Najlepsze filmy noir do obejrzenia w tym Noirvember

Noirvember isn’t on any list of authoritative holidays, but the informal, social-media-driven movement where cinephiles watch and discuss noir movies in November is picking up steam with streaming services. Criterion Channel, Kanopy, and Tubi are all programming month-long waves of noir films this year, and plenty of local arthouse and repertory theaters are getting in on the act. And for the physical media fans, there are Noirvember sales to consider as well.

Even for Noirvember fans, though, picking a single movie to watch out of 80 years of cinema can be hard — the noir movement started in the 1940s and continues to this day. Polygon is happy to aid narrow down the choices: Here are a fewer favorites we’d propose as any of the best movies to stream in Noirvember 2024 and beyond. (And if you want more suggestions, check out last year’s list as well.)

Where to watch: For digital rental/purchase on Apple TV

The large Joan Crawford gives 1 of her finest performances in this movie from Casablanca director Michael Curtiz. Mildred Pierce follows the complicated relation between a divorcée (Crawford) and her selfish, status-driven daughter (Ann Blyth), who feels ashamed that her parent has to work as a baker to support her family.

This noir is heavier on social drama than crime (even with the framing device of a murder), and it’s anchored by Crawford’s outstanding performance, which earned her a well-deserved Oscar — the only 1 she won. Many years later, the large Todd Haynes besides adapted the first novel, this time into an HBO miniseries starring Kate Winslet. —Pete Volk

Where to watch: YouTube, various free Roku channels, or (probably) at your local library

Alfred Hitchcock’s first American movie is besides 1 of his best, and that’s an extraordinarily advanced bar to clear. Adapted from Daphne du Maurier’s moody novel, which came out just 2 years earlier, Rebecca stars Laurence Olivier as a widower and Joan Fontaine as the fresh wife he’s moving into his vast estate. But the shadow of his first wife, Rebecca, looms large over the grounds, as does the mystery surrounding her death. —PV

Where to watch: For digital rental/purchase on Amazon or free with ads on Tubi

Alfred Hitchcock’s 1951 masterpiece Strangers on a Train sits perfectly at the intersection of noir and horror, as amateur tennis star Guy Haines (Farley Granger) meets a unusual man named Bruno (Robert Walker) during a train ride. Guy is struggling to divorce his promiscuous wife, so Bruno proposes a deal: Bruno will kill Guy’s wife and Guy will kill Bruno’s oppressive father, with each man establishing an airtight alibi during the another man’s murder, and taking advantage of the deficiency of connection between them to guarantee that both murders will stay unsolved.

The deal comes off as a dark joke, but as Guy rapidly learns, Bruno is simply a sociopath who considers their train conversation a sacred pact, and has all intention of carrying it out, whether Guy is on board or not. —Austen Goslin

Where to watch: Prime Video or free with ads on Tubi

No noir has always been so large as The 3rd Man about exploiting noir’s love of consequences for characters who stick their noses where they don’t belong. The movie follows an American writer, Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), who travels to Vienna in search of his friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles). Lime, the author is told, was killed in a traffic accident just a fewer days before. But Martins smells something fishy, and he starts following the scent all the way down a vast conspiratorial rabbit gap that leads him through crimes, cops, and the underside of war-torn Vienna. —AG

Where to watch: For digital rental/purchase on Amazon or free with ads on Tubi

The Asphalt Jungle is simply a spiraling communicative about a conspiratorial gang of crooks assembled to pull off a robbery. erstwhile things go bad — due to the fact that they always do in films like this — the movie chronicles each member’s effort at an escape. Beautifully shot by noir master John Huston (who went on to take a major function in the neo-noir masterpiece Chinatown), The Asphalt Jungle feels like a perfect cementing of the various types of criminals who be in noir.

It’s like Huston has stripped the noir genre down to better examine each part: There are heart-of-gold thugs who can’t let themselves catch a break, hotheads who are destined to go out guns blazing, and criminal masterminds who always keep their hands clean. And someway it all adds up to 1 of the most beautiful and tragic of the classical noirs. —AG

Where to watch: For digital rental/purchase on Amazon, YouTube, Apple TV

One of the classical ür-noirs, Out of the Past touches on practically all noir staple you can think of: the weary PI who falls for the dame he’s expected to investigate, the double-dealing femme fatale who plays him for a chump, the complex storyline where everyone gets a chance to betray everyone else, and the twists that come fast and furious. But it’s besides the kind of movie where everyone talks with a smirk, delivering a series of memorable one-liners as they keep revealing more motivations and deeper layers.

Robert Mitchum stars as the detective dispatched to pursuit the runaway thief girlfriend (Jane Greer) of a disgruntled mobster (Kirk Douglas): Their communicative plays out in 2 timelines over 2 jobs, as the past and present collide. The sheer number of switchups can be dizzying, but manager Jacques Tourneur (Cat People) pulls it off with style. —TR

Where to watch: For digital rental/purchase on Amazon, Apple TV, Fandango

Humphrey Bogart had a reputation as 1 of the noir era’s signature weary, cynical tough guys, but this mesmerizing crime thriller is simply a reminder that he wasn’t a large man, or even necessarily a physically commanding one: He usually dominated the screen with calm and charisma. Here, Bogart plays an Army vet trapped in a hotel with a group of mobsters who’ve taken the residents hostage while waiting to lock down a deal. Locked into a situation that compromises both his safety and his dignity, he keeps his cool and finds ways to aid another people. It’s another John Huston classical built around fantastic tension and slow-burn suspense that pays off in satisfying ways that look nothing like the way this communicative would play out in the post-Die hard era. —TR

Where to watch: Free on Tubi, Plex, or Xumo, with a subscription on MGM Plus or Fandor

Tay Garnett’s 1951 noir melodrama, based on an earlier radio play, lays out a nightmare script on a small, individual scale: After planet War II, young wartime bride Ellen (Loretta Young) finds her husband’s physical and intellectual wellness disintegrating, to the point where he decides she’s poisoning him and that he’s justified in killing her. erstwhile he writes a letter accusing her of plotting his death, and she unwittingly mails it, she has to figure out both how to recover the letter and how to deal with his dangerous paranoia and the fallout from his effort on her life.

There’s a Hitchcockian edge to the way writers Mel Dinelli and Tom Lewis contrast Ellen’s desperation and her high-stakes situation with the banal day-to-day of a ’50s suburb. Desperately trying to halt the letter in transit while trying to keep up a cheery all-is-well front, Ellen feels like a precursor to all dark-suburban-secrets thriller of later decades, and a wry pushback against the clichéd image of 1950s Americana. —TR

Where to watch: For digital rental/purchase on Apple TV

The large manager Nicholas Ray (Rebel Without a Cause) made many large noirs — They Live by Night, In a Lonely Place, even a “Western noir” in the fantastic Johnny Guitar — but 1 of my favorites is the thorny 1951 drama On Dangerous Ground. Starring Ida Lupino (herself a large director, and the first female to direct a mainstream movie noir, The Hitch-Hiker) and Robert Ryan, it follows a violent police officer (Ryan) sent distant from his territory due to his behavior, and a blind female (Lupino) he meets during an investigation. It is, essentially, a movie about trust, pairing a bitter man incapable to trust anyone with a female forced to trust everyone. The movie is 1 of Martin Scorsese’s favorites, and was a large influence for Taxi Driver. —PV

Where to watch: For digital rental/purchase on Apple TV

Barbara Stanwyck was a singular Hollywood star, transitioning from Broadway to the movies erstwhile sound was introduced to the form. 1 of my favorites of hers is this paranoid noir thriller about a female who accidentally overhears a execution game on her phone. A predecessor to akin movies like The Conversation and Blow-Up, it’s a fantastic showcase for Stanwyck’s unique star power, and it earned her a 4th Best actor nomination at the Academy Awards. —PV

Where to watch: Prime Video or free with ads on Freevee

Robert Altman’s beloved 1973 neo-noir The Long Goodbye feels like 1 of the genre’s first tiny steps into revisionism, with all the acquainted tropes twisted into creative fresh forms for a changed era. The movie follows Raymond Chandler’s classical private detective Philip Marlowe (Elliott Gould). Here, he’s all bit as smooth-talking as the noir heroes that came before him, but sleepier and a small lazier, without an ounce of their ambition. It’s a perfect ’70s evolution of the version of the character Humphrey Bogart played in The large Sleep.

There’s no chip on Marlowe’s shoulder in this iteration of the character, and he isn’t pursuing the femme fatale (Nina van Pallandt) who involves him in the movie’s messy case. He’s just trying to make a living, and everything else is unfortunate circumstance. All these changes let The Long Goodbye feel like a classical noir that simply got the incorrect protagonist, which makes the full thing fun, even erstwhile Marlowe stumbles besides far into the deep end of a criminal venture, a destiny not even a neo-noir PI can avoid. —AG

Where to watch: Fubo tv or for digital rental/purchase on Amazon

Chinatown might be the most perfect, prototypical neo-noir. It stars Jack Nicholson as the kind of slick-talking, smarmy private eye who could have walked onto the 1974 set straight from the ’50s: The planet seems to have quietly passed him by. alternatively of individual conspiracies and small-time scams, Nicholson’s character stumbles into private tragedy, and the realization that powers larger than he can imagine might be rigging the full strategy against people like him. Chinatown is bigger, darker, and queasier than the noir movies that came before it, ushering the genre into the cynical paranoia of 1970s cinema. —AG

Where to watch: Criterion Channel, or for digital rental/purchase on Amazon, Apple TV, YouTube

Nobody does neo-noir like the Coen brothers: They operate in quite a few different modes, from black-and-white throwback (The Man Who Wasn’t There) to genre-redefining updates (last year’s neo-noir choice Blood Simple, or the PI-reimagined classical Fargo) to deliriously weird comedy (Raising Arizona). In each case, their knack for specificity in characters and dialog gives their films a snap no 1 else can match. Miller’s Crossing is 1 of their all-time greats, and at the same time 1 of their more conventional, play-it-straight crime movies: Set in 1929, it follows a rivalry between gangster clans, with Gabriel Byrne in an all-time-best function as a flunky caught in the middle. It’s packed with memorable double-crosses and double-dealings, all leading up to 1 of the most memorable finales in the neo-noir canon. —TR

Where to watch: Starz, or available for digital rental/purchase on Fandango, Apple TV, or Google Play Movies

Secretly 1 of the best neo-noirs of the past decade, Graham Moore’s criminally underseen 2022 directorial debut The Outfit gives the lie to the old saw “They just don’t make ’em like that anymore.” This crime drama is set in the 1950s, and feels like it could have been made during that era: There’s no modern flash or action, just a twist-packed, character-focused script that keeps the surprises coming, and a superlative cast pulling it all off.

Quiet, dignified Chicago tailor Leonard (the ever-reliable Mark Rylance) operates a store that mostly services the Irish Mob, and serves as 1 of their cash drops. erstwhile a mobster shows up with a bullet in him and a stolen FBI recording pointing to a rat in the organization, Leonard has to navigate the dangerous face-offs that follow, between distrustful, violent career criminals pointing fingers (and guns, naturally) at each other. It’s a classical game of “Who’s the Martian?” with Leonard and others caught in the crossfire, and adequate nested reveals to keep anyone guessing. —TR

Where to watch: Fubo tv or free with ads on Tubi

Brian De Palma’s 1981 neo-noir follows a foley effects artist, Jack Terry (John Travolta), who’s capturing ambient sound outdoors erstwhile he accidentally records the sound of a politician’s fatal car crash. While he’s able to save the girl in the candidate’s car, the politician himself drowns. On top of that tragedy, the sound Jack recorded suggests the crash might not have been an accident.

Travolta’s character is far from a real detective, but Blow Out slots him into the noir canon perfectly as 1 of its sharpest and most fascinating characters. Blow Out continues the trend of neo-noirs of the 1970s, moving the genre’s conspiracy and paranoia out of the individual realm and into the public one. Among noirs about the seedy, steady degradation of society, there’s never been 1 rather so bleak as Blow Out, a movie that starts with a political assassination conspiracy, then throws in a serial killer who’s more than willing to work for whichever political organization will have him. —AG

Where to watch: For digital rental/purchase on Apple TV

This scintillating neo-noir captures Denzel Washington during the era erstwhile he was ascending the mountain of movie stardom in a superb communicative about postwar racial tensions in Los Angeles, featuring any of the best cinematography of the 1990s.

Denzel is Easy Rawlins, a veteran between jobs, just looking to make adequate money to keep paying his mortgage. erstwhile he’s recruited by a seedy PI for what seems to be simple work, Easy gets pulled into a tangled web of lies and deception that proves phenomenally hard to break out of. With incredible supporting performances from Don Cheadle, Tom Sizemore, and Jennifer Beals, Devil in a Blue Dress is simply a gem of a mystery thriller that does the excellent first fresh justice. —PV

Where to watch: For digital rental/purchase on Apple TV

Gene Hackman, in 1 of his best performances, stars as a private detective and erstwhile football pro who gets hired to find the missing daughter of a erstwhile Hollywood star. As he digs into the case, he finds much more than he bargains for. The movie simultaneously pulls off “neo-noir mystery” and “taut character survey of 1 truly sad man,” eschewing the era’s more paranoid direction in favour of a vibe more akin to utmost depression. Sometimes, it’s good to have a bad time at the movies. Night Moves is 1 of those times. —PV