I've ordered these into tiers of five, as it makes for an interesting way to break up the list and get a sense of different levels (even if that might be attenuated by the Paste crew's desire to be more "au courant" and place selected foreign noirs from the classic era into their list as talismans of their particular brand of cinephilia). The numbers in parentheses display the film's rank in the Top 25 poll. Here you are:
Woman in the Window (82), The Big Sleep (11), Double Indemnity (3), Touch of Evil (8), The Third Man (51)
Out of the Past (1), Kiss Me Deadly (15), Laura (26), Sunset Blvd. (25), The Maltese Falcon (7)
Night of the Hunter (80), Gilda (31), Elevator to the Gallows (N/A), Ace in the Hole (29), They Live By Night (53)
Raw Deal (16), Thieves' Highway (127), The Killers (5), The Lady From Shanghai (65), Drunken Angel (N/A)
In A Lonely Place (12), The Killing (10), The Big Heat (20), The Wrong Man (107), The Postman Always Rings Twice (23)
The titles in bold--DOUBLE INDEMNITY, THE MALTESE FALCON, RAW DEAL, and POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE--are the only four films that wound up in the same tier as they occupy in the original Top 25 poll.
Thirteen of the 25 films shown here are part of the old Top 25 list. So you won't have to pick them out, here they are in a list with the Top 25 rank, then the Paste "adjusted" rank (recalibrated into a list solely for pre-1960 films):
The Big Sleep, 11, 2
Double Indemnity, 3, 3
Touch of Evil, 8, 4
Out of the Past, 1, 6
Kiss Me Deadly, 15, 7
Sunset Blvd., 25, 9
The Maltese Falcon, 7, 10
Raw Deal, 16, 16
The Killers, 5, 18
In A Lonely Place, 12, 21
The Killing 10, 22
The Big Heat, 20, 23
Postman Always Rings Twice, 23, 25
Here are the other 35 films from the classic era that appeared on Paste's list, cross-referenced to the Top 25 poll. They are again shown in tiers:
Mildred Pierce (28), Night and the City (14), The Set-Up (19), Criss Cross (2), Crime Wave (58)
Murder My Sweet (24), Nightmare Alley (13), Odd Man Out (N/A), Pickup on South Street (35), White Heat (40)
The Hitch-Hiker (N/A), Martha Ivers (27), The Blue Dahlia (138), Sorry Wrong Number (137), Journey Into Fear (N/A)
Clash By Night (155), Gun Crazy (6), The Verdict (N/A), Sweet Smell of Success (48), T-Men (36)
Angels With Dirty Faces (N/A), Force of Evil (60), Try and Get Me (37), Key Largo (50), Detour (17)
D.O.A. (9), Lady in the Lake (N/A), The Prowler (110), The Asphalt Jungle (4), Tension (178)
Obsession [UK](N/A), Gaslight (N/A), Kiss of Death (55), The Naked City (166), Angel Face (148)
Films from the Top 25 list that are totally missing from the Paste list of 60 classic noirs:
The Narrow Margin, 19, N/A
Scarlet Street, 21, N/A
Born to Kill, 22, N/A
So a total of 22 of our old Top 25 list are present on the list:
13 in the Top 25
7 in Paste's reconfigured 26-50 slots
2 in Paste's reconfigured 51-60 slots
I was surprised to discover that THE HITCH-HIKER, ODD MAN OUT, and GASLIGHT did not receive any votes in our old poll. That info had eluded me for more than 15 years. We can probably attribute ODD MAN OUT to the general reluctance of voters to include non-US films in the 2005 voting; and the absence of GASLIGHT is almost certainly due to the fact that voters were clearly more in thrall to the "hard-boiled paradigm" in '05 than is the case now. But Dan H. will be discouraged to discover that NOTORIOUS, which ranked at #61 in our poll, is nowhere to be found fifteen years later on the Paste poll. My theory: THE WRONG MAN has been "chatted up" a lot in recent years, and it's part of a popular sub-type that has more resonance than was the case previously; thus in a poll constricted further by the need to allot 40% of the slots to neo-noir, NOTORIOUS got left on the cutting room floor.
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