on 3/12/2021, 1:30 pm
For those interested in the answer to the question in the subject line but who want to avoid scrolling, the noirs on this list (which covers all genres, but in a slapdash kind of way, as befits the top-end results in a "wisdom of the commons" approach) are shown below in bottom-top order (position ranks will decrease in the direction of #1):
Out of the Past
La salaire a la peur (Wages of Fear)
Les diaboliques aka Diabolique (note the clustering effect...)
La haine
The Maltese Falcon
Rififi
Ace in the Hole
Sweet Smell of Success
White Heat
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
The Third Man
Double Indemnity
Sunset Boulevard
Le Trou
That's 14 noirs in this Top 100. You may be surprised to discover that LE TROU (a fine film, to be sure) is considered by Stacker's adjusted IMDB rankings to be the best film noir of all time. The clustering effect is more pronounced than what we saw for the two Clouzot films: there are three Chaplin films that rank closer to the top occupying three adjacent positions in the rankings.
The results would likely be more interesting without the algorithmic massage and with a listing that liberalized the eligibility (a lower limit of 5,000 votes instead of 10,000).
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