10 Near-Perfect Noir Movies That No One Remembers Today

Critics and historians still debate whether film noir is a genre, a style, or a movement, but its most compelling entries—stories of morally grey characters caught in crime and despair—remain striking. Over time, even outstanding noir films can slip from view; this selection highlights several near-perfect titles that deserve to be rediscovered.

Carol Reed’s The Fallen Idol follows a butler suspected after his wife’s accidental death, with an impressionable boy as the lone witness; the film earned Reed his first of three Best Directing Academy Award nominations. Samuel Fuller’s Pickup on South Street mixes pickpocket drama with Cold War espionage and features Thelma Ritter in an Oscar-nominated turn.

Odd Man Out finds Reed again in bleak territory with a wounded Irish nationalist on the run after a failed Belfast robbery, a film that still holds a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Fritz Lang’s Scarlet Street adapts Georges de La Fouchardière’s La Chienne into a mid-life crisis melodrama led by Edward G.

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