Dur­ing the 1940s and 50s, Hol­ly­wood entered a “noir” peri­od, pro­duc­ing riv­et­ing films based on hard-boiled fic­tion. These films were set in dark loca­tions and shot in a black & white aes­thet­ic that fit like a glove. Hard­ened men wore fedo­ras and for­ev­er smoked cig­a­rettes. Women played the femme fatale role bril­liant­ly. Love was the surest way to death. All of these ele­ments fig­ured into what Roger Ebert calls “the most Amer­i­can film genre” in his short Guide to Film Noir. (Also find 23 noir films right here.)

Accom­pa­ny­ing noir films were visu­al­ly engag­ing movie posters, and Where Dan­ger Lives (a noir blog) now gives you the “100 Great­est Posters of Film Noir.” They’ve been work­ing through this “best of” list for the past three months, and they con­clude this week with the Top 10 …  the best of the best.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

25 Free John Wayne Films

Kir­by Fer­gu­son is back. Last Sep­tem­ber, the writer/director released the first of a four-part film series – Every­thing is a Remix – that teas­es apart the long his­to­ry of artis­tic “remix­ing.” This first short film con­cen­trat­ed on the artis­tic bor­row­ings of musi­cians and writ­ers, with Led Zep­pelin and the Beat writ­ers get­ting the major focus. Now, with his sec­ond film, the atten­tion turns to film, and par­tic­u­lar­ly to the homages and bor­row­ings of George Lucas’ Star Wars. Aki­ra Kuro­sawa films, Spaghet­ti west­erns and John Wayne west­erns, clas­sic wartime movies, Leni Riefen­stahl pro­pa­gan­da films, Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis – they’re all remixed into the epic space dra­ma. The film wraps up with Fer­gu­son look­ing at Quentin Taran­ti­no and his own remix­ing ten­den­cies. And that sets the stage for parts 3 and 4 – a project that you can help finance in your own mod­est way. I’m sure Kir­by will appre­ci­ate your gen­eros­i­ty…