Ebert's Great Movies - Film Noir

List creator: eifert Created on: August 7, 2004 - 4:13 PM PDT Description: I like to sit in the dark and enjoy movies.

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	movie title	related list	average rating	MPAA rating	watch	rent	buy
	Columbia Pictures Film Noir Classics, Vol. 1: The Big Heat (1953)			Not Rated
The film is as deceptive and two-faced as anything Lang ever made, with its sunny domestic tranquility precariously separated from a world of violence.
	Body Heat (1981)
``Ned, whatever you think--I really do love you.'' Does she? That's what makes the movie so intriguing. Does he love her, for that matter?
	Bob Le Flambeur (Criterion Collection) (1955)
The climax of "Bob le Flambeur" involves surprising developments that approach cosmic irony. How strange, that a man's incorrigible nature would lead him both into and through temptation.
	Breathless (1960)			Not Rated
Modern movies begin here, with Jean-Luc Godard's "Breathless" in 1960. No debut film since "Citizen Kane" in 1942 has been as influential.
	Casablanca (Special Edition) (1942)
Seeing the film over and over again, year after year, I find it never grows over-familiar. It plays like a favorite musical album; the more I know it, the more I like it.
	Chinatown (1974)
From Gittes forward, Nicholson created the persona of a man who had seen it all and was still capable of being wickedly amused.
	Detour (1946)			Not Rated
The movie was shot on the cheap with B-minus actors, but it was directed by a man of qualities: Edgar G. Ulmer
	Double Indemnity (1944)
Walter and Phyllis are pulp characters with little psychological depth, and that's the way Billy Wilder wants it. His best films are sardonic comedies, and in this one, Phyllis and Walter play a bad joke on themselves.
	House of Games (1987)
There is a teasing quality to Mamet's presentations that reminds me of a skilled magician, meticulously laying out his cards while telling us a story. We know the story has nothing to do with the cards.
	Laura (1944)			Not Rated
Film noir is known for its convoluted plots and arbitrary twists, but even in a genre that gave us ''The Maltese Falcon,'' this takes some kind of prize.
	M (Criterion Collection) (1931)
The horror of the faces: That is the overwhelming image that remains from a recent viewing of the restored version of ``M,'' Fritz Lang's famous 1931 film about a child murderer in Germany.
	The Maltese Falcon (1941)			Not Rated
To describe the plot in a linear and logical fashion is almost impossible. That doesn't matter. The movie is essentially a series of conversations punctuated by brief, violent interludes. It's all style.
	The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
Seen today, "The Manchurian Candidate" feels astonishingly contemporary; its astringent political satire still bites, and its story has uncanny contemporary echoes.
	The Night of the Hunter (Criterion) (1955)			Not Rated
Charles Laughton's ``The Night of the Hunter'' (1955) is one of the greatest of all American films, but has never received the attention it deserves because of its lack of the proper trappings.
	Notorious (Criterion Collection) (1946)
Alfred Hitchcock's ``Notorious'' is the most elegant expression of the master's visual style, just as ``Vertigo'' is the fullest expression of his obsessions.
	Out of the Past (1947)			Not Rated
Most crime movies begin in the present and move forward, but film noir coils back into the past. The noir hero is doomed before the story begins -- by fate, rotten luck, or his own flawed character.
	Rififi (Criterion Collection) (1955)			Not Rated
Dassin built his film around a 28-minute safe-cracking sequence that is the father of all later movies in which thieves carry out complicated robberies
	Strangers on a Train (Final Release Version) (1951)
The abiding terror in Alfred Hitchcock's life was that he would be accused of a crime he did not commit. This fear is at the heart of many of his best films, including "Strangers on a Train"
	Sunset Boulevard (1950)			Not Rated
Billy Wilder's ``Sunset Boulevard'' is the portrait of a forgotten silent star, living in exile in her grotesque mansion, screening her old films, dreaming of a comeback.
	Sweet Smell of Success (Criterion) (1957)			Not Rated
The two men in "The Sweet Smell of Success" relate to each other like junkyard dogs. One is dominant, and the other is a whipped cur, circling hungrily, his tail between his legs, hoping for a scrap after the big dog has dined.
	The Third Man (Criterion Collection) (1949)			Not Rated
Has there ever been a film where the music more perfectly suited the action than in Carol Reed's ``The Third Man''?
	Touch of Evil (1958)			Not Rated
Is there a resonance between the Welles character here and the man he became? The story of Welles' later career is of projects left uncompleted and films altered after he had left them.
	Victim (1962)			Not Rated
Recent critics find "Victim" timid in its treatment of homosexuality, but viewed in the context of Great Britain in 1961, it's a film of courage.