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Kirk Douglas in his film debut and Barbara Stanwyck in the film noir classic, "The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers." (1946)
Paramount Pictures
Kirk Douglas in his film debut and Barbara Stanwyck in the film noir classic "The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers" (1946).

Noir-vember: 10 classic film noir movies to die for on KPBS+

By Beth Accomando / Arts & Culture Reporter
Published November 13, 2026 at 5:36 PM PST

Femme fatales, private dicks, wooden kimonos, eel juice ... welcome to the world of film noir. For film noir fans, November has been rechristened Noir-vember to allow us to celebrate the films we love all month long. So once again, I have looked through the KPBS+ classic movie package to come up with a collection of 10 films to die for.

The term "film noir" was coined by French film critics to describe a style of cinema rooted in hard-boiled crime fiction of the 1940s. It was often brought to life by European émigré directors who had fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s and brought with them a German Expressionist style. These included directors such as Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder and Otto Preminger.

Noir revealed a cynicism, fatalism and moral ambiguity that challenged audiences with something new: a world where women used sex to get what they wanted, where betrayal and deceit were to be expected, and where murder was a given. Classic noir is usually defined as films made between 1941 and the late 1950s. The term literally means black film, and the darkness comes not just from the visual look but also from the dark motives of the characters.

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Lizabeth Scott and Raymond Burr in the film noir "Pitfall." (1948)
United Artists
Lizabeth Scott and Raymond Burr in the film noir "Pitfall" (1948).

One of the many things I love about noir is that it’s like whiskey in oak barrels: It just gets better and more complex with age. The reason is that noir was and remains cynical. It embraced moral ambiguity and acknowledged how flawed we are as humans. It understood that people could be greedy, corrupt, duplicitous and violent, and yet could still be the protagonist of a film and sometimes even elicit our empathy. Noir was not pushing a moral agenda or the status quo of its time. In fact it was often challenging both. It’s like noir knew where we were heading and anticipated a more complex and morally gray world, and that makes it feel contemporary and even relevant today.

Eddie Muller is an author, the host of TCM’s Noir Alley, president of the Film Noir Foundation and generally regarded as the Czar of Noir. He explained that these films “are unique because they have a vision and a style and a language that is indicative of that era and they came out of an organic artistic movement that existed for no reason other than the artists wanted to do it.”

Muller went on to say that “the key to what made noir so unique and special, and a bit subversive in Hollywood of that era, was that it was the first time that the people who were doing the wrong thing were the protagonists of the films. So a crime movie in which the central character is a police officer, trying to catch a crook and you spend most of the movie with that law enforcement officer who's trying to do the right thing — that's not a film noir, right? Film noir is where that officer gets tempted into becoming a criminal, just like the guy he's pursuing, and then everything goes to hell and it all turns out badly that then you're talking film noir.”

You can listen to more of Muller’s insights in the podcasts I have paired with the films plus hear from other noir experts like author Alan K. Rode and Nora “The Nitrate Diva” Fiore.

So here is your deliciously dark and gorgeously seductive collection of 10 films to die for this Noir-vember. These films are wickedly efficient and tightly executed, packing an impressive amount of sex, murder, betrayal and snappy dialogue into runtimes of less than 90 minutes. These films are like a perfect nightcap, and you will start to crave more.

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And if you want a translation for the slang in the opening sentence, check out The Miskatonic University and Classic Crime Fiction dictionaries of hard-boiled slang. So get off the Ameche, throw down some rats and mice, avoid flatties and highbinders, and enjoy a badger game or two.

Let’s run through these films in chronological order so you can see how noir evolved over time. As with many of these films, “Detour” was a low-budget ($30K!) crime drama that stirred little interest upon its initial release in 1945. You can find classier, more polished films but none more tightly plotted or unpretentious. This 67-minute treasure distills noir to just the essentials: sex, fatalism and a protagonist doomed from the opening frame. Al Roberts (Tom Neal) opens the film with classic noir narration: “It was just my luck, picking her up on the road. It couldn’t be Helen ... or Mary or Evelyn or Ruth; it had to be the very last person I should ever have met. That’s life. Whichever way you turn, Fate sticks out a foot to trip you.”

Directed by the gifted Edgar G. Ulmer in glorious postwar, German Expressionist style, the film was marketed as just another crime drama. But thankfully, the French critics of Cahiers du Cinéma championed “Detour” and many other noirs, and helped lift them out of obscurity. “Detour” became the first of these “poverty row” films preserved in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.

Companion podcast: Midday Movies and Dark City Dames

A year before “Scarlett Street,” Fritz Lang directed Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett and Dan Duryea in another film noir, “The Woman in the Window.” “Scarlett Street" recycles the same basic premise: A shy, older man randomly meets a gorgeous young woman, which inevitably leads to his downfall. Once again this creative team delivers a satisfying noir but this time with a darker resolution. Robinson plays Christopher Cross and Bennett is a classic femme fatale named Kitty. Kitty is encouraged by her conniving boyfriend Johnny Prince (what a name, played by the underrated Duryea) to milk Cross for as much money as she can, pushing him to steal from his wife and employer. Lang and Robinson do a stunning job of depicting Cross’ psychological turmoil.

Companion podcast: Film Noir Road Trip

Barbara Stanwyck has dominated a number of noirs, most notably the classic “Double Indemnity.” Here she is less the classic femme fatale but no less interesting. The film, which is more of a woman’s picture with noir overtones, has Stanwyck’s Martha trying to escape the cruel clutches of a wealthy aunt (Judith Anderson). Martha accidentally kills her aunt and then is forced into a marriage with Walter (Kirk Douglas in his film debut) because Walter’s father is blackmailing her over her aunt’s death. This film has a second set of lovers in Van Heflin’s Sam and Lizabeth Scott’s Toni, who complicate things. Heflin plays the now grown-up boy Martha loved as a child and wanted to run away with. Scott, getting to bat for the good (bad) girls, has just been released from jail and is trying to turn over a new leaf. She offers Heflin true love with no strings attached. The best scene in the film is with Stanwyck, Heflin and Scott laying out the sexual and power dynamics in a few terse lines. The writing in noir is always sharp and savage.

Companion podcast: TCM Offers Film Noir Classes

As with Stanwyck, Lizabeth Scott has played some ruthless femme fatales (the best in “Too Late for Tears”), but here she’s a more sympathetic character. The plot involves a bored family man (Dick Powell) whose insurance case leads him to Scott and a creepy stalker played to unnerving perfection by Raymond Burr. The interesting twist to the femme fatale is that Scott is not using her sexuality to manipulate men but rather she radiates a sexual confidence that is irresistible to men but also makes them uncomfortable because it suggests power. It scares the male characters because she doesn't want to play by the rules of how a woman is supposed to act. Scott, like Rita Hayworth in "Gilda," has the sexual power to control men by either deliberate choice or complete accident. As Nora Fiore said in my podcast,”The men want to keep it on lockdown because they recognize the danger of it, regardless of how it's being wielded or used by the women. It's kind of this commodity that they want to monopolize and lock down and kind of control by any means necessary because it threatens them. And that's what I mean when I say this role of the femme fatale is projected onto women like Scott.”

All three actors are great and play against the type we have come to expect from them.

Companion podcast: Talking Noir Dames with the Nitrate Diva (Part 2)

“D.O.A.” rivets you from the opening moment when accountant Frank Bigelow (Edmund O’Brien) walks into a police station to report his own murder. After hooked us, the film then plays out through flashbacks that are synced to a ticking clock because Frank was informed that he was poisoned and only has a short time to live. This is another incredibly tight, tense noir tale that’s also an existential journey. As Frank tries to figure out who wants him dead, he uncovers an ugly underbelly of greed and betrayal. But as Frank faces his own mortality, he chooses to seek truth and assess some kind of moral accountability. Watch this but avoid at all costs the 1988 remake.

Companion podcast: TCM's Eddie Muller Talks All Things Noir

Another rejection of the femme fatale in noir is sassy Ann Sheridan as the titular “Woman on the Run.” She's trying to track down her estranged husband who appears to be involved in a murder. She holds her own with cops and reporters in this female — but not femme fatale — driven noir. Again Nora Fiore offers some insights into women like Sheridan’s character: “I think there's something about the way women are pushing justice forward in noir that flies in the face of a lot of misconceptions about noir, that it is misogynistic, that women are entirely demonized. I think there are so many examples of women stepping up for the side of justice, whether it's for personal reasons or because they just don't like to see something bad happen. I do think that that's kind of inspiring. I love these characters, and I think it's a little bit of an underrecognized facet of noir for people who just don't know that much about the genre, how much women are driving the platform and piecing together information and kind of unraveling the mysteries. That's probably why I love ‘Woman on the Run’ so much because her sleuthing reignites the relationship rather than leading to the end, the closure of her adventure. She's been in this bitter union and having to play the sleuth, having to put her skills to use leads her to understand her husband more and kind of realizes that, wow, maybe a successful marriage is a little like being a detective. Maybe you have to keep searching for the truth about someone. And maybe there's something adventurous and exciting and kind of detective-like about staying in love, keeping a union going. So I just find that film romantic in so many ways.”

Companion podcast: Celebrate Noirvember Under the Stars with Alan K. Rode

“Kansas City Confidential” serves up a pair of classic tropes: no-honor-among-thieves and let’s find a patsy to take the fall. John Payne is the patsy, or to elevate him a bit, he’s the innocent man trailing the crew who set him up for a heist he did not commit. Get ready for a nifty, nasty noir full of sweaty, greedy characters played by a stellar rogue’s gallery of Jack Elam, Lee Van Cleef and Neville Brand.

Companion podcast: Noir Bar

Ida Lupino was an actress before becoming a director. Although she worked for studios as a contract player she often rebelled and refused to play parts. As a result she was often put on suspension. That’s when she started to watch directors on the set and learn about editing and directing. This led to Lupino forming her own company and making her films outside the mainstream industry. Lupino was the first woman to direct a film noir and it was the tense, claustrophobic "The Hitch-Hiker," about two men who pick up a hitchhiker who turns out to be a very dangerous escaped convict. Lupino was an absolute trailblazer in Hollywood.

Companion podcast: Talking Noir Dames with the Nitrate Diva (Part one)

Like so many of these low budget noirs shot in less than a month, “The Big Combo” is a master class in how to efficiently pack less than 90 minutes of screen time with the utmost action and tension. It wastes no time throwing us into a netherworld where daylight does not penetrate. Cornel Wilde plays a cop obsessed with catching the slick crime lord, Mr Brown (played to oily, elegant perfection by Richard Conte who would also grace “The Godfather” as a mob boss). Noir is always dark and shadowy but John Alton's cinematography here is particularly striking and darkly seductive. As with “Kansas City Confidential,” there seems to be an extra layer of nastiness to this noir. I’m not complaining, it’s exactly what's needed.

Companion podcast: Down Noir Alley with Eddie Muller

Orson Welles' "Touch of Evil" is festering with police corruption, and often jolted by violent outbursts. Welles was initially hired just to play seedy detective Hank Quinlan. But because of a misunderstanding, star Charleton Heston had thought that Welles would be directing the film as well. To appease its star, the studio brought Welles on as director (but would end up removing him from the film in post-production). The resulting film serves up a mouth-watering feast of cameos, noir elements and visual bravado. Among the memorable cameos are Meecedes McCambridge in a black leather jacket and ominously demanding "I wanna watch" when Janet Leigh is being terrorized; Joseph Cotton as a detective who utters the blunt appraisal "Now you can strain him through a sieve;" and of course the great Marlene Dietrich who gets to sum up Welles' Quinlan at the end of the films with "He was some kind of man."

“Touch of Evil” is some kind of film. Welles, looking bloated and spent, is the picture of police corruption. He choreographed a stunning single shot opening sequence that bobs and weaves through the border as a car with a bomb drives along. Welles gives us a film that feels seedy and oily from top to bottom with Heston and Janet Leigh as the only squeaky clean characters, and they seem completely out of place. Oh and did I mention, Heston plays a Mexican. But that is a whole other discussion as people have argued that it's purely racist or that it's a genius commentary on racism. But to offset that, I will just include a podcast about Mexican noir as well as a Geeky Gourmet video on making desserts to die for, in honor of Welles’ and Quinlan’s appetite for gluttony.

Companion podcast: Mexican Noir and Geeky Gourmet: Desserts to Die For

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Arts & Culture FilmPop Culture
Beth Accomando
I cover arts and culture, from Comic-Con to opera, from pop entertainment to fine art, from zombies to Shakespeare. I am interested in going behind the scenes to explore the creative process; seeing how pop culture reflects social issues; and providing a context for art and entertainment.
See stories by Beth Accomando
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