Top 10 Neo Noirs

Neo Noir is a blanket term used to describe film noirs produced after the classic period 1940 – 1958 (this time frame takes Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil (1958) as the end of the classic period). The trouble with defining neo noir goes back to the problems defining film noir itself, what is it, what does it mean what does the definition of the term cover – does it include serial killer films, horror? I define film noir as films that have a pervasive darkness – literal, physical and moral, a fatalistic tone and a pervasive sense of predetermination. Neo noir continues the look and feel of film noir, but there are distinct divisions within neo noir itself; retro noir recreates the period, costumes and mood of classic era film noir often following the classic noir template of private detective led astray by a femme fatale, complete with voice-over and flashbacks i.e. Chinatown (1974); straight neo noir takes the narrative and stylistic conventions and places them firmly within a contemporary setting i.e. Body Heat (1981); and revisionist noir takes the conventions of noir and either twists them or shifts them into a different genre i.e. Blade Runner (1982).

Read More: Behind the Venetian Blinds: A Peek at Great Film-Noir Movies

10. The Last Seduction (1994)

The Last Seduction illustrates one of the key differences between film noir and neo noir, where the femme fatale not only escapes punishment for her crimes but emerges triumphant. Linda Fiorentino’s Bridget is a classic neo noir femme fatale; she is ruthless and vengeful and casually manipulates a weaker male character into helping her murder her husband.

9: Body Heat (1981)

Like The Last Seduction, Body Heat is a classic example of the weak male character who is easily manipulated by a seductive femme fatale (in this case into killing her husband and taking the blame). In many ways Body Heat plays like an eighties version of Double Indemnity (1944) complete with explicit sex scenes.

8. Dark City (1998)

The hyper-stylised Dark City is a science fiction noir that echoes the origins of noir (German Expressionism) in its expressionistic visuals and disconcerting narrative that questions the nature of reality, it is both existential and brooding. The central character searches for his identity in a city where the inhabitants have their identities and memories randomly adjusted by aliens.

7. Devil in a Blue Dress (1995)

Retro noir set in 1940s/50s Los Angeles based on a novel by Walter Mosley, featuring the laid back Easy Rawlins, a recently unemployed  labourer who is persuaded by his friends to help find a missing woman. The narrative deals directly with the underlying racism of the era and is classically noirish with the reluctant detective trailing a mystery woman through the underworld of his city.

6. Le Samourai (1967)

Noir was not a purely American phenomenon nor is neo noir. This elegant austere French noir by master director Jean-Pierre Melville is a minimalist exercise in pure style. The narrative follows an assassin whose carefully structured life begins to crumble when he finds himself unable to kill a witness.

5. Blade Runner (1982)

Seamlessly combines futuristic sci-fi with a classic noir narrative, and brooding noir visual stylings. A detective tasked with tracking down a rogue group of replicants (robots who attempt to pass for human) falls obsessively in love with a replicant and finds himself caught between his own beliefs and the replicants’ desire for a real life.

4. Memento (2000)

Revisionist noir, Christopher Nolan’s film takes a basic revenge narrative and twists it to the point of fragmentation, mirroring the disjointed perception of the central character Leonard Shelby who is unable to make short memories but obsessively searches for the man who killed his wife.

3. Point Blank (1967)

Both contemporary and revisionist Point Blank is a revenge narrative set in a gleaming hard edged city, that may be read as the fantasy of a dying man. Walker is shot point blank by his partner after a heist, only to rise as if from the dead and take slow and brutal revenge.

2. Chinatown (1974)

Elegant retro noir whose gleaming surfaces belie the darkness of its subtexts, Chinatown is a film that not only illustrates the powerful role played by the past in noir, but gives it an almost physical quality. Private detective, J. J. Gittes and femme fatale, Evelyn Mulwray, who emerges as tragic rather than deadly, are trapped by their pasts as is by implication, the city of Los Angeles itself.

1. L.A. Confidential (1997)

L.A. Confidential is a retro noir that meticulously recreates the 1950s setting as well as the convoluted plotting, moral ambiguity and fatalistic tone of classic noir. The narrative follows three protagonists, all cops who find themselves investigating a case from different angles and who find themselves caught up in different ways in the corruption of the police force and the city of L.A. which is contrasted with the artificial glamour of Hollywood, the effect is of a web of predetermination from which escape is almost impossible.