Film Genres: Film noir

This filmography covers the noir titles released in the classic noir era, October 1940 to June 1962. All sub-genres are covered including British, western and science fiction.

This book is a guide to all of the films in this genre. Films listed in this book stop with the early 1990's.

This guide concentrates on films released between 1940 through 1959.

Film noir--literally "black cinema"--is the label customarily given to a group of black and white American films, mostly crime thrillers, made between 1940 and 1959. Today there is considerable dispute about what are the shared features that classify a noir film, and therefore which films should be included in this category. These problems are partly caused because film noir is a retrospective label that was not used in the 1940s or 1950s by the film industry as a production category and therefore its existence and features cannot be established through reference to trade documents. The Historical Dictionary of Film Noir is a comprehensive guide that ranges from 1940 to present day neo-noir. It consists of a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, a filmography, and over 400 cross-referenced dictionary entries on every aspect of film noir and neo-noir, including key films, personnel, themes, issues, influences, visual style, cycles of films, the representation of the city and gender, other forms, and noir's presence in world cinema. It is an essential reference work for all those interested in this important cultural phenomenon.

The earlier Film Noir Readers have all quite deliberately conveyed a sweeping overview of the classic period, demonstrating how broad and inclusive noir movies are. Film Noir Reader 4 moves in a different direction. Its purpose is to identify the key films and motifs of noir and to analyze in depth the prototypical pictures that, while vivid examples of certain cinematic themes, bend and break their molds to find new ways to enthrall and frighten us.

From 'The Maltese Falcon' (1941) to 'Touch of Evil' (1958), the classic film noir is easily recognizable for its unusual lighting, sinister plots, and feeling of paranoia. For critics and fans alike, these films defined an era. The Philosophy of Film Noir explores philosophical themes and ideas inherent in classic noir and neo-noir films, establishing connections to diverse thinkers ranging from Camus to the Frankfurt School.

Use this index to find articles about film noir.

Four Korean war vets dream up a college prank to rob a casino, convincing the girlfriend of one of them to help. Problems arise when one of the vets, who suffers from a war injury, turns the prank serious.

An aging criminal is released from prison and decides to assemble the old gang to go on one last heist.

Elena tries to make a new life for herself after her mother leaves her father kills himself, but she is drugged, seduced, and forced to work as a dancer/call girl in a nightclub. She soon rises to stardom as a dancer, but still plots revenge and escape.

A jealous husband hires a detective to murder his wife and her lover.

Norah Larkin is a working girl who wakes up a murderess after passing out in the apartment of brutish playboy Harry Prebble. Branded "The Blue Gardenia" by a sensational columnist, Norah dodges dragnets, informants and the cruel hand of fate as she struggles to conceal her involvement with Prebble, and to remember the details of her ill-fated night. As her hopes for justice fade, she decides to gamble her future on the journalist who transformed her into such a notorious figure.

A classic film noir featuring a cold-hearted killer named Sam Wild who kills two innocent people and actively pursues the woman who finds the bodies, all while being married to the woman's half-sister.

A party girl decides she has had enough of the wild lifestyle and returns to her childhood home, where she finds security with a new husband but soon finds herself in an affair with his best friend.

On the mean streets on New York's Lower East Side, Drina hopes to save her brother from a life of crime. But notorious hoodlum Baby Face Martin has come back to his old haunts looking for trouble and threatening to drag the boy down with him. Drina turns to her childhood friend Dave for help. But can he stop Martin without becoming just like him?

A greedy sideshow sharp-shooter marries an ex-army man, then leads him down the road to crime for easy money. Includes a bank robbery sequence, noted for being filmed in one shot.

See catalog record for film summaries.

A screen adaptation of the dramatic events in the life of a "B-Girl," Barbara Graham, a vagrant prostitute and fast-living party girl, which led to a sensational murder trial and afterwards, her execution in the gas chamber despite growing doubts about her guilt.

A tough-talking former GI comes to a small New Mexico town to shake down a gangster who killed his best friend; events turn out neither as planned nor at all well.

A sensational and high-octane but economically constructed drama set in a maximum-security penitentiary.

Tension rises to a fevered pitch in this psychological thriller about an alcoholic, long-absent father who has one day to save his son from the gallows.