to beat the system. Batman and superheroes are always fighting other specific superheroes. That says: it's bad individual actors who mess everything up, not simply the weight of millions of apex predators adjacent to each other. We are in pure oppositeville from noir. The complete opposite of that is superheroes with magical powers. It is the complete and total opposite, thematically.

But what happens is, noir is cool. Superheroes are for audiences still a bit insecure in who they are, and they want to be cool, but can only adopt cool at this age, so they adopt the clothing of cool, but they don't understand the authenticity that is in real noir. They'd rather skip over it, it's inconvenient to the burst of significance one gets when they just saw a film and it lit them up inside and they want to say it's the best. The superhero noir fans are definitely the least developed in noir, they don't understand noir, full stop.