My Top 5 Favorite Noirs

This is my first montagy sort of sketch. I think it came out rather well, especially Robert Ryan.

I love noir. It's my favorite genre ever. For those of you who don't know what it is, Noir is a genre of movies from the early 1940's to the late 1950's that were prevalently dark, gritty, and cynical.  The shadows were big, the good guys weren't always good, the bad guys weren't always bad and you never got a happy ending. Everything just had this moral grey era.

It was a genre that popped up right after WWII in a time when people didn't trust the world they lived in anymore. Noir created the hard-boiled detective, the femme fatale, the crook with a heart of gold, and many more staples you see in movies, games and TV today.  And even though the genre is sometimes associated with that played-out detective formula, it was also a time when film makers were experimenting with story and technique.

So here are my top 5 all-time favorite Noir movies, and a great place to start if you're looking to get into the genre after the jump!