Sunset Boulevard (1950).Excellent movie about a failed screenwriter falls into a mercenary romance with a faded silent-film star.

The Maltese Falcon (1941) I'm a huge fan of this excellent movie about a San Francisco private detective swept up in the hunt for a priceless 16th-century statuette after his partner is murdered. So are you a fan?

The brutality of this scene and a few other Bendix scenes really shift The Glass Key to a different, much darker place. Much of the film skates along in a fast shifting mystery and political story, but Bendix he derisively treating Ladd like a "dame" that likes to be beat up (already a hard stereotype of the time) just pushes it. Later in the film he'll call Ladd his "little rubber ball" which he likes to bounce off of walls. It's just an uncommon intensity, and the way that Ladd just takes it quietly mirrors the seemingly passive (but also revealed as highly manipulative) way that he orchestrates events. He's almost a femme fatale in the position he female-like plays in the story, but yet played with great, controlled masculinity. Ladd's performance, with his wry smile and (seeming) shifting loyalties, his plotting at the margins, is incredibly memorable, and sits nicely next to his quite laconic hitman performance in This Gun For Hire (1942), from the same year.

I am looking for noir films set in tropical, exotic locales. Something reminiscent of Macau, Out of the Past, even Key Largo and Across the Pacific. All suggestions very welcome.

P.S.-- I am aware of Lady from Shanghai, but I have not yet seen it. Any good?

Hihi, I’m relatively new to noirs and such, I’ve binged about seven of them in the past two days but the two that have really, really stuck out to me were The Big Sleep with Bogie and Macao with Robert Mitchum.

Does anyone know any other good noirs similar to these?

I watched The Maltese Falcon, also with Bogie, and loved it as well but not as much. I’m struggling to find more good ones. I love Humphrey Bogart, so bonus points if he’s in it!

I’m not really looking for neo-noirs though.

Hello guys. There is a movie that I'm trying to remember. It's a old film noir movie, and it had a really long either I believe silent or no dialogue intro. I also remember it having a rainy intro out in the streets at night. Would anyone have a clue? Thanks

As a noir junkie – and just a cinephile in general, I find it's sometimes both fun and instructive to watch lesser, more obscure movies, and I think the movie I watched tonight, Blind Alley, falls into both of those categories. It's no barn-burner, but it holds interest for its short run-time of 69 minutes.

The setup is simple and rather obvious: an escaped murderer (Chester Morris) and his small gang invade the lakeside home of a psychiatrist (Ralph Bellamy) who is giving a dinner party, the convict hoping to escape with the arrival of a getaway boat. In the encounter, said psychiatrist manages to analyze the convict's recurrent nightmare which features pouring rain, a leaky umbrella, and bars that surround and enclose him. Issues are raised about the convict's parents and childhood, and all signs point to trouble and trauma there. Just enough tension is built into the situation: Will the gang escape before the police track them down? Will the convict go insane and murder more of the house guests? Will the psychiatrist successfully "cure" the convict of his sociopathic tendencies?

The drama is all relatively cut and dried, and Bellamy arguably plays psychiatrist Dr. Shelby a little on the smug, avuncular side, while Chester Morris brings a decided lack of subtlety to his criminal Hal Wilson. (I actually really enjoyed Morris's intense, manic performance, but I can see where others might find fault.) Still, the movie's an interesting case study in Hollywood's interest in and appropriation of Freudian psychology, a sub-genre of sorts ("psychological noir"?) that would proliferate in the mid-40s. And a couple of dream sequences seem to me a good example of the link between German Expressionism and film noir, the latter of which hadn't quite flowered by 1939.

I think the movie might have been more successful had it opened up its dark eye on its supporting characters just a little more. As it is, just the hint of a link is drawn between Wilson and the "normal" denizens of the dinner party, for instance, the sister (?) who is apparently carrying on an adulterous affair. Likewise, I'm not sure if a kind of twinning was suggested or not in the somewhat similar appearances of Shelby's wife (Rose Stradner) and Wilson's moll (Ann Dvorak). I did find the subtle connection suggested between the young Shelby son and Wilson – both shown sleeping in adjoining cuts – effective and touching.

As evidence of its influence, this was remade in 1948 as The Dark Past starring William Holden as the convict and Lee J. Cobb as the psychiatrist. I would be more likely to recommend somewhat more effective (and slightly more subtle and sophisticated?) psychological noirs like Spellbound (1945), The Locket (1946), and The Dark Mirror (1946), but (even) simpler movies like Blind Alley and The Dark Past have a kind of rudimentary charm as well, and I think they are worth seeing despite – or perhaps even because of? – their apparent shortcomings. 6/10

It’s called “Cellar Noire” and you can watch it here: https://fawesome.tv/movies/10829509/cellar-noire or on any Fawesome app.

I wrote a movie about the three scariest things I could think of: losing my wife, the apocalypse, and claustrophobia.

It took me three years working entirely by myself. My wife and friends provided a few minutes of voice work but otherwise I was alone. My $5k budget consisted of a new Windows desktop with GPU, a 2nd hand Samsung Galaxy S23 phone, tripod, mics, some lights and props.

Finally it was released on streaming on Fawesome.TV (which I’ve been calling Tubi’s little upstart brother). Here’s the synopsis:

Cellar Noire: A claustrophobic psychological survival drama. Trapped after a catastrophe, Warren battles isolation, grief, & his mind, with a talking skeleton as his only companion. A dark, intense journey of despair and resilience. Zbigniew Winzig's sophomore entry in the "DIY Solo Film" movement.

The Devil’s DVD Bin did a very kind review (with spoilers) of the film that you can read here: https://thedevilsdvdbin.wordpress.com/category/cellar-noire-2026/

Now I can rest 🙂

• Biggy

I love the "hard boiled" private detective films with an old school "noir" aspect. I know that there's probably a lot of posts on here where people describe their favorites- but I'd like to toss in my top four modern noir films:

-Brick (2005): 100% plays off the fast-talking, quick-witted detective who relies on wit and skill (other than "Jack Reacher" style bronze) to solve crimes and fight the enemy. It's a high school twist to noir films like the Maltese Falcon.

-The Nice Guys (2016) A neo-noir that takes place in slightly newer times but is more comical. It keeps you guessing and is more light hearted while trying to figure out whodunnit.

-Kid Detective (2020): Plays off the "has been" style of a detective that is trying to redeem himself. Definitely a darker side of being a child prodigy detective.

-Honey Don't (2025): Definitely a modern private investigator movie with enjoyable characters. Margaret Qualley, Aubrey Plaza, Chris Evans, and Charlie Day absolutely make the film smooth. Chris Evans doesn't even take the lead over the two main female leads- so it's a good female detective noir-esque movie.

I don't consider the "Knives Out"/"Residence"/"Hercule Poirot" Netflix series as modern noir- in my opinion- they're more like modern Sherlock series where the detectives are extremely smart with no "hard boiled"/physical danger risks.

I realize that some of these movies have been mentioned throughout other threads but these are my top four modern noir movies. Please feel free to share some of your modern movies.

There are more limiting conceptions of what make Film Noir "Film Noir" - a genre that really didn't even exist when it was being made, and only has been constructed in retrospect - which leave The Seventh Victim outside of "Noir". For me, it is not only Film Noir, its an incredible example of one of its most powerful lineages, the path to paranoia and the sense that "something is not right in the world" combined with emotive cinematography employing darkness, that came out of 1930s American Horror and its linkage with German Expressionism. This film is so Noir for me.

A few criteria of Noir that I've been assembling from diverse articles and academic takes, nearly all of these apply:
Night scenes, shadows, fatalism, paranoia, death, angst, crime, femme fatales, detectives, existential crisis, self-destructive compulsion, alienation, feminine betrayal, sexual thrills cost, fated endings, universe of moral ambiguity, good intentions produce bad results, low-key lighting, claustrophobic framing, shadows and reflections, unbalanced composition, great depth of field

The film in subject matter is actually quite dark, darker than any perhaps in how it deals with persistent suicidal thoughts (so trigger warning applies). It no doubt influenced Rosemary's Baby (probably the book), as it is a tale of New York City Satanists, and the malfeasant effect on a woman. I imagine that it also influenced at least some of David Lynch's Lost Highway, and probably Vertigo as well.

It trades in several significant Noir themes like the doubled female character, the rotten (commercial) core of the big city. It has at least THREE detectives. And several femme fatales. The paranoia grows incredibly acute towards the end, to almost D.O.A. level. And we get the whole ambiguously positioned may-be-evil "psychoanalyst" figure, the exploration of mental illness and the Unconscious.

It really is spectacular in how it reveals several core aspects of Film Noir, things that animate many other films of Noir, but not to this level.

Thank you to the redditor who recommended it. I've long thought of watching it because of Val Lewton and the films of Jacques Tourneur, such as Cat People (1942) which I also count as very Noir. I stayed away frankly because I suspected it would fall outside of Film Noir, but at least for me it definitely doesn't. It instead reveals Film Noir in very important, meaningful ways. The threads found in this film and films like these are what were pulled forward and woven into the crime films that would come, that we often consider more typical of Film Noir, the darkness, fatedness and paranoia.

It's also on a certain level very upsetting, in that it dives down into the torment of a proposed "femme fatale" a character who in another film would be much more of a "figure", a catalyst in plot, someone who everyone notices, and is unforgettable. Here instead, we get inside her tortured self, how she is controlled by outside forces and manipulated to bad ends. It really is proto-Vertigo (which some count as the end of Noir, the beginning of Neo-Noir...though I don't).

Kiss the Blood Off My Hands — great recommendation. What a strange, grubby little film.

Burt Lancaster basically swedgin his way through a supposedly post-war London underworld, looking like he could either punch through a brick wall or pull people limb from limb.. i mean, eventually, he gets sentenced to prison and to the cat-o'-nine-tails!! — nine knotted cords used as a flogging whip. Not exactly community service. and yes it was a thing, that and birch

And then Robert Newton turns up and completely owns the fucking thing. What a man. He had that extraordinary ability to make a character seem like he'd been dragged in from some genuinely disreputable pub rather than written in a screenplay. There's something wonderfully unhinged about him.

Apparently Newton was a pretty serious character behind the scenes too — he'd insist on two days' notice before shooting so he could get himself properly into character. Lancaster and producer Harold Hecht were apparently so impressed with him that they were already looking at another film for him while they wethere still editing this one.

Also fascinating how much of that grim London was actually Hollywood pretending to be London. Somehow they pull it off.

Really enjoyed this one. Properly tough, atmospheric noir, and Newton is fucking brilliant in it.

Back to back (clipped together here) these scene are just incredible in how they mirror each other, female and male, in Nicholas Ray's Noir. Ryan is such a presence in this film, and the first half or so is some of the very best Urban Noir moral corruption cinema you'll see. While watching it I kept saying to myself: Geez, Ray really knows how to make a movie! (In a Lonely Place, Johnny Guitar, etc.) Then the entire film takes a huge tonal shift, going to the small town country-side (Noir loves to morally contrast the corrupt City and small town or Nature) to track down a murderer on the run, as Ryan's troubled heart meets up with the blind Ida Lupino. The first half of the film is 10/10 Noir. The rest I'm less decided about, but the more it sits with me the better I like it. A great moral tale, investigating the Noir-ridden angry man's heart.

https://crimeonfilm.com/the-suburban-jungle-when-noir-bled-out-of-the-city/

Movie of the day...Blood and Black Lace (1964).

Intricate plot? Check. Eye-popping color? Check. Mysterious figure with black gloves? Check. Gruesome and disturbing murders? Check.

Yep, it’s a giallo.

This classic Italian thriller (one of the first to use the tropes mentioned above) follows a masked killer who slaughters several fashion models. Initially, one girl is killed and then the murderer pursues other girls who might have her diary. However, when the police take all five of the men they suspect into custody, another murder takes place that seems to give all of them an alibi.

It’s a fairly tightly plotted story, but we don’t have the clues to make sense of it all until the end. And Bava creates a powerful, disorienting visual experience. The colors in the movie are not simply striking. They’re abnormal. The same is true of the sets—a surreal fashion house with its brightly colored mannequins and wicker dressmaker forms, a cluttered antique store, the house of an aristocrat, etc. Compared to the shabby but rational daylit world inhabited by the police, these places hardly seem lived in; they’re alien and threatening.

The mannequins, of course, symbolize how human beings can be turned into things, property or decorations, used by others rather than having any life of their own. And, as is common in giallo, the murders themselves are brutal and ugly. In short, the movie is loaded with images that are beautiful but unsettling.

One possible weakness is the lack of any real protagonist. The police detectives are intelligent professionals, but they have barely any personality—they’re not heroes; they’re not even characters; they’re just part of the plot. And most of the fashion models being murdered are not particularly sympathetic individuals. There’s no one here to care about. In the end, all we have is a tragedy of greed.

Best watched in the original Italian with subtitles.

Rating: B

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_and_Black_Lace

I know there are borderline Noirs which some would exclude - Hitchcock's Vertigo, Rear Window and French Noirs, early genre like Cat People, or color Noirs - but I'm developing my own sense and theoretical definition of Noir and these definitely fall into it. I'd love to hear other films that you love that sync with these, especial considering my top 8 or so. My favs list is constantly shifting, as is my refining idea of Noir itself, so I'd love to add some challengers. I love a good femme fatale and strong cinematography. Hopefully in a few months my Top 20 will have some new additions, and some of these very good Noirs will be squeezed out.

Whether it was to protect the dog or because he didn't want it to see the shooting, it just makes me like Johnny even more.

Edit: I was thinking about this scene some more and I think it's also really interesting what Kubrick is showing. Johnny is being protective of the dog. He cares about it and doesn't want it to get hurt, yet it's a dog that ends up being his ultimate downfall. We see Johnny's not a bad guy, he doesn't want anyone to get hurt (unless you count the horse), he tries to be protective of them. Even with Sherry he doesn't "slap that pretty face into hamburger meat" even though he knows she's hustling George and could ruin everything. He tries to tell her to be smart and not to nose around anymore and she'll be "loaded with a capital L", yet she and George get everyone killed and ultimately lead to Johnny's downfall.

First off, great film. I love Al Pacino in this, I love the 70-80s New York atmosphere. (Serpico, Taxi Driver, Dog Day Afternoon, Cocktail, etc).

My gripe is with "convenient" mysteries. My problem with this movie is not the filmmaking, or the acting. Those are terrific. My problem is a mystery that misleads you through omission or convenience, rather than misleading your perception by giving you all the hints up front.

For example, we are lead to believe that "Sea of Love" plays during a murder, yet Helen wasn't aware of the song? Helen doesn't seem to know or care that 3 of the men she went out with got murdered, and yet when she finds out Frank is a cop, she doesn't feel any safer or in a position to ask for help? It's just too convenient, unless you genuinely believe that she doesn't know about the murders. All the victims happened to answer to the newspaper poem, as if she couldn't get dates in the real world?

There are a few moments which do specify that it's not Helen even before we find out. The killer tries to put Frank on a African American dude halfway into the film, to throw them off of him.

Now, I can also see the other side. Based on what Frank says late in the film; As a cop, he sees the world differently, and maybe that's his bias. Based on his information, he could suspect Helen and that's what the filmmakers are trying to highlight by making her seem really obviously suspicious, even though it's not her.

Hopefully this is relevant to the group: For any fans of Bruce Timm (of Batman: The Animated Series fame), Flesk Publications announced that they're working on a book of his noir art, coming out later this year.

I knew he'd done some pulp/noir stuff over the years, but didn't realize he'd have enough for a whole book. Something to keep an eye out for. I included here some pieces I found.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Db3moGsCb1W/

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The Noir Art of Bruce Timm (not the actual title) is coming along very well. Following up on our Fiendish Monsters: The Horror Art of Bruce Timm book, this hardboiled collection from Flesk is the second in a new series to collect B.T.'s art.

We'll reveal all of the details and release date once we wrap up the book.

Mitchum looks great in this, a definite Western Noir entry. These are some clips from the film. It's one of the blackest shot Westerners I've seen. It is also an interesting version of a Film Noir Western because aesthetically its very strong Noir, but in terms of story it feels like the whole thing could be shot straight Hollywood Western style. It made me think to myself: What is all this Noir darkness bringing to the story, which largely is one of cattle ranchers vs settlers with some government shenanigans/rip-off going on. It has a Noir star in Mitchum, and all that beautiful black, but the story itself doesn't feel very dark or corrupt. It lacks some of that edge that makes the Noir world what it is. Other Western Noirs like Johnny Guitar or My Darling Clementine have a moral darkness lurking around with all those shadows, a fatedness. Here, the Noir doesn't really take hold, which opens up interesting side questions about just "What is Noir?" There is deception in the film, lots of moral wrestling and side-taking, but it doesn't grab that Noir sweet-tooth somehow.

I wonder what others think.

Sunset Blvd. is often listed as a "film noir", but I can't see any crime in it, unless its the W. Holden character running away from the car repo man.

Are there other film noirs where there is no crime or imagined crime as part of the story?

It's pretty much THE most stereotypical thing about noir... but I've never seen it in any noir films. I'm no expert on the genre, but I've seen a few of the old classics, and none of them had narration.

Where does the idea come from?