The mysteries? The fraught relationships? The twisty stories and unexpected reveals? Just the overall mood? Here are a few we’d recommend regardless of which subgenre you’re most into. Where to go after the basics? This is where noir fans’ mileage is going to vary most, based on which aspects of noir they like most. More in this category: Le Samouraï, Rififi, Laura, The Third Man, Touch of Evil, The Big Sleep, In a Lonely Place, Chinatown, Night of the Hunter There’s enough going on here to keep anyone guessing up to the last minute. It’s one of the great twist movies - everybody in this film is a potential double-crosser, and MacMurray as an insurance investigator is both tasked with solving the murder he committed and trying to cover it up at the same time. Where to watch: Rentable on Amazon, Vudu, YouTubeĪnother Billy Wilder movie told in flashback, Double Indemnity is one of the great genre-defining femme fatale movies, with Barbara Stanwyck as the lovely lady leading hapless chump Fred MacMurray into an insurance fraud scheme that involves murdering her husband. Still, that also makes it one of those movies where watching it suddenly makes a thousand later cultural references and media in-jokes make sense. A prime example of a noir that’s more about atmosphere, cinematography, and a complicated plot than about edge-of-the-seat thrills, The Maltese Falcon is a moody movie with a lot of great performances, but it’s also one of those films that’s been imitated and iterated on so much that it can feel a bit basic in comparison to its followers. Probably the most famous noir movie of all time, John Huston’s adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 crime movie covers the basics: There’s a hard-bitten detective, Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart), on a case full of twists, turns, and double-crosses a beautiful woman who lures him in and turns out to be full of lies and a McGuffin everyone’s after that turns out to be more than it seems. Where to watch: Rentable on Amazon, Vudu, Apple, YouTube
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