on 12/16/2024, 1:30 pm
I will be condensing and consolidating the thread that ran under this title (and a companion thread that ran concurrently) from the tail end of 2017 that discussed a revision effort to the original Noir Top 25 poll run here back in 2005. I'll annotate these as I put them up, to retain a reasonable logical flow and tie together the threads, which branched off interestingly from each other but are a bit hard to read in their original form.
Back in May 2015, I commissioned several of the BB then-stalwarts to participate in an exercise to redraw the landscape for ranking American films noirs. This was done in the first blush of seeing new noirs from around the world, with an eye toward creating a more encompassing “world noir” ranking at some point in the future (a day that might still come, but not as soon as was hoped at that point in time).
Those other folk know who they are, and their identities and specific votes/rankings for specific films will not be revealed here. The exercise is interesting in that some recent massaging of the data permits us to (if nothing else as yet) create a revised ranking of our old Top 25 poll results, which I think will prove interesting to a portion of you out there in the dark.
The revision was conducted using the entirety of the Top 25 poll, but rather than re-ranking the list (a more arduous task than even stalwarts could be expected to do for free...) we eyeballed the rankings and, for each film on the list, indicated if the original ranking was too high, too low, or (as Goldilocks discovered with that famous bowl of porridge) if it was “just right.”
We figured that various elements of “selection bias” that the small group was likely to possess would be balanced out in the cumulative voting, but would still result in a significant shift in the original rankings. And the bias was definitely there: one of us, in the throes of discovering foreign noir, was compelled to consistently downscale American noir’s rankings based on the films unrepresented in the poll; another, with a predilection for the more maudit style of American noir, used the revisionist razor to downgrade a type and period of noir that was insufficiently “lowly” in its aesthetic point of departure; and still another clearly tried to balance the books by responding solely to the films on the list, producing a result in which over half the films on the master list were considered ripe for upgrading!
But all of this extremity actually did balance itself out in the “blended” results: 32% of the films were considered to require an uptick in their ranking; 35% were judged to be “just right”, and 32% needed to be downgraded.
After determining the best formula with which to blend the results of the old poll with these revisions, we re-emerge with a new Top 25 to supplant the original list. The old list and the revised list are shown side by side:
Rk, 2005 Top 25, 2017 Revised Top 25
1: Out of the Past, Double Indemnity
2: Criss Cross, Out of the Past
3: Double Indemnity, Touch of Evil
4: The Asphalt Jungle, The Asphalt Jungle
5: The Killers, Kiss Me Deadly
6: Gun Crazy, Gun Crazy
7: The Maltese Falcon, Criss Cross {2}
8: Touch of Evil, The Maltese Falcon
9: D.O.A., Nightmare Alley
10: The Killing, The Killing
11: The Big Sleep, The Big Combo (30)
12: In A Lonely Place, Raw Deal
13: Nightmare Alley, Scarlet Street
14: Night and the City, In A Lonely Place
15: Kiss Me Deadly, Detour
16: Raw Deal, Night and the City
17: Detour, The Killers {5}
18: The Narrow Margin, Sunset Blvd.
19: The Set-Up, Act of Violence (42)
20: The Big Heat, Sweet Smell of Success (48)
21: Scarlet Street, D.O.A {9}
22: Born to Kill, The Set-Up
23: The Postman Always Rings Twice, Vertigo (44)
24: Murder, My Sweet, Pickup on South Street (35)
25: Sunset Blvd., The Big Sleep {11}
Films on the right side with numbers in (parentheses) are ones that jumped from a lower position in the original poll to the Top 25 due to the revision. (The film titles for these are also show in italics.) Those with numbers in {fancy parentheses} are ones that fell from the original higher position shown next to the title. Films in bold type are the ones that fell out of the old Top 25. Here are the new rankings for those films and a few others:
The Narrow Margin (18, now 28)
The Big Heat (20, now 33)
Born to Kill (22, now 26)
Postman (23, now 36)
Murder, My Sweet (24, now 31)
Other films bubbling under the Top 25 and their revised ranking:
Laura (was 26, now 41)
Strange Love of Martha Ivers (was 27, now 51)
Mildred Pierce (was 28, now 29)
Ace in the Hole (was 29, now 37)
Gilda (was 31, now 47)
Caged (was 32, now 44)
Hollow Triumph (was 33, now 30)
Strangers on a Train (was 34, now 38)
T-Men (was 36, now 42)
Try and Get Me! (was 37, now 27)
Another film that made a large jump in the rankings was FORCE OF EVIL (originally #60, in the revision #40).
The changes in the rankings as a result of this “revisionist exercise” are not eye-opening: the constraints of the method insured that such would be the case. Only two films fell out of the Top Ten—one of them (THE BIG SLEEP) almost, but not quite, falling out of the Top 25. The question that we might ask ourselves is whether the five films that moved into the Top 25 are “better” somehow than the five films that dropped out:
IN: The Big Combo, Act of Violence, Sweet Smell of Success, Vertigo, Pickup on South Street
OUT: The Narrow Margin, The Big Heat, Born to Kill, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Murder My Sweet
A participatory effort here that (still) might prove enlightening would be for folks to take those ten films and rank them in their order of preference, providing any annotation that they considered relevant and useful. If enough folks did so, we might advance this process in some interesting ways that haven’t happened here in quite some time.
The ranking changes have the effect of creating a greater balance between films in the two major classic noir decades (40s and 50s). Four of the five films entering the Top 25 in the revised version are from the 50s, as opposed to two films that dropped out. A net gain of two in the Top 25 for 50s noirs, making the total 13 for the 40s, 12 for the 50s.
And 50s films appearing on the complete Top 25 results (including all films given at least one “honorable mention” in addition to the five “five-film tiers” for the Top 25) got a bigger boost in this reassessment exercise. Only 25% of 40s films on the list received a vote to upgrade their ranking; that average for 50s films was 40%.
The films which were unanimously considered to have been overrated in the original Top 25 poll are: THE BIG SLEEP (11<25), D.O.A (9<21) and THE STRANGE LOVE OF MARTHA IVERS (27<51).
The films which were unanimously considered to have been underrated in the original Top 25 poll are: 99 RIVER STREET (70>54), ANGEL FACE (148>105), CROSSFIRE (89>71), FORCE OF EVIL (60>40), THE PROWLER (110>86), THE RECKLESS MOMENT (111>87), and SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS (48>20).
The films with near-unanimous agreement of having been underrated in the original Top 25 poll are: ACT OF VIOLENCE (42>18), THE BIG COMBO (30>11), DECOY (141>104), GUILTY BYSTANDER (153>107), ON DANGEROUS GROUND (68>55), PUSHOVER (135>100), VERTIGO (44>23) and WICKED WOMAN (152>106).
And the films with near-unanimous agreement of having been overrated in the original Top 25 poll are: THE BIG HEAT (20<33), DEAD RECKONING (47<59), GILDA (31<47), THE KILLERS (5<17), LAURA (26<41), THE NARROW MARGIN (18<28), THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE (23<36) and SOMEWHERE IN THE NIGHT (75<84).
You are also free to make a case for why any of these assessments are incorrect.
Oh, yes: the rest of the revised Top 50, with the Top 25 repeated below in the old "5 five-tier" notation Comments on the revised rankings are, of course, most welcome...
26-30: Born To Kill, Try And Get Me!, The Narrow Margin, Mildred Pierce, Hollow Triumph
31-40: Murder My Sweet, Phantom Lady, The Big Heat, White Heat, He Walked By Night, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Ace In The Hole, Strangers On A Train, Force Of Evil
41-50: Laura, T-Men, The Third Man, Caged, Brute Force, Crime Wave, Gilda, Pitfall, The Chase, Shield For Murder
1-5: Double Indemnity, Out of the Past, Touch of Evil, The Asphalt Jungle, Kiss Me Deadly
6-10: Gun Crazy, Criss Cross, The Maltese Falcon, Nightmare Alley, The Killing
11-15: The Big Combo, Raw Deal, Scarlet Street, In A Lonely Place, Detour
16-20: Night and the City, The Killers, Sunset Blvd., Act of Violence, Sweet Smell of Success
21-25: D.O.A, The Set-Up, Vertigo, Pickup on South Street, The Big Sleep
Responses