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Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize moral ambiguity and sexual motivation. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as stretching from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Film noir of this era is associated with a low-key black-and-white visual style that has roots in German Expressionist cinematography, while many of the prototypical stories and much of the attitude of classic noir derive from the hardboiled school of crime fiction that emerged in the United States during the Depression.The term film noir (French for "black film"), first applied to Hollywood movies by French critic Nino Frank in 1946, was unknown to most American film industry professionals of the era. Cinema historians and critics defined the canon of film noir in retrospect; many of those involved in the making of the classic noirs later professed to be unaware of having created a distinctive type of film.
M (1931)
German-American director Fritz Lang presents his first "talkie" -- and cinema's first serial killer -- in this 1931 classic. Plump pedophile Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre), propelled by a compulsion he can't control, escapes the eye of the law -- but not the wrath of the Berlin underworld being blamed for his crimes. The character of Beckert was later used in Nazi propaganda films to illustrate the evils of sexual deviance.
I AM A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG (1932)Paul Muni stars in director Mervyn LeRoy's gritty prison exposé based on Robert E. Burns's memoirs. Returning war veteran James Allen (Muni) descends into darkness when his architectural aspirations dissolve and he finds himself serving 10 years on bogus armed-robbery charges. Unable to suffer the dehumanization of a chain gang, Allen slips off his shackles and escapes … only to have a scheming woman and the corrupt penal system betray him again.
BABY FACE (1933)Lily Powers (Barbara Stanwyck) may look innocent, but she's far from naive. From her lowly beginnings serving drinks in her father's basement speakeasy, she uses her looks and charm to hook up with a series of men, dropping each of them after they've helped her advance in the world. Leaving a trail of broken hearts and ruined lives, cynical Lily eventually realizes that she, too, may be vulnerable to love -- and the pain that goes with it.
SHADOW OF A DOUBT (1943)
Master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock directed this tale about Charlie (Teresa Wright), a small-town girl consumed with finding out whether her unhinged Uncle (Joseph Cotton) is a serial killer. The arrival of detectives and a murder-infatuated neighbor (Hume Cronyn) only increase Charlie's paranoia. Tension builds as she draws closer to the truth, and in classic Hitchcock style, the film culminates in a nail-biting scene aboard a speeding train.
DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944)
Smitten insurance man Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) plots the perfect murder with femme fatale client Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck): Stage her husband's "accidental" death to collect double indemnity on his life insurance, then abscond with the loot. But the lethal duo must first get past a crafty claims investigator (Edward G. Robinson) who senses something isn't kosher. What ensues is a cat-and-mouse game with fatal consequences.
LAURA (1944)
Otto Preminger's classic mystery received four Oscar nominations, including Best Director, and won the Oscar for Best Cinematography in 1944. Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney) has been murdered. As New York detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) investigates, he finds that everyone seems to be in love with her -- and he, too, gradually falls under her spell. But things aren't always as they seem, and McPherson soon faces a shockingly unexpected twist.
THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW (1944)
Legendary filmmaker Fritz Lang directs this psychological thriller about an unassuming college professor (Edward G. Robinson) who becomes involved with a beautiful model (Joan Bennett) and finds himself ensnared in a web of blackmail, deception and murder. A masterful storyteller, Lang is in top form as he weaves this spellbinding noir, replete with stunning cinematography, sublime editing and pitch-perfect direction.
SCARLET STREET (1945)
Unassuming cashier Christopher Cross (Edward G. Robinson) falls hard when he meets Kitty (Joan Bennett). They become involved, but Kitty keeps a petty crook, Johnny (Jess Barker), on the side as her real love interest. Hoping to impress Kitty, Cross embezzles funds from his employer. What he doesn't realize is that Kitty and Johnny are getting rich on Cross's paintings, which have become a huge success under Kitty's name.
DETOUR (1945)
Classic film noir rules when down-in-the-dumps musician Al Roberts (Tom Neal) decides to hitchhike cross-country to be with his chanteuse girlfriend. He accepts a lift from high-roller Charles Haskell Jr. (Edmund MacDonald), who promptly suffers a fatal coronary. Afraid the cops will finger him as a killer, Al ditches the body and assumes Haskell's identity. But Al's trip quickly goes downhill when he picks up a scheming hitchhiker (Ann Savage).
THE BIG SLEEP (1946)
Tough-as-nails private eye Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) takes on a blackmail case and soon falls for Lauren Bacall, the feisty daughter of a wealthy general. The plot thickens when the murder victims pile up. The film was blessed with stellar talent: Raymond Chandler wrote the novel on which the movie is based, William Faulkner adapted the book for the screen, and Howard Hawks directed.
THE STRANGER (1946)
Directed by and starring Orson Welles, this Academy Award-nominated film tells the story of Franz Kindler, a Nazi war criminal who has fled to Connecticut and assumed a new identity: Prof. Charles Rankin. While an Allied War Crimes Commission detective (the indomitable Edward G. Robinson) hunts down Kindler without knowing how he looks, Kindler's new wife (Loretta Young) discovers the ugly truth about her husband's evil past.
NOTORIOUS (1946)
This top-notch Hitchcock espionage thriller builds to an incredibly suspenseful climax. Government agent T.R. Devlin (Cary Grant) recruits Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman) to spy on her father's influential Nazi friends. As part of her cover, she marries ringleader Claude Rains, but finds she's falling in love with Grant. The 360-degree camera pan around a smitten Grant and Bergman ranks as one of the screen's hottest love scenes.
DARK PASSAGE (1947)
Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall grace the screen in this classic 1947 thriller about a convict who escapes from San Quentin to hunt down his wife's true killer. To complete his mission, he must escape detection by the cops, so he undergoes surgery and is forced to hide out in the home of a mysterious woman he's just met.
OUT OF THE PAST (1947)
Jacques Tourneur directs this definitive noir classic (remade in 1984 as Against All Odds with Jeff Bridges and Rachel Ward) about a trio to reckon with -- troubled private investigator Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum), drop-dead beauty Kathie (Jane Greer) and moneyed mobster Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas). Bailey is hired to find Kathie, Sterling's former mistress. When he finds her, the unexpected occurs.
THE NAKED CITY (1948)When a model is found drowned in her bathtub, homicide detectives Dan Muldoon (Barry Fitzgerald) and Jimmy Halloran (Don Taylor) are on the case. Their investigation, the inner workings of the police department and some of the "eight million stories in the Naked City" are explored. Filmed on location in New York City, this classic thriller won Oscars for cinematography and editing and was nominated for a Best Writing Oscar.
THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI (1948)
Batten down the hatches -- it's gonna be one bumpy ride when Mike O'Hara (Orson Welles, who also wrote and directed) becomes a crew member on Arthur Bannister's (Everett Sloane) yacht. In nothing flat, sparks fly between O'Hara and Bannister's wife, Rosalie (Rita Hayworth), with murder not far off. The hall of mirrors sequence at the end of the film is classic Welles.
THE THIRD MAN (1949)
Who was Harry Lime? And who killed him? And is he really dead? These are just a few of the questions writer-turned-sleuth Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) tries to answer as he trolls the shadowy streets of postwar Vienna. Director Carol Reed turns Graham Greene's classic mystery into a film noir without equal. You'll be humming the zither theme for weeks!
CRISS CROSS (1949)Working man Steve (Burt Lancaster) makes an honest living as an armored truck driver. His only downfall? His lingering feelings for his ex-wife, Anna (Yvonne De Carlo), a greedy woman who recently married a dangerous mob boss (Dan Duryea). When the two ex-lovers reunite and her husband catches them, they manage to convince him they were plotting to rob the truck. Now, Steve is now forced to go through with the crime … or face death.
GUN CRAZY - DEADLY IS THE FEMALE (1949)Shockingly dark and brutal for its time, this drama was directed by Joseph H. Lewis and stars Peggy Cummins and John Dall. A searing forerunner to Bonnie and Clyde, the film tells the story of a gun-obsessed twosome who meet at a carnival, run off to get married and then commit a string of daring robberies across the country. The screenplay was adapted by Dalton Trumbo from novelist MacKinlay Kantor's magazine article.
THIEVES' HIGHWAY (1949)Jules Dassin's last completed film centers on World War II G.I. Nick Garcos (Richard Conte), who returns to San Francisco to find his trucker father crippled after a fight with crooked driver Mike Figlia (Lee J. Cobb). Garcos's plans to marry his longtime girlfriend, Polly (Barbara Lawrence), fizzle as he becomes embroiled in his father's feud with Figlia's men and turns from good guy to bad. Valentina Cortesa and Morris Carnovsky also star.
SUNSET BLVD (1950)
Billy Wilder's noir classic about Hollywood decadence remains as razor-sharp as ever. Norma (Gloria Swanson), a faded silent film star plotting her return, employs Joe (William Holden), a struggling screenwriter, to help edit a script that she has penned. As the work progresses, Norma draws closer to Joe, engulfing him in her fiery throes, but Joe wants out.
D.O.A. (1950)
While on vacation in San Francisco, an accountant named Frank Bigelow (Edmond O'Brien) ingests a dose of lethal, slow-acting poison and begins a desperate search for the individual responsible for his impending death. This great film noir contains the brilliant twist of the "detective" trying to solve his own murder … before the fact.
IN A LONELY PLACE (1950)Just when Hollywood screenwriter Dixon Steele (Humphrey Bogart) sparks up a romance with his neighbor Laurel (Gloria Grahame), the police begin to suspect him of murdering a former lover. Laurel believes Dixon's innocent, but his alibi doesn't wash with the police. As they continue to pressure Dixon, the lovebirds' relationship suffers -- and after witnessing Dixon's increasing hot-tempered behavior, Laurel suspects the police may be right.
NIGHT AND THE CITY (1950)Shot in London, Jules Dassin's film noir centers on grifter Harry (Richard Widmark), who schemes to take over wrestling promoter Kristo's (Herbert Lom) racket. Harry pits Kristo's father, Gregorius, against his own son and convinces nightclub owner Phil (Francis L. Sullivan) to invest in his scheme. But his plan falls apart when Gregorius is killed and Phil learns that his wife (Googie Withers) is leaving him for Harry. Gene Tierney also stars.
WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS (1950)Tormented by his criminal father's reputation, hard-line cop Mark Dixon (Dana Andrews) spins a web of lies to conceal his accidental killing of a suspect. But by planting evidence meant to pin the rap on a racketeer (Gary Merrill), the gumshoe unwittingly turns an innocent taxi driver into the prime suspect. To further complicate matters, Dixon falls for the cabbie's daughter (Gene Tierney) in this stinging film noir directed by Otto Preminger.
ACE IN THE HOLE (1951)
Fired from a number of big-city papers, reporter Charles Tatum (Kirk Douglas) tries to reestablish himself in New Mexico. When a local miner is trapped in a cave-in, Tatum turns the victim's misfortune into a media frenzy to further his own career. A local sheriff agrees to help prolong the rescue efforts, thereby helping build up the story. This classic film has been touted as director Billy Wilder's sharpest, most uncompromising piece of work.
PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET (1953)
A routine subway ride turns out to be anything but when Candy (Jean Peters) is mugged by a man named Skip McCoy (Richard Widmark), who's in search of valuable microfilm that Candy is carrying. Aware of the film's important nature but not its exact contents (government secrets intended for Communist spies), Candy must now enlist the help of her ex-boyfriend Joey (Richard Kiley) to find the thief and get the microfilm back.
KILLER'S KISS (1955)
Davy (Jamie Smith), a washed-up boxer, intervenes when a pretty dancehall girl named Gloria (Irene Kane) is brutalized by her hoodlum boss and lover (Frank Silvera). Gloria falls for her rescuer and angers her boyfriend, who promptly sends men to kill him. But when Davy's friend is murdered instead, the lovebirds must run for their lives. Stanley Kubrick writes, produces, edits, shoots and directs this film -- his second full-length feature.
THE WRONG MAN (1956)
Director Alfred Hitchcock rips a story from newspaper headlines in the 1950s and uses it as inspiration for this thriller. Henry Fonda stars as a down-on-his-luck musician wrongfully branded a criminal when he tries to convert his wife's (Vera Miles) life insurance policy into cash to pay for medical debts. Cops think he's a robber who has eluded them and has finally landed in their clutches, and he must fight to the end to clear his name.
THE KILLING (1956)
In Stanley Kubrick's noir classic, career criminal Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden) plans one last heist before settling down to a respectable life with Fay (Colleen Gray). Clay and several cohorts devise a complex racetrack robbery, but inner tensions and bad luck work against them. Kubrick wrote the script with Jim Thompson, who penned pulp novels such as The Grifters, The Killer Inside Me and Pop. 1280, all of which were made into classic films.
SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS (1957)Walter Winchell-style columnist J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster) uses his power to steamroll both friends and enemies. Fawning press agent Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis), desperate to promote his client in Hunsecker's column, pesters Hunsecker until he's finally drawn into the columnist's devious plan to ruin a jazz guitarist who's angered Hunsecker by daring to date his sister. No one is left unscathed in this sinister tale of greed and corruption.
TOUCH OF EVIL (1958)
Straight-arrow narcotics detective Mike Vargas (Charlton Heston) sees his honeymoon cut short when a car crossing the U.S.-Mexico border explodes before his eyes. Vargas forsakes his bride (Janet Leigh) to mount an investigation but soon locks horns with corpulent Sheriff Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles), a shady cop who's not above planting evidence or colluding with the local crime lord to keep Vargas from discovering the ugly truth.
