Film Noir: Obsession.
by seymourblack-1 | created - 14 Nov 2019 | updated - 01 Apr 2022 | PublicMovies featuring characters who are consumed by powerful obsessions.
- Instant Watch Options
- Genres
- Movies or TV
- IMDb Rating
- In Theaters
- Release Year
- Keywords
1. Vertigo (1958)
PG | 128 min | Mystery, Romance, Thriller
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: 426,757 | Gross: $3.20M
2. The Hidden Room (1949)
Approved | 96 min | Crime, Film-Noir, Thriller
Clive Riordan plans a devilish revenge against his wife's lover.
Director: Edward Dmytryk | Stars: Robert Newton, Sally Gray, Phil Brown, Naunton Wayne
Votes: 2,674
3. The Lady from Shanghai (1947)
Not Rated | 87 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
Fascinated by gorgeous Mrs. Bannister, seaman Michael O'Hara joins a bizarre yachting cruise, and ends up mired in a complex murder plot.
Director: Orson Welles | Stars: Rita Hayworth, Orson Welles, Everett Sloane, Glenn Anders
Votes: 33,297 | Gross: $0.01M
4. 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
5. Laura (1944)
Passed | 88 min | Drama, Film-Noir, Mystery
A police detective falls in love with the woman whose murder he is investigating.
Directors: Otto Preminger, Rouben Mamoulian | Stars: Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb, Vincent Price
Votes: 51,399 | Gross: $4.36M
6. The Woman in the Window (1944)
Passed | 107 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
When a conservative middle aged professor engages in a relationship with a femme fatale, he's plunged into a nightmarish world of blackmail and murder.
Director: Fritz Lang | Stars: Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, Raymond Massey, Edmund Breon
Votes: 17,769
7. Obsession (1943)
TV-14 | 140 min | Crime, Drama, Romance
Gino, a drifter, begins an affair with inn-owner Giovanna, and they plan to get rid of her older husband.
Director: Luchino Visconti | Stars: Clara Calamai, Massimo Girotti, Dhia Cristiani, Elio Marcuzzo
Votes: 8,274
8. Angel Face (1952)
Approved | 91 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
Ambulance driver Frank Jessup is ensnared in the schemes of the sensuous but dangerous Diane Tremayne.
Director: Otto Preminger | Stars: Robert Mitchum, Jean Simmons, Mona Freeman, Herbert Marshall
Votes: 9,023
9. Criss Cross (1949)
Not Rated | 84 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
An armored truck driver and his ex-wife conspire with a gang to have his own truck robbed on the route.
Director: Robert Siodmak | Stars: Burt Lancaster, Yvonne De Carlo, Dan Duryea, Stephen McNally
Votes: 9,597
10. Possessed (1947)
Approved | 108 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
After being found wandering the streets of Los Angeles, a severely catatonic woman tells a doctor the complex story of how she wound up there.
Director: Curtis Bernhardt | Stars: Joan Crawford, Van Heflin, Raymond Massey, Geraldine Brooks
Votes: 5,911 | Gross: $1.99M
11. The Big Combo (1955)
Not Rated | 87 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
A police lieutenant is ordered to stop investigating deadly crime boss Mr. Brown because he hasn't been able to get any hard evidence against him. He goes after Brown's girlfriend, who despises him, for information instead.
Director: Joseph H. Lewis | Stars: Cornel Wilde, Richard Conte, Jean Wallace, Brian Donlevy
Votes: 8,619
12. Road House (1948)
Passed | 95 min | Action, Drama, Film-Noir
A night club owner becomes infatuated with a torch singer and frames his best friend/manager for embezzlement when the chanteuse falls in love with him.
Director: Jean Negulesco | Stars: Ida Lupino, Cornel Wilde, Celeste Holm, Richard Widmark
Votes: 3,160
13. Shockproof (1949)
Approved | 79 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
A parole officer falls in love with his client, a ravishing blonde who served time for murder, and he's determined to help her go straight despite her interfering criminal boyfriend.
Director: Douglas Sirk | Stars: Cornel Wilde, Patricia Knight, John Baragrey, Esther Minciotti
Votes: 2,292
14. Scarlet Street (1945)
Approved | 102 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
A man in mid-life crisis befriends a young woman, though her fiancé persuades her to con him out of the fortune they mistakenly assume he possesses.
Director: Fritz Lang | Stars: Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, Dan Duryea, Margaret Lindsay
Votes: 19,169
15. Rebecca (1940)
Approved | 130 min | Drama, Mystery, Romance
A self-conscious woman juggles adjusting to her new role as an aristocrat's wife and avoiding being intimidated by his first wife's spectral presence.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, George Sanders, Judith Anderson
Votes: 146,673 | Gross: $4.36M
16. Double Indemnity (1944)
Passed | 107 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
A Los Angeles insurance representative lets an alluring housewife seduce him into a scheme of insurance fraud and murder that arouses the suspicion of his colleague, an insurance investigator.
Director: Billy Wilder | Stars: Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson, Byron Barr
Votes: 167,407 | Gross: $5.72M
17. The Killers (1946)
Passed | 103 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
Hit men kill an unresisting victim, and investigator Reardon uncovers his past involvement with beautiful, deadly Kitty Collins.
Director: Robert Siodmak | Stars: Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, Edmond O'Brien, Albert Dekker
Votes: 23,627
18. Cry Vengeance (1954)
Not Rated | 82 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
Violent ex-cop Vic Barron comes to Ketchikan, Alaska seeking revenge on an old enemy.
Director: Mark Stevens | Stars: Mark Stevens, Martha Hyer, Skip Homeier, Joan Vohs
Votes: 624
19. The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)
Passed | 113 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
A married woman and a drifter fall in love and then plot to murder her husband.
Director: Tay Garnett | Stars: Lana Turner, John Garfield, Cecil Kellaway, Hume Cronyn
Votes: 22,870 | Gross: $8.33M
20. Tension (1949)
Passed | 95 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
A meek pharmacist creates an alternate identity under which he plans to murder the bullying liquor salesman who has become his wife's lover.
Director: John Berry | Stars: Richard Basehart, Audrey Totter, Cyd Charisse, Barry Sullivan
Votes: 3,575
21. Pushover (1954)
Passed | 88 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
An undercover police officer falls for the beautiful moll of a bank robber on the run, and together they plan to double-cross the hood and the cops.
Director: Richard Quine | Stars: Fred MacMurray, Kim Novak, Philip Carey, Dorothy Malone
Votes: 4,115
22. The Damned Don't Cry (1950)
Approved | 103 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
A New York socialite climbs the ladder of success man by man until a life among rich gangsters gives her what she thought she always wanted.
Director: Vincent Sherman | Stars: Joan Crawford, David Brian, Steve Cochran, Kent Smith
Votes: 3,550 | Gross: $1.54M
23. A Dangerous Profession (1949)
Approved | 79 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
LA ex-cop Vince Kane is a bail-bondsman who bails out the suspect of a securities bonds robbery but his client disappears, prompting Vince to investigate.
Director: Ted Tetzlaff | Stars: George Raft, Ella Raines, Pat O'Brien, Bill Williams
Votes: 745
24. Born to Kill (1947)
Approved | 92 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
A calculating divorcée risks her chances at wealth and security with a man she doesn't love by getting involved with the hotheaded murderer romancing her foster sister.
Director: Robert Wise | Stars: Claire Trevor, Lawrence Tierney, Walter Slezak, Phillip Terry
Votes: 6,058
25. Secret Beyond the Door... (1947)
Not Rated | 99 min | Drama, Film-Noir, Mystery
After a lovely woman and her new husband settle in an ancient mansion on the East coast, she discovers that he may want to kill her.
Director: Fritz Lang | Stars: Joan Bennett, Michael Redgrave, Anne Revere, Barbara O'Neil
Votes: 5,710
26. Undercurrent (1946)
Passed | 116 min | Drama, Film-Noir, Thriller
Middle-aged bride Ann Hamilton soon begins to suspect that her charming husband is really a psychotic who plans to murder her.
Director: Vincente Minnelli | Stars: Katharine Hepburn, Robert Taylor, Robert Mitchum, Edmund Gwenn
Votes: 3,530
27. Human Desire (1954)
Not Rated | 91 min | Drama, Film-Noir, Romance
A Korean War vet returns to his job as a railroad engineer and becomes involved in an affair with a co-worker's wife following a murder on a train where they meet.
Director: Fritz Lang | Stars: Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Broderick Crawford, Edgar Buchanan
Votes: 6,343
28. Rear Window (1954)
PG | 112 min | Mystery, Thriller
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: 521,907 | Gross: $36.76M
29. The Red House (1947)
Approved | 100 min | Drama, Film-Noir, Mystery
An old man and his sister are concealing a terrible secret from their adopted teen daughter, concerning a hidden abandoned farmhouse, located deep in the woods.
Director: Delmer Daves | Stars: Edward G. Robinson, Lon McCallister, Judith Anderson, Rory Calhoun
Votes: 4,949
30. I Wake Up Screaming (1941)
Passed | 82 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
Why is Inspector Ed Cornell trying to railroad Frankie Christopher for the murder of model Vicky Lynn?
Director: H. Bruce Humberstone | Stars: Betty Grable, Victor Mature, Carole Landis, Laird Cregar
Votes: 5,374
31. Deadline at Dawn (1946)
Passed | 83 min | Crime, Film-Noir, Mystery
After a woman he meets is murdered, a soon-to-ship-out sailor has until dawn to find the killer, aided by a weary dance hall girl.
Directors: Harold Clurman, William Cameron Menzies | Stars: Susan Hayward, Paul Lukas, Bill Williams, Joseph Calleia
Votes: 2,134
32. The Sniper (1952)
Approved | 88 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
A sniper kills young brunettes as the police attempt to grapple with the psychology of the unknown assailant.
Director: Edward Dmytryk | Stars: Arthur Franz, Adolphe Menjou, Gerald Mohr, Marie Windsor
Votes: 3,740
33. The Prowler (1951)
Approved | 92 min | Drama, Film-Noir, Thriller
After Susan Gilvray reports a prowler outside her house police officer Webb Garwood investigates and sparks fly. If only her husband wasn't in the way.
Director: Joseph Losey | Stars: Van Heflin, Evelyn Keyes, John Maxwell, Katherine Warren
Votes: 4,085
34. Witness to Murder (1954)
Approved | 83 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
A woman's sanity comes into question, after she claims to have witnessed a murder from her apartment window.
Director: Roy Rowland | Stars: Barbara Stanwyck, George Sanders, Gary Merrill, Jesse White
Votes: 3,434
35. Backfire (1950)
Passed | 91 min | Crime, Film-Noir, Mystery
While recuperating from wartime back injuries at a hospital, veteran Bob Corey is visited on Christmas Eve by a beautiful stranger with an even stranger message.
Director: Vincent Sherman | Stars: Viveca Lindfors, Dane Clark, Virginia Mayo, Edmond O'Brien
Votes: 1,790
36. Follow Me Quietly (1949)
Not Rated | 60 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
An obsessed cop tracks an elusive serial killer who strangles his victims on rainy nights.
Director: Richard Fleischer | Stars: William Lundigan, Dorothy Patrick, Jeff Corey, Nestor Paiva
Votes: 1,743
37. Fallen Angel (1945)
Approved | 98 min | Crime, Film-Noir, Mystery
A slick con man arrives in a small town looking to make some money, but soon gets more than he bargained for.
Director: Otto Preminger | Stars: Alice Faye, Dana Andrews, Linda Darnell, Charles Bickford
Votes: 6,511
Tell Your Friends