The best neo-noir films include some brilliant releases that subvert the classic Film Noir films of the past. In the 1940s, film noir exploded, offering stories that were often hard-boiled or crime fiction and shot in a style reminiscent of German expressionism. The neo-noir movement drew on the ideas of Film Noir and updated them for contemporary audiences.
This included more violent stories, with greater sensuality, that were shot in a more updated style, eliminating many of the skewed shots of film noir. However, what remained were the hardboiled stories and crime dramas that offered a look at the seedier side of life, matching film noir, while the best neo-noir films exceeded what came before.
The Naked Kiss (1964)
Director Sam Fuller made the brilliant neo-noir movie The Naked Kiss in 1964, with an outstanding performance from Constance Towers. She plays Kelly, a woman who opens the film by beating up her pimp and going into hiding before she kills a pedophile and has to prove to a local police captain (Anthony Eisley) why she did it.
The movie is a brutal look at sexual abuse, and Fuller holds nothing back, taking the violence from film noir to the extreme. It also offers a nice look at a very different lead character. Kelly is not a femme fatale, but a woman who wants to do the right thing, only to take it too far in the end.
The police officer is a good man, but he doesn’t trust Kelly because of her past as a prostitute. This is another subversion of classical noir, and Kelly has to prove herself, although, as with most noir, she doesn’t necessarily get her happy ending. It is a great story with a strong woman who takes control of her narrative.
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
The Manchurian Candidate is a 1963 neo-noir starring Frank Sinatra as a Korean War veteran who has recurring nightmares after the war. However, when he learns his nightmares are all based on brainwashing during his stint as a POW, he realizes he is a pawn in a greater scheme.
This is bigger than a basic neo-noir, as it does not deal with a small detective trying to break open a dangerous case. This is a vast conspiracy thriller, with the target being a political scheme and an assassination plot. Angela Lansbury is the femme fatale here, the influential mother of a senator.
That said, the psychological paranoia involved slots nicely with the neo-noir themes. The anxiety that it creates makes this a considerable influence on the paranoid conspiracy thrillers that would follow, including titles like Three Days of the Condor and even The Bourne Identity.
Taxi Driver (1976)
Martin Scorsese released the neo-noir Taxi Driver in 1976, and it was one of the films that delved into the genre’s darkest depths. The story of a taxi driver who decides to become a vigilante to “save” the city is dark and violent, and the entire film is the darkest shade of grey.
Robert De Niro is brilliant as Travis Bickle, a Vietnam veteran who wants to save a teenage prostitute who doesn’t want to be saved, and who falls in love with a political campaign worker who doesn’t reciprocate his emotions. By the end, it is impossible to know what is real and what is in Travis’s mind.
There are no good guys in this movie. The men that Travis kills are all bad people. Travis himself is an unhinged murderer, even if he is the hero of his own story. This takes the look and feel of classical film noir and tells a story of intense violence exploding in the city’s hellscape from a lonely, disturbed man.
The Killers (1964)
The Killers was never supposed to be a major theatrical release. This Don Siegel movie was made for TV but was deemed too violent for the small screen at the time. Instead, it was released in theaters and has become a landmark neo-noir film starring Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, and Ronald Reagan.
Lee Marvin and Clu Gulager play two hitmen who kill a race car driver at a school for the blind. However, when they look into it, they realize that his death had something to do with a femme fatale (Dickinson) and a crime boss (Reagan). This leads to an outburst of violence involving a million-dollar heist.
The Killers is the purest version of neo-noir, a violent movie that is cynical and brutally honest. It is a mean and violent film that offers no sentimentality, and shows that violence and crime in America takes place in businesses as much as it does on the streets. It also proves that death comes for everyone.
The Conversation (1974)
After his massive breakout with The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola dialed things back and directed the neo-noir mystery thriller The Conversation. Gene Hackman stars as a surveillance expert named Harry Caul, who listens to recordings that reveal a possible murder.
Like the best neo-noir movies, The Conversation leaves what is real and what is the result of paranoia up in the air for much of the running time. Harry, and vicariously the audience, hear what is on the recordings and immediately begin to think the worst. That intensifies the thrilling, anxious plot.
What really helps this stand out, and what subverts the classical film noir tropes, is that the resolution remains completely ambiguous. The movie doesn’t make it easy, and never shows whether The Director is the villain or the couple are the victims. With less violence, this is one of neo-noir’s smartest films.
Le Samourai (1967)
When it comes to neo-noir films, it doesn’t get much more minimal and personal than Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai. Alain Delon plays Jef Costello, a hired killer in Paris who operates with a strict code. However, when someone betrays him, he has to find out who to save himself.
The movie goes a long way to show the paranoia and sense of betrayal of the neo-noir genre, and the existentialism on display here is impressive. Jef lives alone and has almost no friends. He has no one to turn to when he needs help, and his moral code is his only defining characteristic.
It is impressive to see how different Le Samourai is from traditional film noir. There is no witty banter or arguments in this movie. Jef says barely more than a dozen words in the entire film, and this plays into his existential nightmare. Jef’s moral code has meaning, but the world around him doesn’t.
The Bad Sleep Well (1960)
While Akira Kurosawa is best known for his samurai movies, he was also a master at crime dramas, and one of his masterpieces was the neo-noir, The Bad Sleep Well. Regular Kurosawa actor Toshirō Mifune stars as a man seeking to expose a company responsible for his father’s death.
Out of all of Kurosawa’s crime dramas, this was the one that fit most clearly into the role of a neo-noir. By moving criminal activities into a Japanese corporation, he honors noir traditions of corruption and moral compromise on a grand scale. Instead of detectives, it is corporate executives.
While a movie like High and Low had Kurosawa deal with social issues, it was The Bad Sleep Well that saw him critique politics the most in his stories, specifically surrounding government corruption. This was Kurosawa’s Network moment, where he yelled that he wasn’t going to take it anymore.
The French Connection (1971)
The French Connection took the ideas from neo-noir films and put them squarely in the realm of the police officers, rather than the private investigators of classical film noir stories. Gene Hackman stars as Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle, an NYPD detective pursuing a French heroin smuggler.
However, much like noir detectives, this police detective is a flawed and broken man. Popeye is racist, violent, obsessive, and a brutal man whose only positive aspect is that he is not corrupt. This fits nicely into the neo-noir landscape, as he causes as many problems as he solves.
The movie also delivers the neo-noir ending fans expect. There is no happily-ever-after, and Popeye does the unthinkable, with no follow-up, no resolution, and no comfort. The French Connection is a cold, brutal, and hopeless story about justice and a city that doesn’t care.
L.A. Confidential (1997)
L.A. Confidential is one of the later neo-noirs, a dense, overloaded movie about police corruption in a department where even the best cops are not clean. Based on Elmore Leonard’s epic crime novel, it follows several LAPD detectives who are involved in corruption at one level or another.
Russell Crowe (the violent one), Kevin Spacey (the fame-obsessed cop), and Guy Pearce (the ambitious backstabber) are all focused on here, and even their superiors are involved in a giant conspiracy that goes to the top. Taking place in 1950s L.A., this is Hollywood’s most ambitious neo-noir movie.
The moral complexity shows that even the best are corrupted in the end, and the city of Los Angeles is as much a character as any of the detectives, something that has always been important in noir filmmaking. With nine Oscar nominations, it remains among the best of its type.
Chinatown (1974)
The best neo-noir movie ever made arrived in 1974 with Roman Polanski’s Chinatown. Widely considered the best movie script ever penned, this Robert Towne story follows a private detective hired by a woman to follow her husband. However, as with the best noir films, nothing is as it seems.
Jack Nicholson is perfect as Jake Gittes, a PI who wants to learn the truth, but then realizes that no one cares when he does. He discovers a massive conspiracy and a horrifying twist in the ending, but the police tell him to let it go because “it’s Chinatown.” Everything is hopeless.
This is where Chinatown is a perfect blend of classic film noir and modern neo-noir movies. Jake Gittes is the exact character one would expect to see in a classic Film Noir. However, the hopeless nature and deep corruption are a signature of the neo-noir genre, and there’s no better example than Chinatown.
