What is the best film noir?

By IQ Score on TV Intelligentsia, Chinatown (1974), The Third Man (1949), and L.A. Confidential (1997) anchor the canon. Mulholland Drive (2001), Sunset Boulevard (1950), and Double Indemnity (1944) round out the canonical entries from both the classical and neo-noir eras.

How does TVI rank noir?

Every noir is scored on the same rubric. The rubric reads which films treat noir's structural commitments (moral architecture, fatalism, urban-American class material, expressionist visual register) as actual subject and which use noir as setting decoration for thriller plot.

Film Noir · Ranked

Best Film Noir, Ranked by IQ Score

From classical-Hollywood noir (Double Indemnity) to neo-noir (Chinatown, L.A. Confidential). Ranked.

Film noir is American cinema's most-canonical mid-20th-century genre. The classical era (roughly 1944-1958) produced the canonical-form entries (Double Indemnity, The Maltese Falcon, Out of the Past, Touch of Evil). The neo-noir era (roughly 1974-onward) produced the genre's most-canonical American auteur work (Chinatown, L.A. Confidential, Mulholland Drive, No Country for Old Men).

Anchor picks: Chinatown (1974, Polanski) — the canonical neo-noir text. L.A. Confidential (1997, Hanson) — the canonical late-1990s neo-noir. Mulholland Drive (Lynch, 2001). Sunset Boulevard (Wilder, 1950). Double Indemnity (Wilder, 1944).

15 titles · ranked by IQ Score