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Best Film noir Movies

Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of film noir cinema — measured across 3,759 indexed frames from 59 films, against a 408,752-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.

Film noir films over-index on fedora, overcoat and necktie — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.

  1. 1

    The Maltese Falcon (1941)

    John HustonDP Arthur EdesonIMDb 7.9TMDB 7.7See in full on FrameThrower →

    Spade and Archer is the name of a San Francisco detective agency. That's for Sam Spade and Miles Archer. The two men are partners, but Sam doesn't like Miles much. A knockout, who goes by the name of Miss Wonderly, walks into their office; and by that night everything's changed. Miles is dead. And so is a man named Floyd Thursby. It seems Miss Wonderly is surrounded by dangerous men. There's Joel Cairo, who uses gardenia-scented calling cards. There's Kasper Gutman, with his enormous girth and feigned civility. Her only hope of protection comes from Sam, who is suspected by the police of one or the other murder. More murders are yet to come, and it will all be because of these dangerous men -- and their lust for a statuette of a bird: the Maltese Falcon.

  2. 2

    The Stranger (1946)

    Orson WellesDP Russell MettyIMDb 7.3TMDB 7.2See in full on FrameThrower →

    Wilson of the War Crimes Commission is seeking Franz Kindler, mastermind of the Holocaust, who has effectively erased his identity. Wilson releases Kindler's former comrade Meinike and follows him to Harper, Connecticut, where he is killed before he can identify Kindler. Now Wilson's only clue is Kindler's fascination with antique clocks; but, though Kindler seems secure in his new identity, he feels his past closing in.

  3. 3

    Touch of Evil (1958)

    Orson WellesDP Russell MettyIMDb 8.0TMDB 7.8See in full on FrameThrower →

    Mexican Narcotics officer Ramon Miguel 'Mike' Vargas has to interrupt his honeymoon on the Mexican-US border when an American building contractor is killed after someone places a bomb in his car. He's killed on the US side of the border but it's clear that the bomb was planted on the Mexican side. As a result, Vargas delays his return to Mexico City where he has been mounting a case against the Grandi family crime and narcotics syndicate. Police Captain Hank Quinlan is in charge on the US side and he soon has a suspect, a Mexican named Manolo Sanchez. Vargas is soon onto Quinlan and his Sergeant, Pete Menzies, when he catches them planting evidence to convict Sanchez. With his new American wife, Susie, safely tucked away in a hotel on the US side of the border - or so he thinks - he starts to review Quinlan's earlier cases. While concentrating on the corrupt policeman however, the Grandis have their own plans for Vargas and they start with his wife Susie.

  4. 4

    Double Indemnity (1944)

    Billy WilderDP John F. SeitzIMDb 8.3TMDB 8.1See in full on FrameThrower →

    In 1938, Walter Neff, an experienced salesman of the Pacific All Risk Insurance Co., meets the seductive wife of one of his clients, Phyllis Dietrichson, and they have an affair. Phyllis proposes to kill her husband to receive the proceeds of an accident insurance policy and Walter devises a scheme to receive twice the amount based on a double indemnity clause. When Mr. Dietrichson is found dead on a train track, the police accept the determination of accidental death. However, the insurance analyst and Walter's best friend Barton Keyes does not buy the story and suspects that Phyllis has murdered her husband with the help of another man.

  5. 5

    Strangers on a Train (1951)

    Alfred HitchcockDP Robert BurksIMDb 7.9TMDB 7.7See in full on FrameThrower →

    Bruno Antony thinks he has the perfect plot to rid himself of his hated father, and when he meets tennis player Guy Haines on a train he thinks he's found the partner he needs to pull it off. His plan is relatively simple: Two strangers each agree to kill someone the other person wants gone. For example, Guy could kill his father and he could get rid of Guy's wife Miriam, freeing him to marry Anne Morton, the beautiful daughter of a U.S. Senator. Guy dismisses it all out of hand, but Bruno goes ahead with his half of the "bargain" and disposes of Miriam. When Guy balks, Bruno makes it clear that he will plant evidence to implicate Guy in her murder if he doesn't get rid of his father. Guy had also made some unfortunate statements about Miriam after she had refused to divorce him. It all leads the police to believe Guy is responsible for the murder, forcing him to deal with Bruno's mad ravings.

  6. 6

    The Third Man (1949)

    Carol ReedDP Robert KraskerIMDb 8.1TMDB 7.9See in full on FrameThrower →

    An out of work pulp fiction novelist, Holly Martins, arrives in a post war Vienna divided into sectors by the victorious allies, and where a shortage of supplies has led to a flourishing black market. He arrives at the invitation of an ex-school friend, Harry Lime, who has offered him a job, only to discover that Lime has recently died in a peculiar traffic accident. From talking to Lime's friends and associates Martins soon notices that some of the stories are inconsistent, and determines to discover what really happened to Harry Lime.

  7. 7

    Alphaville (1965)

    Jean-Luc GodardDP Raoul CoutardIMDb 7.0TMDB 6.9See in full on FrameThrower →

    Lemmy Caution is on a mission to eliminate Professor Von Braun, the creator of a malevolent computer that rules the city of Alphaville. Befriended by the scientist’s daughter Natasha, Lemmy must unravel the mysteries of the strictly logical Alpha 60 and teach Natasha the meaning of the word “love.”

  8. 8

    The 39 Steps (1935)

    Alfred HitchcockDP Bernard KnowlesIMDb 7.6TMDB 7.3See in full on FrameThrower →

    Richard Hannay is a Canadian visitor to London. At the end of "Mr Memory"'s show in a music hall, he meets Annabella Smith, who is running away from secret agents. He agrees to hide her in his flat, but she is murdered during the night. Fearing that he could be accused of the murder, Hannay goes on the run to break the spy ring.

  9. 9

    White Heat (1949)

    Raoul WalshDP Sidney HickoxIMDb 8.1TMDB 7.7See in full on FrameThrower →

    Cody Jarrett is the sadistic leader of a ruthless gang of thieves. Afflicted by terrible headaches and fiercely devoted to his 'Ma,' Cody is a volatile, violent, and eccentric leader. Cody's top henchman wants to lead the gang and attempts to have an 'accident' happen to Cody, while he is running the gang from in jail. But Cody is saved by an undercover cop, who thereby befriends him and infiltrates the gang. Finally, the stage is set for Cody's ultimate betrayal and downfall, during a big heist at a chemical plant.

  10. 10

    Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

    Alfred HitchcockDP Joseph A. ValentineIMDb 7.8TMDB 7.5See in full on FrameThrower →

    Charlotte "Charlie" Newton is bored with her quiet life at home with her parents and younger sister. She wishes something exciting would happen and knows exactly what they need: a visit from her sophisticated, much-traveled Uncle Charlie Oakley, her mother's younger brother. Imagine her delight when, out of the blue, they receive a telegram from Uncle Charlie announcing that he is coming to visit them for awhile. Charlie Oakley creates quite a stir and charms the ladies' club, as well as the bank President where his brother-in-law works. Young Charlie begins to notice odd behavior on his part, such as cutting out a story in the local paper about a man who marries and then murders rich widows. When two strangers appear asking questions about him, she begins to imagine the worst about her beloved Uncle Charlie.

What film noir films are made of

How much more often each element appears in a film noir frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — fedora is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.

  • fedora11.9×
  • overcoat7.0×
  • necktie4.7×
  • suit jacket4.6×
  • trench coat4.6×
  • suit4.6×
  • telephone4.2×
  • tie3.8×

How film noir films are shot

Weaker signals than the objects above, and worth saying so: most dramatic genres skew dark and night-heavy, so these numbers separate film noir from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.

  • 16%chiaroscurovs 2% baseline
  • 22%naturalvs 43% baseline
  • 30%dayvs 42% baseline
  • 58%nightvs 43% baseline
  • 15%widevs 20% baseline

What breaks the pattern

Rebecca is the least typical film here — it carries the least of what the rest of this list is made of. Which is either a failure of the genre label, or the most interesting film on the page.

Method

Every frame in the FrameThrower catalogue is tagged for shot size, lighting, time of day, camera angle, colour and the objects visible in it. This page aggregates those tags across 3,759 frames from 59 films carrying the film noir label, and compares each figure to the same measurement across the whole catalogue (408,752 frames). Films are ranked by how closely they match the theme’s over-indexed elements, weighted by how distinctive each element is; one film per series. Only films with at least 20 indexed frames and 500 TMDB votes are listed.

Machine-readable: /api/list/film-noir

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These are real movie frames, shown at reduced resolution. All rights remain with their respective owners; they appear here for study, commentary and education under fair-use principles. How these are meant to be used