The MoFo Top 100 Film Noir Countdown

Two top notch films round out the Classic Noir countdown, and of course both were on my ballot.

I have Sunset Boulevard at #15. I sort of scratch my head as to why I had it on the back half of my ballot, as I do adore the film, and at one point, was sort of binge watching it weekly. That was some time ago though, so I am guessing the fact that io hadn't revisited it in so long is the culprit here. Probably deserves to be higher.



I love the fact that this guy pretty much becomes a prisoner, but not only are there no locks on the doors, there aren't even any latches or knobs. I also love the Betty character and Erich Von Stroheim as Max. A quirky, sort of bizarre film that is a ton of fun, but also ultimately sad.


Double Indemnity is a fine film to take the top slot. I have seen it several times, and it is always a pleasure to watch. That said, it is not a Top 5 favorite of mine, and I think its placement on my ballot still feels just right sitting at #8. It's Top 10 material, but just doesn't rank among my favorites of the style. Great stuff, though!

__________________

Last but certainly not least: Thank you to all the folks who brought this countdown to life, especially Citizen Rules and Yoda. I adore classic noir, but realized during this countdown that I still have a lot of catching up to do. I will continue my rectifications, hopefully eventually reaching 100% on the list.

Don't let Minio hear you say that.


What a zowey ending!! A double Wilder. Both great movies especially Sunset Boulevard. Unfortunately it wasn't on my list. I didn't really think of it as Noir. It is more like Los Angeles Gothic. A kind of psychological horror about the film industry. Double Indemnity was, of course on my list. I had it at #14.


I think all my picks were on the list, except for Deception and my #25, A Woman's Face. I love Deception. Bette Davis tries to keep the fact that she has been a kept woman since her man has been trapped in Europe during WWII. It's has got the great Claude Rains as her ex-lover and Paul Henreid as the man she has been waiting for. It is an excellent movie. Watching Bette Davis try to play these guys is very entertaining.
Oh, I almost forgot, a big thanks to our man Citizen Rules for running this countdown. Also to Holden, et. al. for there stats and extra info. I apologize if I missed anyone.

Yeah, both CR and Thief did great work on the countdowns, but to my taste I'd rather we had done one, then the other, just to spread them out a little.

I honestly don't see that as workable. If we would've done 6 months on just the noir countdown, then afterwards another 6 months on the neo noir countdown, many MoFos would've been upset about it taking so long. Plus, the neo noir countdown starting after the noir countdown would've seemed like an afterthought or 'yesterday's newspaper', as people had just done the noir countdown...Enthusiasm to do 'part 2' would be low.

If the idea of noir countdowns being done consecutively had been floated, people would've then insisted that both countdowns should be combined into one. Indeed some said just that...of course they weren't probably big fans of old film noir so didn't really care about making a solid Top 100 noir list. But I did...and that's why I was adamant and pushed the idea of duel noir countdowns, so that we could have a solid Top 100 noir countdown list and a Top 100 neo noir countdown list too...All done in the same time frame that just one countdown would take. I'm happy with the way both countdowns turned out.

Good countdown, thanks for hosting. My list:

1. Kiss me Deadly (1955)
2. The Night of the Hunter (1955)
3. Sunset Blvd (1950)
4. Elevator to the Gallows (1958)
5. The Third Man (1949)
6. Touch of Evil (1958)
7. The Lady from Shanghai (1947)
8. The Killing (1956)
9. Double Indemnity (1944)
10. The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
11. Ace in the Hole (1951)
12. The Maltese Falcon
13. Mildred Pierce (1945)
14. Detour (1945)
15. The Wrong Man (1956)
16. Nightmare Alley (1947)
17. The Hitch-Hiker (1953)
18. In a Lonely Place (1950)
19. Out of the Past (1947)
20. Pickup on South Street (1953)
21. They Live by Night (1948)
22. The Big Heat (1953)

Diehl40's Film Noir List

1. Double Indemnity
2. Touch of Evil
3. The Third Man
4. Out of the Past
5. The Big Sleep
6. Laura
7. The Maltese Falcon
8. The Night of the Hunter
9. Act of Violence
10. Gilda
11. Ace in the Hole
12. The Big Heat
13. The Wrong Man
14. Mildred Pierce
15. Criss Cross
16. Murder My Sweet
17. The Strange Love of Martha Ivers
18. Gun Crazy
19. Sweet Smell of Success
20. Detour
21. Asphalt Jungle
22. Desperate Hours
23. Angel Face
24. Best the Devil
25. Beyond a Reasonable doubt

Oh, I agree with your points. I didn't mean run them consecutively. I meant run them at entirely different times, even months apart. Just my druthers.

I enjoyed them both, but I joined the neo-noir one just as a lark-- to participate. Classic noir is tricky to define. IMO several films I saw listed on IMDB or Wikipedia as "noir" really are not. I think the tendency is to name any crime film shot in black & white from 1940 to 1960 as noir.

Neo-noir? All over the map. Almost any crime film since 1960 seems to qualify... But who cares, as long as everyone is having a good time.

I see what you're saying Doc and in a perfect world we would've done them as you said, many months apart. I just don't think the MoFos would've went for that I agree too that many of us had different definitions of what was and wasn't noir. I know I don't think of Hitch as doing noir. Maybe a couple of his films, but mostly he's grounded in the British tradition of mystery thrillers...and no one done them better but they don't feel like noir to me. Though look at it this way are #1 noir was certainly noir...Double Indemnity.

Rauldc14's List

1. Double Indemnity
2. Ride the Pink Horse
3. Laura
4. Shadow of a Doubt
5. In a Lonely Place
6. Sunset Boulevard
7. The Third Man
8. Gilda
9. The Night of the Hunter
10. The Killers
11. The Maltese Falcon
12. Strangers on a Train
13. The Big Sleep
14. Gun Crazy
15. Sweet Smell of Success
16. Scarlett Street
17. Out of the Past
18. Mildred Pierce
19. Detour
20. Touch of Evil
21. The Postman Always Rings Twice
22. The Suspect
23. Caged
24. The Woman in the Window
25. Leave Her to Heaven

Everything made it!

My List

1. Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
2. Brute Force (1947)
3. The Killers (1946)
4. Key Largo (1948)
5. Caged (1950)
6. Niagara (1953)
7. The Harder They Fall (1956)
8. The Wrong Man (1956)
9. Ace in the Hole (1951)
10. The Maltese Falcon (1941)
11. Touch of Evil (1958)
12. The Lost Weekend (1945)
13. In a Lonely Place (1950)
14. Notorious (1946)
15. Stray Dog (1949)
16. Death of a Cyclist (1955)
17. Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950)
18. Kiss of Death (1947)
19. Phone Call from a Stranger (1952)
20. White Heat (1949)
21. Out of the Past (1947)
22. The Big Sleep (1946)
23. The Big Heat (1953)
24. Act of Violence (1948)
25. The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)

__________________

[ J ] - [ S ] - [ F ]

my list:

1. Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
2. The Wrong Man (1956)
3. On Dangerous Ground (1951)
4. Pickup on South Street (1953)
5. Out of the Past (1947)
6. Double Indemnity (1944)
7. The Big Sleep (1946)
8. In a Lonely Place (1950)
9. Strangers on a Train (1951)
10. Night and the City (1950)
11. Fallen Angel (1945)
12. The Lady from Shanghai (1947)
13. The Narrow Margin (1952)
14. Ride the Pink Horse (1947)
15. Touch of Evil (1958)
16. The Breaking Point (1950)
17. Laura (1944)
18. Confidential Report (1955)
19. The Big Heat (1953)
20. The Maltese Falcon (1941)
21. Key Largo (1948)
22. Phantom Lady (1944)
23. Clash by Night (1952)
24. Party Girl (1958)
25. They Live By Night (1948)

__________________
letterboxd
criticker

That's an impressive list! So many of the noir ballots really impressed me with just how well watched people were in noir. Kudos for Party Girl (1958), I almost voted for that myself.
Thanks Inmate for participating!

I thought this would be a better place to post this than the TV tab.


It's a Noir, mystery series that pays plenty of tributes to the old Noir flicks, because the protagonist loves movies. It has an unexpected twist.

Just eight episodes long & done quite well.


PS: Belated thanks to Citizen Rules for running this. I hadn't watched a lot of old Noir movies, but I have added few from this list to my watchlist.

I agree, a good series. Colin Farrell was first rate as sort of a classic noir shamus.... with a big twist.

My beef was that most of the episodes were too short, so that one had to wait a week just to see a 30 minute continuing episode, which hurt the continuity for me.

The ending left it wide open for another season, but I haven't seen anything about that.

I just read that the all the classic noir clips they used were so short because anything under X amount of seconds doesn't have to be paid for. I had wondered why they were so short.

I missed commenting in this countdown, but I was able to get in my top 25 film noirs list and here is mine. Great final list from MoFo by the way, which does show this is probably the most well versed and knowledgeable film forum on the entire interwebs.

Actually, and I'm not being flippant or sarcastic here, but are there ANY other film forums on the internet since Rotten Tomatoes got rid of theirs? Having been with MoFo for over 20 years and having been an admin at the long-time defunct www.moviejustice.com, having been a long time message board poster over at Rotten Tomatoes, and even from time to time Metacritic (where I found and recruited mark f to come to MoFo back around 2004-2005-ish), it's very sad for me to see so few options and that forums are a "dying breed" in a world of TikTok, Instagram, and snapchat... not to get too off topic, nostalgic, or overly maudlin here (although certainly the tone does fit with the noir genre), but it is rather tragic and heartbreaking to see that message board forums... especially those devoted to the discussion and love of film are quickly going the way of the buffalo in this crazy brave new world.

Wow... I had zero intention of writing that when I clicked "reply" In any event. The point remains... damn proud of MoFo and the insane work of CitizenRules to compile all this information, do the math, and the effort and time to jazz it all up.

So here's my list. Very happy to see In a Lonely Place, which is my top film noir and in my top 10 films of all time, made the cut. It's such a deep and personal dive into the genre and I have always adored Nicholas Ray. I especially admire how he presents time and one thing he does with In a Lonely Place is play with time as night bleeds into late night which bleeds into the wee early hours on the morning, which bleeds into the next day. It's a somewhat clever take or variation of Aristotle's Unity of Time... Nic Ray really draws out so many scenes in his films... think the night in Rebel Without a Cause or Sterling Hayden arriving in the bar that huge long 30-40 minute opening scene in Johnny Guitar. I would argue that In a Lonely Place is also Bogart's best and most intensely vulnerable performance.

I did see two Hitchcock films on the list, Rebecca and Notorious which are my second and third favorite Hitchcock films, respectively. I didn't put them on my list, simply because I don't really think of them as film noirs, but rather thrillers or mystery films as there really isn't an intimate or personal "crime" element to them, as is with most film noir. In that sense I was even tempted to leave of Sunset Blvd, as I've always thought it stretches the definition (I guess it does start off with a dead body... poor William Holden) of what I was taught in film class as what defined film noir, but I did put it on my list because I could be completely wrong in my classification of the genre and it is generally accepted by film critics and scholars as not just noir, but one of the canonical noirs... so I put it on my list. It's also my favorite Billy Wilder film too, which is saying something as he's in my top 10 directors of all time list. It just edges out Double Indemnity for me.

But here's my list for those who were curious:

1. In a Lonely Place




2. A Touch of Evil
3. The Big Sleep
4. Sunset Blvd
5. Double Indemnity
6. Elevator to the Gallows
7. The Maltese Falcon
8. Phantom Lady
9. The Woman in the Window
10. Odd Man Out
11. The Third Man
12. Scarlet Street
13. The Postman Always Rings Twice
14. The Naked City
15. Kiss of Death
16. Laura
17. Gilda
18. Leave Her to Heaven
19. Kiss Me Deadly
20. Mildred Pierce
21. The Lady From Shanghai
22. White Heat
23. Gun Crazy
24. The Asphalt Jungle
25. Night and the City

__________________
"A candy colored clown!"
Member since Fall 2002
Top 100 Films, clicky below

http://www.movieforums.com/community...ad.php?t=26201

Thanks! Like they say it takes a community and when it comes to countdowns that's so true.


I'd say there are very few forums of any kind like MoFo. I don't know of any movies forums. This is the only place on the internet I hang out...and I'm so grateful for MovieForums existences and especially the solid community that makes it happen.

As someone who has jumped from film forum to film forum since the mid-1990s, I have to say it was a breath of fresh air to find a community as devoted and as well structured as MoFo. But yeah, it's safe to say it's a dying medium.

__________________

That was the same with me; I had found one, Chasing the Frog, that was a great lil community but very small and therefore very limited in regards to really exploring various genres and decades of film. When I first discovered MoFo, beyond the initial warmth of the community, I was seriously, and continue to be, amazed at how every genre, every form, and fashion of cinephile found a home to discuss, share, and, so wonderfully important, explore. Everything. My film experience and discovery have been astronomical since joining this community. While many others seem to have vanished, it is a blessing and a joy that we all have found this mecca, this realm of knowledge, admiration, and love of films of all kinds.

__________________
What I actually said to win MovieGal's heart:
- I might not be a real King of Kinkiness, but I make good pancakes

~Mr Minio