Many film directors and their creative personal escaped Hitler’s Germany and hotfooted it to Hollywood. These included Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, Robert Siodmak, Fred Zinnemann and Edgar G. Ulmer. What is not generally acknowledged is that most came via France. Many of the themes and settings of film noir can be seen in films of the Poetic Realists of the 1930s.
Poetic realism is a term first applied to the French literature of Emile Zola, Francis Carco and their ilk. It was first applied to films with Pierre Chenal’s La rue sans nom (1934). These books and films looked at the outside forces affecting people’s lives. They used real settings (the city), real people in a social context (the proletariat or lower middle classes) and showed that crime came from physical and mental oppression. The weak-willed protagonist would find himself trapped in a situation created by society, surrounded by a romantic aura of doom and despair.
German filmmakers who visited Paris before heading for Hollywood include Robert Siodmak, Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, Max Ophüls, Jacques Tourneur and Curtis Bernhardt. Some French directors soon followed (Jean Renoir, Julien Duvivier, Jacques Tourneur). And there is one well-known British director, who served his film apprenticeship in Berlin, who made his way to the City of Angels in 1939: Alfred Hitchcock.
It is not surprising then, that these directors later took the opportunity to remake French, German and British crime films as films noirs: La chienne (1931, d. Jean Renoir) as Scarlet Street (1945, d. Fritz Lang); La bête humaine (1938, d. Jean Renoir) as Human Desire (1954, d. Fritz Lang); Pépé le Moko (1937, d. Julien Duvivier) as Algiers (1938, d. John Cromwell) & Casbah (1948, d. John Berry); Le jour se lève (1939, d. Marcel Carné) as The Long Night (1947, d. Anatole Litvak); Pièges (1939, d. Robert Siodmak) as Lured (1947, d. Douglas Sirk); Le dernier tournant (1939, d. Pierre Chenal) as The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946, d. Tay Garnett); Le corbeau (1943, d. Henri-Georges Clouzot) as The 13th Letter (1951, d. Otto Preminger)." [7]
"Many of the milieu, characters, icons, actors came from the Hollywood gangster films, also concerned with money, crime, and violence and set in the modern American city. Although the dominant 1930s cycle beginning with Little Caesar and The Public Enemy, both released in 1931, was preoccupied with the rise and fall of the dynamic self-made criminal, many others, including Josef von Sternberg’s Underworld (1927) or Rouben Mamoulian’s City Streets (1931), adapted from a Dashiell Hammett story, depicted a shadowy criminal milieu and explored themes of alienation, paranoia, betrayal, and revenge that directly presaged film noir. Like hard-boiled fiction, the gangster film constituted a dissident tradition in which the desires and frustrations of lower class or ethnically marginalized Americans could find a voice during the Depression. This oppositional aesthetic informs film noir.
Studios hired several hard-boiled authors as screenwriters with varying degrees of success. The hard-boiled authors decisively shifted the locale of crime from the country house drawing rooms of the "English school" onto the "mean streets" of the fast-growing American city, providing film noir with its characteristic image of the city as a dark, corrupt, threatening, and confusing labyrinth, populated by criminals, tough private eyes, and duplicitous femme fatales. The new style - a terse, understated vernacular idiom peppered with laconic wisecracks - provided noir with its distinctive dialogue. The influence of hard-boiled writing was delayed because films were subject to close censorship, which prose fiction escaped. It was John Huston’s prescient The Maltese Falcon (1941), adapted from Hammett’s novel, that first reproduced the cynical, corrosive tone and attitude of the hard-boiled tradition." [2]
The Development of film noir and neo-noir
"The influence of German expressionism was evident in the cycle of horror films produced by Universal Studios in the early 1930s. Several, including Robert Florey’s Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), were overtly expressionist, displaying strong echoes of Caligari in the twisted streets, oddly contorted houses that lean over the glistening cobblestones, and gloomy shadows, all of which directly anticipate film noir. Various émigrés worked on these horror films, including Edgar G. Ulmer, who directed The Black Cat (1934). Universal’s second horror cycle, beginning in 1939, was less aesthetically distinguished, but both cycles were a major influence on the studio’s early experimentation with film noir, beginning with Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and Siodmak’s Phantom Lady (1944) that, in turn, influenced the development of the whole noir cycle.
The other studio most associated with the inception of film noir was RKO, mainly through the work of Val Lewton and Orson Welles. The Russian-born Lewton started at RKO in 1942, running his own secondfeature unit to produce horror films that would compete with Universal’s. However, Lewton’s horror films, including The Leopard Man (1943) adapted from Woolrich’s Black Alibi and The Seventh Victim, both released in 1943, were highly distinctive, featuring ordinary men and women in atmospherically lit, mostly contemporary settings and emphasizing psychological disturbance. Lewton’s films acted as a training ground for cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca, already known as a specialist in "mood lighting," and for directors Mark Robson, Jacques Tourneur, and Robert Wise, all of whom went on to make distinguished films noir.
Orson Welles’s innovative Citizen Kane (1941) was a major influence on film noir. Its expressionist set design, Gregg Toland’s deep focus photography, atmospheric lighting, and its creative use of wide-angle lenses and low-angle compositions, its use of mirrors, superimpositions, and distorted perspectives as well as its subjective narration and multiple flashbacks all prefigured noir techniques. Bernard Herrmann’s unconventional score, which used unorthodox combinations of instruments, was the first of many he would contribute to film noir. As the most celebrated example of American expressionism, Citizen Kane acted as another bridge between European modernism and film noir.
The coming together of these various influences led to film noir, usually dated from the appearance of Russian émigré Boris Ingster’s Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), in which Peter Lorre played the mysterious outsider. An RKO second feature marketed as a horror film, Stranger had a highly expressionist dream sequence with clear echoes of Caligari. Stranger began noir’s early "experimental" period (1940-1943), with a wide variety of styles and modes including hard-boiled adaptations - The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Street of Chance (1942) from a Cornell Woolrich story - and numerous Gothic melodramas including Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940) and Stuart Heisler's Among the Living (1941), photographed by émigré cameraman Theodor Sparkuhl. As wartime restrictions on costs began to take a bite, almost all the major studios encouraged the development of modestly budgeted crime thrillers whose restricted sets could be disguised by "atmospheric" lighting and the use of unusual camera angles. One influential example, Paramount’s This Gun for Hire (1942) based on Graham Greene’s thriller, featured a new type of antihero, a psychologically disturbed hit man (Alan Ladd). Early noirs also included several spy thrillers, notably Orson Welles’s screenplay for Journey into Fear (1943), adapted from one of Eric Ambler’s existentialist novels." [2]
"It should be recognised that the ‘gothic’ lighting style of film noir, and the Expressionist angles, were much in evidence during the silent era (the films of Sergei Eisenstein in Russia, and Tod Browning’s horror films in Hollywood, for example). The night-time and location shooting which were common for silent films was impossible with the advent of sound because the equipment was too bulky and noisy. Consequently, the 1930s were a relatively fallow period for dark cinema.
When advances in technology meant that cameras became lighter and more mobile, the cinematographers explored every possibility. Many of the cinematographers (Nicholas Musuraca, George Barnes, Joseph A. Valentine, Hal Mohr, John F. Seitz, Joseph La Shelle etc) were veterans of the silent era, having began work in the 1910s and 1920s. So they were at the height of their skills when asked to layer light and shadows like they had during the silent days. A quick look at Rebecca (1940), for example, shows the camera prowling around Manderley like a wild animal hunting for blood.
In addition, the sparse, single-source lighting style of cinematography which became the norm for film noir arose out of necessity. The advent of World War Two meant the sales market for Hollywood movies shrunk enormously. As a result, budgets were reduced, and dark shadows were employed to hide the fact that there was no set." [7]
"The release of Double Indemnity, Laura, and Murder, My Sweet in 1944 inaugurated the second phase of noir’s development, a major burst of energy and sustained production that stretched through to 1952. In contrast to the earlier phase in which most films noir were second features, the majority were now intermediate productions that fell somewhere between first and second features. They commanded reasonable budgets but had far less market hype on their launch than a full "A" production. Visually, this period may be divided between a studio-bound "expressionist" period, 1944–1947, which focused on individual pathologies, and a "location" period, 1947–1952, dominated by semidocumentaries and social-problem films. The latter showed the influence of Italian neo-realism, the most important European cinematic movement to have emerged during the war, which emphasized the importance of taking the camera out onto the streets and depicting the lives of ordinary people. Thematically, films noir during this phase were preoccupied with the transition from war to peace, depicting numerous troubled veterans experiencing the traumatic difficulties of readjustment to civilian life after the profound disruption of active service. Politically, film noir displayed both left- and right-wing orientations, but the development of a left-leaning critique of American capitalism was truncated by the anti-Communist campaign led by Republican senator Joseph McCarthy, conducted through the hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). This led, in October 1947, to the imprisonment of the "Hollywood Ten" (which included three important noir personnel: director Edward Dmytryk, writer-producer Adrian Scott, and scriptwriter Albert Maltz) and the implementation of a blacklist of unemployable artists that numbered over 200 and went unchallenged until 1960. The blacklist had a profound effect on film noir, ending or inhibiting many careers or pushing some (Jules Dassin, Cy Endfield, and Joseph Losey) into exile.
After 1952, film noir went into a longer period of fragmentation, which ended in 1959. The expressionism of the earlier periods had disappeared, and this period was dominated by more brutal and violent crime films preoccupied with the threat of underworld "corporations" taking over American life, as in the cycle of city exposé films - beginning with The Captive City (1952) - that depicted the supposedly ubiquitous threat of organized crime syndicates. These thrillers were mainly second features, conventionally lit and shot, made either by small companies or the more costconscious majors: Columbia, RKO, Universal, and United Artists acting as a distribution agency. There were significant exceptions: Robert Aldrich’s terrifying Kiss Me Deadly (1955), with its threat of nuclear destruction; Welles’s Touch of Evil (1958), a baroque expressionist masterpiece; and Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), a rare color noir that was a probing study of guilt and obsession.
Although Odds Against Tomorrow, released in 1959, is the conventional watershed that marks the end of film noir’s "classic" phase, the date is an arbitrary and convenient fiction. As the chronology shows, films noir were produced, sporadically, throughout the 1960s. The 3rd Voice (1960), Angel’s Flight (1965), and In Cold Blood (1967) are unmistakably noir, as is the work of Samuel Fuller: Underworld U.S.A. (1961), Shock Corridor (1963), and The Naked Kiss (1964). These films formed part of an "underground" culture, including roman noir authors Patricia Highsmith, Chester Himes, Jim Thompson, and Charles Willeford, who retained noir as a critical mode even if their authors were isolated figures, lacking a cultural climate that could make their work influential. The major energies of noir screen production went into the making of television series, including Johnny Staccato (1959-60), Peter Gunn (1959-61), and The Fugitive (1963-67), which drew heavily on the existentialist sensibility of hard-boiled writer David Goodis.
Although these films are often lumped under the general label of neo-noir, films noir released in this period (1960-67) may best be termed "late noirs" - ones that could have been made before 1959 - in order to differentiate them from neo-noirs that may be dated from the release of Point Blank in 1967. Neo-noirs are ones that selfconsciously allude to classic noir, either implicitly or explicitly, building on what is now recognized and accepted as a distinct body of films. In Point Blank, director John Boorman, drawing on the French New Wave, explicitly and self-consciously revised the noir tradition in a contemporary idiom, adapting Donald E. Westlake’s hard-boiled novel as the basis for a brutal revenge drama shot in 40 mm color Panavision that uses repetitions, doublings, and elliptical editing to create a story that hesitates between dream and reality in order to explore the ambiguities of desire, memory, and identity. Boorman’s film was the beginning of what may be termed the neo-modernist phase of film noir (1967–80) that formed part of the "Hollywood Renaissance," in which a new generation of filmmakers, profoundly influenced by recent developments in European cinema, attempted to transform American cinema. Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye (1973), an acerbic updating of Chandler; Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974); Arthur Penn’s Night Moves (1975); and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976) all engaged in a critique not only of American society but also of noir myths such as the honorable, resourceful private eye. The characteristic protagonist of the neo-modernist noirs is alienated and dysfunctional, adrift in a world where he has lost his bearings. In a separate development, the work of black hard-boiled author Chester Himes finally reached the screen in If He Hollers Let Him Go! (1968) and Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970). Shaft (1971) launched a cycle of "blaxploitation" films that also used the noir crime thriller to open up a space in which the black experience, suppressed in the overwhelmingly white orientation of classical noir, could find an expressive voice and explore the deep-seated racism in American society.
The release of Lawrence Kasdan’s Body Heat in 1981 marked a new phase of neo-noir in which noir conventions were embraced rather than critiqued. Kasdan’s film, a loose remake of Double Indemnity, evoked the mood and atmosphere of classical noir through its use of chiaroscuro lighting, a jazz score, and the archetypal story of the victim-hero seduced by a femme fatale, who, unlike her predecessors, is successful. The Postman Always Rings Twice, released in the same year, was the first of a fairly constant line of remakes of noir classics. Released a year later, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner was a highly influential "future noir," a complex melding of the conventions of science fiction and film noir, and was the forerunner of the hybridization that is so characteristic of many neo-noirs.
Gradually, neo-noir has established itself as an important contemporary genre within a restabilized, expanding Hollywood cinema. Neo-noirs are now a staple of cinema exhibition, cable television programming, and video/DVD rental. Their production is no longer characterized, as it was in the neo-modernist period, by sporadic releases, but by a continuous stream of new films. The noir "look" has become part of a knowing postmodern culture, with modern cineliterate audiences attuned to the multiple allusions of neo-noirs such as Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994) or Curtis Hanson’s L.A. Confidential (1997), an example of a "retro-noir" set during the classic period. Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000), with its reverse chronology and amnesiac self-deluding narrator, is an example of the extreme use of narratological devices that characterizes many neonoirs. Many neo-noirs are also stylistically extreme, using hypermobile camerawork, rapid zooms, shock cuts, and ultrafast montage sequences to create an intense, disruptive, often overwhelming sensory experience that makes them very different from classic noir. A more recent development is the frequent adaptation of graphic novels. Sin City (2005) exemplifies this trend, with director Robert Rodriguez striving for a strict fidelity to the particular noir look of Frank Miller’s original comic book creations.
Three other developments characterize the postmodern phase of film noir. The first is an extension of the focus on the city to embrace "country noir" set amidst the wide-open spaces of redneck America. Country noirs, such as the Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple. (1984), Peter Medak’s Romeo Is Bleeding (1993), or John Dahl’s Red Rock West (1996), are antipastoral, the countryside a site of corruption, betrayal, and murderous hatreds. The panoramic shots, often startlingly beautiful, serve only as an ironic backdrop to the sordid dramas that unfold. The second was a renewed and more wide-ranging development of African American noir that revealed the complexity and heterogeneity of the black experience, beginning with Bill Duke’s A Rage in Harlem (1991) and Deep Cover (1992) and including Carl Franklin’s One False Move (1992) and Devil in a Blue Dress (1995) and Spike Lee’s Clockers (1995). Kathryn Bigelow’s Blue Steel (1990) and Tamra Davis’s Guncrazy (1992), a radical remake of the famous Joseph H. Lewis noir Gun Crazy (aka Deadly Is the Female, 1950), exemplify the third development as important feminist interventions into the overwhelmingly masculine world of film noir." [2]
So... What Makes It Noir?
"Film noir: there’s really no other film genre like it. It’s a genre characterized by long, dark shadows, both physical and psychological, that menace every frame. The characters in these films tend to be quick-witted, sharp and street smart and as cynical as they come, and everyone’s working an angle on everyone else.
Film noir is a genre that’s immersive on every level. The locations in these films, whether they’re detectives’ offices, the mansions of the powerful and connected, police stations or city streets and alleys, are usually mostly draped in darkness. The plots are much the same, with complexity being the norm and no one really being truly good. Film noir is too grounded a genre for those types of characters; there’s a touch of evil in everyone, and film noir explores it in detail. That exploration is engrossing when these films are well executed.
Film noir had its golden age in the 1940s and 1950s. In that era, filmmakers worked under restrictions that forced them to favor the suggestive rather than the explicit. What makes some film noir movies so memorable is that, even though they were made in this era, they managed to take risks. They were usually dark, brooding, violent and oftentimes quite sexy, even compared to modern films made in a much more permissive environment.
What the term "film noir" actually means as a genre, however, is a topic of debate. Viewers, critics and others sometimes differ significantly in their opinions as to what defines a true noir film from one that merely incorporates some of the enduring stylistic elements of this genre." [8]
"Film noir is unique in film history as being the only genre that was also a style. Components of the style existed in the silent era, notably in the German films of the 1920s, but Orson Welles brought them together in Citizen Kane (1941). Its combination of chiaroscuro, depth of focus, oblique camera angles, a disjointed and fragmented narrative, all supporting an appropriately gloomy world view, initiated the style. It suited the new genre of film noir perfectly and was used in hundreds of crime films throughout the 1940s and 1950s. Thus, popular usage of the term film noir as any urban crime film of the era is understandable, if not entirely accurate.
Lacking a generic framework, critics have frequently defined film noir in terms of a particular look or visual style. To further complicate matters, the style, which proved to be detachable, was in the 1940s and 1950s applied across the entire spectrum to Hollywood genres, a fact which has created the chief stumbling block in defining film noir. Nevertheless, the nature of the style has proven much less controversial than the genre.
The visual style of noir narrative structure is a recurrent theme throughout the development of the genre and in the particular expressiveness it attains in the hands of notable noir filmmakers, usually in collaboration with their cameramen:
- High contrast or chiaroscuro, that is, shadows and areas of darkness juxtaposed to more lighted areas.
- Key lighting, that is, a point of light on one object or face.
- Slats of light: the Venetian blind effect. Or bars of light, like prison bars.
- Night scenes.
- Wide angle photography.
- Depth of focus.
- Hallucinatory dissolves.
- Dream montages.
- Strange camera angles. [9]
"The other structural elements of noir narrative that established its genre status include:
- An urban setting or at least an urban influence. This setting, according to noir convention, is captured mostly at night and often just after rain.
- A modern, twentieth-century setting, from the Great Depression on, and usually of the 1940s, 1950s, or early 1960s, with latitude permitting its extension to the present day.
- A lack of comic structure, although the film noir may have comic elements (Jules Dassin’s Rififi) and often has humor (The Big Sleep). There can be no true noir comedy as there is a western comedy or a war comedy. (Frank Capra’s Arsenic and Old Lace, George Marshall’s Murder, He Says, and Preston Sturges’s wonderful comédie noire, Unfaithfully Yours, function as black comedies, a distinct variation of comedy.) Two directors often considered to have made films noirs, Alfred Hitchcock (Shadow of a Doubt, Strangers on a Train, I Confess, The Wrong Man, and perhaps Rear Window) and Billy Wilder (Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Ace in the Hole) are problematic cases because their visions are steeped in cruel and corrosive humor, distinctive in its own right and in its ability to function apart from the noir universe. One senses that both of these artists, especially Hitchcock, would have expressed their personalities unallied with any particular genre. The one notable exception is Wilder’s Double Indemnity. Any film that is based on James M. Cain, is scripted by Raymond Chandler, stars Barbara Stanwyck, and contains every stylistic convention of the film noir, insists upon recognition of that kind.
- A denial by its main characters of conventional social and domestic happiness through unattainability or refusal.
- An assertion of individuality as defined by the killing (although not necessarily murder) of someone (including oneself) in defiance of modern social mores and the law.
- The iconic representation of the above-mentioned features by a definitive star of the screen or through a striking performance by a less recognized screen star or actor.
The conventions of the film noir ensconced in its narrative structure, which make it distinctive yet are not exclusive to the noir, include the following:
- The femme fatale or her counterpart, the homme fatal.
- The active/sexual and passive/nonsexual characters.
- The voice-over narration and the flashback. Both are usually from the male protagonist’s point of view.
- Frequent portraits (Laura, The Woman in the Window, Scarlet Street).
- Telephones - ringing, answered, or dialed - that portend bad and often incriminating news. (Sorry, Wrong Number is the obvious case. In Detour the telephone is literally an instrument of manslaughter, and in Double Indemnity a Dictaphone functions as a confessional.)
- Temporary amnesia, often suffered by noir characters and often diagnosed in tandem with the increasingly popular use of Freudian psychology in postwar American cinema (Phantom Lady, My Name Is Julia Ross, Black Angel, Somewhere in the Night, The Dark Past). Psychology itself can acquire a sinister, manipulative function in noir films (Nightmare Alley, The Accused, Hollow Triumph [The Scar]). Nightmares or daydreams function as disturbing symptoms of hidden fears or desires (The Woman in the Window, Scarlet Street, The Chase, Crack-Up, Fear in the Night).
- Cars as indispensable devices of escape, from crime or a criminal past, one’s pursuers, the law, or marital and domestic unpleasantness. [1]
"However, these stylistic conventions are clearly used in other types of film, and many films that are frequently referred to as films noir do not exhibit these features. Similar problems occur if noir is defined through its particular, and unusually complex, narrative devices including voice-overs, multiple narrators, flashbacks, and ellipses that break with the Hollywood convention of straightforward causality and lead to ambiguous or inconclusive endings. Such devices characterize many noirs but are by no means the majority. Most noirs take place in dark, nighttime cities, their streets damp with rain that reflects the flashing neon signs where the alienated, often psychologically disturbed, male antihero encounters a deceitful femme fatale leading to his doom. However, there are too many exceptions to make these features conclusive criteria. Some commentators have sought to unify film noir through its prevailing mood or tone - its characteristically dark, malign, morally ambivalent, and unstable universe, where existence is understood to be meaningless and absurd. This description fits some examples (the darkest) but also fails to encompass the full range of films noir, many of which have upbeat endings in which the forces of law and order or romantic love are triumphant. Overall, attempting to define film noir as a set of "essential" formal component - stylistic, narratological, or thematic - tends to be reductive or even misleading." [2]
"This gripping era of filmmaking is perhaps more passionately and extensively discussed than any other, particularly with regard to which films are actually considered to be film noir. Because of the era’s widely encompassing denotation and a frequently subjective nature based more on tone and mood than setting, the classification of the films is sometime more a matter of personal opinion than irrefutable fact. Not every film with looming shadows on the wall, light filtering through window blinds, flashing neon signs, and stark shots staring down spiral staircases is film noir. Nor is every film that contains a double-crossing female, a relentless detective, or a luckless, misguided family man. But most noirs contain some, if not all, of these elements.
Perhaps more than any other quality, however, it is the feeling that makes the film noir what it is - the atmosphere of hopelessness, the ambience of doom, the aura of pessimism and cynicism, greed and distrust. (Interestingly, as difficult as film noir is to define, one can glean an understanding of the period by examining the titles of the films themselves. A number of words are used repeatedly in film noir titles - examined collectively, they provide a simplistic, yet revealing and accurate reflection of the era’s overall tone, including "fear," "dark," "night," "kill," "big," "city," "crime," "guilty," "strange," "lady," "kiss," "street," and "cry." Another effective indicator of the spirit of film noir comes from those features with one-word titles, such as Desperate, Cornered, Pitfall, Conflict, Tension, Nightmare, Framed, Possessed, Convicted, and Caught." [5]
"On the most superficial level, however, there are some elements that a viewer can look for that really help to define this genre. If you’re considering watching a film and want to know if it’s really noir before you watch, here are some of the conventions to look for.
The Fashion: Film noir fashion is iconic. It still influences fashion today and, if one wants to invoke the fashion, there are some very established trends they can follow.
The women - at least the leads - are very stylish in almost all cases. They are graceful, elegant and, at the same time, distractingly alluring. The women’s wardrobe in these films was usually put together to look like something the audience would wear, but was a very stylish version of that. There are some exceptions, however, and some femme fatales are all evening gowns and opera gloves, giving them an air of wealth, sophistication and the exotic.
The men, particularly the protagonists, tend toward fedoras, raincoats, and suits and ties. Their clothing tends to suit their needs. A snub-nosed .38 can easily be carried in the hip pocket of a long, loose raincoat without imprinting. Their clothing, however, sometimes serves as a reminder of their natures as well. In the right lighting, those fedoras cast dark shadows across a character’s face, reminding the audience that there’s a bit of darkness to contend with in the world in which the film takes place, even - or particularly - in the protagonist’s case.
The Attitude: Don’t trust anyone in a film noir. They’re usually all hard characters and they’re either figuring out what you’re trying to get out of them or what they can get out of you, sometimes both. There are sometimes innocents in these films, but they are usually exceptional compared to the rest of the characters. Expect a lot of cynicism, hard drinks, unfiltered cigarettes and harsh words. These folks talk tough, act tough and they are tough. Sometimes they might have a heart of gold - or just a conscious - but most of the people in these films do not come off as people to trifle with, and they live up to their attitudes in their actions.
The Settings: Look for the non-glamorous parts of the city. Look for the shadowy docks, the dark alleyways and the businesses that serve as front operations for criminals. Look for these places at night, because that’s when the players in these films will be there. If it’s not nighttime, it’ll most likely be raining and you’ll be hard-pressed to find a sunny day. Wherever you end up in a noir film, there will always be a sense of dread, an oppressive darkness and a sinister atmosphere.
The Plot: Greed, murder, revenge, deception; these are all hallmarks of film noir. The stories are sometimes so complex that it may take more than one viewing to figure out exactly how someone was set up, double-crossed or ended up at the bottom of a river. These are mature stories for a mature audience. In addition to your love of style, bring your brain to the viewing and pay close attention, as you’ll miss the subtleties of the plot otherwise.
Great Dialogue: Some of the best dialogue around is to be found in film noir. The characters tend to use a lot of tough, underworld slang and, despite their hard-boiled, street-smart natures, are typically quite adept at witty conversation. Oftentimes, the best moments in film noir happen when the leads dialogue among themselves, or with colorful side characters." [8]
The Man in Noir
"He can be vicious or violent, as likely to slap a dame’s face as kiss her. Or a dauntless protector of the law, nabbing hoods with a combination of instinct, fortitude, and grit. He might be vulnerable and gullible, apt to succumb to the whims of a conniving cutie at the drop of the proverbial hat. He can be inexorably hardened by life’s unforeseen knocks, brimming with cynicism, suspicion, and doubt. Or overcome with desperate disillusionment, caught up in circumstances beyond his control and urgently seeking a way out of a seemingly hopeless plight.
More so than his feminine counterpart, this man represents every type of persona, occupying all social and economic strata, and spanning the occupational gamut from the vilest petty criminal to the most upstanding judge. He is an indefatigable gumshoe in The Big Sleep (1946), a carnival sharpshooter in Gun Crazy (1949), an unscrupulous newspaper photographer in Shakedown (1950), a hard-working truck driver in Desperate (1947), a prize-fighter in The Set-Up (1949), a priest in Edge of Doom (1950). He pumps gas in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), sells insurance in Double Indemnity (1944), drives a taxicab in 99 River Street (1953), writes short stories in Danger Signal (1945), picks pockets in Pickup on South Street (1953). He is an endless number of syndicate chiefs, assistant district attorneys, private dicks, gun-toting henchmen, and prison inmates.
From Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade to Johnny Rocco and Cody Jarrett, the film noir male is a unique, fascinating, and infinitely watchable being, displaying a wide range of emotions, behaviors, and motivations. Some of the films from the era depict men who are almost mindlessly violent, such as Neville Brand’s Chester in D.O.A. (1950), whose sole enjoyment in life seems to be derived from inflicting pain on others. Other films noirs contain flawed authority figures, as in The Glass Key (1942), in which Senator Ralph Henry (Moroni Olsen) conceals his role in his son’s death; Guilty Bystander (1950), which features alcoholic ex-cop Max Thursday (Zachary Scott); or Detective Story (1951), where lawman Jim McLeod (Kirk Douglas) is ruled by an inflexible moral code that costs him his marriage and, ultimately, his life. Some focus on hapless males whose lives are turned upside down because of their unquenchable desire for a woman, such as insurance agent John Forbes (Dick Powell) in Pitfall (1948), garage mechanic Dan Brady (Mickey Rooney) in Quicksand (1950), or Mike Lambert (Glenn Ford), the unemployed engineer in Framed (1947). Then there are films in which ruthless, powerful crime bosses rule with a steel will and an iron fist, including the brutal Mr. Brown (Richard Conte) in The Big Combo (1955) and Neil Eichelberger (Ed Begley) in The Turning Point (1952), who sacrifices a building of innocent people in the pursuit of his personal objectives. And on the right side of the law, film noir offers numerous portraits of courageous officers, from undercover agents such as Lawrence Trumble (William Bendix) in Macao (1952), to beat cops including Rocky Barnes (Mark Stevens) in Between Midnight and Dawn (1950). From the most imposing gumshoe to the meekest elevator operator, each man in film noir plays a role in weaving the fabric of this dim and murky universe." [5]
The femme noir
"Some of the best film roles for actresses are to be found in film noir. The characters are oftentimes tough as nails and don’t need anyone to save them, allowing good actresses to avoid clichéd roles. The women are oftentimes just as smart and capable as the men, in fact, and just as often they’re smarter and more capable, as many the victim of a femme fatale could reveal. They can also be sympathetic and in need of help without for a minute being helpless. In short, they’re just as human as the main characters. They’re not devices that allow the male protagonist to advance the story but, quite often, have stories that are just as interesting as the men’s and characters that are just profoundly dark and cynical. To top it all off, they usually have a style that’s all their own. When they sit down at a private detective’s desk, they’re no less cool than the fedora-wearing, chain-smoking and hard-drinking man across from them, and that makes them a joy to watch." [8]
"In addition, most films noirs offer portraits of complex female characters who, to some degree, are fundamental to the development of the plot. Some exist as champions for the male protagonists, as in Phantom Lady (1944), where the relentless determination of Ella Raines’ Carol lifts the protagonist from his state of inevitable doom and results in the exposure of the man who framed him for murder. In other noir films, the female is portrayed as an innocent victim, caught up in circumstances beyond her control, such as Keechie (Cathy O’Donnell) in They Live by Night (1948), who falls in love with a naive petty criminal. Then there are the femmes who are gutsy but sincere, as in High Sierra (1941), where Ida Lupino’s Marie is hard-boiled and implacable, but also possesses a deep sense of compassion and a propensity for true love." [6]
"The femme fatale is a staple of film noir movies. This character, in fact, is a staple of many movie genres, but she is unique in her film noir depictions. These characters usually aren’t heroes in the classic era film noir pieces. In fact, they’re villains, but they just happen to be highly desirable villains. These women are the perfect antidote to the bland, doormat female characters that appeared in many other films of the era. When these women are in trouble, they figure out a way to get out of it. When these women need money, they’d rather run right over a man to get it than be supported by him. When they do have a man who supports them, love need not be a part of the occasion.
To really be a femme fatale, however, there has to be something dangerous about the woman. She’s usually a manipulator and is running an angle on the protagonist. If the protagonist knows she is working him for something, he’s usually misguided as to what she wants and whatever she’s up to is usually worse than he thought. Sometimes, she does want a man to do the heavy lifting for her. In The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), Cora needs someone to help her get rid of an inconvenient husband, with murder being the method of choice. These women are oftentimes trying to set up a murder or to get a bit of money - or both - and take some poor sap along for the ride. A femme fatale has to be attractive enough to be distracting. She’s not an action hero girl or a gun moll. She’s a different type of danger and she knows how to distract the men around her so that they don’t realize just how dangerous she really is.
For a lot of femme fatales, getting found out is the ultimate danger. They thrive on no one suspecting them or, if they are suspected, on being able to use their looks and charm to string people along. In the older films, these women would sometimes play the protagonist by implying that they really wanted to be with him and, once he helped them take care of whatever business they needed done, they’d be all his. The Postman Always Rings Twice is a prime example of this. In this way, the femme fatale is able to use assumptions about women and the traditional role of women at the time to deceive the male characters. They have no idea what she’s really up to, of course, thought the audience might suspect it, and that make the femme fatale character even more compelling." [8]
"Finally, there is the assortment of film noir females who use their wiles to get their way, as often as not at the expense of their male counterparts. The mystical French figure of la belle dame sans merci - the beautiful woman without mercy - is personified by the femmes in these productions. In firstrate, often shocking performances, an array of talented actresses - from such prominent stars as Barbara Stanwyck and Lana Turner, to lesser known actresses including Peggie Castle, Hope Emerson and Helen Walker - portrayed the dark side of the female; women who, in turn, could be avaricious, selfish, possessive, slovenly, calculating, masochistic and callous. While usually possessing a keen intelligence and shrewd cunning, these were women totally lacking in morals, bent on satisfying their own lustful, mercenary or violent desires, utterly aware of their unique feminine tools, and willing to capitalize on them whenever necessary." [6]
Film Noir and the City
"The city landscape envisioned as a requisite setting for the film noir symbolizes the conflict of all cities in their collection of different groups of people with competing influences and interests. But much more than this, the noir city individuates human motivations and passions, the very display of which serve as a morality tale of the course modern man has taken in his developed society with its institutions, values, and enticements. Within this urban world, the individual is alternately lost and at home, a refugee from others; as a lone human spirit, the person exercises his or her will to be heard among all the other cries, making that paradoxical claim of all noir characters for whom the city has been a modifying existential experience: to be one among none." [1]
"Although a tiny proportion of the films do have small-town or rural settings, classical film noir is quintessentially an urban cycle. A list of selected titles from the classical period of film noir clearly emphasizes this city focus, either by the use of the word city in the title (e.g. Dark City, The Naked City, City of Shadows, City for Conquest, Cry of the City, Night and the City, The Sleeping City, While the City Sleeps, City That Never Sleeps, Edge of the City), or by naming actual cities in the title (e.g. The Phenix City Story, New York Confidential, Port of New York, The Killer That Stalked New York, Chicago Deadline, Chicago Confidential, Kansas City Confidential), or by employing the term or the notion of the street (e.g. The Naked Street, Scarlet Street, Mystery Street, Street of Chance, The Street with No Name, One Way Street, Panic in the Streets, Side Street, Pickup on South Street, Where the Sidewalk Ends, 711 Ocean Drive, 99 River Street, Sunset Blvd, The House on 92nd Street), or sometimes even by a metaphorical reference to the brutal savagery inherent in urban life (e.g. The Asphalt Jungle, The Human Jungle, The Steel Jungle).
For some viewers the most obvious expression of the urban world of noir is to be found in the subgenre of the semidocumentary film made popular in postwar years by commercially successful movies such as The Naked City (1948). These films were shot on actual locations rather than on studio back-lots, and there is no doubt that they had a more authentic city feel than earlier studio-bound examples of noir. Semidocumentary film noirs tended to portray (rather than any furtive private transgressions) cities riven by public crimes, especially by political corruption, as in TThe Captive City (1952), The Phenix City Story (1955), The Big Heat (1953), The Racket (1951), or Street with No Name (1948).
Their protagonists are frequently members of various law enforcement bodies,a feature which has led some critics to consider them as being different ideologically from the radicalism of much film noir portraying "heroes" who are, in the main, downtrodden victims. Instead of lonely tenement rooms, these semidocumentaries feature locations appropriate for gangsters and organized crime, such as nightclubs, gambling joints, boxing rings, and arenas, along with other metonyms of city life such as boarding houses. The Killing and The Harder They Fall (both 1956) are late classical noirs that share with these semidocumentaries a setting in the urban worlds of sport and gambling. Racetracks, for example, feature in many noir films because (with their large deposits of cash) they obviously link in well with crime stories and heist plots.
Far more representative, however, than the semidocumentary treatment of the noir city is a distorted, expressionistic portrayal of it as an existential site of alienation. This aspect of the nature of the city, pessimistic in tone, is reflected in its often solitary inhabitants. The typical city dwellers of such stories are existential heroes, loners alienated in and by the city, which is impersonal and isolating. They are observed scurrying furtively beneath the street lights and along the alleyways and wet streets. They are revealed sitting alone in a darkened room, fearful and lonely. These protagonists seem so different from the heroes of more traditional Hollywood films, who occupy sunny urban landscapes, but there are sometimes hints that the shadowy city of sin and crime is present all along, lying below the shiny surface of those movies, if only the protagonists could see it. Even in Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), for instance, the noirish Pottersville exists as a nightmare town below the surface of Bedford Falls.
First and foremost as a locus classicus of the genre is the very city in which Hollywood is located and where the studios that produced film noir operated: Los Angeles. There is no doubt that the stringent minimizing of production expenses imposed by the comparatively low budgets of most films today categorized as noir had an influence in this regard. Plainly, the films’ stories were usually set in Los Angeles to save money on travel to plot locations (a policy practiced even more stringently during World War II because of government restrictions). They tended to emphasize the darker and seamier side of a city that was otherwise stereotyped by boosters of its development as sunny and prosperous. In its early years, Los Angeles was dubbed "Los Diablos" (i.e., a devilish rather than an angelic city) by more cynical newspaper writers throughout the United States, and the city certainly seems more diabolic than angelic, as it is generally portrayed in film noir.
For most people both within and outside the United States, New York is the apotheosis of the American city, with its Manhattan skyline being the most iconic image of that urban landscape. Unsurprisingly, it is (apart from Los Angeles) the most common setting for noir movie stories. New York is frequently shown in generalized terms: skyscrapers and so on, often employing stock footage, with the actors only seen recognizably on sound sets in their Los Angeles studios. It was rare for budgets to allow for production in actual New York locations until the creation of a fashion for authenticity first engendered by the popularity of The Naked City.
Director Jules Dassin was determined to make The Naked City the first film to be shot entirely on location. His hankering for complete geographical authenticity is clear from the film’s opening scene: an aerial camera aboard a helicopter or plane approaches the tip of Manhattan in a shot anticipating the famous credit sequence of West Side Story (1961). Producer Mark Hellinger introduces the film The Naked City in voice-over, emphasizing that it is not a studio-bound movie but that all its scenes will be played out on real streets and in the buildings of the actual city. This (he says) is "the city as it is . . . [at] one o’clock in the morning on a hot summer night." The "pulse" of the city, which never stops beating, is then shown by a montage of night workers doing their graveyard shifts: cleaners, newspaper printers, and so on. After the film’s climax high on the superstructure of a bridge, his closing voice-over famously explains that "there are eight million stories in the naked city: this has been one of them."
With its harbor edged by busy piers, its hills and its tightly packed downtown streets, San Francisco more resembles in appearance New York than it does its fellow Californian city Los Angeles. Its picturesquely precipitous streets, its congested downtown neighborhoods, and the exoticism of its Chinatown have all encouraged noir filmmakers to use the city as a symbol of mystery, duplicity, and confusion. This can be seen in the most bewildering section of Out of the Past (1947), where the Robert Mitchum character feels framed in a convoluted trap in which he is the fall guy, or even more dramatically in the kaleidoscopic concluding scenes of The Lady from Shanghai (1948). Most elaborately of all, San Francisco is used as a hypnotically ensnaring environment in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958)." [4]
Legacy
"Many genres borrow from film noir, but there’s nothing like true film noir. The darkness, cynicism and, at the same time, realism, that characterizes these films makes them something unique. The classic era of film noir was one where censorship and the Red Scare dominated the way most films were made. Some stories were essentially forbidden, but film noir manages to break down barriers and tell those stories anyway. Crime, murder, sex; they’re all on bold display in these movies.
Moving to the modern era of neo-noir, we see something wonderful happen. An appreciation for the filmmaking techniques of the past, with all their haunting shadows and darkened urban landscapes, gave us some of the best films in any genre. From Reservoir Dogs to Oldboy, film noir has left its mark on how films look and feel, even if the audience isn’t aware of how much those modern films have been influenced by classic film noir.
This genre has endured because it has something unique to offer. It’s sophisticated, yet accessible. It’s complex, but it still draws on emotions that anyone can relate to. It can be maddening, with all the twists and turns in the plots of these films, but it rewards the viewer for persisting in watching and, perhaps, even watching the same film more than once." [8]
American Film Noir Filmography
American pre-noir
- Underworld (1927) d Josef von Sternberg
- The Racket (1928) d Lewis Milestone
- Thunderbolt (1929) d Josef von Sternberg
- The Big Gamble (1931) d Fred Noble
- City Streets (1931) d Rouben Mamoulian
- The Maltese Falcon (1931) d Roy Del Ruth
- The Secret Six (1931) d George W Hill
- The Beast of the City (1932) d Charles Brabin
- I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932) d Mervyn LeRoy
- Payment Deferred (1932) d Lothar Mendes
- Two Seconds (1932) d Mervyn LeRoy
- Advice to the Lovelorn (1933) d Alfred L Werker
- Blood Money (1933) d Rowland Brown
- Crime Without Passion (1934) d Ben Hecht
- Midnight (1934) d Chester Erskine
- Bordertown (1935) d Archie Mayo
- The Glass Key (1935) d Frank Tuttle
- The Scoundrel (1935) d Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur
- Bullets or Ballots (1936) d William Keighley
- Fury (1936) d Fritz Lang
- The Petrified Forest (1936) d Archie Mayo
- You Only Live Once (1937) d Fritz Lang
- You and Me (1938) d Fritz Lang
- Blind Alley (1939) d Charles Vidor
- Let Us Live (1939) d John Brahm
- Rio (1939) d John Brahm
American classic noir (1940-1960)
- The 3rd Voice (1960), d. Hubert Cornfield
- 5 against the House (1955), d. Phil Karlson
- 711 Ocean Drive (1950), d. Joseph M. Newman
- Abandoned (1949), d. Joseph M. Newman
- Accomplice (1946), d. Walter Colmes
- The Accused (1949), d. William Dieterle
- Accused of Murder (1956), d. Joseph Kane
- Ace in the Hole (1951), d. Billy Wilder
- An Act of Murder (1948), d. Michael Gordon
- Act of Violence (1949), d. Fred Zinnemann
- Affair in Havana (1957), d. Laslo Benedek
- Affair in Trinidad (1952), d. Vincent Sherman
- Alias Nick Beal (1949), d. John Farrow
- Alimony (1949), d. Alfred Zeisler
- All My Sons (1948), d. Irving Reis
- All the King’s Men (1949), d. Robert Rossen
- Allotment Wives (1945), d. William Nigh
- The Amazing Mr. X (1948), d. Bernard Vorhaus
- Among the Living (1941), d. Stuart Heisler
- Anatomy of a Murder (1959), d. Otto Preminger
- Angel Face (1953), d. Otto Preminger
- Angela (1955), d. Edoardo Anton and Dennis O’Keefe
- Angels over Broadway (1940), d. Ben Hecht and Lee Garmes
- Apology for Murder (1945), d. Sam Newfield
- Appointment with a Shadow (1958), d. Richard Karlson
- Appointment with Danger (1951), d. Lewis Allen
- Arch of Triumph (1948), d. Lewis Milestone
- The Argyle Secrets (1948), d. Cy Endfield
- Armored Car Robbery (1950), d. Richard Fleischer
- The Arnelo Affair (1947), d. Arch Oboler
- Arson for Hire (1959), d. Thor L. Brooks
- The Asphalt Jungle (1950), d. John Huston
- Autumn Leaves (1956), d. Robert Aldrich
- Baby Face Nelson (1957), d. Don Siegel
- Backfire (1950), d. Vincent Sherman
- Background to Danger (1943), d. Raoul Walsh
- Backlash (1947), d. Eugene Forde
- Bad for Each Other (1954), d. Irving Rapper
- The Badlanders (1959), d. Delmer Daves
- Bait (1954), d. Hugo Haas
- The Beast with Five Fingers (1946), d. Robert Florey
- The Beat Generation (1959), d. Charles Haas
- Bedlam (1946), d. Mark Robson
- Behind Green Lights (1946), d. Otto Brower
- Behind Locked Doors (1948), d. Budd Boetticher
- Behind the High Wall (1956), d. Abner Biberman
- Below the Deadline (1946), d. William Beaudine
- Berlin Express (1948), d. Jacques Tourneur
- Betrayal from the East (1945), d. William Berke
- Betrayed (1954), d. Gottfried Reinhardt
- Betrayed Women (1955), d. Edward L. Cahn
- Between Midnight and Dawn (1950), d. Gordon Douglas
- Beware, My Lovely (1952), d. Harry Horner
- Bewitched (1945), d. Arch Oboler
- Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1955), d. Fritz Lang
- Beyond the Forest (1949), d. King Vidor
- The Big Bluff (1955), d. W. Lee Wilder
- The Big Boodle (1957), d. Richard Wilson
- The Big Caper (1957), d. Robert Stevens
- The Big Clock (1948), d. John Farrow
- The Big Combo (1955), d. Joseph H. Lewis
- The Big Heat (1953), d. Fritz Lang
- Big Jim McLain (1952), d. Edward Ludwig
- The Big Knife (1955), d. Robert Aldrich
- The Big Night (1951), d. Joseph Losey
- The Big Operator (1959), d. Charles Haas
- The Big Punch (1948), d. Sherry Shourds
- The Big Sleep (1946), d. Howard Hawks
- The Big Steal (1949), d. Don Siegel
- The Big Tip Off (1955), d. Frank McDonald
- Big Town (1947), d. William C. Thomas
- The Bigamist (1953), d. Ida Lupino
- Black Angel (1946), d. Roy William Neill
- Black Friday (1940), d. Arthur Lubin
- Black Hand (1950), d. Richard Thorpe
- Black Magic (1949), d. Gregory Ratoff
- Black Tuesday (1954), d. Hugo Fregonese
- Black Widow (1954), d. Nunnally Johnson
- Blackmail (1947), d. Lesley Selander
- Blind Spot (1947), d. Robert Gordon
- Blonde Alibi (1946), d. Will Jason
- The Blonde Bandit (1950), d. Harry Keller
- Blonde Ice (1948), d. Jack Bernhard
- Blood on the Moon (1948), d. Robert Wise
- Blood on the Sun (1945), d. Frank Lloyd
- Blowing Wild (1953), d. Hugo Fregonese
- The Blue Dahlia (1946), d. George Marshall
- The Blue Gardenia (1953), d. Fritz Lang
- Bluebeard (1944), d. Edgar G. Ulmer
- A Blueprint for Murder (1953), d. Andrew L. Stone
- Blues in the Night (1941), d. Anatole Litvak
- Body and Soul (1947), d. Robert Rossen
- The Body Snatcher (1945), d. Robert Wise
- Bodyguard (1948), d. Richard Fleischer
- The Bonnie Parker Story (1958), d. William Witney
- Boomerang! (1947), d. Elia Kazan
- Border Incident (1949), d. Anthony Mann
- Borderline (1950), d. William A. Seiter
- Born to Kill (1947), d. Robert Wise
- The Boss (1956), d. Byron Haskin
- Bowery at Midnight (1942), d. Wallace Fox
- The Brasher Doubloon (1947), d. Dorothy Hannah
- The Breaking Point (1950), d. Michael Curtiz
- The Bribe (1949), d. Robert Z. Leonard
- The Brighton Strangler (1945), d. Max Nosseck
- The Brothers Rico (1957), d. Phil Karlson
- Brute Force (1947), d. Jules Dassin
- A Bullet for Joey (1955), d. Lewis Allen
- Bullet Scars (1942), d. D. Ross Lederman
- Bunco Squad (1950), d. Herbert I. Leeds
- The Burglar (1957), d. Paul Wendkos
- Bury Me Dead (1947), d. Bernard Vorhaus
- Caged (1950), d. John Cromwell
- Calcutta (1947), d. John Farrow
- Call Northside 777 (1948), d. Henry Hathaway
- Calling Dr. Death (1944), d. Reginald Le Borg
- Calling Homicide (1956), d. Edward Bernds
- Canon City (1948), d. Crane Wilbur
- The Captive City (1952), d. Robert Wise
- The Capture (1950), d. John Sturges
- Casablanca (1942), d. Michael Curtiz
- Cat People (1942), d. Jacques Tourneur
- Caught (1949), d. Max Ophüls
- Cause for Alarm! (1951), d. Tay Garnett
- Cell 2455 Death Row (1955), d. Fred F. Sears
- Chain of Evidence (1957), d. Paul Landres
- Champion (1949), d. Mark Robson
- The Chase (1946), d. Arthur Ripley
- Chicago Confidential (1957), d. Sidney Salkow
- Chicago Deadline (1949), d. Lewis Allen
- Chicago Syndicate (1955), d. Fred F. Sears
- Chinatown at Midnight (1949), d. Seymour Friedman
- Christmas Holiday (1944), d. Robert Siodmak
- Circumstantial Evidence (1945), d. John Larkin
- City across the River (1949), d. Maxwell Shane
- City for Conquest (1940), d. Anatole Litvak
- City of Fear (1959), d. Irving Lerner
- City of Shadows (1955), d. William Witney
- City That Never Sleeps (1953), d. John H. Auer
- Clash by Night (1952), d. Fritz Lang
- The Clay Pigeon (1949), d. Richard Fleischer
- Cloak and Dagger (1946), d. Fritz Lang
- C-Man (1949), d. Joseph Lerner
- The Come-On (1956), d. Russell Birdwell
- The Company She Keeps (1951), d. John Cromwell
- Compulsion (1959), d. Richard Fleischer
- Confidential Agent (1945), d. Herman Shumlin
- Conflict (1945), d. Curtis Bernhardt
- Convicted (1950), d. Henry Levin
- Cop Hater (1958), d. William Berke
- Cornered (1945), d. Edward Dmytryk
- Count the Hours (1953), d. Don Siegel
- Cover Up (1949), d. Alfred E. Green
- Crack-Up (1946), d. Irving Reis
- Crashout (1955), d. Lewis R. Foster
- Crime against Joe (1956), d. Lee Sholem
- Crime in the Streets (1956), d. Don Siegel
- Crime of Passion (1957), d. Gerd Oswald
- Crime Wave (1954), d. André de Toth
- Criminal Court (1946), d. Robert Wise
- The Crimson Kimono (1959), d. Samuel Fuller
- Crisis (1950), d. Richard Brooks
- Criss Cross (1949), d. Robert Siodmak
- The Crooked Circle (1958), d. John Smith
- The Crooked Way (1949), d. Robert Florey
- The Crooked Web (1955), d. Nathan Juran
- Crossfire (1947), d. Edward Dmytryk
- Crossroads (1942), d. Jack Conway
- The Cruel Tower (1956), d. Lew Landers
- The Cry-Baby Killer (1958), d. Roger Corman
- Cry Danger (1951), d. Robert Parrish
- A Cry in the Night (1956), d. Frank Tuttle
- Cry of the City (1948), d. Robert Siodmak
- Cry of the Hunted (1953), d. Joseph H. Lewis
- Cry Terror! (1958), d. Andrew L. Stone
- Cry Tough (1959), d. Paul Stanley
- Cry Vengeance (1954), d. Mark Stevens
- Cry Wolf (1947), d. Peter Godfrey
- D.O.A. (1950), d. Rudolph Maté
- The Damned Don’t Cry (1950), d. Vincent Sherman
- Danger Signal (1945), d. Robert Florey
- Danger Zone (1951), d. William Berke
- Dangerous Crossing (1953), d. Joseph M. Newman
- Dangerous Intruder (1945), d. Vernon Keays
- A Dangerous Profession (1949), d. Ted Tetzlaff
- Dark City (1950), d. William Dieterle
- The Dark Corner (1946), d. Henry Hathaway
- The Dark Mirror (1946), d. Robert Siodmak
- Dark Passage (1947), d. Delmer Daves
- The Dark Past (1948), d. Rudolph Maté
- Dark Waters (1944), d. André de Toth
- Date with Death (1959), d. Harold Daniels
- The Day the World Ended (1955), d. Roger Corman
- Dead Reckoning (1947), d. John Cromwell
- Deadline at Dawn (1946), d. Harold Clurman
- Deadly Is the Female (1950), d. Joseph H. Lewis
- Death in Small Doses (1957), d. Joseph M. Newman
- Death of a Salesman (1951), d. Laslo Benedek
- Death of a Scoundrel (1956), d. Charles Martin
- Deception (1946), d. Irving Rapper
- Decoy (1946), d. Jack Bernhard
- Deep Valley (1947), d. Jean Negulesco
- Desert Fury (1947), d. Lewis Allen
- Desperate (1947), d. Anthony Mann
- The Desperate Hours (1955), d. William Wyler
- Destination Murder (1950), d. Edward L. Cahn
- Destiny (1944), d. Reginald LeBorg and Julien Duvivier (uncredited)
- Detective Story (1951), d. William Wyler
- Detour (1945), d. Edgar G. Ulmer
- The Devil’s Sleep (1951), d. W. Merle Connell
- The Devil Thumbs a Ride (1947), d. Felix E. Feist
- Dial 1119 (1950), d. Gerald Mayer
- Dial M for Murder (1954), d. Alfred Hitchcock
- Dial Red 0 (1955), d. Daniel B. Ullman
- Dillinger (1945), d. Max Nosseck
- Dishonored Lady (1947), d. Robert Stevenson
- Don’t Bother to Knock (1952), d. Roy Ward Baker
- Doorway to Suspicion (1954), d. Dallas Bower
- Double Deal (1950), d. Abby Berlin
- Double Indemnity (1944), d. Billy Wilder
- Double Jeopardy (1955), d. R. G. Springsteen
- A Double Life (1948), d. George Cukor
- Dragonwyck (1946), d. Joseph L. Mankiewicz
- Drive a Crooked Road (1954), d. Blake Edwards
- Edge of Doom (1950), d. Mark Robson
- Edge of the City (1957), d. Martin Ritt
- The Enforcer (1951), d. Bretaigne Windust
- Escape from Crime (1942), d. D. Ross Lederman
- Escape in the Fog (1945), d. Oscar “Budd” Boetticher
- Experiment Perilous (1944), d. Jacques Tourneur
- F.B.I. Girl (1951), d. William Berke
- A Face in the Crowd (1957), d. Elia Kazan
- Fall Guy (1947), d. Reginald LeBorg
- Fallen Angel (1946), d. Otto Preminger
- The Family Secret (1951), d. Henry Levin
- The Fast and the Furious (1955), d. John Ireland and Edward Sampson
- The Fat Man (1951), d. William Castle
- Fear (1946), d. Alfred Zeisler
- Fear in the Night (1947), d. Maxwell Shane
- Female Jungle (1955), d. Bruno VeSota
- Female on the Beach (1955), d. Joseph Pevney
- The File on Thelma Jordon (1950), d. Robert Siodmak
- Finger Man (1955), d. Harold Schuster
- Fingerprints Don’t Lie (1951), d. Sam Newfield
- Fingers at the Window (1942), d. Charles Lederer
- The Flame (1948), d. John H. Auer
- Flamingo Road (1949), d. Michael Curtiz
- Flaxy Martin (1949), d. Richard Bare
- Flesh and Fury (1952), d. Joseph Pevney
- Follow Me Quietly (1949), d. Richard Fleischer
- Footsteps in the Night (1957), d. Jean Yarborough
- For You I Die (1947), d. John Reinhardt
- Forbidden (1953), d. Rudolph Maté
- Force of Evil (1948), d. Abraham Polonsky
- Four Boys and a Gun (1957), d. William Berke
- Fourteen Hours (1951), d. Henry Hathaway
- Framed (1947), d. Richard Wallace
- The French Key (1946), d. Walter Colmes
- The Furies (1950), d. Anthony Mann
- Gambling House (1951), d. Ted Tetzlaff
- Gang Busters (1955), d. Bill Karn
- The Gangster (1947), d. Gordon Wiles
- The Garment Jungle (1957), d. Vincent Sherman and Robert Aldrich
- Gaslight (1944), d. George Cukor
- Gilda (1946), d. Charles Vidor
- The Girl in Black Stockings (1957), d. Howard W. Koch
- The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1955), d. Richard Fleischer
- The Girl on the Bridge (1951), d. Hugo Haas
- The Glass Alibi (1946), d. W. Lee Wilder
- The Glass Key (1942), d. Stuart Heisler
- The Glass Wall (1953), d. Maxwell Shane
- The Glass Web (1953), d. Jack Arnold
- Glory Alley (1952), d. Ralph Meeker
- Grand Central Murder (1942), d. S. Sylvan Simon
- The Great Flamarion (1945) d. Anthony Mann
- The Green Buddha (1955), d. John Lemont
- The Green Glove (1952), d. Rudolph Maté
- Guest in the House (1944), d. John Brahm
- The Guilty (1947), d. John Reinhardt
- Guilty Bystander (1950), d. Joseph Lerner
- Gunman in the Streets (1950), d. Frank Tuttle
- The Halliday Brand (1957), d. Joseph H. Lewis
- Hangover Square (1945), d. John Brahm
- The Harder They Fall (1956), d. Mark Robson
- A Hatful of Rain (1957), d. Fred Zinnemann
- He Ran All the Way (1951), d. John Berry
- He Walked by Night (1949), d. Alfred Werker
- Heartaches (1947), d. Basil Wrangell
- Hell Bound (1957), d. William J. Hole
- Hell on Frisco Bay (1955), d. Frank Tuttle
- Hell’s Half Acre (1954), d. John H. Auer
- Hell’s Island (1955), d. Phil Karlson
- Her Kind of Man (1946), d. Frederick de Cordova
- Hidden Fear (1957), d. André de Toth
- Hideout (1949), d. Philip Ford
- High Sierra (1941), d. John Huston
- High Tide (1947), d. John Reinhardt
- High Wall (1947), d. Curtis Bernhardt
- Highway 301 (1950), d. Andrew L. Stone
- Highway Dragnet (1954), d. Nathan Juran
- Highway West (1941), d. William McGann
- His Kind of Woman (1951), d. John Farrow
- Hit and Run (1957), d. Hugo Haas
- The Hitch-Hiker (1953), d. Ida Lupino
- Hold Back Tomorrow (1955), d. Hugo Haas
- Hollow Triumph (1948), d. Steve Sekely
- Hollywood Story (1951), d. William Castle
- Homicide (1949), d. Felix Jacoves
- Hong Kong Confidential (1959), d. Edward L. Cahn
- The Hoodlum (1951), d. Max Nosseck
- Hoodlum Empire (1952), d. Joseph Kane
- Hot Cargo (1946), d. Lew Landers
- Hot Summer Night (1957), d. David Friedkin
- House by the River (1950), d. Fritz Lang
- House of Bamboo (1955), d. Samuel Fuller
- House of Horrors (1946), d. Jean Yarborough
- House of Numbers (1957), d. Russell Rouse
- House of Strangers (1949), d. Joseph L. Mankiewicz
- The House on 92nd Street (1945), d. Henry Hathaway
- The House on Telegraph Hill (1951), d. Robert Wise
- The Houston Story (1956), d. William Castle
- Human Desire (1954), d. Fritz Lang
- The Human Jungle (1954), d. Joseph M. Newman
- Hunt the Man Down (1950), d. George Archainbaud
- The Hunted (1948), d. Jack Bernhard
- I Cheated the Law (1949), d. Edward L. Cahn
- I Cover the Underworld (1955), d. R. G. Springsteen
- I Died a Thousand Times (1955), d. Stuart Heisler
- I, Jane Doe (1948), d. John H. Auer
- I Love Trouble (1947), d. S. Sylvan Simon
- I Married a Communist (1949), d. Robert Stevenson
- I, the Jury (1953), d. Harry Essex
- I Wake Up Screaming (1941), d. H. Bruce Humberstone
- I Walk Alone (1948), d. Byron Haskin
- I Walked with a Zombie (1943), d. Jacques Tourneur
- I Want to Live! (1958), d. Robert Wise
- I Was a Communist for the F.B.I. (1951), d. Gordon Douglas
- I Was a Shoplifter (1950), d. Charles Lamont
- I Was Framed (1942), d. D. Ross Lederman
- I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes (1948), d. William Nigh
- I’ll Cry Tomorrow (1955), d. Daniel Mann
- Illegal (1955), d. Lewis Allen
- Illegal Entry (1949), d. Frederick de Cordova
- Impact (1949), d. Arthur Lubin
- In a Lonely Place (1950), d. Nicholas Ray
- Incident (1948), d. William Beaudine
- Inner Sanctum (1948), d. Lew Landers
- Inside Detroit (1956), d. Fred F. Sears
- Inside Job (1946), d. Jean Yarbrough
- Intrigue (1947), d. Edwin L. Marin
- Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), d. Don Siegel
- The Invisible Wall (1947), d. Eugene Forde
- The Iron Curtain (1948), d. William A. Wellman
- Iron Man (1951), d. Joseph Pevney
- Ivy (1947), d. Sam Wood
- Jail Bait (1954), d. Edward D. Wood
- Jealousy (1945), d. Gustav Machatý
- Jennifer (1953), d. Joel Newton
- Jeopardy (1953), d. John Sturges
- Jigsaw (1949), d. Fletcher Markle
- Johnny Allegro (1949), d. Ted Tetzlaff
- Johnny Angel (1945), d. Edwin L. Marin
- Johnny Cool (1958), d. William Asher
- Johnny Eager (1942), d. Mervyn LeRoy
- Johnny O’Clock (1947), d. Robert Rossen
- Johnny One-Eye (1950), d. Robert Florey
- Johnny Rocco (1958), d. Paul Landres
- Johnny Stool Pigeon (1949), d. Robert L. Richards
- Journey into Fear (1943), d. Orson Welles
- The Judge (1949), d. Elmer Clifton
- Julie (1956), d. Andrew L. Stone
- Kansas City Confidential (1952), d. Phil Karlson
- Key Largo (1948), d. John Huston
- Key Witness (1947), d. D. Ross Lederman
- Key Witness (1960), d. Phil Karlson
- Kill or Be Killed (1950), d. Max Nosseck
- The Killer Is Loose (1956), d. Oscar Boetticher
- The Killer That Stalked New York (1951), d. Earl McEvoy
- The Killers (1946), d. Robert Siodmak
- Killer’s Kiss (1955), d. Stanley Kubrick
- The Killing (1956), d. Stanley Kubrick
- A Kiss Before Dying (1956), d. Gerd Oswald
- Kiss Me Deadly (1955), d. Robert Aldrich
- Kiss of Death (1947), d. Henry Hathaway
- Kiss the Blood off My Hands (1948), d. Norman Foster
- Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1950), d. Gordon Douglas
- Knock on Any Door (1949), d. Nicholas Ray
- Ladies in Retirement (1941), d. Charles Vidor
- Lady at Midnight (1948), d. Sam Newfield
- The Lady Confesses (1945), d. Sam Newfield
- The Lady from Shanghai (1948), d. Orson Welles
- The Lady Gambles (1949), d. Michael Gordon
- Lady Gangster (1942), d. Robert Florey
- Lady in the Death House (1944), d. Steve Sekely
- Lady in the Lake (1947), d. Robert Montgomery
- Lady on a Train (1945), d. Charles David
- A Lady without Passport (1950), d. Joseph H. Lewis
- Larceny (1948), d. George Sherman
- Las Vegas Shakedown (1955), d. Sidney Salkow
- The Las Vegas Story (1952), d. Robert Stevenson
- The Last Crooked Mile (1946), d. Philip Ford
- The Last Mile (1959), d. Howard W. Koch
- Laura (1944), d. Otto Preminger
- The Lawless (1950), d. Joseph Losey
- The Lawbreakers (1960), d. Joseph M. Newman
- Leave Her to Heaven (1945), d. John M. Stahl
- A Life at Stake (1954), d. Paul Guilfoyle
- Lightning Strikes Twice (1955), d. King Vidor
- The Lineup (1958), d. Don Siegel
- Loan Shark (1952), d. Seymour Friedman
- The Locket (1947), d. John Brahm
- The Lodger (1944), d. John Brahm
- Lonely Heart Bandits (1950), d. George Blair
- Lonelyhearts (1958), d. Vincent J. Donehue
- The Long Night (1947), d. Anatole Litvak
- The Long Wait (1954), d. Victor Saville
- Loophole (1954), d. Harold Schuster
- Lost, Lonely and Vicious (1958), d. Frank Myers
- The Lost Moment (1947), d. Martin Gabel
- The Lost Weekend (1945), d. Billy Wilder
- The Louisiana Hussy (1959), d. Lee Sholem
- Love from a Stranger (1947), d. Richard Whorf
- The Lucky Stiff (1949), d. Lewis R. Foster
- Lure of the Swamp (1957), d. William George
- Lured (1947), d. Douglas Sirk
- Lust for Gold (1949), d. S. Sylvan Simon
- M (1951), d. Joseph Losey
- Macao (1952), d. Joseph Von Sternberg
- Mad at the World (1955), d. Harry Essex
- The Madonna’s Secret (1946), d. William Thiele
- Main Street After Dark (1945), d. Edward L. Cahn
- Make Haste to Live (1954), d. William A. Seiter
- The Maltese Falcon (1941), d. John Huston
- Man Afraid (1957), d. Harry Keller
- The Man I Love (1947), d. Raoul Walsh
- Man in the Attic (1953), d. Hugo Fregonese
- Man in the Dark (1953), d. Lew Landers
- The Man in the Net (1959), d. Michael Curtiz
- Man in the Shadow (1957), d. Jack Arnold
- Man in the Vault (1956), d. Andrew V. McLaglen
- The Man Is Armed (1956), d. Franklin Andreon
- The Man on the Eiffel Tower (1949), d. Burgess Meredith
- The Man Who Cheated Himself (1951), d. Felix E. Feist
- The Man Who Dared (1946), d. John Sturges
- The Man Who Died Twice (1959), d. Joseph Kane
- The Man with a Cloak (1951), d. Fletcher Markle
- The Man with My Face (1951), d. Edward Montagne
- Manhandled (1949), d. Lewis R. Foster
- Mark of the Whistler (1944), d. William Castle
- The Mask of Diijon (1946), d. Lew Landers
- The Mask of Dimitrios (1944), d. Jean Negulesco
- Miami Exposé (1956), d. Fred F. Sears
- Miami Story (1954), d. Fred F. Sears
- Midnight Lace (1960), d. David Miller
- Midnight Manhunt (1945), d. William C. Thomas
- The Midnight Story (1957), d. Joseph Pevney
- Mildred Pierce (1945), d. Michael Curtiz
- Ministry of Fear (1945), d. Fritz Lang
- The Missing Juror (1944), d. Budd Boetticher
- Missing Women (1951), d. Philip Ford
- The Mob (1951), d. Robert Parrish
- Money Madness (1948), d. Sam Newfield
- Moonrise (1948), d. Frank Borzage
- Moontide (1942), d. Archie Mayo
- Moss Rose (1947), d. Gregory Ratoff
- Mr. Arkadin (1955), d. Orson Welles
- Murder by Contract (1958), d. Irving Lerner
- Murder Inc. (1960), d. Burt Balaban and Stuart Rosenberg
- Murder Is My Beat (1955), d. Edgar G. Ulmer
- Murder, My Sweet (1944), d. Edward Dmytryk
- Murder without Tears (1953), d. William Beaudine
- My Favorite Brunette (1947), d. Elliott Nugent
- My Forbidden Past (1951), d. Robert Stevenson
- My Gun Is Quick (1957), d. Phil Victor and George A. White
- My Name Is Julia Ross (1945), d. Joseph H. Lewis
- My Son John (1952), d. Leo McCarey
- Mysterious Intruder (1946), d. William Castle
- The Mysterious Mr. Valentine (1946), d. Philip Ford
- Mystery in Mexico (1948), d. John Sturges
- Mystery Street (1950), d. John Sturges
- Naked Alibi (1954), d. Jerry Hopper
- The Naked City (1948), d. Jules Dassin
- The Naked Street (1955), d. Maxwell Shane
- The Narrow Margin (1952), d. Richard Fleischer
- Never Trust a Gambler (1951), d. Ralph Murphy
- New York Confidential (1955), d. Russell Rouse
- Niagara (1953), d. Henry Hathaway
- Night Editor (1946), d. Henry Levin
- Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948), d. John Farrow
- The Night Holds Terror (1955), d. Andrew L. Stone
- Night into Morning (1955), d. Fletcher Markle
- Night of the Hunter (1955), d. Charles Laughton
- The Night Runner (1957), d. Abner Biberman
- Night without Sleep (1952), d. Roy Ward Baker
- Nightfall (1957), d. Jacques Tourneur
- Nightmare (1956), d. Maxwell Shane
- Nightmare Alley (1947), d. Edmund Goulding
- 99 River Street (1953), d. Phil Karlson
- No Down Payment (1957), d. Martin Ritt
- No Escape (1953), d. Charles Bennett
- No Man of Her Own (1950), d. Mitchell Leisen
- No Man’s Woman (1955), d. Franklin Adreon
- No Questions Asked (1951), d. Harold F. Kress
- No Time to Be Young (1957), d. David Lowell
- No Way Out (1950), d. Joseph L. Mankiewicz
- Nobody Lives Forever (1946), d. Jean Negulesco
- Nocturne (1946), d. Edward L. Marin
- Nora Prentiss (1947), d. Vincent Sherman
- Not Wanted (1949), d. Elmer Clifton and Ida Lupino
- Notorious (1946), d. Alfred Hitchcock
- Ocean’s Eleven (1960), d. Lewis Milestone
- Odds Against Tomorrow (1959), d. Robert Wise
- On Dangerous Ground (1952), d. Nicholas Ray
- On the Waterfront (1954), d. Elia Kazan
- Once a Thief (1950), d. W. Lee Wilder
- One Way Street (1950), d. Hugo Fregonese
- Open Secret (1948), d. John Reinhardt
- The Other Woman (1954), d. Hugo Haas
- Out of the Past (1947), d. Jacques Tourneur
- The Outcasts of Poker Flat (1952), d. Joseph M. Newman
- Outrage (1950), d. Ida Lupino
- Outside the Law (1956), d. Jack Arnold
- Outside the Wall (1950), d. Crane Wilbur
- Paid in Full (1950), d. William Dieterle
- Panic in the Streets (1950), d. Elia Kazan
- Paper Bullets (1941), d. Phil Rosen
- The Paradine Case (1947), d. Alfred Hitchcock
- Parole, Inc. (1949), d. Alfred Zeisler
- Party Girl (1958), d. Nicholas Ray
- Pay or Die! (1960), d. Richard Wilson
- Payment on Demand (1951), d. Curtis Bernhardt
- The People Against O’Hara (1951), d. John Sturges
- Pete Kelly’s Blues (1955), d. Jack Webb
- Phantom Lady (1944), d. Robert Siodmak
- The Phenix City Story (1955), d. Phil Karlson
- Philo Vance’s Gamble (1947), d. Basil Wrangell
- Pickup (1951), d. Hugo Haas
- Pickup on South Street (1953), d. Samuel Fuller
- Pitfall (1948), d. André de Toth
- Playgirl (1954), d. Joseph Pevney
- Please Murder Me (1956), d. Peter Godfrey
- Plunder Road (1957), d. Hubert Cornfield
- The Port of Forty Thieves (1944), d. John English
- Port of Hell (1954), d. Harold D. Schuster
- Port of New York (1949), d. Laslo Benedek
- Portland Exposé (1957), d. Harold D. Schuster
- Possessed (1947), d. Curtis Bernhardt
- Post Office Investigator (1946), d. George Blair
- The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), d. Tay Garnett
- Power of the Whistler (1945), d. Lew Landers
- The Pretender (1947), d. W. Lee Wilder
- The Price of Fear (1956), d. Abner Biberman
- Private Hell 36 (1954), d. Don Siegel
- The Prowler (1951), d. Joseph Losey
- Psycho (1960), d. Alfred Hitchcock
- Pursued (1947), d. Raoul Walsh
- The Pusher (1960), d. Gene Milford
- Pushover (1954), d. Richard Quine
- Queen Bee (1955), d. Ranald MacDougall
- Quicksand (1950), d. Irving Pichel
- Quiet Please: Murder (1942), d. John Larkin
- Race Street (1948), d. Edward L. Marin
- The Racket (1951), d. John Cromwell
- Rage in Heaven (1941), d. W. S. Van Dyke
- The Raging Tide (1951), d. Ernest K. Gann
- Railroaded (1947), d. Anthony Mann
- Ramrod (1947), d. André de Toth
- Rancho Notorious (1952), d. Fritz Lang
- Ransom (1956), d. Alex Segal
- Raw Deal (1948), d. Anthony Mann
- Rear Window (1954), d. Alfred Hitchcock
- Rebecca (1940), d. Alfred Hitchcock
- The Reckless Moment (1949), d. Max Ophüls
- The Red House (1947), d. Delmer Daves
- Red Light (1950), d. Roy Del Ruth
- The Red Menace (1949), d. R. G. Springsteen
- Reign of Terror (1949), d. Anthony Mann
- Repeat Performance (1947), d. Alfred L. Werker
- Revolt in the Big House (1958), d. R. G. Springsteen
- Ride the Pink Horse (1947), d. Robert Montgomery
- Riff-Raff (1947), d. Ted Tetzlaff
- Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954), d. Don Siegel
- Road House (1948), d. Jean Negulesco
- Road to the Big House (1947), d. Walter Colmes
- Roadblock (1951), d. Harold Daniels
- Rogue Cop (1954), d. Roy Rowland
- Rope (1948), d. Alfred Hitchcock
- Rope of Sand (1949), d. William Dieterle
- Roughshod (1949), d. Mark Robson
- Ruthless (1948), d. Edgar G. Ulmer
- Saboteur (1942), d. Alfred Hitchcock
- Saigon (1948), d. Leslie Fenton
- San Quentin (1946), d. Gordon Douglas
- Scandal Sheet (1952), d. Phil Karlson
- The Scarf (1951), d. E. A. Dupont
- Scarlet Street (1945), d. Fritz Lang
- Scene of the Crime (1949), d. Roy Rowland
- Screaming Mimi (1958), d. Gerd Oswald
- Sealed Lips (1941), d. George Waggner
- Second Chance (1953), d. Rudolph Maté
- Second Face (1950), d. Jack Bernhard
- The Second Woman (1951), d. James V. Kern
- Secret Beyond the Door (1948), d. Fritz Lang
- Secret Enemies (1943), d. Benjamin Stoloff
- The Secret Fury (1950), d. Mel Ferrer
- The Secret of Convict Lake (1951), d. Michael Gordon
- Secret of the Whistler (1946), d. George Sherman
- The Sellout (1952), d. Gerald Mayer
- The Set-Up (1949), d. Robert Wise
- Seven Thieves (1960), d. Henry Hathaway
- Shack Out on 101 (1955), d. Edward Dein
- Shadow of a Doubt (1943), d. Alfred Hitchcock
- Shadow of a Woman (1946), d. Joseph Santley
- Shadow on the Wall (1950), d. Pat Jackson
- Shadow on the Window (1957), d. William Asher
- Shakedown (1950), d. Joseph Pevney
- The Shanghai Gesture (1941), d. Josef von Sternberg
- Shed No Tears (1948), d. Jean Yarbrough
- Shield for Murder (1954), d. Edmond O’Brien and Howard W. Koch
- Shock (1946), d. Alfred L. Werker
- Shockproof (1949), d. Douglas Sirk
- Shoot to Kill (1947), d. William Berke
- Short Cut to Hell (1957), d. James Cagney
- Side Street (1950), d. Anthony Mann
- The Sign of the Ram (1948), d. John Sturges
- Singapore (1947), d. John Brahm
- Sirocco (1951), d. Curtis Bernhardt
- Slander (1956), d. Roy Rowland
- Slattery’s Hurricane (1949), d. André de Toth
- Slaughter on Tenth Avenue (1957), d. Arnold Laven
- Sleep, My Love (1948), d. Douglas Sirk
- The Sleeping City (1950), d. George Sherman
- Slightly Scarlet (1956), d. Allan Dwan
- Smart Girls Don’t Talk (1948), d. Richard L. Bare
- Smash-Up, The Story of a Woman (1947), d. Stuart Heisler
- The Snake Pit (1948), d. Anatole Litvak
- The Sniper (1952), d. Edward Dymtryk
- So Dark the Night (1946), d. Joseph H. Lewis
- Somewhere in the Night (1946), d. Joseph L. Mankiewicz
- Sorry, Wrong Number (1948), d. Anatole Litvak
- The Sound of Fury (1951), d. Cy Endfield
- Southside 1-1000 (1950), d. Boris Ingster
- Special Agent (1949), d. William C. Thomas
- Specter of the Rose (1946), d. Ben Hecht
- Spellbound (1945), d. Alfred Hitchcock
- The Spider (1945), d. Robert D. Webb
- The Spiral Staircase (1946), d. Robert Siodmak
- Split Second (1953), d. Dick Powell
- Spy Hunt (1950), d. George Sherman
- Stakeout on Dope Street (1958), d. Irvin Kershner
- Station West (1948), d. Sidney Lanfield
- The Steel Helmet (1951), d. Samuel Fuller
- The Steel Jungle (1956), d. Walter Doniger
- The Steel Trap (1952), d. Andrew L. Stone
- Step by Step (1946), d. Phil Rosen
- Step Down to Terror (1958), d. Harry Keller
- Stolen Identity (1953), d. Gunther von Fritsch
- A Stolen Life (1946), d. Curtis Bernhardt
- Storm Fear (1956), d. Cornel Wilde
- Storm Warning (1951), d. Stuart Heisler
- The Story of Molly X (1949), d. Crane Wilbur
- The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (1945), d. Robert Siodmak
- Strange Alibi (1941), d. D. Ross Lederman
- Strange Bargain (1949), d. Will Price
- Strange Fascination (1952), d. Hugo Haas
- Strange Illusion (1945), d. Edgar G. Ulmer
- Strange Impersonation (1946), d. Anthony Mann
- Strange Intruder (1956), d. Irving Rapper
- The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), d. Lewis Milestone
- The Strange Mr. Gregory (1945), d. Phil Rosen
- Strange Triangle (1946), d. Ray McCarey
- The Strange Woman (1946), d. Edgar G. Ulmer
- The Stranger (1946), d. Orson Welles
- Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), d. Boris Ingster
- Strangers on a Train (1951), d. Alfred Hitchcock
- Street of Chance (1942), d. Jack Hively
- Street of Darkness (1958), d. Robert G. Walker
- The Street with No Name (1948), d. William Keighley
- The Strip (1951), d. Leslie Kardos
- Sudden Danger (1955), d. Hubert Cornfield
- Sudden Fear (1952), d. David Miller
- Suddenly (1954), d. Lewis Allen
- The Sun Sets at Dawn (1950), d. Paul Sloane
- Sunset Boulevard (1950), d. Billy Wilder
- The Suspect (1944), d. Robert Siodmak
- Suspense (1946), d. Frank Tuttle
- Suspicion (1941), d. Alfred Hitchcock
- Swamp Fire (1946), d. William H. Pine
- Sweet Smell of Success (1957), d. Alexander Mackendrick
- The System (1953), d. Lewis Seiler
- Take One False Step (1949), d. Chester Erskine
- Talk About a Stranger (1952), d. David Bradley
- The Tattered Dress (1957), d. Jack Arnold
- The Tattooed Stranger (1950), d. Edward J. Montagne
- Teenage Doll (1957), d. Roger Corman
- Temptation (1946), d. Irving Pichel
- Tension (1949), d. John Berry
- Terror at Midnight (1956), d. Franklin Adreon
- They Live by Night (1948), d. Nicholas Ray
- They Made Me a Killer (1946), d. William C. Thomas
- They Won’t Believe Me (1947), d. Irving Pichel
- The Thief (1952), d. Russell Rouse
- Thieves’ Highway (1949), d. Jules Dassin
- 13 Rue Madeleine (1947), d. Henry Hathaway
- The Thirteenth Hour (1947), d. William Clemens
- The Thirteenth Letter (1951), d. Otto Preminger
- This Gun for Hire (1942), d. Frank Tuttle
- This Side of the Law (1950), d. Richard L. Bare
- This Woman Is Dangerous (1952), d. Felix E. Feist
- The Threat (1949), d. Felix E. Feist
- The Three Bad Sisters (1956), d. Gilbert Kay
- Three Steps North (1951), d. W. Lee Wilder
- Three Strangers (1946), d. Jean Negulesco
- Thunder Road (1958), d. Arthur Ripley
- Tight Spot (1955), d. Phil Karlson
- Time to Kill (1942), d. Herbert I. Leeds
- Timetable (1956), d. Mark Stevens
- T-Men (1948), d. Anthony Mann
- To the Ends of the Earth (1948), d. Robert Stevenson
- Tokyo File 212 (1951), d. Dorrell and Stuart McGowan
- Tomorrow Is Another Day (1951), d. Felix E. Feist
- Tomorrow Is Forever (1946), d. Irving Pichel
- Tomorrow We Live (1942), d. Edgar G. Ulmer
- Too Late for Tears (1949), d. Byron Haskin
- Touch of Evil (1958), d. Orson Welles
- Tough Assignment (1949), d. William Beaudine
- The Toughest Man Alive (1955), d. Sidney Salkow
- Track of the Cat (1954), d. William A. Wellman
- A Tragedy at Midnight (1942), d. Joseph Santley
- The Trap (1959), d. Norman Panama
- Trapped (1949), d. Richard Fleischer
- The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), d. John Huston
- The Turning Point (1952), d. William Dieterle
- Two Dollar Bettor (1951), d. Edward L. Cahn
- The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947), d. Peter Godfrey
- Two of a Kind (1951), d. Henry Levin
- Under Capricorn (1949), d. Alfred Hitchcock
- Under the Gun (1951), d. Ted Tetzlaff
- Undercover Girl (1950), d. Joseph Pevney
- The Undercover Man (1949), d. Joseph H. Lewis
- Undercurrent (1946), d. Vincente Minnelli
- Undertow (1949), d. William Castle
- The Underworld Story (1950), d. Cy Endfield
- The Unfaithful (1947), d. Vincent Sherman
- The Unholy Wife (1957), d. John Farrow
- Union Station (1950), d. Rudolph Maté
- The Unknown Man (1951), d. Richard Thorpe
- Unmasked (1950), d. George Blair
- The Unseen (1945), d. Lewis Allen
- The Unsuspected (1947), d. Michael Curtiz
- The Unwritten Code (1944), d. Herman Rotsten
- Valerie (1957), d. Gerd Oswald
- The Velvet Touch (1948), d. John Gage
- Vertigo (1958), d. Alfred Hitchcock
- Vice Raid (1960), d. Edward L. Cahn
- Vice Squad (1953), d. Arnold Laven
- The Vicious Circle (1948), d. W. Lee Wilder
- Vicki (1953), d. Harry Horner
- Violated (1953), d. Walter Strate
- Violence (1947), d. Jack Bernhard
- Violent Saturday (1955), d. Richard Fleischer
- Voice in the Wind (1944), d. Arthur Ripley
- Voice of the Whistler (1945), d. William Castle
- Walk a Crooked Mile (1948), d. Gordon Douglas
- Walk East on Beacon (1952), d. Alfred Werker
- Walk Softly, Stranger (1950), d. Robert Stevenson
- The Walking Hills (1950), d. John Sturges
- The Walls Came Tumbling Down (1946), d. Lothar Mendes
- We Were Strangers (1949), d. John Huston
- The Web (1947), d. Michael Gordon
- The Well (1951), d. Leo C. Popkin and Russell Rouse
- Wetbacks (1956), d. Hank McCune
- When Gangland Strikes (1956), d. R. G. Springsteen
- When Strangers Marry (1944), d. William Castle
- Where Danger Lives (1950), d. John Farrow
- Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950), d. Otto Preminger
- While the City Sleeps (1956), d. Fritz Lang
- The Whip Hand (1951), d. William Cameron Menzies
- Whiplash (1948), d. Lewis Seiler
- Whirlpool (1949), d. Otto Preminger
- Whispering Footsteps (1943), d. Howard Bretherton
- Whispering Smith (1948), d. Leslie Fenton
- Whistle Stop (1946), d. Leonid Moguy
- The Whistler (1944), d. William Castle
- White Heat (1949), d. Raoul Walsh
- Wicked Woman (1954), d. Russell Rouse
- Wife Wanted (1946), d. Phil Karlson
- The Wild One (1953), d. Laslo Benedek
- The Window (1949), d. Ted Tetzlaff
- Without Honor (1949), d. Irving Pichel
- Without Warning! (1952), d. Arnold Laven
- Witness to Murder (1954), d. Roy Rowland
- The Woman from Tangier (1950), d. Harold Daniels
- Woman in Hiding (1950), d. Michael Gordon
- The Woman in the Window (1945), d. Fritz Lang
- The Woman in White (1948), d. Peter Godfrey
- The Woman on the Beach (1947), d. Jean Renoir
- Woman on the Run (1950), d. Norman Foster
- A Woman’s Devotion (1956), d. Paul Henreid
- A Woman’s Secret (1949), d. Nicholas Ray
- A Woman’s Vengeance (1948), d. Zoltan Korda
- Women in the Night (1948), d. William Rowland
- Women’s Prison (1955), d. Lewis Seiler
- World for Ransom (1954), d. Robert Aldrich
- The Wrong Man (1956), d. Alfred Hitchcock
- Why Must I Die? (1960), d. Roy Del Ruth
American post-noir (1961-1975)
- Blast of Silence (1961) d Allen Baron
- Man-Trap (1961) d Edmond O’Brien
- Underworld USA (1961) d Sam Fuller
- Cape Fear (1962) d J Lee Thompson
- Experiment in Terror (1962) d Blake Edwards
- The Manchurian Candidate (1962) d John Frankenheimer
- War Hunt (1962) d Denis Sanders
- The Killers (1964) d Don Seigel
- The Naked Kiss (1964) d Sam Fuller
- Angel’s Flight (1965)
- Brainstorm (1965) d William Conrad
- Who Killed Teddy Bear (1965) d Joseph Cates
- Harper (1966) d Jack Smight
- The Money Trap (1965) d Burt Kennedy
- Point Blank (1967) d John Boorman
- Warning Shot (1967) d Buzz Kulik
- The Detective (1968) d Gordon Douglas
- Lady in Cement (1968) d Gordon Douglas
- Madigan (1968) d Don Seigel
- Night of the Following Day (1968) d Hubert Cornfield
- The Split (1968) d Gordon Flemyng
- Marlowe (1969) d Paul Bogart
- The Kremlin Letter (1970) d John Huston
- Venus in Furs (1970) d Jesús Franco
- Dirty Harry (1971) d Don Seigel
- The French Connection (1971) d William Friedkin
- Klute (1971) d Alan Pakula
- Chandler (1972) d Paul Magwood
- Hickey & Boggs (1972) d Robert Culp
- The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) d Peter Yates
- The Long Goodbye (1973) d Robert Altman
- Serpico (1973) d Sidney Lumet
- Black Eye (1974) d Jack Arnold
- Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974) d Sam Peckinpah
- Chinatown (1974) d Roman Polanski
- The Conversation (1974) d Francis Ford Coppola
- Death Wish (1974) d Michael Winner
- The Outfit (1974) d John Flynn
- The Parallax View (1974) d Alan Pakula
- Thieves Like Us (1974) d Robert Altman
- Dog Day Afternoon (1975) d Sidney Lumet
- The Drowning Pool (1975) d Stuart Rosenberg
- Farewell, My Lovely (1975) d Dick Richards
- French Connection II (1975) d John Frankenheimer
- Hustle (1975) d Robert Aldrich
- Night Moves (1975) d Arthur Penn
- The Nickel Ride (1975) d Robert Mulligan
- Three Days of the Condor (1975) d Sydney Pollack
American neo noir (1976-)
- Guncrazy (1992) d Tamra Davis
- The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992) d Curtis Hanson
- Lethal Weapon III (1992) d Richard Donner
- Love Crimes (1992) d Lizzie Borden
- Midnight Heat (1992) d John Nicolella
- Nails (1992) d John Flynn
- Night and the City (1992) d Irwin Winkler
- Past Midnight (1992) d Jan Eliaberg
- Red Rock West (1992) d John Dahl
- Reservoir Dogs (1992) d Quentin Tarantino
- Thunderheart (1992) d Michael Apted
- To Kill For (1992) d John Dirlam
- White Sands (1992) d Roger Donaldson
- Body Snatchers (1993), d. Abel Ferrara
- A Bronx Tale (1993), d. Robert De Niro
- Carlito’s Way (1993), d. Brian De Palma
- Equinox (1993), d. Alan Rudolph
- Falling Down (1993), d. Joel Schumacher
- Guilty as Sin (1993), d. Sidney Lumet
- A Perfect World (1993), d. Clint Eastwood
- Point of No Return (1993), d. John Badham
- True Romance (1993), d. Tony Scott
- China Moon (1994), d. John Bailey
- Death and the Maiden (1994), d. Roman Polanski
- Disclosure (1994), d. Barry Levinson
- The Getaway (1994), d. Roger Donaldson
- Natural Born Killers (1994), d. Oliver Stone
- The Addiction (1995), d. Abel Ferrara
- Blondes Have More Guns (1995), d. George Merriweather
- Casino (1995), d. Martin Scorsese
- Clockers (1995), d. Spike Lee
- Copycat (1995), d. John Amiel
- Dead Presidents (1995), d. Allen and Albert Hughes
- Eye for an Eye (1995), d. John Schlesinger
- Heat (1995), d. Michael Mann
- Se7en (1995), d. David Fincher
- The Usual Suspects (1995), d. Bryan Singer
- Blood and Wine (1996), d. Bob Rafelson
- Bound (1996), d. Larry Wachowski and Andy Wachowski
- Buffalo 66 (1996), d. Vincent Gallo
- Bullet (1996), d. Julien Temple
- City Hall (1996), d. Harold Becker
- Diabolique (1996), d. Jeremiah S. Chechik
- Fargo (1996), d. Joel Coen
- Freeway (1996), d. Matthew Bright
- From Dusk to Dawn (1996), d. Quentin Tarantino
- The Funeral (1996), d. Abel Ferrara
- Gang in Blue (1996), d. Mario and Melvin Van Peebles
- The Last Man Standing (1996), d. Walter Hill
- Night Falls on Manhattan (1996), d. Sidney Lumet
- Absolute Power (1997), d. Clint Eastwood
- Blackout (1997), d. Abel Ferrara
- Breakdown (1997), d. Jonathan Mostow
- Cop Land (1997), d. James Mangold
- Donnie Brasco (1997), d. Mike Newell
- Executive Target (1997), d. Joseph Merhi
- Face/Off (1997), d. John Woo
- The Game (1997), d. David Fincher
- Gattaca (1997), d. Andrew Niccol
- L.A. Confidential (1997), d. Curtis Hanson
- Lost Highway (1997), d. David Lynch
- The Spanish Prisoner (1997), d. David Mamet
- Ambushed (1998), d. Ernest R. Dickerson
- The Big Lebowski (1998), d. Joel Coen
- Clay Pigeons (1998), d. David Dobkin
- Cold Around the Heart (1998), d. John Ridley
- Enemy of the State (1998), d. Tony Scott
- Fallen (1998), d. Gregory Hoblit
- Ronin (1998), d. John Frankenheimer
- Best Laid Plans (1999), d. Mike Barker
- The Bone Collector (1999), d. Phillip Noyce
- Bringing Out the Dead (1999), d. Martin Scorsese
- Brokedown Palace (1999), d. Jonathan Kaplan
- Double Jeopardy (1999), d. Bruce Beresford
- 8MM (1999), d. Joel Shumacher
- Fight Club (1999), d. David Fincher
- Forever Mine (1999), d. Paul Schrader
- Ghost Dog, the Way of the Samurai (1999), d. Jim Jarmusch
- Gloria (1999), d. Sidney Lumet
- The Limey (1999), d. Steven Soderbergh
- The Matrix (1999), d. Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski
- The Ninth Gate (1999), d. Roman Polanski
- The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), d. Anthony Minghella
- True Crime (1999), d. Clint Eastwood
- Get Carter (2000), d. Stephen T. Kay
- The Gift (2000), d. Sam RaimiK
- Memento (2000), d. Christopher Nolan
- Under Suspicion (2000), d. Stephen Hopkins
- Along Came a Spider (2001), d. Lee Tamahori
- The Deep End (2001), d. Scott McGehee and David Siegel
- Don’t Say a Word (2001), d. Gary Fleder
- Double Take (2001), d. George Gallo
- From Hell (2001), d. Albert Hughes and Allen Hughes
- Hannibal (2001), d. Ridley Scott
- Heist (2001), d. David Mamet
- Mulholland Dr. (2001), d. David Lynch
- The Pledge (2001), d. Sean Penn
- Training Day (2001), d. Antoine Fuqua
- 25th Hour (2002), d. Spike Lee
- Blood Work (2002), d. Clint Eastwood
- The Bourne Identity (2002), d. Doug Liman
- City by the Sea (2002), d. Michael Caton-Jones
- Dark Blue (2002), d. Ron Shelton
- Gangs of New York (2002), d. Martin Scorsese
- Equilibrium (2002), d. Kurt Wimmer
- The Good Thief (2002), d. Neil Jordan
- The House on Turk Street (2002), d. Bob Rafelson
- Insomnia (2002), d. Christopher Nolan
- Liberty Stands Still (2002), d. Kari Skogland
- Minority Report (2002), d. Steven Spielberg
- Road to Perdition (2002), d. Sam Mendes
- Tattoo (2002), d. Robert Schwentke
- Confidence (2003), d. James Foley
- The Cooler (2003), d. Wayne Kramer
- Cypher (2003), d. Vincenzo Natali
- Kill Bill I (2003), d. Quentin Tarantino
- The Matrix Reloaded (2003), d. Andy and Larry Wachowski
- The Matrix Revolutions (2003), d. Andy and Larry Wachowski
- Mystic River (2003), d. Clint Eastwood
- The Bourne Supremacy (2004), d. Paul Greengrass
- Collateral (2004), d. Michael Mann
- Kill Bill II (2004), d. Quentin Tarantino
- Man on Fire (2004), d. Tony Scott
- The Manchurian Candidiate (2004), d. Jonathan Demme
- Constantine (2005), d. Francis Lawrence
- Harsh Times (2005), d. David Ayer
- A History of Violence (2005), d. David Cronenberg
- Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), d. Shane Black
- Ripley Under Ground (2005), d. Roger Spottiswoode
- Sin City (2005), d. Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez
- V for Vendetta (2005), d. James McTeigue
- The Black Dahlia (2006), d. Brian De Palma
- The Departed (2006), d. Martin Scorsese
- The Good Shepherd (2006), d. Robert De Niro
- Miami Vice (2006), d. Michael Mann
- The Prestige (2006), d. Christopher Nolan
- American Gangster (2007), d. Ridley Scott
- The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), d. Paul Greengrass
- Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007), d. Sidney Lumet
- Hannibal Rising (2007), d. Peter Webber
- The Hitcher (2007), d. Dave Meyers
- Living and Dying (2007), d. Jon Keeyes
- No Country for Old Men (2007), d. Joel and Ethan Coen
- The Walker (2007), d. Paul Schrader
- You Kill Me (2007), d. John Dahl
- Changeling (2008), d. Clint Eastwood
- The Dark Knight (2008), d. Christopher Nolan
- Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (2009), d. Peter Hyams
- Break (2009), d. Marc Clebanoff
- Getting Out (2009), d. Sidney Lumet
- Gran Torino (2009), d. Clint Eastwood
- Hired Gun (2009), d. Brad Jurjens
- The International (2009), d. Tom Tykwer
- Public Enemies (2009), d. Michael Mann
- The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009), d. Tony Scott
British Noir Filmography
British pre-noir
- Blackmail (1929), d. Alfred Hitchcock
- A Canterbury Tale (1944), d. Michael Powell
- The Case of the Frightened Lady (1940), d. George King
- Contraband (1940), d. Michael Powell
- The Dark Eyes of London (1939), d. Walter Summers
- The Dark Tower (1943), d. John Harlow
- Dead Man’s Shoes (1940), d. Thomas Bentley
- Dead Men Are Dangerous (1939), d. Harold French
- Dead of Night (1945), d. Robert Hamer and Alberto Cavalcanti
- The Door with Seven Locks (1940), d. Norman Lee
- East of Piccadilly (1941), d. Harold Huth
- Escape to Danger (1943), d. Lance Comfort
- The Face at the Window (1939), d. George King
- Fanny by Gaslight (1944), d. Anthony Asquith
- The Frightened Lady (1932), d. T. Hayes Hunter
- Gaslight (1940), d. Thorold Dickinson
- Great Day (1945), d. Lance Comfort
- The Green Cockatoo (1937), d. William Cameron Menzies
- Hatter’s Castle (1941), d. Lance Comfort
- Hotel Reserve (1944), d. Victor Hanbury
- I Met a Murderer (1939), d. Roy Kellino
- The Lodger (1926), d. Alfred Hitchcock
- The Man in Grey (1943), d. Leslie Arliss
- The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), d. Alfred Hitchcock
- Murder! (1930), d. Alfred Hitchcock
- Murder in Reverse (1945), d. Montgomery Tully
- Murder in Soho (1939), d. Norman Lee
- The Night Has Eyes (1942), d. Leslie Arliss
- Number 17 (1932), d. Alfred Hitchcock
- On the Night of the Fire (1939), d. Brian Desmond Hurst
- Pink String and Sealing Wax (1945), d. Robert Hamer
- Poison Pen (1939), d. Paul L. Stein
- Sabotage (1936), d. Alfred Hitchcock
- The Seventh Veil (1945), d. Compton Bennett
- Spellbound (1941), d. John Harlow
- The Spy in Black (1939), d. Michael Powell
- Squadron Leader X (1942), d. Lance Comfort
- Stolen Life (1939), d. Paul Czinner
- They Drive by Night (1938), d. Arthur Woods
- The 39 Steps (1935), d. Alfred Hitchcock
- Three Silent Men (1940), d. Thomas Bentley
- Tower of Terror (1941), d. Lawrence Huntington
- Traitor Spy (1939), d. Walter Summers
- Trunk Crime (1939), d. Roy Boulting
- 21 Days (1937), d. Basil Dean
- Uncensored (1942), d. Anthony Asquith
- Waterloo Road (1945), d. Sidney Gilliat
- Went the Day Well? (1942), d. Alberto Cavalcanti
- A Window in London (1939), d. Herbert Mason
- Young and Innocent (1937), d. Alfred Hitchcock
British classic noir
- Across the Bridge (1957), d. Ken Annakin
- Act of Murder (1964), d. Alan Bridges
- Alias John Preston (1956), d. David MacDonald
- All Night Long (1963), d. Basil Dearden
- Another Man’s Poison (1951), d. Irving Rapper
- Appointment with Crime (1946), d. John Harlow
- Assassin for Hire (1951), d. Michael McCarthy
- Bang! You’re Dead (1954), d. Lance Comfort
- The Bank Raiders (1958), d. Maxwell Munden
- Beat Girl (1960), d. Edmond T. Greville
- Beautiful Stranger (1954), d. David Miller
- Bedelia (1946), d. Lance Comfort
- Before I Wake (1954), d. Albert S. Rogell
- Beyond This Place (1959), d. Jack Cardiff
- The Big Chance (1957), d. Peter Graham Scott
- Bitter Harvest (1963), d. Peter Graham Scott
- Black Memory (1947), d. Oswald Mitchell
- Black Narcissus (1947), d. Michael Powell
- Black Orchid (1953), d. Charles Saunders
- Black 13 (1954), d. Ken Hughes
- Black Widow (1951), d. Vernon Sewell
- Blackmailed (1951), d. Marc Allégret
- Blackout (1950), d. Robert S. Baker
- Blanche Fury (1947), d. Marc Allégret
- Blind Corner (1963), d. Lance Comfort
- Blind Date (1959), d. Joseph Losey
- The Blue Lamp (1950), d. Basil Dearden
- The Blue Parrot (1953), d. John Harlow
- Boys in Brown (1949), d. Montgomery Tully
- The Brain Machine (1955), d. Ken Hughes
- The Breaking Point (1961), d. Lance Comfort
- Brighton Rock (1948), d. John Boulting
- The Brothers (1947), d. David MacDonald
- Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965), d. Otto Preminger
- Cage of Gold (1950), d. Basil Dearden
- Cairo (1963), d. Wolf Rilla
- Calculated Risk (1963), d. Norman Harrison
- Calling Bulldog Drummond (1951), d. Victor Saville
- Candidate for Murder (1962), d. David Villiers
- Carnival (1946), d. Stanley Haynes
- Cast a Dark Shadow (1955), d. Lewis Gilbert
- Cat Girl (1957), d. Alfred Shaughnessy
- The Challenge (1960), d. John Gilling
- Chase a Crooked Shadow (1958), d. Michael Anderson
- Child in the House (1956), d. Cy Endfield
- Circle of Danger (1951), d. Jacques Tourneur
- Circle of Deception (1960), d. Jack Lee
- Cloudburst (1951), d. Francis Searle
- The Clouded Yellow (1950), d. Ralph Thomas
- The Clue of the New Pin (1961), d. Allan Davis
- Confession (1955), d. Ken Hughes
- Corridors of Mirrors (1948), d. Terence Young
- Cosh Boy (1952), d. Lewis Gilbert
- Counterblast (1948), d. Paul L. Stein
- The Counterfeit Plan (1957), d. Montgomery Tully
- Cover Girl Killer (1959), d. Terry Bishop
- The Criminal (1960), d. Joseph Losey
- Crossroads to Crime (1960), d. Gerry Anderson
- Crow Hollow (1952), d. Michael McCarthy
- The Damned (1962), d. Joseph Losey
- Dancing with Crime (1947), d. John Paddy Carstairs
- The Dark Man (1951), d. Jeffrey Dell
- Dark Secret (1949), d. Maclean Rogers
- Daughter of Darkness (1948), d. Lance Comfort
- Daybreak (1948), d. Compton Bennett
- Deadfall (1968), d. Bryan Forbes
- Deadly Nightshade (1953), d. John Gilling
- Dear Murderer (1947), d. Arthur Crabtree
- The Deep Blue Sea (1955), d. Anatole Litvak
- Delayed Action (1954), d. John Harlow
- The Depraved (1957), d. Paul Dickson
- Desperate Moment (1953), d. Compton Bennett
- Dial 999 (1955), d. Montgomery Tully
- Do You Know This Voice? (1964), d. Frank Nesbitt
- Don’t Talk to Strange Men (1962), d. Pat Jackson
- Double Confession (1950), d. Ken Annakin
- Downfall (1964), d. John Moxey
- Dual Alibi (1947), d. Alfred Travers
- Eight O’Clock Walk (1954), d. Lance Comfort
- The Embezzler (1954), d. John Gilling
- The End of the Line (1957), d. Charles Saunders
- Escape (1954), d. John Gilling
- Escape Route (1952), d. Seymour Friedman
- Face of a Stranger (1964), d. John Moxey
- Face the Music (1954), d. Terence Fisher
- Faces in the Dark (1960), d. David Eady
- The Fake (1953), d. Godfrey Grayson
- The Fallen Idol (1948), d. Carol Reed
- The Fatal Night (1948), d. Mario Zampi
- Five Days (1954), d. Montgomery Tully
- Five to One (1963), d. Gordon Flemyng
- The Flamingo Affair (1948), d. Horace Shepherd
- The Flanagan Boy (1953), d. Reginald LeBorg
- The Flesh Is Weak (1957), d. Don Chaffey
- Floods of Fear (1958), d. Charles Crichton
- The Flying Scot (1957), d. Compton Bennett
- Footsteps in the Fog (1955), d. Arthur Lubin
- For Them That Trespass (1949), d. Alberto Calvalcanti
- Forbidden (1949), d. George King
- Fortune Is a Woman, d. Sidney Gilliat
- Frieda (1947), d. Basil Dearden
- The Frightened City (1961), d. John Lemont
- The Gambler and the Lady (1952), d. Patrick Jenkins
- The Gentle Gunman (1952), d. Basil Dearden
- Give Us This Day (1949), d. Edward Dmytryk
- Golden Salamander (1950), d. Ronald Neame
- The Good Die Young (1954), d. Lewis Gilbert
- Good-Time Girl (1948), d. David MacDonald
- Green for Danger (1946), d. Sidney Gilliat
- The Green Scarf (1954), d. George More O’Ferrall
- A Gunman Has Escaped (1948), d. Richard Grey
- The Heart of the Matter (1953), d. George More O’Ferrall
- Hell Drivers (1957), d. Cy Endfield
- Hell Is a City (1960), d. Val Guest
- Hidden Homicide (1959), d. Tony Young
- Home at Seven (1952), d. Ralph Richardson
- The House across the Lake (1954), d. Ken Hughes
- The House in the Woods (1957), d. Maxwell Munden
- House of Darkness (1948), d. Oswald Mitchell
- Hunted (1952), d. Charles Crichton
- The Hypnotist (1957), d. Montgomery Tully
- Hysteria (1964), d. Freddie Francis
- The End of the Line (1957), d. Charles Saunders
- Escape (1954), d. John Gilling
- Escape Route (1952), d. Seymour Friedman
- Face of a Stranger (1964), d. John Moxey
- Face the Music (1954), d. Terence Fisher
- Faces in the Dark (1960), d. David Eady
- The Fake (1953), d. Godfrey Grayson
- The Fallen Idol (1948), d. Carol Reed
- The Fatal Night (1948), d. Mario Zampi
- Five Days (1954), d. Montgomery Tully
- Five to One (1963), d. Gordon Flemyng
- The Flamingo Affair (1948), d. Horace Shepherd
- The Flanagan Boy (1953), d. Reginald LeBorg
- The Flesh Is Weak (1957), d. Don Chaffey
- Floods of Fear (1958), d. Charles Crichton
- The Flying Scot (1957), d. Compton Bennett
- Footsteps in the Fog (1955), d. Arthur Lubin
- For Them That Trespass (1949), d. Alberto Calvalcanti
- Forbidden (1949), d. George King
- Fortune Is a Woman (1957), d. Sidney Gilliat
- Frieda (1947), d. Basil Dearden
- The Frightened City (1961), d. John Lemont
- The Gambler and the Lady (1952), d. Patrick Jenkins
- The Gentle Gunman (1952), d. Basil Dearden
- Give Us This Day (1949), d. Edward Dmytryk
- Golden Salamander (1950), d. Ronald Neame
- The Good Die Young (1954), d. Lewis Gilbert
- Good-Time Girl (1948), d. David MacDonald
- Green for Danger (1946), d. Sidney Gilliat
- The Green Scarf (1954), d. George More O’Ferrall
- A Gunman Has Escaped (1948), d. Richard Grey
- The Heart of the Matter (1953), d. George More O’Ferrall
- Hell Drivers (1957), d. Cy Endfield
- Hell Is a City (1960), d. Val Guest
- Hidden Homicide (1959), d. Tony Young
- Home at Seven (1952), d. Ralph Richardson
- The House across the Lake (1954), d. Ken Hughes
- The House in the Woods (1957), d. Maxwell Munden
- House of Darkness (1948), d. Oswald Mitchell
- Hunted (1952), d. Charles Crichton
- The Hypnotist (1957), d. Montgomery Tully
- Hysteria (1964), d. Freddie Francis
- I Believe in You (1952), d. Michael Relph
- I See a Dark Stranger (1946), d. Frank Launder
- I’ll Get You for This (1950), d. Joseph M. Newman
- Impact (1963), d. Peter Maxwell
- Impulse (1955), d. Cy Endfield
- In the Wake of a Stranger (1959), d. David Eady
- Incident at Midnight (1963), d. Norman Harrison
- Information Received (1961), d. Robert Lynn
- The Informers (1963), d. Ken Annakin
- An Inspector Calls (1954), d. Guy Hamilton
- The Interrupted Journey (1949), d. Daniel Birt
- The Intimate Stranger (1956), d. Joseph Losey
- The Intruder (1953), d. Guy Hamilton
- It Always Rains on Sunday (1947), d. Robert Hamer
- Jassy (1947), d. Bernard Knowles
- Jigsaw (1962), d. Val Guest
- Joe MacBeth (1955), d. Ken Hughes
- Johnny Nobody (1961), d. Nigel Patrick
- Jungle Street (1961), d. Charles Saunders
- The Key (1958), d. Carol Reed
- Kill Her Gently (1957), d. Charles Saunders
- Kill Me Tomorrow (1957), d. Terence Fisher
- Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), d. Robert Hamer
- Lady of Vengeance (1957), d. Burt Balaban
- The Large Rope (1953), d. Wolf Rilla
- The Last Page (1952), d. Terence Fisher
- The Late Edwina Black (1951), d. Maurice Elvey
- Latin Quarter (1945), d. Vernon Sewell
- Libel (1959), d. Anthony Asquith
- The Limping Man (1953), d. Cy Endfield
- The Little Red Monkey (1955), d. Ken Hughes
- Locker Sixty-Nine (1962), d. Norman Harrison
- London Belongs to Me (1948), d. Sidney Gilliat
- The Long Dark Hall (1951), d. Anthony Bushell
- The Long Haul (1957), d. Ken Hughes
- The Long Memory (1953), d. Robert Hamer
- The Lost Hours (1952), d. David MacDonald
- Madeleine (1949), d. David Lean
- The Malpas Mystery (1960), d. Sidney Hayers
- The Man Between (1953), d. Carol Reed
- Man Detained (1961), d. Robert Tronson
- Man in Black (1950), d. Francis Searle
- The Man in the Back Seat (1961), d. Vernon SewellM
- The Man in the Road (1957), d. Lance Comfort
- Man in the Shadow (1957), d. Montgomery Tully
- Man on the Run (1949), d. Lawrence Huntington
- The Man Upstairs (1960), d. Montgomery Tully
- The Man Who Finally Died (1963), d. Quentin Lawrence
- The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By (1952)
- The Man Who Wouldn’t Talk (1958), d. Herbert Wilcox
- The Man Within (1947), d. Bernard Knowles
- Mantrap (1953), d. Terence Fisher
- Marilyn (1953), d. Wolf Rilla
- The Mark of Cain (1947), d. Brian Desmond Hurst
- Marriage of Convenience (1960), d. Clive Donner
- Midnight Episode (1950), d. Gordon Parry
- Mine Own Executioner (1947), d. Anthony Kimmins
- Mr. Denning Drives North (1951), d. Anthony Kimmins
- Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill (1948), d. Lawrence Huntington
- Murder at 3 A.M. (1953), d. Francis Searle
- Murder by Proxy (1954), d. Terence Fisher
- Murder without Crime (1950), d. J. Lee Thompson
- My Brother’s Keeper (1948), d. Alfred Roome
- The Naked Edge (1961), d. Michael Anderson
- Naked Fury (1959), d. Charles Saunders
- The Narrowing Circle (1956), d. Charles Saunders
- Never Let Go (1960), d. John Guillermin
- Never Mention Murder (1964), d. John Nelson Burton
- Night and the City (1950), d. Jules Dassin
- Night Beat (1947), d. Harold Huth
- Night Boat to Dublin (1946), d. Lawrence Huntington
- Night of the Demon (1957), d. Jacques Tourneur
- Night Was Our Friend (1951), d. Michael Anderson
- Night without Stars (1951), d. Anthony Pélissier
- Nightmare (1963), d. Freddie Francis
- 1984 (1956), d. Michael Anderson
- No Orchids for Miss Blandish (1948), d. St. John L. Clewes
- No Road Back (1957), d. Montgomery Tully
- No Room at the Inn (1948), d. Daniel Birt
- No Trace (1950), d. John Gilling
- No Trees in the Street (1959), d. J. Lee Thompson
- No Way Back (1949), d. Stefan Osiecki
- Noose (1948), d. Edmond T. Greville
- Now Barabbas (1949), d. Gordon Parry
- Nowhere to Go (1958), d. Seth Holt
- Obsession (1949), d. Edward Dmytryk
- The October Man (1947), d. Roy Ward Baker
- Odd Man Out (1947), d. Carol Reed
- Offbeat (1961), d. Cliff Owen
- Oliver Twist (1948), d. David Lean
- On the Run (1963), d. Robert Tronson
- Once a Sinner (1950), d. Lewis Gilbert
- One Way Out (1955), d. Francis Searle
- Operation Diplomat (1953), d. John Guillermin
- Outcast of the Islands (1952), d. Carol Reed
- The Painted Smile (1962), d. Lance Comfort
- Panic (1963), d. John Gilling
- Paranoiac (1963), d. Freddie Francis
- The Passing Stranger (1954), d. John Arnold
- Passport to Shame (1959), d. Alan Rakoff
- Payroll (1961), d. Sidney Hayers
- Peeping Tom (1960), d. Michael Powell
- Personal Affair (1953), d. Anthony Pélissier
- Piccadilly Third Stop (1960), d. Wolf Rilla
- Pit of Darkness (1961), d. Lance Comfort
- A Place to Go (1963), d. Basil Dearden
- Playback (1962), d. Quentin Lawrence
- The Pool of London (1951), d. Basil Dearden
- Port of Escape (1956), d. Tony Young
- Portrait from Life (1948), d. Terence Fisher
- A Prize of Arms (1962), d. Cliff Owen
- A Prize of Gold (1955), d. Mark Robson
- Psyche 59 (1963), d. Alexander Singer
- The Queen of Spades (1949), d. Thorold Dickinson
- The Quiet Woman (1951), d. John Gilling
- Radio Cab Murder (1954), d. Vernon Sewell
- Rag Doll (1961), d. Lance Comfort
- Recoil (1953), d. John Gilling
- Return of a Stranger (1961), d. Max Varnel
- Return to Sender (1963), d. Gordon Hales
- Ricochet (1963), d. John Moxey
- The Rivals (1963), d. Max Varnel
- The Rocking Horse Winner (1949), d. Anthony Pélissier
- Room at the Top (1959), d. Jack Clayton
- Room to Let (1950), d. Godfrey Grayson
- The Rough and the Smooth (1959), d. Robert Siodmak
- Rough Shoot (1953), d. Robert Parrish
- The Running Man (1963), d. Carol Reed
- Sapphire (1959), d. Basil Dearden
- Saraband for Dead Lovers (1948), d. Basil Dearden
- Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964), d. Bryan Forbes
- The Secret (1955), d. Cy Endfield
- Secret People (1952), d. Thorold Dickinson
- The Secret Place (1957), d. Clive Donner
- Serious Charge (1959), d. Terence Young
- The Servant (1963), d. Joseph Losey
- The Set-Up (1963), d. Gerard Glaister
- Seven Days to Noon (1950), d. Roy Boulting
- Shake Hands with the Devil (1959), d. Michael Anderson
- The Shakedown (1960), d. John Lemont
- The Share-Out (1962), d. Gerard Glaister
- The Ship That Died of Shame (1955), d. Basil Dearden
- The Shop at Sly Corner (1947), d. George King
- Silent Dust (1949), d. Lance Comfort
- The Six Men (1951), d. Michael Law
- The Sleeping Tiger (1954), d. Joseph Losey (as Victor Hanbury)
- The Small Back Room (1949), d. Michael Powell
- The Small Voice (1948), d. Fergus McDonnell
- The Small World of Sammy Lee (1963), d. Ken Hughes
- The Snorkel (1958), d. Guy Green
- Snowbound (1948), d. David MacDonald
- So Evil My Love (1948), d. Lewis Allen
- So Long at the Fair (1950), d. Terence Fisher
- So Well Remembered (1947), d. Edward Dmytryk
- Soho Incident (1956), d. Vernon Sewell
- Solo for Sparrow (1962), d. Gordon Flemyng
- The Spider and the Fly (1949), d. Robert Hamer
- The Square Ring (1953), d. Basil Dearden
- Stage Fright (1950), d. Alfred Hitchcock
- Stolen Face (1952), d. Terence Fisher
- Stormy Crossing (1958), d. C. Pennington-Richards
- The Stranger Came Home (1954), d. Terence Fisher
- Stranger in the House (1967), d. Pierre Rouve
- The Stranger’s Hand (1954), d. Mario Soldati
- Street Corner (1953), d. Muriel Box
- Street of Shadows (1953), d. Richard Vernon
- Strongroom (1962), d. Vernon Sewell
- Subway in the Sky (1959), d. Muriel Box
- Take My Life (1947), d. Ronald Neame
- Taste of Fear (1961), d. Seth Holt
- Temptation Harbour (1947), d. Lance Comfort
- There Is Another Sun (1950), d. Lewis Gilbert
- They Can’t Hang Me (1955), d. Val Guest
- They Made Me a Fugitive (1947), d. Alberto Cavalcanti
- The Third Man (1949), d. Carol Reed
- Third Party Risk (1955), d. Daniel Birt
- The Third Secret (1964), d. Charles Crichton
- 13 East Street (1952), d. Robert S. Baker
- Thirty-Six Hours (1953), d. Montgomery Tully
- This Was a Woman (1948), d. Tim Whelan
- Three Cases of Murder (1955), d. David Eady
- Three Crooked Men (1958), d. Ernest Morris
- Three Steps to the Gallows (1953), d. John Gilling
- Three Sundays to Win (1957), d. Ernest Morris
- Three Weird Sisters (1948), d. Dan Birt
- Tiger Bay (1959), d. J. Lee Thompson
- Tiger by the Tail (1955), d. John Gilling
- Tiger in the Smoke (1956), d. Roy Ward Baker
- Time Bomb (1953), d. Ted Tetzlaff
- Time to Remember (1962), d. Charles Jarrott
- Time without Pity (1957), d. Joseph Losey
- To Have and to Hold (1963), d. Herbert Wise
- Tread Softly Stranger (1958), d. Gordon Parry
- Turn the Key Softly (1953), d. Jack Lee
- £20,000 Kiss (1963), d. John Moxey
- Twisted Nerve (1968), d. Roy Boulting
- The Two-Headed Spy (1958), d. André de Toth
- Uncle Silas (1947), d. Charles Frank
- Uneasy Terms (1949), d. Vernon Sewell
- The Upturned Glass (1947), d. Lawrence Huntington
- Urge to Kill (1960), d. Vernon Sewell
- Vengeance Is Mine (1949), d. Alan Cullimore
- The Verdict (1964), d. David Eady
- The Vicious Circle (1957), d. Gerald Thomas
- The Victim (1961), d. Basil Dearden
- Violent Playground (1958), d. Basil Dearden
- Wanted for Murder (1946), d. Lawrence Huntington
- Waterfront (1950), d. Michael Anderson
- We Shall See (1964), d. Quentin Lawrence
- The Weak and the Wicked (1954), d. J. Lee Thompson
- The Weapon (1957), d. Val Guest
- West 11 (1963), d. Michael Winner
- Wheel of Fate (1953), d. Francis Searle
- While I Live (1947), d. John Harlow
- Whirlpool (1959), d. Lewis Allen
- Wicked as They Come (1956), d. Ken Hughes
- Wide Boy (1952), d. Ken Hughes
- Wings of Danger (1952), d. Terence Fisher
- Witness in the Dark (1959), d. Wolf Rilla
- The Woman in Question (1950), d. Anthony Asquith
- The Woman with No Name (1950), d. Ladislao Vadja
- Women of Twilight (1953), d. Gordon Parry
- Women without Men (1956), d. Elmo Williams
- The Yellow Balloon (1953), d. J. Lee Thompson
- Yield to the Night (1956), d. J. Lee Thompson
- Your Witness (1950), d. Robert Montgomery
British neo noir
- Adulthood (2008), d. Noel Clarke
- The Bank Job (2008), d. Roger Donaldson
- Beyond Bedlam (1994), d. Vadim Jean
- The Big I Am (2009), d. Nic Auerbach
- The Big Sleep (1975), d. Michael Winner
- Blow-up (1967), d. Michelangelo Antonioni
- Bullet Boy (2004), d. Saul Dibbs
- Chinese Boxes (1984), d. Chris Petit
- Christy Malry’s Own Double Entry (2000), d. Paul Tickell
- Circus (2000), d. Rob Walker
- The Criminal (2000), d. Julian Simpson
- Croupier (1998), d. Mike Hodges
- The Crying Game (1992), d. Neil Jordan
- Cul-de-sac (1966), d. Roman Polanski
- Dance with a Stranger (1985), d. Mike Newell
- Darklands (1996), d. Julian Richards
- Dead Man’s Shoes (2004), d. Shane Meadows
- The Deadly Affair (1966), d. Sidney Lumet
- Deadly Strangers (1974), d. Sidney Hayers
- Dr. Sleep (2002), d. Nick Willing
- Empire State (1987), d. Ron Peck
- Endless Night (1972), d. Sidney Gilliat
- Essex Boys (2000), d. Terry Winsor
- Face (1997), d. Antonia Bird
- Far North (2007), d. Asif Kapadia
- Farewell My Lovely (1975), d. Michael Winner
- Following (1998), d. Christopher Nolan
- For Queen and Country (1988), d. Martin Stellman
- Franklyn (2008), d. Gerald McMorrow
- Frenzy (1972), d. Alfred Hitchcock
- Gangster No. I (2000), d. Paul McGuigan
- Get Carter (1971), d. Mike Hodges
- Hard Men (1997), d. J. K. Amalou
- Harry Brown (2009), d. Daniel Barber
- The Hard Way (1979), d. Michael Dryhurst
- Helen (2008), d. Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy
- Hidden City (1987), d. Stephen Poliakoff
- The Hit (1981), d. Stephen Frears
- Hush (2008), d. Mark Tonderai
- I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead (2003), d. Mike Hodges
- Killing Time (1998), d. Bharat Nalluri
- The Krays (1990), d. Peter Medak
- Let Him Have It (1991), d. Peter Medak
- Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), d. Guy Ritchie
- London to Brighton (2006), d. Paul Andrew Williams
- The Long Good Friday (1980), d. John Mackenzie
- The Looking Glass War (1969), d. Frank R. Pierson
- Miranda (2003), d. Marc Munden
- Mona Lisa (1986), d. Neil Jordan
- Mr. In-Between (2001), d. Paul Sarossy
- The Near Room (1995), d. David Hayman
- The Offence (1972), d. Sidney Lumet
- Outlaw (2007), d. Nick Lowe
- Parker (1981), d. Jim Goddard
- Performance (1970), d. Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg
- Pulp (1972), d. Mike Hodges
- Radio On (1980), d. Chris Petit
- Red Road (2006), d. Andrea Arnold
- Repulsion (1965), d. Roman Polanski
- Resurrection Man (1997), d. Marc Evans
- Scandal (1988), d. Michael Caton-Jones
- Sexy Beast (2000), d. Jonathan Glazer
- Shallow Grave (1995), d. Danny Boyle
- Shooters (2002), d. Colin Teague
- Shopping (1994), d. Paul Anderson
- Sitting Target (1972), d. Douglas Hickox
- Slayground (1983), d. Terry Bedford
- Spivs (2002), d. Colin Teague
- The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965), d. Martin Ritt
- Stormy Monday (1989), d. Mike Figgis
- The Strange Affair (1968), d. David Greene
- Tank Malling (1990), d. James Marc
- Trauma (2004), d. Marc Evans
- An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1982), d. Chris Petit
- Villain (1971), d. Mike Tuchner
- The Young Americans (1993), d. Danny Cannon
French noir Filmography
French classic noir
- À bout de souffle (Breathless) (1960), d. Jean-Luc Godard
- À double tour (Web of Passion) (1959), d. Claude Chabrol
- Abus de confiance (Abused Confidence) (1937), d. Henri Decoin
- L’Ainé des Ferchaux (Magnet of Doom) (1963), d. Jean-Pierre Melville
- L’Alibi (The Alibi) (1937), d. Pierre Chenal
- Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (Alphaville) (1965), d. Jean-Luc Godard
- Les Anges du péché (Angels of the Streets) (1943), d. Robert Bresson
- L’Armeé des ombres (The Army of Shadows) (1969), d. Jean-Pierre Melville
- Ascenseur pour l’échafaud (Lift to the Scaffold) (1958), d. Louis Malle
- L’Assassin habite au 21 (The Murderer Lives at Number 21) (1941), d. Henri-Georges Clouzot
- L’Assassinat du Père Noël (The Killing of Santa Claus) (1941), d. Christian-Jaque
- Au-delà des grilles (The Walls of Malapaga) (1949), d. René Clément
- Bande à part (Band of Outsiders) (1964), d. Jean-Luc Godard
- Les Barbouzes (The Great Spy Chase) (1964), d. Georges Lautner
- Les Bas-fonds (The Lower Depths aka Underworld) (1936), d. Jean Renoir
- La Belle équipe (They Were Five) (1936), d. Julien Duvivier
- La Bête humaine (Judas Was a Woman aka The Human Beast) (1938), d. Jean Renoir
- Bob le flambeur (Bob the Gambler) (1956), d. Jean-Pierre Melville
- Borsalino (1970), d. Jacques Deray
- Le Boucher (The Butcher) (1969), d. Claude Chabrol
- Carrefour (Crossroads) (1938), d. Curtis Bernhardt
- Casque d’or (Golden Marie) (1952), d. Jacques Becker
- Le Cave se rebiffe (The Counterfeiters) (1961), d. Gilles Grangier
- Les Caves du Majestic (Majestic Hotel Cellars) (1945), d. Richard Pottier
- Cécile est morte (Cecile Is Dead) (1944), d. Maurice Tourneur
- 120 rue de la gare (1946), d. Jacques Daniel-Norman
- Le Cercle rouge (The Red Circle) (1970), d. Jean-Pierre Melville
- Le Chat (The Cat) (1971), d. Pierre Granier-Deferre
- Chéri-Bibi (1937), d. Léon Mathot
- Le Chien jaune (The Yellow Dog) (1932), d. Jean Tarride
- La Chienne (The Bitch) (1931), d. Jean Renoir
- 56 rue Pigalle (1949), d. Willy Rozier
- Le Clan des Siciliens (The Sicilian Clan) (1969), d. Henri Verneuil
- Classe tous risques (The Big Risk) (1960), d. Claude Sautet
- Coeur de Lilas (Lilac) (1932), d. Anatole Litvak
- Compartiment tueurs (The Sleeping Car Murders) (1965), d. Constantin Costa-Gavras
- Un Condamné à mort s’est échappé (A Man Escaped) (1956), d. Robert Bresson
- Un Condé (Blood on My Hands) (1970), d. Yves Boisset
- Le Corbeau (The Raven) (1943), d. Henri-Georges Clouzot
- La Course du liève à travers les champs (And Hope to Die) (1972), d. René Clément
- Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (The Crime of Monsieur Lange) (1936), d. Jean Renoir
- La Dame d’onze heure (Eleven O’Clock Lady) (1948), d. Jean Devaivre
- Dédée d’Anvers (Woman of Antwerp) (1948), d. Yves Allégret
- Dernier atout (The Last Trump) (1942), d. Jacques Becker
- Le Dernier tournant (The Last Turn) (1939), d. Pierre Chenal
- Le Désordre et la nuit (Night Affair) (1958), d. Gilles Grangier
- Deux hommes dans Manhattan (Two Men in Manhattan) (1959), d. Jean-Pierre Melville
- Le Deuxième soufflé (Second Breath) (1966), d. Jean-Pierre Melville
- Le Diable au corps (Devil in the Flesh) (1946), d. Claude Autant-Lara
- Les Diaboliques (Diabolique aka The Devils) (1954), d. Henri-Georges Clouzot
- Le Dos au mur (Back to the Wall) (1958), d. Edouard Molinaro
- Douce (Love Story) (1943), d. Claude Autant-Lara
- Le Doulos (The Finger Man) (1963), d. Jean-Pierre Melville
- Du rififi à Paname (Rififi in Paris aka The Upper Hand) (1966), d. Denys de la Patellière
- Du rififi chez les hommes (Rififi) (1955), d. Jules Dassin
- En cas de Malheur (Love Is My Profession) (1958), d. Claude Autant-Lara
- L’Entraîneuse (Nightclub Hostess) (1938), d. Albert Valentin
- Eve (1962), d. Joseph Losey
- Les Fanatiques (A Bomb for a Dictator) (1957), d. Alex Joffé
- Fantômas (1964), d. André Hunnebelle
- Faubourg-Montmartre (1931), d. Raymond Benard
- Le Félins (Joy House) (1964), d. René Clement
- La Femme infidèle (The Unfaithful Wife) (1968), d. Claude Chabrol
- Les Femmes s’en balancent (Dames Don’t Care) (1953), d. Bernard Borderie
- Un Flic (Dirty Money) (1972), d. Jean-Pierre Melville
- Le Gorille vous salue bien (The Gorilla Greets You) (1958), d. Bernard Borderie
- Goupi mains rouges (It Happened at the Inn) (1943), d. Jacques Becker
- Le Grand jeu (The Big Game) (1930), d. Jacques Feyder
- Gueule d’amour (Lady Killer) (1937), d. Jean Grémillon
- L’Homme de Londres (The London Man) (1943), d. Henri Decoin
- Hôtel du Nord (1938), d. Marcel Carné
- Impasse des deux anges (Impasse of Two Angels) (1948), d. Maurice Tourneur
- Les Inconnus dans la maison (Strangers in the House) (1942), d. Henri Decoin
- Je suis un sentimental (Headlines of Destruction) (1955), d. John Berry
- Jenny (1936), d. Marcel Carné
- Jeu de massacre (The Killing Game) (1967), d. Alain Jessua
- Le Jour se lève (Daybreak) (1939), d. Marcel Carné
- Judex (1963), d. Georges Franju
- Juste avant la nuit (Just Before Nightfall aka The Vice) (1971), d. Claude Chabrol
- Justice est faite (Justice Is Done) (1950), d. André Cayatte
- Justin de Marseille (1935), d. Maurice Tourneur
- Landru (1962), d. Claude Chabrol
- Made in U.S.A. (1966), d. Jean-Luc Godard
- Maigret tend un piège (Maigret Lays a Trap) (1958), d. Jean Delannoy
- La Maison du Maltais (Sirocco) (1938), d. Pierre Chenal
- Manèges (The Cheat) (1949), d. Yves Allégret
- Manon (1949), d. Henri-Georges Clouzot
- La Mariée était en noir (The Bride Wore Black) (1968), d. François Truffaut
- Massacre en dentelles (Massacre in Lace) (1952), d. André Hunnebelle
- Max et les ferrailleurs (Max and the Junkmen) (1971), d. Claude Sautet
- Méfiez-vous des blondes (Beware of Blondes) (1950), d. André Hunnebelle
- Mélodie en sous-sol (Any Number Can Win) (1963), d. Henri Verneuil
- La Métamorphose des cloportes (Cloportes) (1965), d. Pierre Granier-Deferre
- Le Meurtrier (Enough Rope) (1963), d. Claude Autant-Lara
- Mission à Tanger (Mission in Tangier) (1949), d. André Hunnebelle
- La Môme vert-de-gris (Poison Ivy) (1953), d. Bernard Borderie
- Le Mystère de la chambre jaune (The Mystery of the Yellow Room) (1930), d. Marcel L’Herbier
- Nous sommes tous des assassins (We Are All Murderers) (1952), d. André Cayatte
- La Nuit du Carrefour (Night at the Crossroads) (1932), d. Jean Renoir
- Obsession (1954), d. Jean Delannoy
- L’Oeil du matin (The Third Lover) (1963), d. Claude Chabrol
- Panique (Panic) (1947), d. Julien Duvivier
- Le Parfum de la dame en noir (The Perfume of the Lady in Black) (1931), d. Marcel L’Herbier
- Le Passager de la pluie (Rider on the Rain) (1969), d. René Clément
- La Peau Douce (Soft Skin) (1964), d. François Truffaut
- Pépé le Moko (1937), d. Julien Duvivier
- Pickpocket (1959), d. Robert Bresson
- Picpus (1943), d. Richard Pottier
- Pièges (Traps aka Personal Column) (1939), d. Robert Siodmak
- Pierrot le fou (1965), d. Jean-Luc Godard
- La Piscine (The Sinners) (1968), d. Jacques Deray
- Plein soleil (Purple Noon) (1960), d. René Clément
- Pleins feux sur l’assassin (Spotlight on a Murder) (1960), d. Georges Franju
- Les Portes de la nuit (The Gates of the Night) (1946), d. Marcel Carné
- Prisons de femmes (Marked Girls) (1938), d. Roger Richebé
- Le Puritain (The Puritan) (1937), d. Jeff Musso
- Le Quai des brumes (Port of Shadows) (1938), d. Marcel Carné
- Quai des orfèvres (Jenny Lamour) (1947), d. Henri-Georges Clouzot
- Quand la femme s’en mêle (When a Woman Meddles) (1957), d. Yves Allégret
- Quand tu liras cette lettre (When You Read This Letter) (1953), d. Jean-Pierre Melville
- Que la bête meure (This Man Must Die aka Killer) (1969), d. Claude Chabrol
- Razzia sur la chnouf (Razzia) (1955), d. Henri Decoin
- Remorques (Stormy Waters) (1940), d. Jean Grémillon
- Retour de manivelle (There’s Always a Price Tag) (1957), d. Denys de la Patellière
- Le Rouge est mis (Speaking of Murder) (1957), d. Gilles Grangier
- La Rue sans nom (Street without a Name) (1934), d. Pierre Chenal
- La Rupture (The Break) (1970), d. Claude Chabrol
- Le Salaire de la peur (The Wages of Fear) (1953), d. Henri-Georges Clouzot
- Le Samouraï (1967), d. Jean-Pierre Melville
- Le Scandale (The Champagne Murders) (1967), d. Claude Chabrol
- Section des disparus (Missing Persons Department) (1956), d. Pierre Chenal
- Une Si jolie petite plage (Riptide) (1949), d. Yves Allégret
- La Sirène du Mississipi (Mississippi Mermaid) (1969), d. François Truffaut
- La Tête d’un homme (A Man’s Neck) (1932), d. Julien Duvivier
- Thérèse Desqueyroux (1962), d. Georges Franju
- Thérèse Raquin (1953), d. Marcel Carné
- Tirez sur le pianiste (Shoot the Piano Player) (1960), d. François Truffaut
- Les Tontons flingueurs (Crooks in Clover) (1963), d. Georges Lautner
- Touchez pas au grisbi (Honor Among Thieves aka Grisbi aka Hands off the Loot) (1954), d. Jacques Becker
- Trans-Europ-Express (1966), d. Alain Robbe-Grillet
- Le Trou (The Night Watch aka The Hole) (1960), d. Jacques Becker
- La Vérité (The Truth) (1960), d. Henri-Georges Clouzot
- La Vérité sur Bébé Donge (The Truth about Bebe Donge) (1951), d. Henri Decoin
- La Vie, l’amour et la mort (Life, Love, Death) (1969), d. Claude Lelouch
- Voici le temps des assassins (Deadlier Than the Male) (1956), d. Julien Duvivier
- Le Voleur (The Thief of Paris) (1967), d. Louis Malle
- Weekend (1967), d. Jean-Luc Godard
- Les Yeux Sans Visage (Eyes without a Face) (1959), d. George Franju
- Z (1969), d. Constantin Costa-Gavras
French neo noir
- L’Amour violé (Rape of Love) (1977), d. Yannick Bellon
- L’Appât (The Bait) (1995), d. Bertrand Tavernier
- L’Argent (Money) (1983), d. Robert Bresson
- Assassin(s) (1997), d. Mathieu Kassovitz
- L’Attentat (Plot) (1972), d. Yves Boisset
- Au coeur du mensonge (The Color of Lies) (1999), d. Claude Chabrol
- Aux yeux du monde (In the Eyes of the World) (1991), d. Eric Rochant
- L’Aveu (The Confession) (1970), d. Constantin Costa-Gavras
- Baise-moi (Kiss Me) (2000), d. Coralie Trinh Thi and Virginie Despentes
- La Balance (The Nark) (1982), d. Bob Swaim
- Borsalino & Co. (1974), d. Jacques Deray
- Buffet froid (Cold Cuts) (1979), d. Bertrand Blier
- Caché (Hidden) (2005), d. Michael Haneke
- La Cérémonie (A Judgement in Stone) (1995), d. Claude Chabrol
- Le Chat et la souris (Cat and Mouse) (1975), d. Claude Lelouch
- Le Choc (Contract in Blood) (1982), d. Robin Davis
- Un Choix d’assassins (A Choice of Killers) (1996), d. Philippe Fourastié
- Coup de torchon (Clean Slate) (1981), d. Bertrand Tavernier
- Le Cri du hibou (The Cry of the Owl) (1987), d. Claude Chabrol
- Un Crime (A Crime) (1993), d. Jacques Deray
- De battre mon coeur s’est arrête (The Beat My Heart Skipped) (2005), d. Jacques Audiard
- Demoiselle d’honneur (The Bridesmaid) (2004), d. Claude Chabrol
- Dernier domicile connu (Last Known Address) (1970), d. José Giovanni
- Descente aux enfers (Descent into Hell) (1986), d. Francis Girod
- Détective (1985), d. Jean-Luc Godard
- Deux hommes dans la ville (Two Men in Town) (1973), d. José Giovanni
- Dites-lui que je l’aime (The Sweet Sickness) (1977), d. Claude Miller
- Diva (1981), d. Jean-Jacques Beineix
- Dobermann (1997), d. Jan Kounen
- Docteur Petiot (1990), d. Christian de Chalonge
- Dupont Lajoie (Rape of Innocence) (1975), d. Yves Boisset
- Eaux profondes (Deep Water) (1981), d. Michel Deville
- L’Empreinte de l’ange (Mark of an Angel) (2008), d. Safy Nebbou
- État de siège (State of Siege) (1973), d. Constantin Costa-Gavras
- L’Étoile du nord (The North Star) (1982), d. Pierre Granier-Deferre
- Les Fantômes du chapelier (The Hatter’s Ghost) (1982), d. Claude Chabrol
- La Femme Nikita (Nikita) (1990), d. Luc Besson
- Feux rouges (Red Lights) (2004), d. Cédric Kahn
- Flic story (Cop Story) (1975), d. Jacques Deray
- Fleur du mal (Flower of Evil) (2003), d. Claude Chabrol
- Fréquence meurtre (Frequent Death) (1988), d. Élizabeth Rappeneau
- Le Gang (The Gang) (1976), d. Jacques Deray
- Garde à vue (Under Suspicion) (1981), d. Claude Miller
- La Haine (Hate) (1995), d. Mathieu Kassovitz
- L’Homme de Londres (aka A londoni férfi and The Man from London) (2007), d. Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky
- L’Horloger de Saint-Paul (The Watchmaker of St. Paul) (1973), d. Bertrand Tavernier
- L’Humanité (Humanity) (1999), d. Bruno Dumont
- Les Innocents aux mains sales (Innocents with Dirty Hands) (1975), d. Claude Chabrol
- Inspecteur Lavardin (1986), d. Claude Chabrol
- Irréversible (2002), d. Gaspar Noé
- J’ai vu tuer Ben Barka (I Saw Ben Barka Get Killed) (2005), d. Serge Le Péron and Säid Smihi
- Le Juge et l’assassin (The Judge and the Assassin) (1976), d. Bertrand Tavernier
- Le Juge Fayard dit le Shérif (Judge Fayard Called the Sheriff) (1976), d. Yves Boisset
- L.627 (1992), d. Bertrand Tavernier
- Léon (1994), d. Luc Besson
- Les Liens du sang (Blood Relatives) (1978), d. Claude Chabrol
- Un Linceul n’a pas des poches (No Pockets in a Shroud) (1974), d. Jean-Pierre Mocky
- La Locataire (The Tenant) (1976), d. Roman Polanski
- La Lune dans le caniveau (The Moon in the Gutter) (1983), d. Jean-Jacques Beineix
- Masques (Masks) (1987), d. Claude Chabrol
- Mauvais Sang (Bad Blood) (1986), d. Leos Carax
- Merci pour le chocolat (Nightcap) (2000), d. Claude Chabrol
- Monsieur Hire (1989), d. Patrice Leconte
- Mort d’un pourri (Death of a Corrupt Man) (1977), d. Georges Lautner
- Nada (The Nada Gang) (1974), d. Claude Chabrol
- Ne réveillez pas un flic qui dort (Let Sleeping Cops Lie) (1988), d. José Pinheiro
- Nikita (La Femme Nikita) (1990), d. Luc Besson
- Les Noces rouges (Blood Wedding) (1973), d. Claude Chabrol
- On ne meurt que deux fois (He Died with His Eyes Open) (1985), d. Jacques Deray
- Parole de flic (Cop’s Honor) (1985), d. José Pinheiro
- Péril en la demeure (Peril) (1985), d. Michel Deville
- Le Petit lieutenant (The Young Lieutenant) (2005), d. Xavier Beauvois
- Place Vendôme (1998), d. Nicole Garcia
- Police (1985), d. Maurice Pialat
- Police Python 357 (The Case against Ferro) (1976), d. Alain Corneau
- Poulet au vinaigre (Cop au Vin) (1985), d. Claude Chabrol
- Pour la peau d’un flic (For a Cop’s Hide) (1981), d. Alain Delon
- Poussière d’ange (Angel Dust) (1987), d. Edouard Niermans
- Le Professionnel (The Professional) (1981), d. Georges Lautner
- Regard les hommes tomber (See How They Fall) (1994), d. Jacques Audiard
- René-la-canne (Rene the Cane) (1977), d. Francis Girod
- Les Ripoux (My New Partner) (1985), d. Claude Zidi
- Rivals (2008), d. Jacques Maillot
- Roberto Succo (2001), d. Cédric Kahn
- Romance (1999), d. Catherine Breillat
- Rue Barbare (1983), d. Gilles Béhat
- Le Secret (The Secret) (1974), d. Robert Enrico
- Série noire (1979), d. Alain Corneau
- Seul contre tous (I Stand Alone) (1998), d. Gaspar Noé
- Sombre (1998), d. Philippe Grandrieux
- Subway (1985), d. Luc Besson
- Sur mes lèvres (Read My Lips) (2001), d. Jacques Audiard
- Tendre poulet (Dear Inspector) (1978), d. Philippe de Broca
- La Tourneuse de pages (The Page Turner) (2006), d. Denis Dercourt
- 36 Quai des Orfèvres (Department 36) (2004), d. Olivier Marchal
- Les Valseuses (Going Places) (1974), d. Bertrand Blier
- La Veuve Couderc (The Widow Couderc) (1971), d. Pierre Granier-Deferre
- La Vie rêvée des anges (The Dreamlife of Angels) (1998), d. Erick Zonca
- Violette Nozière (1978), d. Claude Chabrol
- Vivement Dimanche! (Finally, Sunday aka Confidentially Yours) (1983), d. François Truffaut
German noir Filmography
German classic noir
- Abenteuer in Wien (Stolen Identity) (1952), d. E. E. Reinert and Gunther von Fritsch
- Ein Alibi zerbricht (An Alibi Collapses) (1963), d. Alfred Vohrer
- Alraune (Unnatural) (1952), d. Arthur Maria Rabenalt
- Am Tag als der Regen kam (The Day the Rains Came) (1959), d. Gerd Oswald
- Das Bekenntnis der Ina Kahr (Ina Kahr’s Confession) (1954), d. G. W. Pabst
- Berlin Ecke Schönhauser (Berlin Schönhauser Corner) (1957), d. Gerhard Klein
- Der Blaue Engel (The Blue Angel) (1930), d. Josef Von Sternberg
- Blockierte Signale (Blocked Signals) (1948), d. Johannes Meyer
- Epilog—Das Geheimnis der Orplid (Epilogue—The Orplid Mystery) (1950), d. Helmut Käutner
- Es geschah am hellichten Tag (It Happened in Broad Daylight) (1958), d. Ladislao Vajda
- Die Frühreifen (The Adolescents) (1957), d. Josef von Baky
- Geständnis unter vier Augen (Private Confession) (1954), d. André Michel
- Gestehen Sie, Dr. Corda! (Confess, Dr. Corda) (1958), d. Josef von Baky
- Die Goldene Pest (The Golden Plague) (1954), d. John Brahm
- Hafenmelodie (Harbour Melody) (1948), d. Hans Müller
- Die Halbstarken (The Hooligans) (1956), d. Georg Tressler
- Hanna Amon (1951), d. Veit Harlan
- Illusion in Moll (Illusion in a Minor Key) (1952), d. Rudolf Jugert
- Kirmes (Fairground) (1960), d. Wolfgang Staudte
- M: Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder (M: A City Searches for a Murderer) (1931), d. Fritz Lang
- Das Mädchen Rosemarie (The Girl Rosemarie) (1958), d. Rolf Thiele
- Der Mann, der den Mord beging (The Man Who Committed Murder) (1931), d. Curtis Bernhardt
- Der Mann, der seinen Mörder sucht (The Man Who Searched for His Own Murderer) (1931), d. Robert Siodmak
- Die Mörder sind unter uns (The Murderers Are Among Us) (1946), d. Wolfgang Staudte
- Nachts auf den Strassen (At Night on the Streets) (1952), d. Rudolf Jugert
- Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam (The Devil Strikes at Night) (1957), d. Robert Siodmak
- Nasser Asphalt (Wet Asphalt) (1958), d. Frank Wisbar
- Opfergang (The Great Sacrifice) (1943), d. Veit Harlan
- Der Rest ist Schweigen (The Rest Is Silence) (1959), d. Helmut Käutner
- Schicksal aus zweiter Hand (Second-Hand Destiny) (1949), d. Wolfgang Staudte
- Schwarzer Kies (Black Gravel) (1960), d. Helmut Käutner
- Die Sünderin (The Sinner) (1951), d. Willi Forst
- Die Tausend Augen des Dr Mabuse (The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse) (1960), d. Fritz Lang
- Teufel in Seide (Devil in Silk) (1955), d. Rolf Hansen
- Das Totenschiff (Ship of the Dead) (1959), d. Georg Tressler
- Tromba (1949), d. Helmut Weiss
- Der Verlorene (The Lost One) (1951), d. Peter Lorre
- Das Verlorene Gesicht (The Lost Face) (1948), d. Kurt Hoffmann
- Verwehte Spuren (Covered Tracks) (1938), d. Veit Harlan
- Viele kamen vorbei (Many Passed By) (1956), d. Peter Pewas
- Die Wahrheit über Rosemarie (The Truth about Rosemarie) (1959), d. Rudolf Jugert
- Wenn abends die Heide träumt (When the Heath Dreams at Night) (1952), d. Paul Martin
German neo noir
- Alabama: 2000 Light Years from Home (1968), d. Wim Wenders
- Der Amerikanische Freund (The American Friend) (1977), d. Wim Wenders
- Der Amerikanische Soldat (The American Soldier) (1970), d. Rainer Werner Fassbinder
- Die Ehe der Maria Braun (The Marriage of Maria Braun) (1979), d. Rainer Werner Fassbinder
- Der Geschichtenzähler (The Story Teller) (1989), d. Rainer Boldt
- Die Gläserne Zelle (The Glass Case) (1978), d. Hans W. Geissendörfer
- Götter der Pest (Gods of the Plague) (1970), d. Rainer Werner Fassbinder
- Hammett (1982), d. Wim Wenders
- Jerichow (2008), d. Christian Petzold
- Kurz und Schmerzlos (Short Sharp Shock) (1998), d. Fatih Akin
- Das Leben des Anderen (The Lives of Others) (2006), d. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
- Liebe - kälter als der Tod (Love Is Colder Than Death) (1969), d. Rainer Werner Fassbinder
- Lola (1981), d. Rainer Werner Fassbinder
- Lola rennt (Run Lola Run) (1998), d. Tom Tykwer
- Long Hello and Short Goodbye (1998), d. Rainer Kaufmann
- Meschugge (1999), d. Dani Levy
- Same Player Shoots Again (1967), d. Wim Wenders
- Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss (Veronika Voss) (1982), d. Rainer Werner Fassbinder
- Die Unberührbare (No Place to Go) (2000), d. Andreas Roehler
- 14 Tage lebenslänglich (14 Days to Life) (1997), d. Roland Suso Richter
- Wege in die Nacht (Paths in the Night) (1999), d. Andreas Kleinert
- Die Zwei Gesichter des Januar (The Two Faces of January) (1986), d. Wolfgang Storch and Gabriela Zerhau
Italian noir Filmography
Italian classic noir
- A ciascuno il suo (We Still Kill the Old Way) (1967), d. Elio Petri
- L’Assassino (The Ladykiller of Rome) (1962), d. Elio Petri
- Banditi a Milano (Bandits of Milan) (1968), d. Carlo Lizzani
- Il Bandito (The Bandit) (1946), d. Alberto Lattuada
- Caccia tragica (Tragic Pursuit) (1947), d. Aldo Vergano
- Cadaveri eccellenti (Illustrious Corpses) (1975), d. Francesco Rosi
- Il Caso Mattei (The Mattei Affair) (1972), d. Francesco Rosi
- La Commare secca (The Grim Reaper) (1961), d. Pier Paolo Pasolini
- Il Conformista (The Conformist) (1970), d. Bernardo Bertolucci
- Cronaca di un amore (Story of a Love Affair) (1950), d. Michelangelo Antonioni
- Danza macabra (Dance Macabre) (1964), d. Antonio Margheriti
- La Donna della Domenica (Sunday Woman) (1975), d. Luigi Comencini
- La Frusta e il corpo (The Whip and the Body, aka Night Is the Phantom) (1963), d. Mario Bava as John M. Old
- Il Giorno della civetta (The Cry of the Owl) (1968), d. Damiano Damiani
- Gioventù perduta (Lost Youth) (1947), d. Pietro Germi
- In nome della legge (In the Name of the Law) (1949), d. Pietro Germi
- Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto (Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion) (1970), d. Elio Petri
- L’Istruttoria è chiusa, dimentichi (Interrogation Is Over, Forget) (1971), d. Damiano Damiani
- Lucky Luciano (1974), d. Francesco Rosi
- Un Maledetto imbroglio (A Wretched Business) (1959), d. Pietro Germi
- Le Mani sulla città (Hands over the City) (1963), d. Francesco Rosi
- Mark il poliziotto (Mark the Policeman) (1975), d. Stelvio Massi
- Mark il poliziotto spara per primo (Policeman Mark Shoots First) (1975), d. Stelvio Massi
- Milano calibro 9 (Milan Calibre 9) (1971), d. Fernando Di Leo
- Milano violenta (Violent Milan) (1976), d. Mario Caiano
- Napoli violenta (Violent Naples) (1976), d. Umberto Lenzi
- Nella città l’inferno (And the Wild, Wild Women) (1959), d. Renato Castellani
- Il Nome della lege (In the Name of the Law) (1949), d. Pietro Germi
- Non si sevizia un paperino (Don’t Torture the Duck) (1976), d. Lucio Fulci
- Le Notti bianche (White Nights) (1957), d. Luchino Visconti
- L’Oro di Napoli (The Gold of Naples) (1954), d. Vittorio De Sica
- Ossessione (Obsession) (1942), d. Luchino Visconti
- La Polizia ringrazia (The Police Are Grateful) (1972), d. Stefano Vanzina
- Processo alla città (City on Trial) (1952), d. Luigi Zampa
- Professione reporter (The Passenger) (1975), d. Michelangelo Antonioni
- Profondo rosso (Deep Red) (1975), d. Dario Argento
- Quattro mosche di velluto grigio (Four Flies on Grey Velvet) (1971), d. Dario Argento
- Riso amaro (Bitter Rice) (1948), d. Giuseppe De Santis
- Il Rossetto (Lipstick) (1960), d. Damiano Damiani
- Salvatore Giuliano (1961), d. Francesco Rosi
- Sei donne per l’assassino (Blood and Black Lace) (1964), d. Mario Bava
- Senza pietà (Without Pity) (1948), d. Alberto Lattuada
- Senza sapere niente di lei (Unknown Woman) (1969), d. Luigi Comencini
- La Sfida (The Challenge) (1958), d. Francesco Rosi
- La Signora senza camelie (The Lady without Camelias) (1953), d. Michelangelo Antonioni
- La Sindrome di Stendhal (The Stendhal Syndrome) (1996), d. Dario Argento
- Il Sospetto (Suspicion) (1975), d. Francesco Maselli
- Lo Spettro (The Ghost) (1963), d. Riccardo Freda
- Todo modo (1976), d. Elio Petri
- Tombolo, paradiso nero (Tombolo, Black Paradise) (1947), d. Giorgio Ferroni
- Torino nera (Black Turin) (1972), d. Carlo Lizzani
- L’Uccello dalle piume di cristallo (Bird with the Crystal Plumage) (1970), d. Dario Argento
- Vaghe stelle dell’orsa (Sandra) (1965), d. Luchino Visconti
- I Vinti (The Vanquished) (1952), d. Michelangelo Antonioni
Italian neo noir
- Almost Blue (2000), d. Alex Infascelli
- L’Amico di famiglia (Friend of the Family) (2006), d. Paolo Sorrentino
- Assassini dei giorni di festa (The Holiday Killers) (2002), d. Damiano Damiani
- L’Assassino di poliziotti (Copkiller) (1983), d. Roberto Faenza
- Benzina (Gasoline) (2004), d. Monica Stambrini
- Brucio nel vente (Burning in the Wind) (2002), d. Silvio Soldini
- Buongiorno notte (Good Morning, Night) (2003), d. Marco Bellocchio
- Il Cartaio (The Card Player) (2003), d. Dario Argento
- La Casa del tappeto giallo (House of the Yellow Carpet) (1983), d. Carlo Lizzani
- I Cento passi (The 100 Steps) (2000), d. Marco Tullio Giordano
- Certi bambini (A Children’s Story) (2003), d. Andrea Frazzi
- Chimera (2001), d. Pappi Corsicato
- Le Conseguenze dell’amore (The Consequences of Love) (2004), d. Paolo Sorrentino
- Un Delitto impossibile (An Impossible Crime) (2001), d. Antonello Grimaldi
- Il Divo (aka Il Divo: la straordinaria vita di Guilio Andreotti) (2008), d. Paolo Sorrentino
- Un Eroe borghese (Middle Class Hero) (1994), d. Michele Placido
- La Fine è nota (The End Is Known) (1993), d. Cristina Comencini
- La Finestra di fronte (Facing Window) (2003), d. Ferzan Ozpetek
- Una Fredda mattina di maggio (A Cold May Morning) (1990), d. Vittorio Sindoni
- Il Gioco di Ripley (Ripley’s Game) (2002), d. Liliana Cavani
- Il Giudice ragazzino (The Young Judge) (1993), d. Alessandro Di Robilant
- Gomorra (Gomorrah) (2008), d. Matteo Garrone
- Io non ho paura (I’m Not Scared) (2002), d. Gabriele Salvatores
- Il Lungo silenzio (The Long Silence) (1993), d. Margarethe von Trotta
- La Mia generazione (My Generation) (1996), d. Wilma Labate
- Il Muro di gomma (The Rubber Wall) (1991), d. Marco Risi
- Il Nome della rosa (The Name of the Rose) (1986), d. Jean Jacques Annaud
- Notturno Bus (Night Bus) (2007), d. Davide Marengo
- Piazza delle cinque lune (Five Moon Square) (2003), d. Renzo Martinelli
- Una Pura formalità (A Pure Formality) (1994), d. Giuseppe Tornatore
- Quo vadis, Baby? (2005), d. Gabriele Salvatores
- Romanzo criminale (Crime Novel) (2005), d. Michele Placido
- Rose e pistole (Roses and Guns) (1998), d. Carla Apuzzo
- Saimir (2004), d. Francesco Munzi
- La Scorta (The Escort) (1993), d. Ricky Tognazzi
- Segreto distato (Secret File) (2003), d. Paolo Benvenuti
- Teatro di guerra (Theatre of War) (1998), d. Mario Martone
- Tenebre (Tenebrae) (1982), d. Dario Argento
- La Tragedia di un uomo ridicolo (Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man) (1981), d. Bernardo Bertolucci
Resources
- [1] Andrew Dickos, Street with No Name: A History of the Classic American Film Noir (University Press of Kentucky, 2002)) pp 6-8
- [2] Andrew Spicer, Historical Dictionary of Film Noir (Scarecrow Press, 2010) pp xxxix-xli, xliii-xlvii
- [3] Arthur Lyons, Death On The Cheap: The Lost B Movies Of Film Noir (Da Capo Press, 2000) pp 1-2, 7
- [4] Geoff Mayer & Brian McDonnell, Encyclopedia of Film Noir (Greenwood, 2007) pp 47-56
- [5] Karen Burroughs Hannsberry, Bad Boys: The Actors of Film Noir (McFarland & Company, 2003) pp 2-3
- [6] Karen Burroughs Hannsberry, Femme Noir: Bad Girls of Film (McFarland & Company, 2009) pp 1, 8-11
- [7] Paul Duncan, Film Noir: Films of Trust and Betrayal (Pocket Essentials, 2006) pp 17-20
- [8] Stephen Hoover, Dark Movies: The Essential Film Noir (Stephen Hoover, 2014) pp 1-5, 205
- [9] William Park, What is Film Noir? (Bucknell University Press, 2013) pp 55