Slant Magazine The 100 Best Film Noirs of All Time
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Purists will argue that film noir was born in 1941 with the release of John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon and died in 1958 with Marlene Dietrich traipsing down a long, dark, lonely road at the end of Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil. And while this period contains the quintessence of what Italian-born French film critic Nino Frank originally characterized as film noir, the genre has always been in a constant state of flux, adapting to the different times and cultures out of which these films emerged.
Noir came into its own alongside the ravages of World War II, with the gangster and detective films of the era drastically transforming into something altogether new as the aesthetics of German Expressionism took hold in America, and in large part due to the influx of German expatriates like Fritz Lang. These already dark, hardboiled films suddenly gained a newfound viciousness and sense of ambiguity, their dangers and existential inquiries directed at audiences through canted camera angles and a shroud of smoke and shadows.
As the war reached its end stage, soldiers came home to find a once-unquestioned era of male authority put in the crosshairs of changing cultural norms. And in lockstep, the protagonists of many a noir began to feel as if they were living in a newly vulnerable world, taking cover beneath trench coats and fedoras, adopting cynical, wise-cracking personae, and packing heat at all times while remaining hyper-aware of the feminine dangers that surrounded them. Jean-Luc Godard once said that “all you need for a movie is a gun and a girl,” and in noir, the latter was often the most dangerous. Indeed, Barbara Stanwyck’s anklet in Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and Ann Savage’s icy stare in Edgar G. Ulmer’s Detour are as deadly as any bullet.
Our list acknowledges the classics of the genre, the big-budget studio noirs and the cheapest of B noirs made on the fringes of the Hollywood studio system. But we’ve also taken a more expansive view of noir, allowing room for supreme examples of the proto-noirs that anticipated the genre and the neo-noirs that resulted from the genre being rebooted in the midst of the Cold War, seemingly absorbing the world’s darkest and deepest fears. Then and now, the best examples of this genre continue to evoke—shrewdly and with the irrepressible passion of the dispossessed—humanity’s eternal fear of social disruption.
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61 new
Vertigo
1958, in 42 top lists Check -
11 new
Double Indemnity
1944, in 37 top lists Check -
4 new
The Third Man
1949, in 37 top lists Check -
26 new
Blade Runner
1982, in 36 top lists Check -
19 new
The Night of the Hunter
1955, in 35 top lists Check -
17 new
Sunset Blvd.
1950 — a.k.a. Sunset Boulevard, in 35 top lists Check -
41 new
Taxi Driver
1976, in 34 top lists Check -
7 new
Chinatown
1974, in 31 top lists Check -
6 new
Touch of Evil
1958, in 30 top lists Check -
37 new
À bout de souffle
1960 — a.k.a. Breathless, in 29 top lists Check -
23 new
Blue Velvet
1986, in 27 top lists Check -
63 new
Fargo
1996, in 27 top lists Check -
75 new
L.A. Confidential
1997, in 27 top lists Check -
14 new
The Maltese Falcon
1941, in 27 top lists Check -
77 new
The Big Lebowski
1998, in 26 top lists Check -
39 new
Mulholland Dr.
2001 — a.k.a. Mulholland Drive, in 26 top lists Check -
3 new
The Big Sleep
1946, in 22 top lists Check -
34 new
Ace in the Hole
1951, in 21 top lists Check -
20 new
Laura
1944, in 21 top lists Check -
5 new
Kiss Me Deadly
1955, in 20 top lists Check -
22 new
Le samouraï
1967 — a.k.a. Le Samouraï, in 20 top lists Check -
15 new
Sweet Smell of Success
1957, in 20 top lists Check -
1 new
In a Lonely Place
1950, in 19 top lists Check -
8 new
The Big Heat
1953, in 18 top lists Check -
51 new
Gun Crazy
1950, in 17 top lists Check -
53 new
Mildred Pierce
1945, in 17 top lists Check -
10 new
Detour
1945, in 16 top lists Check -
2 new
Out of the Past
1947, in 16 top lists Check -
42 new
Tengoku to jigoku
1963 — a.k.a. High and Low, in 16 top lists Check -
92 new
The Asphalt Jungle
1950, in 15 top lists Check -
91 new
The Killers
1946, in 15 top lists Check -
44 new
The Killing
1956, in 15 top lists Check -
9 new
The Long Goodbye
1973, in 15 top lists Check -
35 new
Odd Man Out
1947, in 15 top lists Check -
47 new
Point Blank
1967, in 15 top lists Check -
76 new
White Heat
1949, in 15 top lists Check -
12 new
Pickup on South Street
1953, in 14 top lists Check -
48 new
Force of Evil
1948, in 13 top lists Check -
29 new
Gilda
1946, in 13 top lists Check -
30 new
They Live by Night
1948, in 13 top lists Check -
33 new
Night and the City
1950, in 12 top lists Check -
64 new
Ossessione
1943, in 12 top lists Check -
90 new
Ascenseur pour l'échafaud
1958 — a.k.a. Elevator to the Gallows, in 10 top lists Check -
56 new
Basic Instinct
1992, in 10 top lists Check -
52 new
Blood Simple
1984, in 10 top lists Check -
74 new
The Fallen Idol
1948, in 10 top lists Check -
36 new
Lost Highway
1997, in 10 top lists Check -
88 new
Pépé le Moko
1937, in 10 top lists Check -
13 new
Scarlet Street
1945, in 10 top lists Check -
21 new
Tirez sur le pianiste
1960 — a.k.a. Shoot the Piano Player, in 10 top lists Check
Last updated on Apr 17, 2019; source