Good Film Noir Movies?
 

Ive started to be fascinated with thise genre after i saw Sin City and Fargo. Yea, i know they aren't exactly film noir movies but they have distinct characteristics of ones. Anyway recommend some good movies of this genre.

I heard Sunset Blvd is supposed to be really good.

oooh...

start maybe with "the maltese falcon"?? that's an iconic movie of the genre if there ever was one.

Touch of Evil by Orson Welles

Double Indemnity by Billy Wilder

something by Hitchcock...perhaps! you think?!!!

Casablanca is a good film. It's also one of the most overrated.

hot damn touch of evil was perhaps the apex of the genre

then there are awesome post-noir movies (?) like "le samourai"


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post-edit:

here is a little primer i just found, looks quite comprehensive & offers many titles.

"enyoy"

http://www.filmsite.org/filmnoir.html

The Killers(1946)
Detour(1945)
T-Men(1948)
Crossfire(1947)
White Heat(1949)
and another Bogart The Big Sleep(1947)

oh the big sleep was fun and lauren bacall was completely babelicious in it.

Let's not forget Cape Fear(1962). Robert Mitchum is brilliant. The 1991 version was a pretty good remake.

Vertigo is GREAT and very creepy.

Dunno if it's strictly film noir but Metropolis is really really good, and also very creepy.

Similarly Whatever Happened to Baby Jane is AMAZING.

But, yeah, I don't know the technical description of film noir, so I don't know if these are or not.

no, metropolis is certainly not film noir.

neither is sunset boulevard for that matter.

There are many characteristics in Film noir.

Obscure lighting
Obsession with the past (flashbacks)
Femme Fatale
Odd camera angles (often low, high or tilted to one side)
Narration by the main character
The getaway and the chase
Someone is always looking for the truth
The city landscape
... and so on.

Betrayal, love, sex and the perfect murder are all important elements of film noir.

Kiss Me Deadly is prett kool.

Psycho?

Touch of Evil is my fave

Polanski's "Chinatown"

LifeDistortion has schooled me. I swear to you that Chinatown is usually in my top ten or twenty.

Nice ones, Tokolosh.



Detour is one of the best B-movies out there.

White Heat is some choice Cagney.

Cape Fear with Peck and Mitchum is a great one.
Mitchum, who's just about always wonderful, turns in a fabulous twilight performance in The Friends of Eddie Coyle which is like a '70s-noir.

Not film noir, there's crime, but not many dames hehe, but I will also recommend the original In Cold Blood.

The Big Sleep is great but really confusing. Definitely requires multiple viewings.

You would like Blade Runner if you haven't seen it...it's sci-fi-noir based on PKD's Do Androids Deam of Electric Sheep? Its atmosphere is a bit comparable to Sin City with all the darkness.

mmm anything from hitchcock, physco has something about noir film, casablanca it's a good one too, to kill a dead man...
*I hate sin city, I just cant stand the 'hollywood' industry*

oh i forgot

NAKED CITY!!!

a singular movie... very fucking cool

And for a great comedy that pokes fun of film noir see Steve Martin's classic "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid". Good stuff.

a lot of great ones have been mentioned...you basically can't go wrong with Bogey, and Bacall is such a babe, she steals every scene...
some newer ones:
LA Confidential - loved it...Guy Pearce is amazing...
Dark City - Sci-Fi-Noirish, what the Matrix borrowed from, only with better acting, and darker and less polished/geeky than the Matrix...

...and don't see the Black Dahlia-such a disappointment...though Hilary Swank was actually pretty good...

i liked the maltese falcon.

is sin city a film noir?

Yes.

Shadow of a Doubt(1943) and Spellbound(1945) are Hitchcock noir films.
The original The Postman Always Rings Twice(1946) is also very good.

but its also an action movie as well. i didnt think i would like it but it was actually quite good.

It's a neo-noir/post-toon-noir film. Very much like the Batman trilogy and even Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Some of the David Lynch films are considered psycho-noir,
as is Fight Club.

BRICK

modern noir heh

strangers on a train is another hitchcock one.


also, the third man is a really great movie... maybe not film noir in the strictest definition but definitely noir-ish.

best genre description EVAH

Just thought of another really good movie Stanley Kubrick's "Killer's Kiss".

The Third Man has always been a favourite of mine.

Most of the ones based on The Hammet/Chandler/Caine books and stories are a safe bet. Farewell My Lovely (The 40s version and the later Robert Mitchum version both good), To Have and to Have not, The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity etc.

The Sweet Smell of Success is incredible, one of my favourite films in any genre.

Nice call on Touch of Evil, they don't come much better than that. And I used to love Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid when I was a kid, "Carlotta was the kind of town where they spell trouble T-R-U-B-I-L, and if you tried to correct them, they kill you." Funny stuff.

Joseph H. Lewis is a good reference... Gun crazy, The Big Combo, So Dark the Night...

Detour
Gun Crazy
Kiss Me Deadly

These are really good ones

More recently, Larry Clark's Another Day in Paradise.

Oh, and, yes, Sweet Smell of Success is quite quite good. Alexander Mackendrick knew how to use the black & the white, and his actors were perfect.