Noir was named after the fact. French critics who had been cut off from American films during the occupation saw five years of backlog arrive at once in 1946, noticed that the crime pictures had turned fatalistic and black, and gave it a label the people making them never used.
That accident is why the form is so consistent. Nobody was working to a template, so what the films share is a condition rather than a formula: wartime and postwar anxiety, German expressionist technique brought over by emigre directors, cheap sets that lighting could hide, and a Production Code that forced everything interesting into shadow and implication.
The pattern running down this list is that the protagonist is competent and it does not matter. Every ranking below is the one carried by the linked review, with ties broken by year.
1. Dark City (1998)
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"The most underrated science fiction film ever made, and it is structurally a noir."
Dark City carries the highest rating on this page and sits low only because the sort places it by year. It arrived in 1998, a year before The Matrix, with the same central idea and none of the credit.
It is noir in structure rather than in decoration. A man wakes with no memory beside a body, is pursued for a murder he cannot remember, and investigates his own possible guilt through a city that is permanently night.
The reveal, that the city is an experiment and the night is total, converts the genre’s fatalism into a literal condition. Roger Ebert recorded a commentary track for it and named it the best film of its year.
A man wakes with no memory beside a body, is pursued for a murder he cannot remember, and investigates his own possible guilt through a city that is permanently night.
The reveal, that the city is an experiment and the night is total, converts the genre’s fatalism into a literal condition.
Roger Ebert recorded a commentary track for it and named it the best film of its year, and it arrived a year before The Matrix with the same central idea.
2. The Maltese Falcon (1941)
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"The film that established the template, made by a first-time director who stuck to the book."
The Maltese Falcon is first because it set the visual and narrative template the rest of this list is working inside. Huston was a screenwriter making his directorial debut and adapted Hammett by the simple method of breaking the novel into shots and filming what was there.
Bogart’s Sam Spade is the reason the archetype exists. He is not honourable, sleeps with his partner’s wife, and turns the woman in at the end because his partner was killed and something has to be done about it. That is a code rather than a morality, and every subsequent private detective is working from it.
The supporting cast is the other half. Sydney Greenstreet was sixty-one and making his first film, Peter Lorre’s Cairo is played as unmistakably coded, and Elisha Cook Jr established the small-time gunman as a type. The falcon itself is worthless, which is the whole point and the line the film closes on.
Huston was a screenwriter making his directorial debut and adapted Hammett by breaking the novel into shots and filming what was there, which is why the dialogue survives almost intact.
Sydney Greenstreet was sixty-one and making his first film, Peter Lorre’s Cairo is played as unmistakably coded, and Elisha Cook Jr established the small-time gunman as a type.
The falcon is worthless, which is the whole point and the line the film closes on, and no version of the plot would have worked if it had been valuable.
3. Double Indemnity (1944)
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"Wilder and Chandler hated each other and produced the genre’s perfect screenplay."
Double Indemnity is the canonical noir and the collaboration that produced it was miserable. Wilder co-wrote with Raymond Chandler, who was an alcoholic novelist with no screen experience and who loathed Wilder personally, and the script is the best either of them worked on.
The structure is the innovation. The film opens with Walter Neff dictating his own confession into a dictaphone, wounded, so the audience knows from the first minutes that it ends badly and watches the whole thing as a foregone conclusion.
Edward G. Robinson’s Keyes is the reason it hurts. The pursuer is not police, he is the friend, and the film’s actual love story is between the two men. The final exchange about the match is the closest thing to tenderness in the entire genre.
Wilder co-wrote with Raymond Chandler, who was an alcoholic novelist with no screen experience and who loathed Wilder personally, and the script is the best either worked on.
Edward G. Robinson’s Keyes is the reason it hurts. The pursuer is the friend rather than the police, and the film’s actual love story is between the two men.
The confession frame means the audience knows from the opening minutes that it ends badly, so the whole picture is watched as a foregone conclusion.
4. The Third Man (1949)
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"Post-war Vienna, a zither score, and the most famous entrance in cinema."
The Third Man is the best-looking film on this list and the only major noir made outside America, which gives it a setting no studio could have built. Occupied Vienna in 1949 was still bombed out and divided between four powers, and Reed shot in it.
Graham Greene wrote it and the tilted angles, the wet cobbles and the sewer chase are the expressionist inheritance used at full strength. Welles appears after an hour of being talked about, lit in a doorway by a neighbour’s window, and says nothing.
Anton Karas was a zither player Reed found in a wine garden, and scoring the whole film on a single folk instrument was a decision nobody would approve now. The cuckoo clock speech was Welles’s own addition and is historically wrong, which he knew.
Occupied Vienna in 1949 was still bombed out and divided between four powers, and Reed shot in it rather than building anything.
Anton Karas was a zither player Reed found in a wine garden, and scoring an entire film on one folk instrument is a decision nobody would approve now.
Welles appears after an hour of being talked about, lit in a doorway by a neighbour’s window, and the cuckoo clock speech was his own addition and is historically wrong.
5. Sunset Boulevard (1950)
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"Hollywood’s most lacerating film about itself, narrated by a dead man."
Sunset Boulevard is narrated by a corpse floating in a swimming pool, which Wilder got away with after a first version featuring a morgue was laughed at in previews.
The casting is the cruelty. Gloria Swanson had been a genuine silent star whose career ended with sound. Erich von Stroheim had been a major director reduced to acting. Buster Keaton, H.B. Warner and Anna Q. Nilsson appear as themselves playing bridge, and DeMille appears as himself directing.
Louis B. Mayer reportedly told Wilder he should be tarred and run out of town for it. The film is about an industry that discards people and it was made by that industry, using the people it had discarded.
Gloria Swanson had been a genuine silent star whose career ended with sound, and Erich von Stroheim had been a major director reduced to acting, playing her butler and former husband.
Buster Keaton, H.B. Warner and Anna Q. Nilsson appear as themselves playing bridge, and DeMille appears as himself directing on a real Paramount stage.
Louis B. Mayer reportedly told Wilder he should be tarred and run out of town for it, and the film was made by the industry it is about using the people it had discarded.
6. Chinatown (1974)
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"The most studied screenplay in American cinema, and Polanski changed the ending."
Chinatown is the defining neo-noir and Robert Towne’s screenplay is taught more than any other American script. It uses the California water wars as the engine and buries the actual crime underneath a land fraud.
The structure is a detective who is competent throughout and wrong about everything. Gittes solves the case correctly and his solving it is what gets Evelyn killed, which inverts the entire private eye tradition this list opens with.
Towne wrote an ending where Evelyn survives and Polanski insisted on the one in the film, against the writer’s objection, and was right. Polanski appears himself as the man who slits Gittes’s nose.
Robert Towne’s screenplay is taught more than any other American script, and uses the California water wars as the engine while burying the actual crime underneath a land fraud.
Gittes solves the case correctly and his solving it is what gets Evelyn killed, which inverts the entire private eye tradition the genre was built on.
Towne wrote an ending where Evelyn survives and Polanski insisted on the one in the film against the writer’s objection, and Polanski appears himself as the man who slits Gittes’s nose.
7. L.A. Confidential (1997)
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"Ellroy adapted by people who understood what to cut."
L.A. Confidential is the best literary adaptation on this list and the achievement is subtraction. Ellroy’s novel is enormous, has four intersecting plots and a timeline spanning years, and Hanson and Helgeland removed most of it without losing the argument.
Three cops with incompatible codes is the structure. Crowe’s Bud White is violence with a moral rule, Pearce’s Exley is ambition wearing ethics, and Spacey’s Vincennes is corruption that has forgotten it is corrupt, and the film does not endorse any of them.
Crowe and Pearce were both unknown Australians, which Hanson had to fight the studio for, and casting nobodies as the leads while surrounding them with Spacey, DeVito and Cromwell is why the film works.
Ellroy’s novel is enormous, with four intersecting plots and a timeline spanning years, and Hanson and Helgeland removed most of it without losing the argument.
Crowe and Pearce were both unknown Australians, which Hanson had to fight the studio for, and casting nobodies as leads while surrounding them with Spacey, DeVito and Cromwell is why it works.
Three cops with incompatible codes is the structure, and the film does not endorse any of them, including the one who survives.
8. The Big Sleep (1946)
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"Nobody involved could work out who killed the chauffeur, including Chandler."
The Big Sleep has a plot that does not resolve and the film is better for not caring. During production the crew wired Chandler to ask who killed the chauffeur and he admitted he did not know.
What it has instead is Bogart and Bacall, who had married between films, and a series of scenes in which the plot stops entirely so two people can talk. The bookshop sequence and the horse racing dialogue exist for no narrative reason.
Hawks reshot substantial portions after the war to add more Bacall, which is why two versions exist and why the released cut is the less coherent and more enjoyable one.
During production the crew wired Chandler to ask who killed the chauffeur and he admitted he did not know, and the film proceeds without resolving it.
Hawks reshot substantial portions after the war to add more Bacall, which is why two versions exist and the released cut is the less coherent and more enjoyable one.
The bookshop sequence and the horse racing dialogue exist for no narrative reason at all, which is the clearest statement of what the film is for.
9. The Killers (1946)
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"Hemingway’s short story is the first twenty minutes, and the rest is invention."
The Killers adapts a Hemingway story that runs a few pages and ends where the film’s first act does. Two men arrive at a diner to kill a Swede who, told they are coming, refuses to run and lies in the dark waiting.
Everything after that was invented, structured as an insurance investigator reconstructing the dead man’s life through flashbacks from multiple witnesses, which is Citizen Kane’s structure applied to a crime picture.
It is Burt Lancaster’s first film and Ava Gardner’s first significant one, and Siodmak was one of the German emigres who brought the lighting with him.
Hemingway’s story runs a few pages and ends where the film’s first act does, with a man told killers are coming who refuses to run and lies in the dark waiting.
Everything afterward was invented, structured as an insurance investigator reconstructing a life through flashbacks from multiple witnesses, which is Citizen Kane applied to a crime picture.
It is Burt Lancaster’s first film and Ava Gardner’s first significant one, and Siodmak was one of the German emigres who brought the lighting with him.
10. Out of the Past (1947)
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"The purest example of the form, and Robert Mitchum never raises his voice."
Out of the Past is the most concentrated dose of noir fatalism on this list. A man running a gas station in a small town is found by his past, goes back, and knows from the first minute that it will kill him.
Mitchum’s performance is the model for the genre’s exhausted protagonist. He is not fighting anything, he is complying with something he recognises as inevitable, and the flatness of the delivery is the characterisation.
Jane Greer’s Kathie is the most complete femme fatale in the form because she is not performing. She shoots people, lies continuously, and the film never suggests she is conflicted about any of it.
Mitchum’s flatness is the characterisation. He is not fighting anything, he is complying with something he recognises as inevitable, and the delivery never varies.
Jane Greer’s Kathie is the most complete femme fatale in the form because she is not performing. She shoots people, lies continuously, and the film never suggests she is conflicted.
Tourneur shoots the Mexican sequences in bright sunlight, which was unusual for the form and makes the return to the shadows read as a sentence rather than a style.
11. White Heat (1949)
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"Cagney’s last great gangster performance, and the mother fixation is the film."
White Heat is a gangster picture that arrived a decade after the cycle ended and updated it with psychology. Cody Jarrett has crippling headaches, sits in his mother’s lap, and is genuinely deranged rather than merely ruthless.
The prison mess hall scene, in which he learns of his mother’s death and has to be physically restrained by a dozen men, is the best piece of acting Cagney did and was largely improvised.
The undercover subplot gives the film its real cruelty. The man Jarrett trusts most is a federal agent, and the betrayal lands harder than the violence.
The prison mess hall scene, where Cody learns of his mother’s death and has to be physically restrained by a dozen men, was largely improvised and is the best acting Cagney did.
The undercover subplot supplies the real cruelty, since the man Jarrett trusts most is a federal agent and the betrayal lands harder than the violence.
Cody has crippling headaches and sits in his mother’s lap, and the film treats the derangement as a medical fact rather than as a metaphor.
12. Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950)
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"A cop kills a suspect by accident and investigates his own crime."
Where the Sidewalk Ends has the best premise in classical noir. A violent detective kills a man during questioning, conceals it, and is then assigned to the case, so the investigation and the cover-up are the same activity.
Preminger reunited Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney from Laura and made the considerably harder film. Andrews’s Dixon is a cop who hates criminals because his father was one, which is a motive the film states once and never repeats.
It is unusually clear-eyed about police violence for 1950, and the resolution requires the protagonist to confess rather than to be caught.
Preminger reunited Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney from Laura and made the considerably harder film, where the detective is the problem rather than the solution.
Andrews’s Dixon hates criminals because his father was one, which the film states once and never repeats.
It is unusually clear-eyed about police violence for 1950, and the resolution requires the protagonist to confess rather than to be caught.
13. The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
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"Huston invented the heist film here and every entry in it since owes him the structure."
The Asphalt Jungle established the heist template: assemble the crew, establish the specialisms, execute the plan, and watch it come apart through human failure rather than bad luck.
What makes it noir rather than a caper is that everybody is tired. Sterling Hayden wants enough money to buy back a horse farm in Kentucky, the planner is fresh out of prison and wants one last job, and none of them are excited about any of it.
Marilyn Monroe appears in an early small role, and the film’s ending, a dying man reaching a field of horses, is the most sentimental thing Huston ever shot and it works.
Huston established the heist template here: assemble the crew, establish the specialisms, execute the plan, and watch it come apart through human failure rather than bad luck.
Sterling Hayden wants enough money to buy back a horse farm in Kentucky, the planner is fresh out of prison, and none of them are excited about any of it.
Marilyn Monroe appears in an early small role, and the ending, a dying man reaching a field of horses, is the most sentimental thing Huston shot.
14. Rififi (1955)
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"A thirty-minute silent robbery, directed by an American who had been blacklisted out of Hollywood."
Rififi is French and was directed by Jules Dassin, an American who had made noir in Hollywood until the blacklist made him unemployable and he left for Europe.
The heist sequence runs roughly half an hour with no dialogue, no music and no sound beyond the work itself. It was reportedly so procedurally accurate that the film was banned in several countries on the grounds that it functioned as instruction.
Dassin also plays the Italian safecracker under a pseudonym because he could not afford the actor he wanted, which is the sort of thing the blacklist produced.
Jules Dassin had made noir in Hollywood until the blacklist made him unemployable and he left for Europe, and this is what he did with the exile.
The heist runs roughly half an hour with no dialogue, no music and no sound beyond the work, and was reportedly banned in several countries as instruction.
Dassin also plays the Italian safecracker under a pseudonym because he could not afford the actor he wanted.
15. Kiss Me Deadly (1955)
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"The film where noir collides with the atomic age and both lose."
Kiss Me Deadly takes Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, a brutal and stupid private detective, and uses him as a critique rather than a hero. Aldrich despised the source material and filmed it anyway.
Hammer punches his way through the plot looking for something valuable and the something turns out to be a case containing fissile material. The great whatsit is the first nuclear MacGuffin and the film ends with it opened.
It is the point where classical noir ends. The apocalyptic ending, the contempt for the protagonist and the Cold War anxiety all point forward to a genre that would not return until the seventies.
Aldrich despised Spillane’s Mike Hammer and filmed him anyway, using a brutal and stupid private detective as a critique rather than a hero.
The great whatsit is the first nuclear MacGuffin and the film ends with it opened, which is the point where classical noir stops.
The apocalyptic ending, the contempt for the protagonist and the Cold War anxiety all point forward to a genre that would not return until the seventies.
16. The Killing (1956)
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"Kubrick’s third film, told out of order, made at twenty-eight."
The Killing is where Kubrick became Kubrick. A racetrack robbery told in fragmented chronology, doubling back to follow each participant through the same afternoon, with a newsreel narrator supplying times.
That structure was borrowed from Lionel White’s novel and executed with a precision nobody expected from a twenty-eight-year-old on a small budget. It is the direct ancestor of Reservoir Dogs, which Tarantino has acknowledged.
Sterling Hayden again, and the ending, in which everything comes apart because of a suitcase latch and a poodle on a runway, is the purest expression of noir’s argument about planning.
Kubrick was twenty-eight and the fragmented chronology was borrowed from Lionel White’s novel, with a newsreel narrator supplying times across a single afternoon.
It is the direct ancestor of Reservoir Dogs, which Tarantino has acknowledged, and Sterling Hayden is again the man with a plan and no luck.
The ending, coming apart because of a suitcase latch and a poodle on a runway, is the purest expression of noir’s argument about planning.
17. Touch of Evil (1958)
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"The opening shot is three minutes and twenty seconds, and Welles was fired before the edit."
Touch of Evil is the last film of the classical cycle and Welles got the job by accident when Charlton Heston assumed he was directing and the studio went along with it.
The opening crane shot follows a car with a bomb in the boot through a border town for over three minutes in one take, and the studio later laid credits over it. Universal recut the film, Welles wrote a fifty-eight page memo objecting, and a version following his notes was assembled in 1998.
Welles plays Quinlan himself, bloated and corrupt and right about the suspect for the wrong reasons, and Marlene Dietrich delivers the epitaph.
Welles got the job by accident when Charlton Heston assumed he was directing and the studio went along with it.
Universal recut the film, Welles wrote a fifty-eight page memo objecting, and a version following his notes was assembled in 1998.
Welles plays Quinlan himself, bloated and corrupt and right about the suspect for the wrong reasons, and Marlene Dietrich delivers the epitaph.
18. The Long Goodbye (1973)
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"Altman put Philip Marlowe in 1973 and let him be wrong about everything."
The Long Goodbye is a deliberate act of vandalism against the genre this list is built on. Altman takes Chandler’s Marlowe, a man of 1940s principles, and drops him into a Los Angeles of health food and yoga where nobody wants what he is selling.
Elliott Gould plays him as a mumbling anachronism who spends the film being lied to and agreeing with people. The camera never stops moving and almost never settles, which was a deliberate refusal of noir’s composed frames.
The ending, in which Marlowe does something Chandler’s Marlowe would never do, was so unpopular that the film was pulled and remarketed. It has been reassessed as one of the best films of the decade.
Altman takes Chandler’s Marlowe, a man of 1940s principles, and drops him into a Los Angeles of health food and yoga where nobody wants what he is selling.
The camera never stops moving and almost never settles, which was a deliberate refusal of noir’s composed frames.
The ending, in which Marlowe does something Chandler’s Marlowe would never do, was so unpopular the film was pulled and remarketed.
19. Body Heat (1981)
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"Double Indemnity remade in Florida heat, and Kathleen Turner’s debut."
Body Heat is Lawrence Kasdan’s directorial debut and an unapologetic reworking of Double Indemnity, transposed to a Florida heatwave where everybody is sweating and nobody has air conditioning.
The heat is the device. It explains the clothing, the irritability and the sense of a place where judgment has gone, and it replaces the Production Code constraints with something the 1981 rating allowed.
Kathleen Turner’s Matty is the best femme fatale since Jane Greer and the film’s final reveal is more ruthless than anything in the 1944 original.
The heat explains the clothing, the irritability and the sense of a place where judgment has gone, replacing the Production Code constraints the 1944 original worked under.
Kathleen Turner was making her first film and the final reveal is more ruthless than anything in Double Indemnity.
Kasdan had written Raiders and Empire and this is his directorial debut, shot during a genuine Florida heatwave the production used rather than fought.
20. Memento (2000)
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"Told backwards, because that is what it is like not to know how you got here."
Memento runs its colour scenes in reverse order and its black-and-white scenes forward, meeting in the middle, which is a gimmick only if the subject were anything else.
It is not a gimmick here because the structure reproduces the condition. The audience arrives in each scene with no memory of what preceded it, exactly as Leonard does, and has to reconstruct from notes and photographs.
Nolan adapted his brother’s short story and made it for around nine million dollars. The final reveal is that the protagonist has been lying to himself deliberately, which recontextualises the entire film and is the last thing the audience learns.
The colour scenes run in reverse and the black-and-white scenes run forward, meeting in the middle, and the structure reproduces the condition rather than depicting it.
The final reveal is that Leonard has been lying to himself deliberately, which recontextualises the whole film and is the last thing the audience learns.
Nolan made it for around nine million from his brother’s short story, and it is genuinely hard to rewatch once solved.
21. Brick (2005)
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"Hammett dialogue in a Californian high school, played completely straight."
Brick is the most committed genre transplant on this list. A student investigates an ex-girlfriend’s death using the full vocabulary and structure of 1930s hardboiled fiction, and nothing in the film acknowledges that this is unusual.
The slang is never explained. Johnson wrote a glossary and refused to include it, so the audience is expected to keep up exactly as a reader of Hammett would be, and the vice-principal functions as the police chief in a meeting over apple juice.
It cost around half a million dollars, was shot in Johnson’s old high school in San Clemente, and launched both him and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
Johnson wrote a glossary of the slang and refused to include it, so the audience is expected to keep up exactly as a reader of Hammett would be.
The vice-principal functions as the police chief in a meeting conducted over apple juice, which is the clearest statement of how seriously the film takes its own transplant.
It cost around half a million dollars, was shot in Johnson’s old high school in San Clemente, and launched both him and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
22. Sin City (2005)
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"Miller’s panels reproduced shot for shot, which is the achievement and the limitation."
Sin City is the most literal comic adaptation ever made. Rodriguez shot it against green screen using Miller’s panels as storyboards, gave Miller a co-directing credit, and resigned from the Directors Guild rather than remove it.
The monochrome with selective colour is a genuine achievement and the film looks like nothing else. It is also the limitation, because a comic’s compression works on a page and produces narration-heavy sequences on screen.
It sits here rather than higher because the fidelity is to the artwork rather than to the storytelling, and the three interlocking stories do not accumulate into anything.
Rodriguez shot it against green screen using Miller’s panels as storyboards, gave Miller a co-directing credit, and resigned from the Directors Guild rather than remove it.
The monochrome with selective colour is a genuine achievement and the film looks like nothing else, which is also its limitation.
A comic’s compression works on a page and produces narration-heavy sequences on screen, and the three interlocking stories do not accumulate into anything.
23. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)
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"Shane Black’s directorial debut, a Christmas noir that narrates itself badly on purpose."
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a parody of hardboiled narration written by somebody who had clearly read all of it. Downey tells the story badly, forgets things, goes back, apologises to the audience and admits he has been withholding.
The plot is a genuine Chandler-shaped mystery underneath it, with a missing sister, a Hollywood party and a body that should not be there, and it resolves properly rather than dissolving into the joke.
It was Downey’s first lead after his legal difficulties and directly preceded Iron Man. Val Kilmer’s Gay Perry is the best supporting performance in any Shane Black film.
Downey tells the story badly, forgets things, goes back, apologises to the audience and admits he has been withholding, which parodies the convention while delivering the information.
The plot underneath is a genuine Chandler-shaped mystery with a missing sister, a Hollywood party and a body that should not be there, and it resolves properly.
It was Downey’s first lead after his legal difficulties and directly preceded Iron Man, and Val Kilmer’s Gay Perry is the best supporting performance in any Shane Black film.
24. Blade Runner (1982)
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"The film that proved noir could be transplanted whole into science fiction."
Blade Runner is noir wearing science fiction and every element transfers directly. A detective pulled out of retirement for one last case, a client who is lying, a femme fatale, permanent rain, venetian blind shadows and voiceover narration in the original release.
That narration was studio-imposed and Ford has said he delivered it badly on purpose. The existence of seven versions is the defining fact about the film and the Final Cut from 2007 is the one Scott stands behind.
It failed commercially against E.T. and its influence on production design has been more total than almost any film of its decade.
Every noir element transfers directly: a detective pulled out of retirement, a lying client, a femme fatale, permanent rain and venetian blind shadows.
The voiceover was studio-imposed and Ford has said he delivered it badly on purpose, and the existence of seven versions is the defining fact about the film.
It failed commercially against E.T. and its influence on production design has been more total than almost any film of its decade.
25. Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
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"Beautiful, slow, and answering a question the original was careful not to ask."
Blade Runner 2049 is the most beautiful film on this list and the one with the least to say. Deakins finally won an Academy Award for it and the images are extraordinary throughout.
The problem is that it resolves things the original left open. The ambiguity about Deckard was the source of thirty years of argument, and settling it converts a question into a plot point.
It runs a hundred and sixty-four minutes, is deliberately slow, and lost a great deal of money. The craft is not in dispute; what it is for is.
Deakins finally won an Academy Award for it and the images are extraordinary throughout, particularly the Las Vegas sequences in orange particulate.
Settling the question about Deckard converts thirty years of argument into a plot point, which is a poor exchange.
It runs a hundred and sixty-four minutes, is deliberately slow, and lost a great deal of money, and the craft is not in dispute.