Login

Classic Film Noir

Here be those darkly vexing offerings one should include in their diet periodically. Film Noir (literally 'black film or cinema') was coined by French film critics (first by Frank Nino in 1946) who noticed the trend of how 'dark' and black the looks and themes were of many American crime and detective films released in France following the war. It was a style of black and white American films that first evolved in the 1940s, became prominent in the post-war era, and lasted in a classic "Golden Age" period until about 1965. With the list below Alice has included many "Contempory Noirs", making browsing that much more "coloured"..... Right: Orson Wells stars and directs "A Touch Of Evil".

M (Fritz Lang) (1931)

8.4/10
Director: Fritz Lang
Starring: Peter Lorre, Inge Landgut, Ellen Widmann

Uncut for the first time. Harrowing images, shadows and symbolism permeate Fritz Lang's first sound film, an internationally heralded German cinematic... Read more

Out of the Past (1947)

8.1/10
Director: Jacques Tourneur
Starring: Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas

This masterful brooding film noir has Robert Mitchum playing a man with a past embroiled with murder and deceit at the hands of a reckless woman and a... Read more

Sunset Boulevard (1950)

8.5/10
Director: Billy Wilder
Starring: Buster Keaton, Erich Von Stroheim, Fred Clark, Gloria Swanson, Jack Webb, Nancy...

Billy Wilder's classic drama stars Gloria Swanson as reclusive silent movie queen Norma Desmond. Sharing a mansion with her live-in butler/former husb... Read more

North by Northwest (1959)

8.3/10
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Cary Grant, James Mason, Eva Marie Saint, Leo G Carroll, Jessie Royce Landis, Ma...

One of Hitchcock's greatest films. Cary Grant plays Roger Thornhill, the suave ad man mistaken for a Federal Agent, trapped in a web of intrigue that... Read more

Strangers on a Train (1951)

8/10
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Farley Granger, Robert Walker, Ruth Roman

Read more

Spellbound (1945)

7.6/10
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Gregory Peck, Ingrid Bergman, Leo G Carroll

Gregory Peck stars as the new director of a mental institution, Ingrid Bergman his love interest, who soon discovers that her lover is actually a ment... Read more

Just Another Love Story (2007)

7.2/10
Director: Ole Bornedal
Starring: Anders W Berthelsen, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Charlotte Fich, Dejan Cukic, Rebecka Hems...

After Jonas (Anders W. Berthelsen) causes a car accident that leaves Julia (Rebecka Hemse), a mysterious stranger, crippled with amnesia, he's compell... Read more

Rear Window (1954)

8.5/10
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Grace Kelly, James Stewart, Raymond Burr, Thelma Ritter, Wendell Corey

An injured magazine photographer, confined to his apartment because of a broken leg, suspects a murder has been committed in a neighbouring flat. Conf... Read more

Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

7.9/10
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Joseph Cotten, Teresa Wright

A young girl, overjoyed when her favourite uncle comes to visit the family, slowly begins to suspect that he is in fact the "Merry Widow" killer sough... Read more

The Killing (1956)

8/10
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Starring: Sterling Hayden, Coleen Gray, Vince Edwards

An early Stanley Kubrick classic about an elaborate race track robbery filmed with total artistic freedom using a multilayered simultaneous storyline.... Read more