The best noir movies to watch this Noirvember

15.11.2023 - 16:09 / polygon.com / Best

For some reason — blame the encroaching winter, post-Halloween boredom, or simple copycat syndrome, you be the judge — November has become a big month for annual social-media-based collective challenges. From NaNoWriMo and NaPoWriMo to Movember and No-Shave November to, um, others, the extremely online crowd has focused on November as a month for group events and group discussion.

For cinephiles, the fun one of the batch is Noirvember, a collective urge to watch and compare noir movies. Unlike most of these other challenges, Noirvember doesn’t have an organizing website, a sponsor, a fundraising goal, or an established set of rules. (Though individual participants have certainly proposed some.) So for those participating — or for anyone looking for the best noir movies, or the best way to get into the classic genre for the first time — we’re offering a little help. Here are some of our favorites, for newbies and noir veterans alike.

Let’s start with a few seminal noirs, the basics you’ll want to hit to understand the genre and its conventions.

Director: John Huston
Where to watch: Rentable on Amazon, Vudu, Apple, YouTube

Probably the most famous noir movie of all time, John Huston’s adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 crime movie covers the basics: There’s a hard-bitten detective, Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart), on a case full of twists, turns, and double-crosses; a beautiful woman who lures him in and turns out to be full of lies; and a McGuffin everyone’s after that turns out to be more than it seems. A prime example of a noir that’s more about atmosphere, cinematography, and a complicated plot than about edge-of-the-seat thrills, The Maltese Falcon is a moody movie with a lot of great performances, but it’s also one of those films that’s been imitated and iterated on so much that it can feel a bit basic in comparison to its followers. Still, that also makes it one of those movies where watching it suddenly makes a thousand later cultural references and media in-jokes make sense. —Tasha Robinson

Director: Billy Wilder
Where to watch: Streaming on Paramount Plus, and free with a library card on Hoopla or Kanopy. Rentable on Amazon, Vudu, YouTube

Starting with one of the all-time great openings — has-been writer Joe Gillis (William Holden) wearily narrating over a shot of the police examining his floating corpse in a Los Angeles swimming pool —Sunset Boulevard is a stunner from start to finish. This one isn’t a crime procedural, like so many classic noirs; it’s about how Joe, out of work and fleeing the men trying to repossess his car, tries to find shelter with an aging movie star by promising to write her a comeback vehicle. He gets drawn into a drama he didn’t expect — a drama that’s exceptionally