BFI's One Great Film Noir for Every Year (1940-59)
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Nobody knew what to call film noirs when they first started coming out of Hollywood in the early 1940s. Reviews of the time call them “tough melodramas”, “murder mysteries” or simply “crime dramas”.
The French had the solution. When movies such as Double Indemnity, Laura and Murder, My Sweet (all 1944) saw delayed release in Paris after the end of the Second World War, critics likened them to the ‘romans noirs’ of 1930s crime novelists such as Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain and Dashiell Hammett. The term ‘film noir’ stuck.
For most of the 1940s and 50s, this style of crime film was dominant. You can spot them by their shadowy visuals and shady morals. Hard-talking men fall for duplicitous dames, as cigarette smoke wreaths around them on dark street corners or in rooms with the slatted blinds pulled down.
Hot on the heels of the Great Depression and the traumatising violence of the war, film noir reflected a world-weary fatalism in the American mood (and in the many European émigré filmmakers who had fled to Hollywood). The movies borrowed angular lighting effects from 1920s German films and a poetic gloominess from 1930s French films, wrapping it all up in tantalising packages of grit, glamour and cynicism.
Here’s one key film from each of the influential cycle’s peak years. (Plus three more to "See Also")
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1 new
Stranger on the Third Floor
1940, in 2 top lists Check -
2 new
Johnny Apollo
1940, in 0 top lists Check -
3 new
The Letter
1940, in 5 top lists Check -
4 new
They Drive by Night
1940, in 2 top lists Check -
5 new
The Maltese Falcon
1941, in 27 top lists Check -
6 new
High Sierra
1941, in 8 top lists Check -
7 new
I Wake Up Screaming
1941, in 2 top lists Check -
8 new
The Shanghai Gesture
1941, in 3 top lists Check -
9 new
This Gun for Hire
1942, in 4 top lists Check -
10 new
The Glass Key
1942, in 3 top lists Check -
11 new
Moontide
1942, in 1 top list Check -
17 new
The Woman in the Window
1944, in 8 top lists Check -
18 new
Double Indemnity
1944, in 37 top lists Check -
19 new
Laura
1944, in 21 top lists Check -
20 new
Phantom Lady
1944, in 5 top lists Check -
21 new
Detour
1945, in 16 top lists Check -
22 new
Fallen Angel
1945, in 2 top lists Check -
23 new
Mildred Pierce
1945, in 17 top lists Check -
25 new
The Postman Always Rings Twice
1946, in 9 top lists Check -
26 new
The Big Sleep
1946, in 22 top lists Check -
28 new
The Killers
1946, in 15 top lists Check -
30 new
Brute Force
1947, in 6 top lists Check -
31 new
Kiss of Death
1947, in 5 top lists Check -
32 new
The Lady from Shanghai
1947, in 9 top lists Check -
33 new
Cry of the City
1948, in 2 top lists Check -
34 new
Force of Evil
1948, in 13 top lists Check -
35 new
Moonrise
1948, in 4 top lists Check -
36 new
Raw Deal
1948, in 5 top lists Check -
39 new
Criss Cross
1949, in 6 top lists Check -
40 new
White Heat
1949, in 15 top lists Check -
42 new
The Asphalt Jungle
1950, in 15 top lists Check -
43 new
Gun Crazy
1950, in 17 top lists Check -
47 new
On Dangerous Ground
1951, in 3 top lists Check -
48 new
Strangers on a Train
1951, in 17 top lists Check -
51 new
Kansas City Confidential
1952, in 3 top lists Check -
53 new
Angel Face
1952, in 5 top lists Check -
54 new
The Big Heat
1953, in 18 top lists Check -
55 new
The Hitch-Hiker
1953, in 7 top lists Check -
56 new
Pickup on South Street
1953, in 14 top lists Check -
58 new
Crime Wave
1953, in 2 top lists Check -
59 new
Riot in Cell Block 11
1954, in 2 top lists Check -
60 new
Suddenly
1954, in 2 top lists Check -
61 new
Kiss Me Deadly
1955, in 20 top lists Check -
62 new
The Big Combo
1955, in 7 top lists Check -
63 new
The Night of the Hunter
1955, in 34 top lists Check -
64 new
The Phenix City Story
1955, in 6 top lists Check -
65 new
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
1956, in 3 top lists Check -
66 new
The Killing
1956, in 15 top lists Check -
67 new
While the City Sleeps
1956, in 5 top lists Check -
68 new
The Wrong Man
1956, in 8 top lists Check
Last updated on May 20, 2020 by Chilton; source