Best Film-Noir Movies

#1 Sunset Boulevard 1950

A Hollywood Story

Director: Billy Wilder. Cast: William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olson, Fred Clark, Lloyd Gough, Jack Webb, Buster Keaton, Cecil B. DeMille, Hedda Hopper, Anna Q. Nilsson, Ray Evans, Jay Livingston, H.B. Warner.

Overview: Director Billy Wilder is ice cold in his captivating Hollywood drama Sunset Blvd. A screenwriter begins an affair with a silent film actress who thinks she’s at the top of her field...

Genres: Comedy, Drama, Romance. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 50m. Rated: PG.

#2 Double Indemnity 1944

From the Moment they met it was Murder!

Director: Billy Wilder. Cast: Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson, Porter Hall, Richard Gaines, Jean Heather, Tom Powers, Fortunio Bonanova, John Philliber.

Overview: Double Indemnity is a film noir thriller from directory Billy Wilder from 1944 in which the protagonist sets up an insurance fraud.

Genres: Drama, Film Noir, Mystery, Thriller. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 47m.

#3 The Third Man 1949

Hunted by men...Sought by WOMEN!

Director: Carol Reed. Cast: Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles, Trevor Howard, Bernard Lee, Paul Hörbiger, Siegfried Breuer, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Hedwig Bleibtreu, Annie Rosar, Erich Ponto, Ernst Deutsch.

Overview: An American pulp writer arrives in post-WWII Vienna only to find that the friend who waited for him is killed under mysterious circumstances. The ensuing mystery entangles him in his friend's involvement in the black market, with the multinational police, and with his Czech girlfriend.

Genres: Drama, Foreign, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller. Countries: Austria, United Kingdom. Runtime: 1h 45m. Rated: NR.

#4 The Maltese Falcon 1941

A story as EXPLOSIVE as his BLAZING automatics!

Director: John Huston. Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, Mary Astor, Gladys George, Barton MacLane, Lee Patrick, Sydney Greenstreet, Ward Bond, Jerome Cowan, Elisha Cook Jr., James Burke, Murray Alper, John Hamilton.

Overview: The Maltese Falcon is a mystery thriller detective film from John Huston starring Humphrey Bogart. The film is regarded as a landmark in the film-noir movement.

Genres: Crime, Drama, Film Noir, Thriller. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 40m. Rated: NR.

#5 Touch of Evil 1958

THE STRANGEST VENGEANCE EVER PLANNED!

Director: Orson Welles. Cast: Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Orson Welles, Joseph Calleia, Akim Tamiroff, Joanna Moore, Ray Collins, Dennis Weaver, Valentin de Vargas, Mort Mills, Victor Millan, Lalo Rios, Michael Sargent, Phil Harvey, Joi Lansing.

Overview: Stark, perverse story of murder, kidnapping, and police corruption in Mexican border town.

Genres: Crime, Film Noir, Thriller. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 46m. Rated: PG-13.

#6 Strangers on a Train 1951

Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Cast: Farley Granger, Ruth Roman, Robert Walker, Leo G. Carroll, Patricia Hitchcock, Norma Varden, Marion Lorne, Jonathan Hale, Howard St. John, John Brown, Robert Gist, Kasey Rogers.

Overview: Strangers on a Train is a typical Hitchcock thriller with all the elements of a suspense film masterpiece: The innocent man is being chased for a crime he didn’t do.

Genres: Crime, Drama, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 41m. Rated: PG.

#7 Notorious 1946

Notorious woman of affairs... Adventurous man of the world

Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Cast: Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Louis Calhern, Leopoldine Konstantin, Reinhold Schünzel, Ivan Triesault, Alex Minotis, Eberhard Krumschmidt, Fred Nurney, Moroni Olsen, Wally Brown, Charles Mendl, Ricardo Costa.

Overview: Released shortly after the war, this classic Hitchcock film illustrates the battle between German Nazis and American spies and the trafficking of drugs.

Genres: Drama, History, Romance, Suspense, Thriller. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 41m. Rated: NR.

#8 The Big Sleep 1946

The picture they were born for!

Director: Howard Hawks. Cast: Humphrey Bogart, John Ridgely, Martha Vickers, Dorothy Malone, Lauren Bacall, Peggy Knudsen, Charles Waldron, Regis Toomey, Charles D. Brown, Elisha Cook Jr., Louis Jean Heydt.

Overview: Private Detective Philip Marlowe is hired by a rich family. Before the complex case is over, he's seen murder, blackmail, and what might be love.

Genres: Crime, Drama, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 56m.

#9 Ace in the Hole 1951

Director: Billy Wilder. Cast: Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling, Robert Arthur, Porter Hall, Frank Cady, Richard Benedict, Ray Teal, Lewis Martin, John Berkes, Frances Dominguez, Gene Evans, Frank Jaquet, Harry Harvey, Bob Bumpas, Geraldine Hall.

Overview: One of the most scathing indictments of American culture ever produced by a Hollywood filmmaker. Kirk Douglas gives the fiercest performance of his career as Chuck Tatum, an amoral newspaper reporter caught in dead-end Albuquerque who happens upon the story of a lifetime and will do anything to ensure he gets the scoop.

Genre: Drama. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 51m.

#10 White Heat 1949

Pick up the pieces folks, Jimmy's in action again!

Director: Raoul Walsh. Cast: James Cagney, Virginia Mayo, Edmond O'Brien, Margaret Wycherly, Steve Cochran, John Archer, Wally Cassell, Fred Clark.

Overview: A psychopathic criminal (Cagney) with a mother complex makes a daring break from prison and then leads his old gang in a chemical plant payroll heist. After the heist, events take a crazy turn.

Genres: Action, Crime, Drama, Thriller. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 54m.

#11 Rififi 1955
Du rififi chez les hommes

Director: Jules Dassin. Cast: Jean Servais, Carl Möhner, Robert Manuel, Janine Darcey, Magali Noël, Marie Sabouret, Robert Hossein, Claude Sylvain, Jules Dassin.

Overview: Rififi is a classic film noir with a famous 20 minute long break-in in absolute silence. A classic film noir.

Genres: Crime, Drama, Film Noir, Foreign. Country: France. Runtime: 2h 26m.

#12 The Night of the Hunter 1955

The wedding night, the anticipation, the kiss, the knife, BUT ABOVE ALL...THE SUSPENSE!

Director: Charles Laughton. Cast: Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish, James Gleason, Evelyn Varden, Peter Graves, Don Beddoe, Billy Chapin, Sally Jane Bruce, Gloria Castillo.

Overview: A religious fanatic marries a gullible widow whose young children are reluctant to tell him where their real daddy hid $10,000 he'd stolen in a robbery.

Genres: Drama, Suspense, Thriller. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 33m. Rated: NR.

#13 The Killing 1956

Director: Stanley Kubrick. Cast: Sterling Hayden, Coleen Gray, Vince Edwards, Jay C. Flippen, Elisha Cook Jr., Marie Windsor, Ted de Corsia, Joe Sawyer, James Edwards, Timothy Carey, Joe Turkel, Jay Adler, Kola Kwariani, Tito Vuolo, Dorothy Adams.

Overview: The Killing was Stanley Kubrick’s first film with a professional cast and the first time he achieved public recognition as the unconventional director he’s now known for. The story is of ex-prisoners who plan to set up a racetrack so they can live a life without monetary worries. One of the more exceptional films of the 1950’s.

Genres: Crime, Drama, Thriller, Film Noir. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 25m.

#14 Sweet Smell of Success 1957

This is the story of J.J. - But not the way he wants it told

Director: Alexander Mackendrick. Cast: Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Susan Harrison, Martin Milner, Sam Levene, Barbara Nichols, Jeff Donnell, Edith Atwater, Joe Frisco, Emile Meyer.

Overview: Sweet Smell of Success is a Film Noir from American director Alexander Mackendrick. This drama tells the defamation of a media mogul against a jazz musician who wants to marry his sister.

Genre: Drama. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 36m. Rated: NR.

#15 Laura 1944

The story of a love that became the most fearful thing that ever happened to a woman!

Director: Otto Preminger. Cast: Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb, Vincent Price, Judith Anderson, Dorothy Adams, Kathleen Howard.

Overview: A police detective falls in love with the woman whose murder he's investigating.

Genres: Crime, Drama, Mystery, Romance, Suspense, Thriller. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 28m.

#16 Shadow of a Doubt 1943

Directors: Alfred Hitchcock, William Tummel. Cast: Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotten, Macdonald Carey, Henry Travers, Patricia Collinge, Hume Cronyn, Wallace Ford, Edna May Wonacott, Charles Bates, Irving Bacon, Clarence Muse, Janet Shaw, Estelle Jewell.

Overview: A bored young woman, a teen living in Santa Rosa, California, Charlotte "Charlie" Newton (Wright), is frustrated because nothing seems to be happening in her life and that of her family. Then, she receives wonderful news: her uncle (for whom she was named), Charlie Oakley (Cotten), her mother's brother, is arriving for a visit. But Uncle Charlie may not be the man he seems to be.

Genres: Crime, Drama, Film Noir, Thriller. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 48m. Rated: PG.

#17 Out of the Past 1947

A MAN - Trying to run away from his past... A WOMAN - Trying to escape her future...

Director: Jacques Tourneur. Cast: Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas, Rhonda Fleming, Richard Webb, Steve Brodie, Virginia Huston, Paul Valentine, Dickie Moore, Ken Niles.

Overview: Jeff Bailey seems to be a mundane gas station owner in remote Bridgeport, CA. He is dating local girl Ann Miller and lives a quiet life. Town lawman Jim is in love with Ann and unsure about Jeff, who is secretive about his past.

Genres: Drama, Mystery, Thriller, Film Noir. Countries: Mexico, United States of America. Runtime: 1h 37m.

#18 In a Lonely Place 1950

The Bogart suspense picture with the surprise finish -

Director: Nicholas Ray. Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame, Frank Lovejoy, Carl Benton Reid, Art Smith, Jeff Donnell, Martha Stewart, Robert Warwick, Morris Ankrum, William Ching, Steven Geray, Hadda Brooks.

Overview: Dixon 'Dix' Steele, a down-on-his-luck screenwriter needs to adapt a trashy novel. At a night club, the hat-check girl, Mildred Atkinson is engrossed reading it. Too tired to read the novel, he asks Mildred to go home with him, to explain the plot. Later that night, Mildred is murdered and Steele is a prime suspect, his record of violence when angry goes against him.

Genres: Drama, Film Noir, Mystery, Thriller. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 34m.

#19 Night and the City 1950

Director: Jules Dassin. Cast: Richard Widmark, Gene Tierney, Googie Withers, Hugh Marlowe, Francis L. Sullivan.

Overview: Night and the City (1950) is a film noir based on the novel by Gerald Kersh, directed by Jules Dassin, and starring Richard Widmark and Gene Tierney. Shot on location in London, the plot evolves around an ambitious hustler whose plans keep going wrong.

Genres: Drama, Thriller. Country: United Kingdom. Runtime: 1h 41m.

#20 The Big Heat 1953

A hard cop and a soft dame.

Director: Fritz Lang. Cast: Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Jocelyn Brando, Alexander Scourby, Lee Marvin, Jeanette Nolan, Peter Whitney, Willis Bouchey, Robert Burton, Adam Williams.

Overview: Tough cop Dave Bannion takes on a politically powerful crime syndicate.

Genres: Crime, Drama, Suspense. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 29m.

#21 Key Largo 1948

Director: John Huston. Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, Lauren Bacall, Lionel Barrymore, Claire Trevor, Thomas Gomez, Harry Lewis, John Rodney, Marc Lawrence, Dan Seymour, Monte Blue, William Haade.

Overview: A hurricane swells outside, but it's nothing compared to the storm within the hotel at Key Largo. There, sadistic mobster Johnny Rocco (Robinson) holes up -- and holds at gunpoint hotel owner Nora Temple (Bacall), her invalid father-in-law (Barrymore) and ex-GI Frank McCloud (Bogart).

Genres: Drama, Thriller. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 40m.

#22 The Killers 1946

TENSE! TAUT! TERRIFIC! Told the untamed Hemingway way!

Director: Robert Siodmak. Cast: Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, Edmond O'Brien, Albert Dekker, Sam Levene, Vince Barnett, Virginia Christine, Jack Lambert, Charles D. Brown, Donald MacBride, Charles McGraw, William Conrad, Jeff Corey.

Overview: Hit men kill an unresisting victim, and investigator Reardon uncovers his past involvement with beautiful, deadly Kitty Collins.

Genres: Crime, Drama, Film Noir. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 43m.

#23 The Asphalt Jungle 1950

The City Under the City

Director: John Huston. Cast: Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, Jean Hagen, James Whitmore, Sam Jaffe, John McIntire, Marilyn Monroe, Marc Lawrence, Barry Kelley, Anthony Caruso, Teresa Celli, William 'Wee Willie' Davis, Dorothy Tree, Brad Dexter, John Maxwell.

Overview: Recently paroled from prison, legendary burglar "Doc" Riedenschneider, with funding from Alonzo Emmerich, a crooked lawyer, gathers a small group of veteran criminals together in the Midwest for a big jewel heist.

Genres: Action, Crime, Drama, Thriller. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 2h 2m.

#24 Mildred Pierce 1945

A mother's love leads to murder

Director: Michael Curtiz. Cast: Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Eve Arden, Ann Blyth, Bruce Bennett, Lee Patrick, Moroni Olsen, Veda Ann Borg, Jo Ann Marlowe.

Overview: After her cheating husband leaves her, Mildred Pierce proves she can become independent and successful, but can't win the approval of her spoiled daughter.

Genres: Drama, Thriller, Film Noir. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 51m.

#25 Angels With Dirty Faces 1938

Director: Michael Curtiz. Cast: James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, Humphrey Bogart, Ann Sheridan.

Overview: In New York, the boys Rocky Sullivan and Jerry Connelly are best friends and small time thieves. After a robbery, Rocky is arrested and sent to a reformatory school, where he begins his criminal career. Jerry escapes and later becomes a priest. After three years in prison, Rocky is released and demands the return of $100,000 deposited with his Solicitor - prior to his jail term.

Genres: Crime, Drama. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 37m.

#26 Scarface 1932

Director: Howard Hawks. Cast: Paul Muni, Ann Dvorak, Karen Morley, Osgood Perkins, C. Henry Gordon, George Raft, Vince Barnett, Boris Karloff, Purnell Pratt, Tully Marshall, Inez Palange, Edwin Maxwell.

Overview: Scarface is a brutal gangster film from 1932 from director Howard Hawks that depicts the fall of a Chicago gangster.

Genres: Action, Adventure, Crime, Drama, Thriller. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 30m.

#27 Pickup on South Street 1953

Director: Samuel Fuller. Cast: Richard Widmark, Jean Peters, Thelma Ritter, Murvyn Vye, Richard Kiley, Willis Bouchey, Milburn Stone.

Overview: A pickpocket unwittingly lifts a message destined for enemy agents and becomes a target for a Communist spy ring.

Genres: Drama, Thriller. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 20m.

#28 Body and Soul 1947

Director: Robert Rossen. Cast: John Garfield, Lilli Palmer, Hazel Brooks, Anne Revere, William Conrad, Joseph Pevney, Lloyd Gough, Canada Lee, Art Smith, James Burke, Virginia Gregg, Peter Virgo, Joe Devlin, Shimen Ruskin.

Overview: Charley Davis, against the wishes of his mother, becomes a boxer. As he becomes more successful the fighter becomes surrounded by shady characters, including an unethical promoter named Roberts, who tempt the man with a number of vices. Charley finds himself faced with increasingly difficult choices.

Genres: Drama, Sports Film. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 44m.

#29 Scarlet Street 1945

Director: Fritz Lang. Cast: Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, Dan Duryea, Margaret Lindsay, Jess Barker, Rosalind Ivan.

Overview: A man in mid-life crisis befriends a young woman after rescuing her from an attack. She believes he is rich and her boyfriend persuades her to con him out of his fortune.

Genre: Film Noir. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 43m.

#30 Bob The Gambler 1956
Bob le flambeur

Director: Jean-Pierre Melville. Cast: Isabelle Corey, Daniel Cauchy, Roger Duchesne, André Garet, Gérard Buhr, Guy Decomble, Claude Cerval, Howard Vernon, Colette Fleury, Simone Paris, René Havard.

Overview: Both a tribute to classic American gangster films and the source of inspiration for French New Wave filmmakers, Bob le Flambeur is the first in a series of stylish noirs that Jean-Pierre Melville started in the mid-'50s. Co-scripted by the popular crime writer Auguste Le Breton (Rififi), this is a story of ex-bank robber and gambler Bob (Roger Duchesne), who plans a heist at the Deauville casino.

Genre: Crime. Country: France. Runtime: 1h 38m.

#31 The Set-Up 1949

I want a man...not a human punching bag!

Director: Robert Wise. Cast: Robert Ryan, Audrey Totter, George Tobias, Alan Baxter, Wallace Ford, Percy Helton, Hal Baylor, Darryl Hickman.

Overview: Stoker Thompson is a 35-year-old has-been boxer. His once-promising fighting career has come crashing to the end. Tiny, Stoker's manager, is sure he will continue to lose fights, so he takes money for a "dive" from a mobster, but is so sure that Thompson will lose that he doesn't tell the boxer about the set-up. At the beginning of the last round of the vicious boxing match he learns of the fix.

Genres: Crime, Documentary, Drama, Sports Film. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 12m.

#32 Deadly Is the Female 1950

THRILL CRAZY... KILL CRAZY...

Director: Joseph H. Lewis. Cast: Peggy Cummins, John Dall, Berry Kroeger, Morris Carnovsky, Anabel Shaw, Harry Lewis, Nedrick Young, Nedrick Young, Russ Tamblyn.

Overview: Bart Tare is an ex-Army man who has a lifelong fixation with guns, he meets a kindred spirit in sharpshooter Annie Starr and goes to work at a carnival. After upsetting the carnival owner who lusts after Starr, they both get fired. Soon, on Starr's behest, they embark on a crime spree for cash. Subjects of a manhunt, they are tracked by police in the hills Tare enjoyed as a boy.

Genres: Thriller, Film Noir. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 26m.

#33 Thieves' Highway 1949

Director: Jules Dassin. Cast: Richard Conte, Valentina Cortese, Lee J. Cobb, Barbara Lawrence, Jack Oakie, Millard Mitchell, Joseph Pevney, Morris Carnovsky, Tamara Shayne, Kasia Orzazewski, Norbert Schiller, Hope Emerson.

Overview: War-veteran truck driver "Nick" Garcos (Conte) arrives at home to find his father, a farmer, crippled. He learns that his father was crippled at the hands of an amoral produce dealer in San Francisco, Mike Figlia (Cobb). Garcos vows revenge.

Genres: Drama, Thriller. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 34m.

#34 The Narrow Margin 1952

Director: Richard Fleischer. Cast: Charles McGraw, Marie Windsor, Jacqueline White, Gordon Gebert, Queenie Leonard, David Clarke, Peter Virgo, Don Beddoe, Paul Maxey, Harry Harvey.

Overview: A tough cop meets his match when he has to guard a gangster's moll on a tense train ride.

Genres: Action, Crime, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 11m.

#35 The Woman in the Window 1944

Director: Fritz Lang. Cast: Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, Raymond Massey, Edmund Breon, Dan Duryea, Thomas E. Jackson, Dorothy Peterson.

Overview: A seductive woman gets an innocent professor mixed up in murder.

Genres: Drama, Film Noir, Suspense, Thriller. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 39m.

#36 Nightmare Alley 1947

Director: Edmund Goulding. Cast: Tyrone Power, Joan Blondell, Coleen Gray, Helen Walker, Taylor Holmes, Mike Mazurki, Ian Keith.

Overview: The movie follows the rise and fall of a con man — a story that begins and ends at a seedy travelling carnival. Stanton Carlisle (Tyrone Power) joins the carnival, working with "Mademoiselle Zeena" (Joan Blondell) and her alcoholic husband, Pete (Ian Keith).

Genres: Drama, Film Noir. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 50m.

#37 The Letter 1940

Director: William Wyler. Cast: Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, James Stephenson, Frieda Inescort, Gale Sondergaard, Bruce Lester, Elizabeth Inglis, Cecil Kellaway, Victor Sen Yung, Doris Lloyd.

Overview: The wife of a rubber plantation administrator shoots a man to death claiming he "tried to make love to me" and killed him to save her honour. When a damning letter she wrote on the day of the shooting turns up in the hands of her attorney he becomes suspicious.

Genres: Crime, Drama, Film Noir, Romance. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 35m.

#38 Gilda 1946

There NEVER was a woman like Gilda!

Director: Charles Vidor. Cast: Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford, Joseph Calleia, George Macready, Steven Geray, Joe Sawyer, Gerald Mohr, Mark Roberts, Ludwig Donath, Donald Douglas.

Overview: Just arrived in Argentina, small-time crooked gambler Johnny Farrell is saved from a gunman by sinister Ballin Mundson, who later makes Johnny his right-hand man. But their friendship based on mutual lack of scruples is strained when Mundson returns from a trip with a wife: whom Johnny once knew and learned to hate.

Genres: Drama, Film Noir, Romance, Thriller. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 50m.

#39 The Lady from Shanghai 1947

I told you... you know nothing about wickedness

Director: Orson Welles. Cast: Rita Hayworth, Orson Welles, Everett Sloane, Glenn Anders, Ted de Corsia, Erskine Sanford, Gus Schilling, Louis Merrill, Carl Frank, Evelyn Ellis, Harry Shannon.

Overview: A romantic drifter gets caught between a corrupt tycoon and his voluptuous wife.

Genres: Crime, Drama, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 27m.

#40 The Big Clock 1948

Director: John Farrow. Cast: Ray Milland, Charles Laughton, Maureen O'Sullivan, George Macready, Rita Johnson, Elsa Lanchester, Harold Vermilyea, Dan Tobin, Harry Morgan, Richard Webb, Elaine Riley, Luis Van Rooten, Lloyd Corrigan, Frank Orth, Margaret Field.

Overview: Stroud, a crime magazine's crusading editor has to post-pone a vacation with his wife, again, when a glamorous blonde is murdered and he is assigned by his publishing boss Janoth to find the killer. As the investigation proceeds to its conclusion, Stroud must try to disrupt his ordinarily brilliant investigative team as they increasingly build evidence (albeit wrong) that he is the killer.

Genres: Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 35m.

#41 The Naked City 1948

The soul of a city. Her glory stripped! Her passion bared!

Director: Jules Dassin. Cast: Barry Fitzgerald, Howard Duff, Dorothy Hart, Don Taylor, Frank Conroy, Ted de Corsia, House Jameson, Anne Sargent, Adelaide Klein, Grover Burgess, Tom Pedi, Enid Markey, Mark Hellinger.

Overview: The Naked City portrays the police investigation that follows the murder of a young model. A veteran cop is placed in charge of the case and he sets about, with the help of other beat cops and detectives, finding the girl's killer.

Genres: Crime, Drama, Thriller. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 36m.

#42 Brute Force 1947

Director: Jules Dassin. Cast: Burt Lancaster, Hume Cronyn, Charles Bickford, Yvonne De Carlo, Ann Blyth, Ella Raines, Anita Colby, Sam Levene, Jeff Corey, John Hoyt, Jack Overman, Roman Bohnen, Sir Lancelot, Vince Barnett, Jay C. Flippen.

Overview: Prison inmates revolt against a sadistic guard.

Genres: Crime, Drama, Film Noir. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 38m.

#43 Where the Sidewalk Ends 1950

Director: Otto Preminger. Cast: Dana Andrews, Gene Tierney, Gary Merrill, Bert Freed, Tom Tully, Karl Malden.

Overview: Tough NYC police detective Dixon misses out on a promotion because of his record of roughing up suspects. When accidentally kills a suspect in a murder case he plants clues to absolve himself. But when the father of a woman he recently fell in love is accused of the crime his plan looks like back firing.

Genres: Crime, Drama, Indie, Thriller. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 35m.

#44 Kiss Me Deadly 1955

Blood red kisses! White hot thrills! Mickey Spillane's latest H-bomb...

Director: Robert Aldrich. Cast: Ralph Meeker, Albert Dekker, Paul Stewart, Juano Hernandez, Wesley Addy, Marian Carr, Maxine Cooper, Cloris Leachman, Gaby Rodgers, Nick Dennis, Jack Lambert, Jack Elam, Jerry Zinneman, Leigh Snowden, Percy Helton.

Overview: One evening, Hammer gives a ride to Christina, an attractive hitchhiker on a lonely country road, who has escaped from the nearby lunatic asylum. Thugs waylay them and force his car to crash. When Hammer returns to semi-consciousness, he hears Christina being tortured until she dies. Hammer, both for vengeance and in hopes that "something big" is behind it all, decides to pursue the case.

Genres: Drama, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 46m.

#45 Murder, My Sweet 1944

An Original Philip Marlowe Mystery

Directors: Edward Dmytryk, Luciano Sacripanti. Cast: Dick Powell, Claire Trevor, Anne Shirley, Miles Mander, Mike Mazurki, Douglas Walton, Otto Kruger, Donald Douglas.

Overview: Detective Philip Marlowe (Dick Powell) is hired by hulking Moose Malloy (Mike Mazurki) to locate his old girlfriend that he lost track of while serving time in prison. With each lead he follows, Marlowe encounters lies, larceny, perjury, theft and a beautiful femme fatale (Claire Trevor).

Genres: Crime, Drama, Film Noir, Mystery, Thriller. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 35m.

#46 Spellbound 1945

Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Cast: Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck, Michael Chekhov, Rhonda Fleming, Leo G. Carroll, John Emery, Norman Lloyd, Bill Goodwin, Steven Geray, Donald Curtis, Art Baker, Regis Toomey, Paul Harvey, Wallace Ford.

Overview: A psychiatrist tries to help the man she loves solve a murder buried in his subconscious.

Genres: Drama, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 51m. Rated: NR.

#47 Detective Story 1951

Director: William Wyler. Cast: Kirk Douglas, Eleanor Parker, William Bendix, Cathy O'Donnell, George Macready, Horace McMahon, Gladys George, Joseph Wiseman, Lee Grant, Gerald Mohr, Frank Faylen, Craig Hill, Michael Strong, Luis Van Rooten, Bert Freed.

Overview: Tells the story of one day in the lives of the various people who populate a police detective squad. An embittered cop, Det. Jim McLeod (Douglas), leads a precinct of characters in their grim daily battle with the city's lowlife. The characters who pass through the precinct over the course of the day include a young petty embezzler, a pair of burglars, and a naive shoplifter.

Genres: Crime, Drama. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 43m.

#48 This Gun for Hire 1942

Director: Frank Tuttle. Cast: Veronica Lake, Robert Preston, Laird Cregar, Alan Ladd, Tully Marshall, Marc Lawrence, Olin Howland, Roger Imhof, Pamela Blake, Frank Ferguson, Victor Kilian, Patricia Farr, Harry Shannon, Charles C. Wilson, Mikhail Rasumny.

Overview: Hit man, Raven, is double crossed by nightclub owner Willard Gates who acts as a middleman for a traitorous industrialist, the president of Nitro Chemical, Alvin Brewster. Travelling to Los Angeles to kill his his betrayers, Raven meets up with Ellen Graham a nightclub magician and singer who has just landed a job with Gates. Ellen's fiancée, policeman Lt. Michael Crane is on the trail of Raven.

Genres: Crime, Film Noir, Mystery, Thriller. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 20m.

#49 Leave Her to Heaven 1945

Director: John M. Stahl. Cast: Gene Tierney, Cornel Wilde, Jeanne Crain, Vincent Price, Mary Philips, Ray Collins, Gene Lockhart, Reed Hadley, Darryl Hickman, Chill Wills.

Overview: A young novelist, Richard Harland, meets beautiful Ellen Berent on a train where they fall in love and are soon married. When tragedies take first his handicapped young brother, then his unborn son from him, Harland gradually realises that his wife's insane jealousy may be the cause of the tragedies in his life. Yet another shock awaits them all, as Ellen's emotions become uncontrollable.

Genres: Drama, Film Noir, Romance, Thriller. Country: United States of America. Runtime: 1h 50m.