I just wanted to throw my 2p in the ring to support both Double Indemnity and Mildred Pierce. They are obviously very different from each other, but both are fantastic movies.

Sunset blvd and Ace in the Hole are both noir.

If you like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane, I'm sure you'll like the sterling film noir examples you gave that you haven't seen. I would prioritize those over the other classics you cite.

What film was term film noir coined for? I believe I read once the first known use of the term was from a French critic reviewing Out of the Past. Don't know if that's accurate.

It may have been but it wouldn't have been contemporary to that film’s release. Noir was a term coined only in retrospect. But having said that, it is possible that it may have been upon release of Out of the Past in France several years after it's American release.

The rennesance of French film criticism in the 50s was due to a slew of American films from the 40s that were never shown because of the war being imported all at once. Out of the Past may not have reached France until 1950 or even later.

Right. Put some films in your Netflix queue before you leave your computer. Kiss Me Deadly, Double Indemnity, The Big Sleep, and Out of the Past. All great movies.

Millers Crossing is an excellent movie based on a Dashiell Hammett novel.

Detour is a B-movie, but it has a real emotional power.

Out of the Past is my pick for best Film Noir ever.

But Double Indemnity is a very close second.

I recommend first watching The Glass Key starring Alan Ladd, which is a great Film Noir in its own right.

Then watch the Coen Brothers film Miller's Crossing, which is loosely based on it.

Together, this makes for an amazing double-feature.

I hope you're misremembering or you really got ripped off at film school.

Joke's on them, I didn't even graduate!

Essential Noir Orson Welles style :

Touch of Evil
The Lady From Shanghai
Journey Into Fear

I cancelled my Netflix account a while back. The disc service sucked because they kept showing up broken (not just scratched, but broken) and my experiments with streaming over Netflix and Hulu were far less than satisfying (even though I had sufficient hardware and an internet connection that was fifteen times faster than what Hulu required). I've considered buying the Criterion Blu-ray of Kiss Me Deadly, and I may at some point in the near future.

I've seen that one. It's not officially a Hammett adaptation, but it's certainly an intentional pastiche. The plot is sort of a combination of Red Harvest and The Glass Key. I thought it was excellent. I should buy it one of these days.

Anyway, I'm familiar with more film noir than just The Maltese Falcon, The Third Man, and Touch of Evil... I just haven't seen the classics that I listed like Double Indemnity. Most of the stuff I've seen from that era isn't held in quite the same high regard, unless movies like D.O.A and The Stranger and The Hitch-Hiker are more loved than I thought. Also, Blade Runner is my favorite movie, which is certainly very heavily inspired by classic film noir, but modern noirs inspired by the classics like Blade Runner and Miller's Crossing are their own thing.

Favorites off the top of my head:

Detour
Asphalt Jungle
The Killing
I Wake Up Screaming
The Killers
The Woman In The Window (up until the last 3 minutes, it's a PERFECT movie)
Brute Force
Chinatown
Kiss Me Deadly
Rififi
Maltese Falcon
GUN CRAZY
The Big Clock
Out Of The Past
Vertigo
Angel Heart
Thief
Blade Runner
LA Confidential
The Maltese Falcon
Laura
Night and the City <--- probably my 2nd favorite after GUN CRAZY
Scarlet Street
The Postman Always Rings Twice
Point Blank (Lee Marvin, not Mel Gibson)


I did not like This Gun For Hire

Are these considered noirs? Because I've actually seen these. Own a few, too.

I always get confused regarding what's considered a noir and what's not.

I guess other movie geeks do too, since they're always arguing about it.

Neo-noir

Goodie! List time! From the 40s/50s, My lesser known noir favorites:

Lady in the Lake (Gimmick works for me)
Where Danger Lives
99 River Street
Crime Wave (Charlie Bronson!)
The Breaking Point
On Dangerous Ground
The Stranger
Odds Against Tomorrow
Jeopardy/Beware My Lovely (These two are labeled as noirs, but they're more like Hitchcockian thrillers. Love both of 'em)

People often confuse noirs and crime thrillers (or heist flicks).

If you ask a dozen film critics on what makes a noir, you'll get a dozen different responses. I do like the essential noir themes as put forth by film writer/producer David Mayer:

1. No good deed goes unpunished.
2. A detached ironic view is the only refuge.
3. Crime doesn't pay, but normal life is an experiential/existential straightjacket.
4. Character determines fate.
5. Though love might seem to be the only redeeming aspect of human existence, it's not.
6. Kicks count for something.
7. Alienation rules.

Also check out:

1. Phantom Lady
2. Ride The Pink Horse

Two classics that hardly ever get mentioned.

Fie on you. It's a great crime movie and has Alan Ladd's greatest performance (his first starring role). Here's what I wrote about the film on my blog when I honored Ladd's centennial last year:

I believe the term was coined in Cahiers du Cinema. I don't recall reading if it was specifically in relation to one film or, more likely, a whole bunch from that time period that exhibited similar traits, both thematically and visually.
The "noir" part came about because the films under review all tended to be similar lower budgeted affairs. Budget affected how brightly lit the films were shot (more lights = more time to set up the lighting, as well necessitating a higher degree of polish in regards to sets/set dressing, etc). This is why these films tend to be bathed in a lot of shadows. It was a style born out of necessity.

Double Indemnity- like the other Cain adaptation Postman Always Rings Twice, and another film I don think anyone has mentioned yet, The Killers- is generally considered a prototypical film noir. They all share a hero/protagonist who is easily corrupted and then inexorably dragged down to his doom by a femme fatale. The first two also make use of the staple of killing a spouse for financial gain.
DI is a great movie, but I'm just as if not more fond of the other two.
Out of the Past is probably my favorite noir of all time.
I don't think I would classify Shadow Of A Doubt as a Noir. It's a crime thriller, and one of my favorite films of all time, but the heroine isn't corrupted or doomed to her fate through sexual misadventure or some character flaw. Theresa Wright was in a western (with Robert Mitchum) that IS considered a Noir though called Pursued. Along with the doomed hero it also has some very noir-ish lighting and general sensibilities to it. Very highly recommended- and it's on a great Bd from Olive, which was a major improvement over the old DVD release.

This Gun For Hire held a lot of allure for me in the years before it made it to DVD. I had bought the LD but it was defective and after I returned it, it was suddenly out of print and unable to be found anywhere. I had seen the film and liked it quite a bit, but not being able to get it for so long gave it this mystique that didn't quite hold up when I finally did get a chance to see it again. It was still enjoyable, but the plot seemed quite a bit "pulpier" than I remembered. It seemed like a story cooked up by someone who was getting paid a $.01 a word so all kinds of things got thrown into the stew pot.
TGFH has some iconic moments, but I think I would rate both other Ladd/Lake films much higher.

Just watched the Warner Archive release Loophole recently and enjoyed it quite a bit. That and The Steel Trap were two fringe noirs I'd never heard of before but turned out to be very interesting. Both deal with Bank related shenanigans. Steel Trap strains credulity early on, but the fallout after the crime I thought was handled very well. It reunites Wright and Joseph Cotten from Shadow Of A Doubt.

I believe it was the French critics who coined the term in said magazine, yes. I think most critics have analyzed it as being a reaction to WWII, the pessimism that followed in its wake, etc. There are any number of different thesis about it (Alan Silver has written some great books about noir.), but much of what I've read generally comes down to the idea of a deterministic universe. Many noir are about characters being buffeted around by outside forces, cutting their way through information to find the truth. The aesthetic, obviously, has had a wide-ranging influence. Those spooky shadows, cynical detectives, trench coats and fedoras, etc. have obviously proven influential in way more films than any of us can count. I might have to get DI and TOE on Amazon. I was hoping that we'd get it in at work, but that was probably a pretty vain hope. Great stuff.

Actually they got the term from a French publisher that put out a lot of American hardboiled fiction under the imprint "Serie Noir," similar to how Italians published American and British mysteries with yellow covers, leading to the term "giallo".

In graduate school I did a paper on critical reaction to film noir at the time the films came out, i.e. before there was even a term for these films. I did locate the French essay that first used the term (in the 1950s), but I'd have to dig out that paper to see exactly when and where it appeared.

But my research indicated that a number of American critics/commentators definitely noted a trend and most of them were quite critical of it and were worried about these films' effects on an audience's morals. Bosley Crowther in The New York Times called them "homicidal melodramas." James Agee reacted to the criticism by defending a number of the films and their skeptical views of the legal system. Crowther once complained about a youthful member of the audience's enthusiastic reaction to a maneuver by James Cagney in WHITE HEAT. Fascinating stuff.