Top 25 Film Noir

by kingrahl | created - 30 Dec 2014 | updated - 02 Jan 2015 | Public
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1. Criss Cross (1949)

Not Rated | 84 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir

An armored truck driver and his ex-wife conspire with a gang to have his own truck robbed on the route.

Director: Robert Siodmak | Stars: Burt Lancaster, Yvonne De Carlo, Dan Duryea, Stephen McNally

Votes: 9,597

2. Touch of Evil (1958)

PG-13 | 95 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir

99 Metascore

A stark, perverse story of murder, kidnapping and police corruption in a Mexican border town.

Director: Orson Welles | Stars: Charlton Heston, Orson Welles, Janet Leigh, Joseph Calleia

Votes: 109,798 | Gross: $2.24M

3. In a Lonely Place (1950)

Not Rated | 94 min | Drama, Film-Noir, Mystery

A potentially violent screenwriter is a murder suspect until his lovely neighbor clears him. However, she soon starts to have her doubts.

Director: Nicholas Ray | Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame, Frank Lovejoy, Carl Benton Reid

Votes: 35,247

4. Possessed (1947)

Approved | 108 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir

After being found wandering the streets of Los Angeles, a severely catatonic woman tells a doctor the complex story of how she wound up there.

Director: Curtis Bernhardt | Stars: Joan Crawford, Van Heflin, Raymond Massey, Geraldine Brooks

Votes: 5,910 | Gross: $1.99M

5. Angel Face (1952)

Approved | 91 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir

Ambulance driver Frank Jessup is ensnared in the schemes of the sensuous but dangerous Diane Tremayne.

Director: Otto Preminger | Stars: Robert Mitchum, Jean Simmons, Mona Freeman, Herbert Marshall

Votes: 9,029

6. The Third Man (1949)

Approved | 93 min | Film-Noir, Mystery, Thriller

97 Metascore

Pulp novelist Holly Martins travels to shadowy, postwar Vienna, only to find himself investigating the mysterious death of an old friend, Harry Lime.

Director: Carol Reed | Stars: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Trevor Howard

Votes: 181,815 | Gross: $0.45M

7. Double Indemnity (1944)

Passed | 107 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir

95 Metascore

A Los Angeles insurance representative lets an alluring housewife seduce him into a scheme of insurance fraud and murder that arouses the suspicion of his colleague, an insurance investigator.

Director: Billy Wilder | Stars: Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson, Byron Barr

Votes: 167,435 | Gross: $5.72M

8. Out of the Past (1947)

Approved | 97 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir

85 Metascore

A private eye escapes his past to run a gas station in a small town, but his past catches up with him. Now he must return to the big city world of danger, corruption, double crosses, and duplicitous dames.

Director: Jacques Tourneur | Stars: Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas, Rhonda Fleming

Votes: 40,903

9. The Killing (1956)

Approved | 84 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir

91 Metascore

Crook Johnny Clay assembles a five-man team to plan and execute a daring racetrack robbery.

Director: Stanley Kubrick | Stars: Sterling Hayden, Coleen Gray, Vince Edwards, Jay C. Flippen

Votes: 97,487

10. The Big Sleep (1946)

Passed | 114 min | Crime, Film-Noir, Mystery

86 Metascore

Private detective Philip Marlowe is hired by a wealthy family. Before the complex case is over, he's seen murder, blackmail and what might be love.

Director: Howard Hawks | Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Ridgely, Martha Vickers

Votes: 90,516 | Gross: $6.54M

11. Force of Evil (1948)

Passed | 79 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir

89 Metascore

An unethical lawyer who wants to help his older brother becomes a partner with a client in the numbers racket.

Director: Abraham Polonsky | Stars: John Garfield, Thomas Gomez, Beatrice Pearson, Marie Windsor

Votes: 7,665

12. Sunset Blvd. (1950)

Passed | 110 min | Drama, Film-Noir

94 Metascore

A screenwriter develops a dangerous relationship with a faded film star determined to make a triumphant return.

Director: Billy Wilder | Stars: William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olson

Votes: 236,416

13. The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Passed | 100 min | Crime, Film-Noir, Mystery

97 Metascore

San Francisco private detective Sam Spade takes on a case that involves him with three eccentric criminals, a gorgeous liar and their quest for a priceless statuette, with the stakes rising after his partner is murdered.

Director: John Huston | Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Gladys George, Peter Lorre

Votes: 166,560 | Gross: $2.11M

14. Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

Not Rated | 106 min | Crime, Film-Noir, Mystery

A doomed female hitchhiker pulls Mike Hammer into a deadly whirlpool of intrigue, revolving around a mysterious "great whatsit".

Director: Robert Aldrich | Stars: Ralph Meeker, Albert Dekker, Paul Stewart, Juano Hernandez

Votes: 22,077

15. Mildred Pierce (1945)

Approved | 111 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir

88 Metascore

A hard-working mother inches towards disaster as she divorces her husband and starts a successful restaurant business to support her spoiled daughter.

Director: Michael Curtiz | Stars: Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Eve Arden

Votes: 28,653

16. Notorious (1946)

Not Rated | 102 min | Drama, Film-Noir, Romance

100 Metascore

The daughter of a convicted German spy is asked by American agents to gather information on a ring of German scientists in South America. How far will she have to go to ingratiate herself with them?

Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Louis Calhern

Votes: 107,270 | Gross: $10.46M

17. Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)

Approved | 89 min | Drama, Film-Noir, Mystery

While on the telephone, an invalid woman overhears what she thinks is a murder plot and attempts to prevent it.

Director: Anatole Litvak | Stars: Barbara Stanwyck, Burt Lancaster, Ann Richards, Wendell Corey

Votes: 12,549

18. Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

Passed | 108 min | Film-Noir, Thriller

94 Metascore

A teenage girl, overjoyed when her favorite uncle comes to visit the family in their quiet California town, slowly begins to suspect that he is in fact the "Merry Widow" killer sought by the authorities.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotten, Macdonald Carey, Henry Travers

Votes: 70,495

19. Key Largo (1948)

Approved | 100 min | Action, Crime, Drama

A man visits his war buddy's family hotel and finds a gangster running things. As a hurricane approaches, the two end up confronting each other.

Director: John Huston | Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, Lauren Bacall, Lionel Barrymore

Votes: 43,967

20. Strangers on a Train (1951)

PG | 101 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir

88 Metascore

A psychopathic man tries to forcibly persuade a tennis star to agree to his theory that two strangers can get away with murder by submitting to his plan to kill the other's most-hated person.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: Farley Granger, Robert Walker, Ruth Roman, Leo G. Carroll

Votes: 140,995 | Gross: $7.63M

21. Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

Approved | 96 min | Drama, Film-Noir

100 Metascore

Powerful but unethical Broadway columnist J.J. Hunsecker coerces unscrupulous press agent Sidney Falco into breaking up his sister's romance with a jazz musician.

Director: Alexander Mackendrick | Stars: Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Susan Harrison, Martin Milner

Votes: 35,692

22. The Desperate Hours (1955)

Approved | 112 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir

Three escaped convicts move in on and terrorize a suburban household.

Director: William Wyler | Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Fredric March, Arthur Kennedy, Martha Scott

Votes: 10,876

23. Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

Not Rated | 161 min | Drama, Mystery

95 Metascore

An upstate Michigan lawyer defends a soldier who claims he killed an innkeeper due to temporary insanity after the victim raped his wife. What is the truth, and will he win his case?

Director: Otto Preminger | Stars: James Stewart, Lee Remick, Ben Gazzara, Arthur O'Connell

Votes: 71,321 | Gross: $11.90M

24. Dark Passage (1947)

Passed | 106 min | Film-Noir, Thriller

68 Metascore

A man convicted of murdering his wife escapes from prison and works with a woman to try to prove his innocence.

Director: Delmer Daves | Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Bruce Bennett, Agnes Moorehead

Votes: 21,970

25. The Stranger (1946)

Passed | 95 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir

76 Metascore

An investigator from the War Crimes Commission travels to Connecticut to find an infamous Nazi.

Director: Orson Welles | Stars: Orson Welles, Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young, Philip Merivale

Votes: 28,709



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