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Alphaville

Jean-Luc Godard
1965 • 99 minutes • 1.33:1 • France
Spine: #25 Edition: DVD

Eddie Constantine stars as intergalactic hero Lemmy Caution, on a mission to kill the inventor of fascist computer Alpha 60, in Jean-Luc Godard’s irreverent, cockeyed fusion of science fiction, pulp characters, and surrealist poetry.

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Army of Shadows

Jean-Pierre Melville
1969 • 145 minutes • 1.85:1 • France
Spine: #385 Editions: DVD, Blu-ray, Collector’s Sets

Atmospheric and gripping, Army of Shadows is Melville’s most personal film, featuring Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse, Jean-Pierre Cassel, and the incomparable Simone Signoret as intrepid underground fighters who must grapple with their conception of honor in their battle against Hitler’s regime.

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The Bad Sleep Well

Akira Kurosawa
1960 • 150 minutes • 2.35:1 • Japan
Spine: #319 Editions: DVD, Collector’s Sets, Hulu Plus

A young executive hunts down his father’s killer in director Akira Kurosawa’s scathing The Bad Sleep Well. Continuing his legendary collaboration with actor Toshiro Mifune, Kurosawa combines elements of Hamlet and American film noir to chilling effect.

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Blast of Silence

Allen Baron
1961 • 77 minutes • 1.33:1 • United States
Spine: #428 Edition: DVD

Swift, brutal, and black-hearted, Allen Baron’s New York City noir Blast of Silence is a sensational surprise, a low-budget, carefully crafted portrait of a hit man on assignment in Manhattan during Christmastime.

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Branded to Kill

Seijun Suzuki
1967 • 91 minutes • 2.35:1 • Japan
Spine: #38 Editions: DVD, Blu-ray, Hulu Plus, iTunes

When Japanese New Wave bad boy Seijun Suzuki delivered this brutal, hilarious, and visually inspired masterpiece to the executives at his studio, he was promptly fired.

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Breathless

Jean-Luc Godard
1960 • 90 minutes • 1.33:1 • France
Spine: #408 Editions: DVD, Blu-ray, Hulu Plus, iTunes

With its lack of polish, surplus of attitude, anything-goes crime narrative, and effervescent young stars Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, Breathless helped launch the French New Wave and ensured cinema would never be the same.

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Brute Force

Jules Dassin
1947 • 98 minutes • 1.33:1 • United States
Spine: #383 Editions: DVD, Hulu Plus

As hard-hitting as its title, Brute Force was the first of Jules Dassin’s forays into the crime genre, a prison melodrama that takes a critical look at American society as well, starring Burt Lancaster.

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Le cercle rouge

Jean-Pierre Melville
1970 • 140 minutes • 1.85:1 • France
Spine: #218 Editions: DVD, Blu-ray

Alain Delon plays a master thief, fresh out of prison, who crosses paths with a notorious escapee and an alcoholic ex-cop (Yves Montand). The unlikely trio plot a heist, against impossible odds, until a relentless inspector and their own pasts seal their fates.

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Classe tous risques

Claude Sautet
1960 • 108 minutes • 1.66:1 • France
Spine: #434 Edition: DVD

A character study of a career criminal at the end of his rope, this rugged noir from Claude Sautet is a thrilling highlight of sixties French cinema, starring Lino Ventura and Jean-Paul Belmondo.

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Coup de torchon

Bertrand Tavernier
1981 • 128 minutes • 1.66:1 • France
Spine: #106 Edition: DVD

An inspired rendering of Jim Thompson’s pulp novel Pop. 1280, Bertrand Tavernier’s Coup de torchon (Clean Slate) deftly transplants the story of an inept police chief turned heartless killer and his scrappy mistress from the American South to French West Africa.

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Le deuxième souffle

Jean-Pierre Melville
1966 • 144 minutes • 1.66:1 • France
Spine: #448 Edition: DVD

With his customary restraint and ruthless attention to detail, director Jean-Pierre Melville follows the parallel tracks of French underworld criminal Gu (Lino Ventura), escaped from prison and roped into one last robbery, and the suave inspector, Blot (Paul Meurisse), relentlessly seeking him.

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Diabolique

Henri-Georges Clouzot
1955 • 117 minutes • 1.33:1 • France
Spine: #35 Editions: DVD, Blu-ray, Hulu Plus

Before Psycho, Peeping Tom, and Repulsion, there was Diabolique, a heart-grabbing benchmark in horror filmmaking, featuring outstanding performances by Simone Signoret, Véra Clouzot, and Paul Meurisse.

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Le doulos

Jean-Pierre Melville
1962 • 109 minutes • 1.66:1 • France
Spine: #447 Edition: DVD

A stone-faced Jean-Paul Belmondo stars as enigmatic gangster Silien, who may or may not be responsible for squealing on Faugel, just released from the slammer and already involved in what should have been a simple heist. Le doulos is one of the filmmaker’s most gripping crime dramas.

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Drunken Angel

Akira Kurosawa
1948 • 98 minutes • 1.33:1 • Japan
Spine: #413 Editions: DVD, Collector’s Sets, Hulu Plus

In this powerful early noir from the great Akira Kurosawa, Toshiro Mifune bursts onto the screen as a volatile, tubercular criminal who strikes up an unlikely relationship with Takashi Shimura’s jaded physician.

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The Element of Crime

Lars von Trier
1984 • 104 minutes • 1.85:1 • Denmark
Spine: #80 Editions: DVD, Hulu Plus

Lars von Trier’s stunning debut film, influenced equally by Hitchcock and science fiction, is the story of Fisher, an exiled ex-cop who returns to his old beat to catch a serial killer with a taste for young girls.

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Elevator to the Gallows

Louis Malle
1957 • 92 minutes • 1.66:1 • France
Spine: #335 Editions: DVD, Hulu Plus

A touchstone of the careers of both its star and director, Louis Malle’s debut feature, Elevator to the Gallows, starring Jeanne Moreau, is a richly atmospheric thriller of murder and mistaken identity unfolding over one restless Parisian night.

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Europa

Lars von Trier
1991 • 107 minutes • 2.35:1 • Denmark
Spine: #454 Editions: DVD, Hulu Plus

Lars von Trier’s hypnotic Europa is a fever dream in which American pacifist Leopold Kessler stumbles into a job as a sleeping-car conductor for the Zentropa railways in a Kafkaesque 1945 postwar Frankfurt. Europa is one of the great Danish filmmaker’s weirdest and most wonderful works.

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The Friends of Eddie Coyle

Peter Yates
1973 • 102 minutes • 1.85:1 • United States
Spine: #475 Edition: DVD

World-weary and living hand to mouth, Coyle works on the sidelines of the seedy Boston underworld. In one of the best performances of his legendary career, Robert Mitchum plays small-time gunrunner Eddie “Fingers” Coyle in Peter Yates’s The Friends of Eddie Coyle.

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High and Low

Akira Kurosawa
1963 • 143 minutes • 2.35:1 • Japan
Spine: #24 Editions: DVD, Blu-ray, Collector’s Sets, Hulu Plus

Adapting Ed McBain’s detective novel King’s Ransom, Kurosawa moves effortlessly from compelling race-against-time thriller to exacting social commentary, creating a diabolical treatise on contemporary Japanese society.

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The Hit

Stephen Frears
1984 • 98 minutes • 1.77:1 • United Kingdom
Spine: #469 Edition: DVD

Terence Stamp is Willie, a gangster’s henchman turned “supergrass” (informer) trying to live in peaceful hiding in a Spanish village. Sun-dappled bliss turns to nerve-racking suspense, however, when two hit men—played by John Hurt and Tim Roth—come a-calling to bring Willie back for execution.

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Homicide

David Mamet
1991 • 101 minutes • 1.85:1 • United States
Spine: #486 Edition: DVD

In this nightmarish urban odyssey, inner-city police detective Bobby Gold (Joe Mantegna), is following the murder of an elderly Jewish candy-shop owner, which leads him down a path of obscure encounters and clues, as well as a profound reckoning with his own self and identity.

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Insomnia

Erik Skjoldbjærg
1997 • 97 minutes • 1.85:1 • Norway
Spine: #47 Edition: DVD

Disgraced Swedish detective Jonas Engström (Stellan Skarsgård) travels to northern Norway to solve a brutal murder in Erik Skjoldbjærg’s debut feature, Insomnia.

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The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

John Cassavetes
1976 • 135 minutes • 1.85:1 • United States
Spine: #254 Editions: DVD, Collector’s Sets, Hulu Plus, iTunes

John Cassavetes engages film noir in his own inimitable style. Ben Gazzara brilliantly portrays gentlemen’s club owner Cosmo Vitelli, a man dedicated to pretenses of composure and self-possession. When he runs afoul of a group of gangsters, Cosmo is forced to commit a horrible crime.

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The Long Good Friday

John Mackenzie
1979 • 114 minutes • 1.77:1 • United Kingdom
Spine: #26 Edition: DVD

Bob Hoskins, in his breakthrough film role, stars as a London racketeer fast losing control of his gangland empire; Helen Mirren shines as his classy moll.

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Mona Lisa

Neil Jordan
1986 • 104 minutes • 1.77:1 • United Kingdom
Spine: #107 Edition: DVD

Bob Hoskins (who snagged an Oscar nomination for his performance) plays George, a small-time loser employed as a chauffeur to an enigmatic, high-class call girl in writer-director Neil Jordan’s brilliant, noir-infused love story.

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