2021 11/5 Top 100 黑色电影 ( 29 - 1 )

29. Blade Runner

Director: Ridley Scott Year: 1982

A box-office flop on its initial run, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (and its numerous post-theatrical re-edits) has since become one of the defining pillars of sci-fi filmmaking. Besides exploring deep, existential questions of what constitutes humanity and the repercussions that come with creating artificial life, the movie features extraordinary performances by Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer, as well as some of the most emotionally intense action set pieces ever put to film. Moreover, a good portion of the film’s appeal lies in its incorporation of film noir aesthetics—shadow-filled, rainy metropolitan exteriors, a brooding yet resourceful investigator hero, retro ’40s fashion—into its dreary, dystopian setting. At one point, the film even boasted a Philip Marlowe-esque voiceover narration that was thankfully excised from future cuts. Once regarded as a failed experiment, Blade Runner now registers as nothing short of a classic. —M.R.

28. Night and the City

Director: Jules Dassin Year: 1950

London is cast as a waking nightmare in Jules Dassin’s charged portrait of greed, which stockpiled surpluses of pathos and anxiety early on, behind the scenes. Vilified for past Communist sympathies, Dassin was sent to Britain by 20th Century Fox studio head Darryl F. Zanuck to shoot the adaptation of Gerald Kersh’s best-selling novel (which Dassin admitted he never read). Along with his newfound status on many a Hollywood blacklist, Dassin was told by Zanuck the foreign production would also help lead actress Gene Tierney get over a breakup—she was allegedly suicidal as a result. So even before the cameras started rolling, Night and the City was steeped in despair. Factor in Richard Widmark’s turn as Harry Fabian, a small-time wheeler-dealer who attempts to infiltrate the local wrestling subculture, and Dassin’s refusal to grant his characters clemency, and Night and the City hits new depths of noir pessimism—all threat, no sentiment. It’s no stretch to draw parallels between Dassin’s displaced filmmaker and Fabian’s Yank in London, nor his vision of the noir city, quintessentially American, across the pond. Harry is, as his long-suffering friend Mary (Tierney) tells him, “an artist without an art,” a cipher left to scavenge the hellish urban underbelly, London’s architecture practically suffocated in expressionist chiaroscuro. The bottom-feeders (more Tinseltown commentary, mayhaps?) he comes across are liars of one sort or another: forgers, thieves, panhandlers, smugglers, promoters—but even they have a niche, a trade. “You could have been anything. Anything. You had brains … ambition. You worked harder than any 10 men. But the wrong things. Always the wrong things…” Mary laments. Harry’s nothing, and Dassin—hotly and brilliantly—lets the anger seethe. —A.S.

27. Mildred Pierce

Director: Michael Curtiz Year: 1945

Like Double Indemnity, Michael Curtiz’ Mildred Pierce succeeds on the strength of its leading lady; in this case that’s the immortal Joan Crawford, who plays the film’s central character, not to mention all of its heart and soul. (Arguably, it’s the most definitive Crawford performance of all time, at least next to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?.) Mildred Pierce is a strong woman driven by an inexhaustible love for her children, Veda (Ann Blyth) and Kay (Jo Ann Marlowe), but she’s also stymied by the restricting grasp of a patriarchal society. Even Veda is contemptuous of Mildred for daring to have the moxie to have it all. The film is about more than prickly mother-daughter relationships, of course, specifically the murder of Mildred’s second husband. But sandwiched in between Curtiz’ probing whodunit lies one of noir’s most sympathetic and purely humanist tales. —A.C.

26. The Postman Always Rings Twice

Director: Tay Garnett Year: 1946

“A beautiful femme fatale saunters into an unsuspecting man’s life and entices him into committing murder for her.” This logline could be used to describe any number of classic film noirs. Most of this can be traced back to author James M. Cain, who wrote two books—Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice—that hinged on this premise. In the case of Postman, the archetypal sucker is a drifter (John Garfield) who falls into an affair with a beautiful married woman working at a diner (Lana Turner, in one of her most memorable performances). The two subsequently hatch a scheme to murder the woman’s much-older husband and seize control of his assets. Incidentally, MGM actually purchased the rights to Cain’s novel shortly after it was first published 12 years prior, but it took the success of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity adaptation at Paramount to convince them the story and its mature themes were a viable gamble. Even before that, Cain’s book had been unofficially adapted into two foreign productions—Le Dernier Tournant in France and Luchino Visconti’s Ossessione in Italy. It would go on to be adapted several more times, including again in 1981 with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange, but the 1946 version, with its button-pushing steaminess and stylish direction, remains the gold standard. —M.R.

25. The Wrong Man

Director: Alfred Hitchcock Year: 1956

Leave it to the master of suspense to meld docudrama realism with the melodrama of film noir. “Alfred Hitchcock’s powerful portrait of a man … drawn from life!” The Wrong Man’s original trailer proclaims. It’s to the film’s credit that Hitch doesn’t screw around here, telling in full the story of a man falsely convicted for robberies he never committed. Unsurprisingly, Hitch is every bit as interested in the effects of the outrageous miscarriage of justice that befalls Manny Balestrero as he is in the lasting trauma his detention inflicts on him and his family. The Wrong Man puts a high premium on claustrophobic camerawork—we feel like we’re as confined as poor old Manny—but the film’s greatest impression is left in its aftermath. —A.C.

24. The Big Heat

Director: Fritz Lang Year: 1953

A pot of boiling coffee to the face is among the lasting impressions that remain long after the first, and second, and tenth viewings of Fritz Lang’s seminal noir. Glenn Ford stars as Det. Sgt. Dave Bannion, the poster boy of black-and-white morality in a sea of film noir gray. He’s a man on a mission, Johnny Law out to clean up the ruinous city. You see, something about the suicide of his colleague, one of scads of cops in the back pocket of the local mob boss, doesn’t sit right with him, and Lord help anyone who gets in his way—or even in his periphery. As the potential for justice seems to slip away, so convinced does Ford’s underdog become of his holy crusade, he’s blind to the collateral damage—emotional, too—or maybe it’s just that his self-righteousness trumps everyone and everything else. Black-and-white no more, eh? Along with Ford’s relentless (anti)hero (that parenthetical, depending on how you look at him), Gloria Grahame is incredible as the moll of Lee Marvin’s (also outstanding) second-in-command gangster. Working from a Saturday Night Post serial adapted by former crime reporter Sydney Boehm, Lang is meticulous in depicting the transition from principled family man to revenge-seeking vigilante, and the below-the-surface hypocrisy of this by-the-book guy, who prefers his own gun to the police department’s, anyway. Viewers can take the thrills at face value—and there are many, and they’re glorious and gut-churning. But what we think is a rather straightforward, if brutal, takedown of systemic corruption becomes something more nuanced, and chilling. “Keep the coffee hot,” the ultimately “triumphant” detective tells a clerk. Given the bodies left in his reckless wake, that line still feels too soon, some 60 years later. —A.S.

23. The Killing

Director: Stanley Kubrick Year: 1956

Once upon a time, before Stanley Kubrick entered the pupal stages of his career and subsequently emerged as a god and master of his medium, he made movies like The Killing. Lean, mean and economical to a fault, The Killing gets lost in the shuffle of Kubrick’s career landmarks, but the man wielded impressive influence even in overlooked 80-minute heist flicks. (The Quentin Tarantino we all know and love and loathe might be a very different filmmaker today if not for The Killing.) Kubrick’s work here is no-frills and elegantly straightforward: Sterling Hayden plans one final holdup before retiring and settling down with Coleen Gray. No twists and turns, just good old-fashioned theft at the racetrack. The film revels in the gray morality of Hayden’s good intentions. Crime pays, at least until it doesn’t. —A.C.

22. In a Lonely Place

Director: Nicholas Ray Year: 1950

One of the great noirs of all time and one of the great feel-bad movies of all time. In a Lonely Place treats redemption as a cruel joke, a spell of relief that lasts only long enough for us to view its obsolescence. The film takes jabs at Hollywood and celebrity while telling the kind of dangerous love story E.L. James wishes she could write; Humphrey Bogart is a bad, bad man, but he’s also grossly compelling. He plays Dixon Steele, a Tinseltown screenwriter fallen on hard times whom we sympathize with in spite of ourselves. Apart from being a sad sack, he’s also an explosive lunatic with a frighteningly short fuse, which makes him dangerously alluring bait for his new neighbor, Laurel (Gloria Grahame). Theirs is an ill-fated romance, and through it, Nicholas Ray makes a hauntingly grim study of masculinity, set against the ratcheting suspense of a murder mystery yarn. —A.C.

21. Drunken Angel

Director: Akira Kurosawa Year: 1948

An act of genre deconstruction and muted political critique all in one. Akira Kurosawa plays with noir tropes more than he plays to them, deflating film noir’s inherent machismo by revealing the chief heavies of his cast as scrabbling cowards. Depending on your mood, Drunken Angel’s climactic brawl between Toshiro Mifune’s Matsunaga and Reizaburô Yamamoto’s Okada may either read as hilarious, pathetic or tragic. Aren’t mob heavies supposed to be intimidating? Like Rashomon, Drunken Angel puts male toughness on trial and makes it look ridiculous, but the study of manliness might be a smokescreen for Kurosawa’s veiled jabs at the board of censors installed by the U.S. government in post-World War II Japan. Note the Western clothing. Observe the recurring image of the bubbling muck that serves as one of the film’s central locations. The American occupation whitewashes and corrupts Japanese culture in equal measure, and Drunken Angel captures it all with deft humanism. —A.C.

20. The Lady From Shanghai

Director: Orson Welles Year: 1947

Orson Welles could do just about anything except speak in a convincing Irish accent, but regardless of his flimsy brogue, The Lady From Shanghai is a masterpiece. Funny to think that American critics looked down their noses at the film at the time of its release. Maybe they took offense at the inescapable scent of Welles’ passion for Rita Hayworth, his wife at the time and his ex shortly after production wrapped. He captures her in close-up with a hungry, enraptured eye, the most coherent image in a film that’s built on logical incoherence. The Lady From Shanghai has enormous ambitions that belie its tight running time, the end result of odious studio interference that nonetheless fails to impede the viewing experience. Come for Hayworth and Welles, stay for the film’s dizzying hall of mirrors shootout. —A.C.

19. The Killers

Director: Robert Siodmak Year: 1946

If you’re of the impression that Quentin Tarantino invented the concept of a nonlinear crime story involving boxers and hitmen, Robert Siodmak’s adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s celebrated short story is a must-watch. The story commences with two assassins entering a small-town gas station and executing “The Swede” (Burt Lancaster), a former professional boxer. A life insurance investigator is subsequently sent to piece together the events that led to the Swede’s demise. From here, Siodmak and his screenwriters (which included future legendary directors John Huston and Richard Brooks) weave a fascinating story that, while not always the most inspired, more than picks up the slack with the help of dynamic performances and some tensely directed set pieces. According to Hemingway’s biography, The Killers marked one of the only times the author was legitimately impressed by an adaptation of his work. —M.R.

18. Thieves’ Highway

Director: Jules Dassin Year: 1949

Jules Dassin’s impact on film noir is widely documented—if you need proof, just consider the fact a handful of his best contributions to the genre have landed on this very list—and among them, Thieves’ Highway is perhaps the most economical. At the same time, it’s superficially the least noirish: It’s a revenge movie, sure, but that revenge is sought by a good man driven to right wrongs done to his father. This is a movie built on a pure search for retribution, though of course it’s Dassin, so nothing is ever that simple, and in point of fact everything that can go wrong for Nick Garcos does. Who knew the world of fruit trucking could be so damn cutthroat? —A.C.

17. Raw Deal

Director: Anthony Mann Year: 1948

After the success of 1947’s T-Men, director Anthony Mann reteamed the following year with star Dennis O’Keefe, screenwriter John C. Higgins, and cinematographer John Alton for Raw Deal. The plot revolves around a prisoner who, after taking the fall for his boss, makes a break from the slammer with the help of his girlfriend. His boss, however, isn’t looking to reward his employee’s loyalty and sets about trying to have him killed. Much like T-Men, Raw Deal boasts some truly arresting images, courtesy of Alton, that worked to crystallize the standard noir look. And though some of the film’s story now comes across a bit rote, particularly the inclusion of a love triangle, there’s enough visual splendor and hard-hitting action to make it essential noir viewing. —M.R.

16. They Live By Night

Director: Nicholas Ray Year: 1948

Nicholas Ray’s first picture boasts perhaps the dumbest wronged protagonist in film noir’s history. What kind of nitwit plots to clear his name in a wrongful conviction by committing a crime? Sure, fine, maybe knocking over a bank is less heinous than killing a man, but Farley Granger’s doomed hero, Bowie, doesn’t really connect the dots and realize that robbery is still a jailable offense. The intellectual merits of Bowie’s bright idea are irrelevant, though: They Live By Night cares deeply about the inescapable grasp of the law and the people who wind up caught in it. Some of them are genuinely scummy people, like Bowie’s fellow fugitives, One-Eye and T-Dub. Some of them are victims of the system, who lack the means to prove their uprightness. They Live By Night is a superlative example of an atypical noir domain—the film takes place largely on the road instead of in the city—but most of all, it’s a heartbreaking stunner about the decay of human innocence. —A.C.

15. Ace in the Hole

Director: Billy Wilder Year: 1951

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Chuck Tatum, the forefather of Nightcrawler’s unhinged Louis Bloom. Billy Wilder’s film is a vicious, acerbic, and above all else misanthropic satire of America’s press core, but today we might be inclined to look at it as a scathing critique of American entrepreneurialism. Tatum is one enterprising man, alright, a ladder-climbing dirtbag who sees any opportunity as a golden opportunity, and he seizes them all with deceitful gusto. There’s no situation better left unexploited, if you ask him, and Wilder captures Tatum’s reckless quest of self-aggrandizement beneath New Mexico’s blistering sun. This is an outlaw America, an apathetic postwar America where rules of propriety come a very distant third to getting one over on the other guy and feeding the rushing addiction of sleaze entertainment. It’s an ugly vision that eerily predicted the direction of contemporary pop culture more than half a century ahead of its time. —A.C.

14. Elevator to the Gallows

Director: Louis Malle Year: 1958

Prior to reinventing filmic language with their playful genre experiments, the members of France’s New Wave movement got their start as film critics. In fact, it was through their writings and discussions that the term “film noir” was first christened as a means of describing a certain breed of brooding postwar films. It’s not surprising then that Louis Malle—though not an official New Wave member—would settle on a film noir-influenced project as his first feature film. Acting both as an homage to noir as well as a subversion of its structure, Elevator to the Gallows stars Jeanne Moreau and Maurice Ronet as a pair of criminals whose plan to kill Moreau’s husband quickly falls apart when the Ronet character gets stuck in an elevator. This already absurd concept becomes all the more confounding when paired with the film’s unorthodox, experimental editing and somber, Miles Davis-performed jazz score. —M.R.

13. Gilda

Director: Charles Vidor Year: 1946

Seven years before his powerhouse turn in The Big Heat, Glenn Ford played second fiddle to Rita Hayworth—how the hell could you not?—in Charles Vidor’s exotic thriller. From the moment Hayworth whips her sultry tresses into frame—to this day, a disarmingly forward, come-hither introduction made more so by her bare shoulders—we’re as gobsmacked as Ford’s drooling puppy dog. An American thug in Buenos Aires, our narrator Johnny Farrell (Ford) cheats, and then cheats some more: first at the casino of an older businessman involved in a Nazi cartel, and then with the businessman’s young new wife, his ex, Gilda (Hayworth). Johnny and Gilda hurl emotional and physical hostilities as they love-hate on each other, both felt in equal measure. But when the businessman—now Johnny’s boss—seems to meet an untimely end, the guilt-stricken employee is determined to cruelly punish both himself and Gilda for their deceit. (Sadomasochism much?) The Argentinean intrigue is marked by crackling dialogue and cast in lush shadows by cinematographer Rudolph Maté, but Vidor wisely recognizes the film belongs to Hayworth, a femme fatale of epic proportions. With a beauty for the ages as his star, Vidor doesn’t have to do much, and his static, voyeuristic direction shows in fact he didn’t. Gilda represents the oft-discussed male gaze of noir at its most blatant—she’s largely a fetishized object. But at times the framing makes Hayworth’s erotic physicality all the more charged, and dangerous. She’s not bound (at least briefly, repeatedly) to the mise en scène, a rebellious force keenly aware of her charms. She’s also more than a little desperate, as it turns out. Just watch the visual motif of that boudoir introduction recur in the “Put the Blame on Mame” musical number-turned-striptease. Gilda taunts Johnny throughout the film, goading him with her sex appeal, and for his part, Vidor teases us, too—“Gilda, are you decent?” Define decent. —A.S.

12. Night of the Hunter

Director: Charles Laughton Year: 1955

Film noir or horror—which category does Charles Laughton’s Night of the Hunter belong in? Frankly, all such quibbles are needless. The film fits snugly beneath either appellation, for one thing: It’s a hybridized version of both. (Let’s call it “film noirror.”) For another, it’s a masterwork, so fie upon labels. Night of the Hunter lurks in shadows and revels in misogyny. Whether you’ve seen it or not, you probably have the image of Robert Mitchum’s tattooed knuckles imprinted upon your brain thanks to pop culture osmosis. Reverend Harry Powell is quite the villain, a man as quick to distort the truth with honey-coated lies as Laughton is to distort reality through oblique perspective, unnerving use of shadows and light, and a dizzying array of camera compositions that make small-town West Virginia feel altogether otherworldly. —A.C.

11. The Maltese Falcon

Director: John Huston Year: 1941

Referred to by many as the first major noir (after the more obscure 1940 film Stranger on the Third Floor), this John Huston classic set the bar for the archetypal detective, the subgenre as a whole, and the rest of star Humphrey Bogart’s career. On the surface a murder mystery revolving around yet another archetype, that of the titular MacGuffin, The Maltese Falcon is in essence a character study, a definitive assurance of masculinity and the cool objectivity it entails, by way of one Sam Spade. Bogart’s antihero is a man of honor, as it suits him—he has no qualms about kissing his dead partner’s widow while the body’s still warm, or turning in the guilty woman he loves to the police. He’s nobody’s “sap.” Interestingly, Spade’s creator, Dashiell Hammett—who once worked as a P.I.—called the character “a dream man in the sense that he is what most of the private detectives I worked with would like to have been, and, in their cockier moments, thought they approached.” In Bogart’s brusque yet smooth hands, that sounds about right. Likewise, this is the adaptation to which vastly inferior attempts, including a 1931 version of the same name and 1936’s Satan Met a Lady, could only aspire. It is impeccable in every sense. Huston also penned the screenplay, on Howard Hawks’ advice, almost verbatim from Hammett’s hard-boiled novel. He painstakingly storyboarded the drama to include complex camerawork and lighting schemes, evocative POVs, and an uninterrupted seven-minute take whose logistics boggle the mind. The violent, stylized set pieces are as visceral as the verbal confrontations. Aside from Bogie’s legendary turn, the other performances are spot-on: among them, an already scandalized Mary Astor as the femme fatale; Sydney Greenstreet (Casablanca) as hulking baddie Kasper “Fat Man” Gutman—astonishingly, his film debut; and Peter Lorre as an obviously gay associate of Gutman’s whose homosexuality was muted for the folks at the Hays Code. One of the first titles to be preserved in the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry, The Maltese Falcon is landmark filmmaking. —A.S.

10. Sunset Boulevard

Director: Billy Wilder Year: 1950

Billy Wilder’s meta noir is a doozy, an unfailingly cynical critique of showbiz and a portrait of postwar alienation projected on the microcosm of Hollywood. It’s also wickedly funny in Sahara dry fashion, from the opening words of our dead narrator—floating facedown in his killer’s swimming pool—to Norma Desmond’s concluding descent down her staircase, and the rabbit hole. Gloria Swanson is magnificent and sad as Ms. Desmond, a fading beauty of the silent screen who manipulates broke, hackish screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) into becoming her boy toy. Theirs is a fated relationship from the get-go, she of the wordless era, he dependent on them for his very livelihood. They’re on the outs with their industry, and each other, yet coexist out of desperation. Wilder, who co-wrote with Charles Brackett and D. M. Marshman Jr., layered the script with in-joke upon self-referential wink, perhaps the least of which is Desmond’s passion project, about that OG of femme fatales, Salome. There’s a parade of Hollywood cameos, namechecks, and behind-the-scenes instances of “art imitating life” (and vice versa); for example, Erich von Stroheim, who portrays Desmond’s former director/first husband-turned-still lovestruck butler Max, directed Swanson in 1929’s Queen Kelly (excerpted here) before she as the film’s producer fired him, much like her Sunset Blvd. character discards his. Many of these nods were in less-than-good fun, so it’s no shock that Sunset Boulevard met with local disdain, yet Wilder doesn’t flinch. Norma, Joe, Max … they’re all unwanted souls who, try as they might to live in the past, have succumbed to the present—in Joe’s case, most finally. The smoke and mirrors of Tinseltown, of life, don’t do the job anymore (though cinematographer John Seitz, who also lensed Double Indemnity, most certainly did, sprinkling dust into the air for the lights to catch). Desmond may be a seductress past her sell-by date, but Hollywood is the ultimate femme fatale, who chews suckers up and spits them out. Sunset Boulevard gives L.A. its close-up, alright. —A.S.

9. Laura

Director: Otto Preminger Year: 1944

Maybe falling in love with dead people is just an occupational hazard of being an investigative detective in New York City. Then again, maybe a shotgun blast to the face couldn’t keep anybody from developing a crush on Gene Tierney, which is pretty much how the plot of Otto Preminger’s Laura goes. The film tracks the trajectory of NYPD detective Mark McPherson’s growing obsession with the eponymous young lady as he cobbles together the bits and pieces of her life and death. Poring over her diary and her letters, he comes to moon over her, and why not? She’s every bit as delightful as Preminger’s movie. Laura doesn’t waste time and stacks contrivance on top of unlikelihood, but such is the strength of Preminger’s craft and the performances of his cast that the film’s convolution doesn’t matter. —A.C.

8. Kiss Me Deadly

Director: Robert Aldrich Year: 1955

Frequently cited as an example of when film noir, to appropriate a TV idiom, “jumped the shark,” Kiss Me Deadly long ago overcame its initial bad press to become one of the most beloved and influential examples of the subgenre and its ability to tell dark, controversial stories. In that regard, director Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly wears its insanity like a badge. Ralph Meeker stars as a hard-boiled private eye who ends up bearing witness to the brutal torture and murder of a young hitchhiker (Cloris Leachman in one her first film appearances). He decides to pursue her case, which results in the discovery of one of film’s all-time great MacGuffins—a mysterious piece of luggage that emits intense heat and a bright light when opened. (This visual went on to inspire the glowing briefcase in Pulp Fiction.) This all leads to one of the craziest, most jaw-dropping final sequences you’re likely to see in any American movie made during the Hays Code era. —M.R.

7. Out of the Past

Director: Jacques Tourneur Year: 1947

There’s no better way to describe Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past than “perfect.” For many, this is the epitome of all things noir, a sprawling, rambling examination of betrayal and seduction peppered with shrapnel-sharp dialogue. Out of the Past looks about as bleak as it feels. It’s savage and sexual, deeply unsettling in its nihilism and yet not utterly without hope; the final shot offers a respite of sorts from Tourneur’s otherwise unblinking sobriety. Out of the Past’s cheerlessness towers from the shoulders of its cast, a coterie of acting giants each at the top of their game. Robert Mitchum dominates, whether in his tête-à-têtes with Kirk Douglas or his simmering flirtations with Jane Greer. Together they pop, but no matter how brightly they might shine, Out of the Past remains a masterwork coated in darkness from page to screen. —A.C.

6. The Third Man

Director: Carol Reed Year: 1949

At this point, any person who calls themselves a cinephile yet has not seen Carol Reed’s phenomenal Third Man needs to stop reading this blurb immediately, carve out two hours and rectify this mistake. In all seriousness though, Vienna has rarely looked more richly cinematic than it does here, with Robert Krasker’s expressionistic camerawork capturing the feel of a city distorted. The plot centers on Joseph Cotten’s Western writer Holly Martins, who arrives in Vienna after hearing about a job from his friend, Harry. Holly is promptly shocked to discover that Harry was killed in a car accident but, suspicious of the shady details, begins to investigate his friend’s death. On the off chance anyone has remained unspoiled (or never watched Pinky and the Brain), I will leave it at that, adding only that the film boasts a brilliant performance from Orson Welles and a thrilling final-act foot chase. —M.R.

5. Touch of Evil

Director: Orson Welles Year: 1958

With its legendary opening, a single, crane-enabled shot just shy of three-and-a-half minutes in length, Orson Welles essentially closed the book on the classic noir era—and rewrote his own legacy in the process. Welles was 20 years into his career and a Hollywood has-been at 42 when he signed on to adapt Whit Masterson’s novel Badge of Evil for the screen. The result is a masterwork wrought by an auteur of monumental brass ones, even for Welles. The film opens at night, as a bomb is placed in the trunk of a convertible just before an unwitting couple take a drive through town. An echoing strain of horns and percussion situate us in an exotic, obviously dangerous locale, the natural sounds of the streets weaving in and out with the rock ’n’ roll playing on the car stereo. Cinematographer Russell Metty slowly pans away to refocus our attention on Mexican DEA agent Charlton Heston and his American bride Janet Leigh—a bit of breezy, expository chitchat fills us in on those details. They stroll through customs, across the border, into the U.S. on foot and share an embrace, just as the convertible explodes in front of them. In one extended take, we’re hurtled into this thriller with a minimum of screen time and maximum of suspense. Sure, Wells himself will soon command the frame as a fat, drunk, cane-toting corrupt cop, as will Marlene Dietrich as a brothel madam, and Dennis Weaver as a sketchy hotel night manager. The plot will double down with a manhunt, kidnapping, gang rape, drugs and more in a yarn as thick and filthy as Welles’ villain’s final resting place. But those first 3 minutes 20 seconds not only encapsulate a singular mastery of filmmaking—an immaculately orchestrated synergy of technical skill, storytelling, and style—they tick off practically every box on the noir checklist: gritty, maze-like streets; foreign vs. domestic threats; isolation and anxiety; the law and the lawless; the passions of a gorgeous gal and her hero; extremes of shadow and light, angles and composition; unsparing tension, and a palpable, inescapable sense of doom. Three. Unbroken. Minutes. —A.S.

4. Chinatown

Director: Roman Polanski Year: 1974

When you look at Jack Nicholson’s run of films in what I’ll call the “New Hollywood” era, starting with Easy Rider in 1969 and ending with The Shining in 1980, it’s truly astounding. There’s barely a dud on the list, so it’s really saying something that Chinatown, Roman Polanski’s crime classic, stands out among the best. The central mystery is bold for its complexity, revolving around water rights in 1930s Southern California—a plot that remains relevant today—and was undoubtedly an influence for the second season of True Detective. Like much of Polanski’s work, an ominous atmosphere works alongside the plot, shadowing every character in doubt and undermining the possibility of a clean conclusion. In Polanski’s world, the mere fact that a mystery is solved doesn’t mean there’s a happy ending, and his incredible powers of ambiguity have never been so strong as in Chinatown. Nominated for 11 Academy Awards, it won the Oscar for Robert Towne’s original screenplay. Add Nicholson at his most essential, along with a young Faye Dunaway and an aging John Huston, and this is truly one of the classics of American cinema. —S.R.

3. Double Indemnity

Director: Billy Wilder Year: 1944

Long before the Boomers came to know Fred MacMurray as the kindly father on My Three Sons, the actor essayed his best performance in Double Indemnity as the deplorable, hard-boiled Walter Neff, who falls for a married temptress (Barbara Stanwyck) who talks him into killing her husband. Whether in film or on television, MacMurray normally played the nice guy, but for Double Indemnity he turned his everyman decency into a mask—perfect for a character who can barely conceal what a lustful, conniving bastard he is. One of the great noirs, this early effort from Billy Wilder revealed the filmmaker’s talent for wonderfully thorny, unapologetically rotten characters—and it doubles as one of the definitive mid-century Los Angeles movies. —T.G.

2. The Big Sleep

Director: Howard Hawks Year: 1946

The great granddaddy of all convoluted noirs, The Big Sleep fully embodies every single identifying feature of Raymond Chandler’s writing: dialogue that sears itself into viewers’ brains, rough-cut men, seductive femme fatales, plenty of violence, a respectable body count, and enough plot curveballs to give even the most accomplished noirs twist envy. The film almost demands to be seen twice for the sheer volume of slants and revelations. Truthfully, you’ll want to watch it more than once for Howard Hawks’ direction, Sidney Hickox’ dread-inducing cinematography, and Chandler’s barbed exchanges, not to mention the raw chemistry and animal magnetism of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Production codes at the time of The Big Sleep’s release prohibited it from being as graphic as Chandler’s novel, but maybe thrillers of today can learn a valuable lesson from the restrictions: Less can so often mean much, much more. —A.C.

1. The Woman in the Window

Director: Fritz Lang Year: 1944

Only a master like Fritz Lang could take a trope as hackish as “it was all just a dream” and turn it into nightmare fuel. Then again, only a master like Lang could surreptitiously flip the board at censors by tacking a happy ending onto a tragedy. The Woman in the Window isn’t just one of Lang’s best films, it’s one of noir’s greatest gifts to cinema, a taut psychological mindscrew about the nature of taking life. When is it okay to take a life? When is it not? By the film’s own standards, Lang’s protagonist, Professor Wanley, kills the jealous lover of young Alice Reed in self-defense, which puts him in the clear from our standpoint. But Wanley winds up falling further and further into hot water, and we start to question the lesson he teaches his students at The Woman in the Window’s commencement. It’s such a juicy, complex film, made impeccably and with unshakable style, that there’s no need to wonder at its role in validating cinema as art and causing a sea change in film criticism as a discipline. —A.C.