Favorite Noir Films

Here are some good ones that I think you will find useful.
Murder, My Sweet with Dick Powell and Claire Trevor.
Double Indemnity with Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray.
Detour with Tom Neal and Ann Savage.

They all are classic noir and have voiceovers, ableit Murder, My Sweet is the only one with a voiceover that is a detective.

Sunset Boulevard is considered to be the consummate noir.

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Curtiz' adaptation of MILDRED PIERCE is a great example of how to use the genre and filter a story through it. I also love SUNSET BLVD.
CHINATOWN, a much much later one, also does a great job using that genre in a post-modern style, I'd find it very inspiring

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Shadow of a Doubt

BODY HEAT (1981) with William Hurt and Kathleen Turner.

A man who is not as smart as he thinks he is and a woman who is too smart for anyone's good.

It out noirs the film noirs.

favorite line: Turner (in her husky voice) to Hurt, "You're not too smart. I like that in a man."

An odd choice, but it serves as a pretty sharp critique of the noir form: The Paperboy. It's campy and over the top, but it's meta-noir as well. It has the raspy voice-over (the maid), a disturbing crime to solve with lots of dead ends, and even a femme fatale.

For a very traditional modern example, you can't do better than Winter's Bone. No voice overs, but the story is excellent and the narrative and character arcs are pure old-fashioned noir.

For period examples, I'm big on Hitchcock's Notorious and Laughton's The Night of the Hunter. And if you go with The Night of the Hunter, you might as well tag on Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural to see how noir forms can be applied to other genres; it's an almost shot-for-shot reimagining of The Night of the Hunter as a dark fairy tale with vampires, witches, and Lovecraftian horror.

I can say that again.

Updated On: 3/3/13 at 07:52 AM