15 Best Film Noir Movies of All Time, Ranked for Filmmakers

We know that Hollywood glamorizes criminality with thrilling capers and daring masterminds. Asphalt Jungle is… not that. Sam Jaffe and Sterling Hayden lead the cast as Doc and Dix in the story of a host gone awry (Marilyn Monroe, early in her career, also features). 

Nightmare Alley is circus noir. Edmund Goulding’s 1947 classic extracts the themes of morality from its urban peers and refocuses them into this bizarre setting. That’s probably why it didn’t fare well when it first released, but has since persevered as a standout in the film noir list.

Tyrone Power is Stan, a carnival barker-turned-swindler who takes his act to the city after a series of unfortunate events. The storyline is less centered around the mystery of a murder and more about its aftermath, driving Stan’s Icarian arc. Guillermo del Toro is currently working on a remake, which is too perfect a mashup for words.

Releasing in the latter years of the film noir era and the height of the Red Scare, Kiss Me Deadly channels all the paranoia and nihilism of its time. Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) is a private eye, out for revenge after the murder of a mysterious woman he picked up on the side of the road.

Up to the top 10 film noir movies of all time now. Humphrey Bogart takes the spotlight once again, this time in an adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s novel. Like Hammett, Chandler is a recurring scribe for the blueprints of film noir, responsible for the creation of one of it’s most acclaimed characters: Philip Marlowe.

In a list of film noir movies set in Los Angeles, at last we’ve got one that’s patently New York! Sweet Smell of Success shows us that not all villains are jewel-robbing lowlives; white collar corruption can be just as treacherous. That’s particularly true when the media gets involved.

In this film, the media is J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster). He leverages his influence to force Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) to break up his sister and her jazz guitarist beau.

As mentioned earlier, German Expressionism was a significant building block of film noir. German Expressionist filmmaker Fritz Lang came and made his mark too. Known for Metropolis and M, Lang’s eye for high-concept productions darkened when he got involved in Hollywood. 

Now to complete the trifecta of Big Sleep, Big Heat, and White Heat. Film noir loves its naming conventions.

We're reaching the creme de la creme of top noir films now. 

With all the film noir set in Los Angeles, there had to be one about the inner workings of Hollywood, right? In a Lonely Place is all about the darkness that can befall creatives when they become desperate.

Here, it's screenwriter Dix (a name you've heard before) played by Humphrey Bogart (another name you've heard before). With such clear patterns and connections to Hollywood, it was inevitable that the codified genre would turn to meta-commentary. 

Film noir populated theaters at a significant time in history: the end of World War II. The best film noir movies tend to draw on that, but The Third Man has a noteworthy lens on that era since it was made in the UK rather than America.

That altered perspective can be seen literally: the film uses Dutch angles to create an atmosphere of uneasiness. It’s fitting of the time period, a limbo between world war and cold war.

Creatively speaking, this genre complements the high contrast lighting with rain, adding a reflective quality to the visuals. For this film, director Carol Reed goes a step further, descending into the sewers and wetting the cobblestone walls so that, even in darkness, the picture shimmers.

Though Sunset Boulevard is among director Billy Wilder's best films, purists don't always consider it film noir. If you check out the 30 Best Neo-Noir Films, you'll see that one line between the parent and child genres is self-awareness.

Sunset Boulevard is deeply self-aware, marking an early evolution of the genre's sensibilities. You can even glean this from the fact that it's not based on any book or novella. All that said, its proper film noir, and among the best film noir movies of all time.

Before we reveal the best film noir movie of all time (it’s no surprise), here’s a shout-out to some other movies that didn’t make the list.

For more Philip Marlowe, check out Murder My Sweet (1944). You can follow up In a Lonely Place with Ride the Pink Horse (1947), another Dorothy B. Hughes adaptation, and follow up Kiss Me Deadly with Pickup on South Street (1953) for more 'communist fun.' 

Double Indemnity is the poster child of film noir, almost inevitably so. Directed by Billy Wilder and with a script co-penned by Raymond Chandler, it epitomizes the genre from the foundation up.

Though it fell a few years later into the timeline, it defined the mise-en-scene for its successors. That’s courtesy of cinematographer John F. Seitz, who brought the dark visual elements of German Expressionism. 

He originated the visual techniques of black shadows cast by venetian blinds, metaphorically trapping the characters behind bars. 

The plot, which sees Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) and Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) conspiring to murder her husband to collect the payout, pushed the boundaries of a Hollywood story. Such explorations of criminal morality were unprecedented and met with loads of restrictions from the Hays Code.

The pushback set the production down a complex road to development, but the result was a game changer for Hollywood. Double Indemnity is the total embodiment of noir from the inside out.