ICM Forum's Favorite Film Noirs, 2nd Edition; Nominations

[Lonewolf2003]

iCM Forum's Favorite Film Noirs
2nd Edition
Nominations

Film noir, or noir for short, was originally a moniker retroactively giving to a certain type of American movies from the 40s and 50s by French critics. It's therefor a unusual "genre", cause it probably wasn't until the rise of neo-noirs in the 60s-70s that a filmmaker actively set out to make a noir (like one would with other genres). Since the term first been coined, the definition been debated, its characteristics discussed and the movies being considered broadened. It's debatable if it actually is a genre, or a style, cycle, phenomenon, mood or series. Like film historian Mark Bould said film noir remains an "elusive phenomenon ... always just out of reach". Or like Kim Newman said noirs are like porn, they're hard to define but one knows one when one sees it. While film noir will be subject to endless debates, it is is defined "not by a fundamental attribute, but by a general disposition and a group of elements, some—but rarely and perhaps never all—of which are found in each of the genre's films." That's why we will try to choose our favorite film noirs again.

Because noir is such a tricky "genre" to define, when you feel a movie is eligible (and a favorite according to your own definition) than you can include it. When in doubt about a movie you can ask others about it here of course.

DEADLINE = January 3rd 2023

• IMDb- or iCM-lists are accepted. (If you can't make one of those, ask another user to help you out.)
• Lists can be any length.
• Shorts, mini-series and TV-episodes from anthology series where the episodes are unrelated, are allowed. Tv-series aren't allowed.*
  *A mini-series is 16 episodes or less, not multiple seasons, and not planned to be longer but canceled, and is intended as a single unified work and not episodic.
• Each nominee can only be named once (of course)
• Lists can be ranked or unranked or partially-ranked. In a partially-ranked list, the top X films are ranked and everything after that point is unranked. When not specified I will consider a list as ranked.

Some help:
Noirs you rated on IMDb
Like always, use this at your own discretion; not all movies mentioned you might consider noirs and some you would could be missing.

Last edition from 2015:

Top List	Full Or Extended List	Result Thread	Nomination Thread
Top 150	Complete List	Results Thread	Nominations Thread

Voters (43)

Perception de Ambiguity
klaus78 (unranked)
Caracortada
frbrown
zzzorf
mighysparks
TraverseTown
3eyes (unranked)
Mysterious Dude
1SO
Fergenaprido
blocho (unranked)
prodigalgodson
nimimerkillinen
filmbantha
jeff_v
beasterne
rnilsson19
sol
joachimt
AB537 (unranked125)
tommy_leazaq
Melvelet (unranked35)
VincentPrice (unranked)
insomnius (unranked)
OldAle1 (unranked65)
lineuphere
Jimi Antiloop
Good_Will_Harding (unranked20)
murnaunosferatu
Rufus-T
Lammetje (unranked8)
jonas2k
Panunzio
Gordon_Gekko
DudeLanez (unranked)
RogerTheMovieManiac88 (unranked)
Leopardi
ororama
Silga
Mifune
Opio
Lonewolf2003 (unranked70)

Please check if your list is stated, ordered and linked correctly. And is set to public. For iCM lists you can also set it to "Friends" and befriend me. Don't edit your post, but make a new post or at least notify me of the edit in a new post.

[Perception de Ambiguity]

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls566188893/

[klaus78]

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls566028932/ (unranked)

[Caracortada]

ICM Poll: Paint It Noir

[frbrown]

Ranked

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls031782557/

[Torgo]

Cool, 150 films to look forward to which are better than any Godard.

[OldAle1]

Cool, 150 films to look forward to which are better than any Godard.

But how about all the Godard films that can be consider film noir? PARADOX

[Torgo]

In the end, only master Neff knows the answers to this one; I'm merely his disciple.
Or maybe the Breathless conundrum can be solved as once was written:
It was the best of Godards
It was the worst of noirs

[zzzorf]

Here is my ranked list
https://www.icheckmovies.com/lists/my+f ... ir/zzzorf/

[mightysparks]

Ranked: https://www.imdb.com/list/ls031016698/

[TraverseTown]

Still don't know what Noir is but I'll give it a shot

https://www.icheckmovies.com/lists/trav ... versetown/ Ranked

[3eyes]

unranked

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls566340719/

[Mysterious Dude]

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls566275908/ (all ranked)

[1SO]

ranked

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls031139593/

[prodigalgodson]

Sorry if I missed it while searching, but do we have a separate poll for neo-noirs?

[Fergenaprido]

Sorry if I missed it while searching, but do we have a separate poll for neo-noirs?

Nope. They're included in this poll.

[Fergenaprido]

I went to go update my list for this poll.... and discovered I didn't participate last time. I suppose I had seen so few noirs back then that I didn't bother. Which makes sense.

So, here's my list, though it's still a work in progress and I'm hoping to catch another dozen or so before the deadline, depending on how the rest of the month goes.

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls566413593/ (fully ranked)

I still need to add the films I saw for last month's challenge too, plus look at other ballots and see if I left any of the borderline cases out.

Oh, and I've now seen 100 of the Top 150. This is a rare forum list I should be able to platinum eventually.

[blocho]

It's been a long time since the last noir poll. I expanded my list from 45 to 73.

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls031143811/
Unranked

[prodigalgodson]

http://www.imdb.com/list/ls566466892/

Roughly ranked. Tough list to make. I'm not crazy about having Inherent Vice in the top 20 but excluding Out of the Past.

EDIT: Shit, I woke up this morning realizing I forgot to include The Long Goodbye! Sorry Act of Violence, another Ale favorite. Also I decided Road House should be in, so there goes possibly the most iconically-photographed noir The Big Combo.

[Fergenaprido]

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls566466892/

Roughly ranked. Tough list to make. I'm not crazy about having Inherent Vice in the top 20 but excluding Out of the Past.

"This list is not public"

[OldAle1]

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls566466892/

Roughly ranked. Tough list to make. I'm not crazy about having Inherent Vice in the top 20 but excluding Out of the Past.

Me neither. Anybody who doesn't have Out of the Past in their top 20 (top 10, actually) should have their list excluded from the votes. And be horsewhipped.

[prodigalgodson]

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls566466892/

Roughly ranked. Tough list to make. I'm not crazy about having Inherent Vice in the top 20 but excluding Out of the Past.

"This list is not public"

Ah thanks, hopefully fixed now.

[prodigalgodson]

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls566466892/

Roughly ranked. Tough list to make. I'm not crazy about having Inherent Vice in the top 20 but excluding Out of the Past.

Me neither. Anybody who doesn't have Out of the Past in their top 20 (top 10, actually) should have their list excluded from the votes. And be horsewhipped.

Haha. Well I've given it enough chances to wow me.

[nimimerkillinen]

unranked https://www.imdb.com/list/ls566973996/

[filmbantha]

I'm not a huge film-noir fan (most of them tend to blur into one another in my memory after a while) but I have managed to put together a small ranked list of favourites and will be interested in using the results to help broaden my horizons.

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls566965554/

[jeff_v]

My list:
https://www.imdb.com/list/ls031037250/

[beasterne]

Here's my ranked list: https://www.icheckmovies.com/lists/favo ... beasterne/

After looking at the past list and seeing where neo-noirs land, I'm thinking we need to consider having a poll focused specifically on that subgenre. Chinatown at #61 in the last poll is crazy low to me (and it's not even one of my favorites). But I'm sure it's largely to do with voters not wanting to rank it high on their ballot of film noirs. It would have to be near or at the top of a neo-noir poll though.

[rnilsson19]

https://www.icheckmovies.com/lists/film ... /greennui/

[sol]

https://www.icheckmovies.com/lists/noirs/sol-/

RANKED

[joachimt]

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls566893521/

I find it hard to decide which is noir and which isn't so I just filtered my fav-movies-list on:
- genre tag "noir" on IMDb
- included in TSPDT's 1,000 noirs
- top 150 of previous poll

[AB537]

My submission: https://www.icheckmovies.com/lists/ab53 ... lms/ab537/

1-125 ranked, rest unranked.

As others have observed, this is a tricky category to define. Filters I used included IMDB genre tags, the TSPDT noir list, and genre pages from Netflix and Criterion. Also a bit of common sense for films that are clearly noir but slipped through these cracks (e.g. Baltasar Kormakur's Jar City (2006)).

[tommy_leazaq]

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls031169441/

[prodigalgodson]

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls566893521/

I find it hard to decide which is noir and which isn't so I just filtered my fav-movies-list on:
- genre tag "noir" on IMDb
- included in TSPDT's 1,000 noirs
- top 150 of previous poll

Ah yes, what list would be complete without top 3 stalwarts The Bad Sleep Well, Le trou, and Fight Club?

[Melvelet]

https://www.icheckmovies.com/lists/melv ... /melvelet/

Top 35 ranked

[joachimt]

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls566893521/

I find it hard to decide which is noir and which isn't so I just filtered my fav-movies-list on:
- genre tag "noir" on IMDb
- included in TSPDT's 1,000 noirs
- top 150 of previous poll

Ah yes, what list would be complete without top 3 stalwarts The Bad Sleep Well, Le trou, and Fight Club?

I wouldn't mind deleting them, if people don't consider those as noir. They are all on TSPDT's Noir list.

[VincentPrice]

Unranked https://www.imdb.com/list/ls562049260/

[insomnius]

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls566299346/
unranked

[OldAle1]

1-65 ranked, 66+ unranked/chronological. May add a few more before the deadline but this is close.

https://www.icheckmovies.com/lists/film ... zzlehatch/

stats

By decade:

06 - 1930s
99 - 1940s
95 - 1950s
31 - 1960s
21 - 1970s
22 - 1980s
22 - 1990s
20 - 2000s
15 - 2010s
02 - 2020s

By country - somewhere between 225 and 240 are American or co-productions that include the USA. The rest:

27 - France
19 - UK
11 - Japan
10 - Mexico
05 - Canada, Iran
04 - Argentina
03 - Germany/West Germany, South Korea
02 - Egypt, Hong Kong, Philippines, Spain
01 - Australia, Brazil, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Hungary, India, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Tunisia

Top directors (3+ films)

08 - Fritz Lang
06 - Alfred Hitchcock
05 - Coen brothers, Anthony Mann, Jean-Pierre Melville, Robert Siodmak
04 - Brian De Palma, Phil Karlson, David Lynch, Orson Welles, Robert Wise
03 - John Brahm, Henri-Georges Clouzot, David Cronenberg, Cy Endfield, John Farrow, David Fincher, Richard Fleischer, Samuel Fuller, Akira Kurosawa, Ida Lupino, Otto Preminger, Martin Scorsese, Billy Wilder

[lineuphere]

https://www.icheckmovies.com/lists/icm+ ... ineuphere/

[OldAle1]

Here's my ranked list: https://www.icheckmovies.com/lists/favo ... beasterne/

After looking at the past list and seeing where neo-noirs land, I'm thinking we need to consider having a poll focused specifically on that subgenre. Chinatown at #61 in the last poll is crazy low to me (and it's not even one of my favorites). But I'm sure it's largely to do with voters not wanting to rank it high on their ballot of film noirs. It would have to be near or at the top of a neo-noir poll though.

Not sure why we'd need a separate poll; a secondary list could always be created of post-1959 (or whatever year you want to use as a cutoff) films. Then again there might be people willing to participate in a dedicated poll who refuse to put anything outside the classic era on their lists for this poll. And people like me who are frustrated that so many people have such a narrow view of what noir is.

Eh, can't win.