Film noir in color

by lora-31 | created - 20 Dec 2011 | updated - 01 Dec 2012 | Public

Contrary to its name, film noir can (or could, if we restrict the timeframe to the period from the 1940s to the 1950s) be set in daytime (High Noon, 1952) or shot in color. Here is my list of color films noirs. Only classic noir era (1940s to 1950s) is covered.

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1. Leave Her to Heaven (1945)

Passed | 110 min | Drama, Film-Noir, Romance

A writer falls in love with a young socialite and they're soon married, but her obsessive love for him threatens to be the undoing of them both as well as everyone around them.

Director: John M. Stahl | Stars: Gene Tierney, Cornel Wilde, Jeanne Crain, Vincent Price

Votes: 14,770

2. Desert Fury (1947)

Approved | 96 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir

The daughter of a Nevada casino owner gets involved with a racketeer, despite everyone's efforts to separate them.

Director: Lewis Allen | Stars: John Hodiak, Lizabeth Scott, Burt Lancaster, Wendell Corey

Votes: 1,972

3. Rope (1948)

Approved | 80 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery

73 Metascore

Two men attempt to prove they committed the perfect crime by hosting a dinner party after strangling their former classmate to death.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: James Stewart, John Dall, Farley Granger, Dick Hogan

Votes: 153,572

4. Niagara (1953)

Not Rated | 92 min | Film-Noir, Thriller

70 Metascore

As two couples are visiting Niagara Falls, tensions between one wife and her husband reach the level of murder.

Director: Henry Hathaway | Stars: Marilyn Monroe, Joseph Cotten, Jean Peters, Max Showalter

Votes: 19,728

5. Inferno (1953)

Approved | 83 min | Crime, Drama, Romance

A tough, hard-driving business tycoon suffers a broken leg and is left to die in the desert by his scheming wife and her greedy lover.

Director: Roy Ward Baker | Stars: Robert Ryan, Rhonda Fleming, William Lundigan, Larry Keating

Votes: 1,799

6. Second Chance (1953)

Approved | 82 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir

Mobster Vic Spalato's girlfriend Claire is in hiding in Mexico and she's willing to testify for a US Senate investigation committee, if she can make it back to the US alive.

Director: Rudolph Maté | Stars: Robert Mitchum, Jack Palance, Linda Darnell, Sandro Giglio

Votes: 1,300

7. Black Widow (1954)

Approved | 95 min | Drama, Film-Noir, Mystery

A young writer insinuates herself into the life of a Broadway producer.

Director: Nunnally Johnson | Stars: Ginger Rogers, Van Heflin, Gene Tierney, George Raft

Votes: 3,242

8. Dangerous Mission (1954)

Approved | 75 min | Action, Crime, Film-Noir

A policeman tries to protect a young woman against a hit man, when she flees New York after witnessing a mob killing.

Director: Louis King | Stars: Victor Mature, Piper Laurie, William Bendix, Vincent Price

Votes: 920

9. Rear Window (1954)

PG | 112 min | Mystery, Thriller

100 Metascore

A wheelchair-bound photographer spies on his neighbors from his Greenwich Village courtyard apartment window and, despite the skepticism of his fashion-model girlfriend, becomes convinced one of them has committed murder.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey, Thelma Ritter

Votes: 521,905 | Gross: $36.76M

10. Dial M for Murder (1954)

PG | 105 min | Crime, Thriller

75 Metascore

A former tennis star arranges the murder of his adulterous wife.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: Ray Milland, Grace Kelly, Robert Cummings, John Williams

Votes: 188,722 | Gross: $0.01M

11. Silver Lode (1954)

Approved | 81 min | Western

In the western town of Silver Lode, Dan Ballard is arrested for murder and theft by marshals, but he denies the charges and searches for the real culprit as the townsfolk gradually turn against him.

Director: Allan Dwan | Stars: John Payne, Lizabeth Scott, Dan Duryea, Dolores Moran

Votes: 2,299

12. Johnny Guitar (1954)

Not Rated | 110 min | Drama, Western

83 Metascore

After helping a wounded gang member, a strong-willed female saloon owner is wrongly suspected of murder and bank robbery by a lynch mob.

Director: Nicholas Ray | Stars: Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, Mercedes McCambridge, Scott Brady

Votes: 19,741

13. Three Hours to Kill (1954)

Approved | 77 min | Western

Framed for murder, Jim Guthrie barely escapes lynching by the town mob, becomes a wanted fugitive for three years but returns to find the real killer.

Director: Alfred L. Werker | Stars: Dana Andrews, Donna Reed, Dianne Foster, Stephen Elliott

Votes: 914

14. Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)

Passed | 81 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery

A one-armed stranger comes to a tiny town possessing a terrible past they want to keep secret, by violent means if necessary.

Director: John Sturges | Stars: Spencer Tracy, Robert Ryan, Anne Francis, Dean Jagger

Votes: 24,247

15. Hell's Island (1955)

Approved | 84 min | Adventure, Drama, Film-Noir

Down-on-his-luck Mike Cormack is hired to fly to a Caribbean island to retrieve a missing ruby. On the island, possibly involved with the ruby's disappearance, is his ex-girlfriend.

Director: Phil Karlson | Stars: John Payne, Mary Murphy, Francis L. Sullivan, Eduardo Noriega

Votes: 416

16. House of Bamboo (1955)

Approved | 102 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir

Planted in a Tokyo crime syndicate, a U.S. Army Investigator attempts to probe the coinciding death of a fellow Army official.

Director: Samuel Fuller | Stars: Robert Ryan, Robert Stack, Shirley Yamaguchi, Cameron Mitchell

Votes: 4,092

17. I Died a Thousand Times (1955)

Passed | 109 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir

After aging criminal Roy Earle is released from prison he decides to pull one last heist before retiring - by robbing a resort hotel.

Director: Stuart Heisler | Stars: Jack Palance, Shelley Winters, Lori Nelson, Lee Marvin

Votes: 1,617

18. Violent Saturday (1955)

Not Rated | 90 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir

Three hoodlums carefully case a small town while planning to rob the bank on the upcoming Saturday. On Saturday, things turn violent and deadly.

Director: Richard Fleischer | Stars: Victor Mature, Richard Egan, Stephen McNally, Virginia Leith

Votes: 2,862

19. Hell on Frisco Bay (1955)

Unrated | 99 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir

After 5 years in prison, ex-cop Steve Rollins is paroled and searches for the San Francisco mobsters who framed him for manslaughter.

Director: Frank Tuttle | Stars: Alan Ladd, Edward G. Robinson, Joanne Dru, William Demarest

Votes: 733

20. A Man Alone (1955)

Approved | 96 min | Western

A gunfighter's main hope lies in the trust of a beautiful woman who hides him out when he is wrongly suspected of a stagecoach massacre.

Director: Ray Milland | Stars: Ray Milland, Mary Murphy, Ward Bond, Raymond Burr

Votes: 1,255

21. The Violent Men (1955)

Approved | 96 min | Western

A bitter land dispute causes a Civil War veteran to take extreme action.

Director: Rudolph Maté | Stars: Glenn Ford, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson, Dianne Foster

Votes: 3,339

22. The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)

PG | 120 min | Drama, Thriller

76 Metascore

An American doctor and his wife, a former singing star, witness a murder while vacationing in Morocco, and are drawn into a twisting plot of international intrigue when their young son is kidnapped.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: James Stewart, Doris Day, Brenda de Banzie, Bernard Miles

Votes: 69,537 | Gross: $10.25M

23. Slightly Scarlet (1956)

Passed | 99 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir

An urban wheeler-dealer gets involved in organized crime, corrupt city politics and graft while falling in love with the fiancée of the newly elected mayor.

Director: Allan Dwan | Stars: John Payne, Rhonda Fleming, Arlene Dahl, Kent Taylor

Votes: 1,288

24. A Kiss Before Dying (1956)

Approved | 94 min | Crime, Film-Noir, Mystery

A ruthless college student resorts to murder in an attempt to marry an heiress.

Director: Gerd Oswald | Stars: Robert Wagner, Jeffrey Hunter, Virginia Leith, Joanne Woodward

Votes: 4,323

25. Accused of Murder (1956)

Approved | 74 min | Film-Noir, Mystery

Police detective falls for singer, gets involved with gangster killing.

Director: Joseph Kane | Stars: David Brian, Vera Ralston, Sidney Blackmer, Virginia Grey

Votes: 393

26. The Unholy Wife (1957)

Passed | 94 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir

A gold-digger floozy marries a wealthy wine producer but she secretly takes a young lover with whom she conspires to murder her husband for his fortune.

Director: John Farrow | Stars: Diana Dors, Rod Steiger, Tom Tryon, Beulah Bondi

Votes: 628

27. The Bravados (1958)

Approved | 98 min | Drama, Western

A man is chasing four outlaws who killed his wife and finds them in a small town's jail, but they escape to Mexico.

Director: Henry King | Stars: Gregory Peck, Joan Collins, Stephen Boyd, Albert Salmi

Votes: 6,397

28. Man of the West (1958)

Not Rated | 100 min | Western

A reformed outlaw becomes stranded after an aborted train robbery with two other passengers and is forced to rejoin his old outlaw band.

Director: Anthony Mann | Stars: Gary Cooper, Julie London, Lee J. Cobb, Arthur O'Connell

Votes: 9,158

29. Party Girl (1958)

Approved | 99 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir

Lawyer Tommy Farrell is a defender of crooks. Vicki Gaye encourages him to go straight, but mob king Rico Angelo insists otherwise.

Director: Nicholas Ray | Stars: Robert Taylor, Cyd Charisse, Lee J. Cobb, John Ireland

Votes: 3,746

30. Vertigo (1958)

PG | 128 min | Mystery, Romance, Thriller

100 Metascore

A former San Francisco police detective juggles wrestling with his personal demons and becoming obsessed with the hauntingly beautiful woman he has been hired to trail, who may be deeply disturbed.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes, Tom Helmore

Votes: 426,754 | Gross: $3.20M

31. The Trap (1959)

Not Rated | 84 min | Action, Crime, Drama

In a remote Californian desert town, a lawyer arranges for a wanted mobster to skip the country via a small airstrip but the local sheriff and his deputy could pose a problem.

Director: Norman Panama | Stars: Richard Widmark, Lee J. Cobb, Tina Louise, Earl Holliman

Votes: 691

32. Foreign Intrigue (1956)

Approved | 100 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery

When a reclusive, enigmatic millionaire dies suddenly on the Riviera, his press agent begins to investigate his employer's shady past.

Director: Sheldon Reynolds | Stars: Robert Mitchum, Geneviève Page, Ingrid Thulin, Frédéric O'Brady

Votes: 1,449



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