Film noir: 21 essential films
Weekly collection in the app for the week of October 9, 2026.
Film noir is the name French critics gave, just after the war, to the dark American crime films of the 1940s: venetian-blind shadows, cynical narrators, doomed men and dangerous women. This collection runs from the Hollywood classics (Double Indemnity, The Maltese Falcon, Out of the Past) through Melville's Paris gangsters and Kurosawa's Tokyo to the neo-noir of L.A. Confidential, Mulholland Drive and Memento.
These 21 films ran as the weekly theme in the I Like Movies Discover tab for the week of October 9, 2026, featuring The Third Man. The spread runs from John Huston's The Maltese Falcon in 1941 to Rian Johnson's Brick, a hardboiled detective story moved into a California high school.
The collection
-
The Third Man 1949 Reed A writer of pulp westerns arrives in bombed-out postwar Vienna to work for his friend Harry Lime and learns Lime has just died, in circumstances that do not add up; Graham Greene wrote it, Orson Welles lurks in the shadows. Cast: Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Trevor Howard -
Double Indemnity 1944 Wilder An insurance salesman falls for a married woman and helps her kill her husband for the payout, then watches the perfect plan come apart; Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler adapting James M. Cain. Cast: Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson -
Sunset Boulevard 1950 Wilder A broke screenwriter hiding from repo men ends up in the decaying mansion of a forgotten silent-film star who is planning her comeback; the story is told by a narrator who is already dead. Cast: William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim -
The Maltese Falcon 1941 Huston After his partner is shot, San Francisco private eye Sam Spade is caught between liars and killers all hunting a jeweled statuette; John Huston's first film as director, with Humphrey Bogart. Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Gladys George -
The Asphalt Jungle 1950 Huston A criminal mastermind fresh out of prison recruits a safecracker, a driver and a hired muscle for one jewel robbery, and each man has a weakness that unravels it; an early model for the heist film. Cast: Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, Jean Hagen -
Out of the Past 1947 Tourneur A small-town gas station owner is pulled back into the past he fled: a job tracking down a gangster's runaway lover that ended with him falling for her; noir at its most fatalistic. Cast: Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas -
The Big Sleep 1946 Hawks Private detective Philip Marlowe is hired by a dying general over his daughter's gambling debts and walks into blackmail and murder; a famously tangled plot carried by Bogart and Bacall's banter. Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Ridgely -
Sweet Smell of Success 1957 Mackendrick A desperate New York press agent does whatever a powerful gossip columnist asks, including wrecking the columnist's sister's romance with a jazz guitarist; a night-time Manhattan of favors and smears. Cast: Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Susan Harrison -
The Night of the Hunter 1955 Laughton A self-appointed preacher with LOVE and HATE tattooed on his knuckles marries a widow to find the money her executed husband hid, and her two children run; Charles Laughton's only film as director. Cast: Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish -
Kiss Me Deadly 1955 Aldrich Private eye Mike Hammer picks up a terrified hitchhiker on a dark highway, and her murder leads him to a box everyone wants and nobody should open; a Cold War noir with an apocalyptic ending. Cast: Ralph Meeker, Albert Dekker, Paul Stewart -
The Killing 1956 Kubrick An ex-convict plans one last job, robbing a racetrack's cash room during a big race, with a crew of small-time men, and the film follows the heist out of order, minute by minute; the young Stanley Kubrick's breakthrough. Cast: Sterling Hayden, Coleen Gray, Vince Edwards -
L.A. Confidential 1997 Hanson Three very different 1950s Los Angeles cops, a by-the-book climber, a brutal enforcer and a celebrity detective, circle a coffee-shop massacre that leads back into their own department; adapted from James Ellroy. Cast: Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce -
Mulholland Drive 2001 Lynch An aspiring actress arrives in Los Angeles and finds a woman with amnesia hiding in her aunt's apartment, and the two set out to learn who she is; David Lynch's dream-logic Hollywood mystery. Cast: Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, Justin Theroux -
Memento 2000 Nolan A man who cannot form new memories hunts his wife's killer with Polaroids, notes and tattoos, and the story runs backward so you share his confusion; Christopher Nolan's breakthrough. Cast: Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano -
Le Samouraï 1967 Melville A solitary contract killer in Paris carries out a hit behind a carefully built alibi and finds both the police and his employers closing in; Alain Delon in a trench coat and fedora, saying almost nothing. Cast: Alain Delon, François Périer, Nathalie Delon -
Bob le Flambeur 1956 Melville An aging Montmartre gambler, broke after a losing streak, plans to rob the Deauville casino on the night its safe holds a fortune; often cited as a forerunner of the French New Wave. Cast: Roger Duchesne, Isabelle Corey, Daniel Cauchy -
Stray Dog 1949 Kurosawa A rookie Tokyo detective has his pistol stolen on a crowded bus and searches the city's postwar underworld through a summer heatwave as the gun turns up in crimes; Kurosawa's police procedural. Cast: Toshirō Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Keiko Awaji -
Detour 1945 Ulmer A nightclub pianist hitchhikes across America to join his girlfriend in Los Angeles, and a stranger's sudden death, then a worse passenger, trap him; a B-movie shot on a tiny budget at a poverty-row studio. Cast: Tom Neal, Ann Savage, Claudia Drake -
The Long Goodbye 1973 Altman Philip Marlowe drives a friend to Mexico and is then accused of helping him escape a murder charge, in a laid-back 1970s Los Angeles; Elliott Gould plays Chandler's detective as a mumbling misfit. Cast: Elliott Gould, Nina van Pallandt, Sterling Hayden -
Brick 2005 Johnson A loner at a California high school digs into what happened to his ex-girlfriend and talks his way through the school's drug ring in hardboiled slang; Rian Johnson's first feature. Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Nora Zehetner, Matt O'Leary -
In a Lonely Place 1950 Ray A volatile Hollywood screenwriter becomes the suspect in a young woman's murder, and the neighbor who gives him an alibi falls in love with him, then starts to doubt him; Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame. Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame, Frank Lovejoy
Keep your place
Noir rewards watching in a run, when the shadows, voice-overs and double-crosses start to echo each other. Save this collection to your watchlist in I Like Movies, mark each film as you see it, and rate it so the app learns whether you lean toward the 1940s originals or the modern reinventions. Every Friday the Discover tab gets a new themed collection.
Questions people ask
What makes a movie a film noir?
Film noir describes a style and a mood more than a strict genre: crime stories with low-key, high-contrast lighting, cynical or trapped heroes, femmes fatales, and often a flashback told in voice-over. French critics coined the term in 1946 for the American crime films of the war years; most classic noirs date from 1941 to the late 1950s, and later films in the tradition are called neo-noir.
Where do I start with film noir?
Double Indemnity and The Maltese Falcon are the classic entry points, and Out of the Past is noir at its most fatalistic. For a European angle, try The Third Man and Le Samouraï; for modern neo-noir, L.A. Confidential, then Brick if you want the genre's slang in an unexpected setting.
The week before: Horror movie marathon: 21 films for October. The week after: Modern black-and-white films: 21 picks. See every weekly theme, or browse every guide, watch order and comparison.