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Free film noir: the classic noir cycle, watchable for nothing

22 films

No genre left copyright as thoroughly as noir. The American cycle ran from the early 1940s into the mid-1950s, a lot of it on modest budgets, and a remarkable share of it is now free to show in the United States. In most cases the reason is dull: when the 28-year renewal came due, nobody filed it.

Every film on this page streams from the Internet Archive without advertising. The earliest are from 1945 (Detour, Scarlet Street and Strange Illusion) and the latest is The Big Combo from 1955, so the whole list sits inside the classic decade of the form.

These are not leftovers. Detour is in the National Film Registry. Fritz Lang directed Scarlet Street, Orson Welles directed and starred in The Stranger, Ida Lupino made The Hitch-Hiker, and Barbara Stanwyck heads the cast of The Strange Love of Martha Ivers.

Worth knowing

No advertising on any of these, and most run under ninety minutes, so two fit into one evening.

Films in this collection

Where to start with free noir

Detour is the obvious first film. It runs 68 minutes, has a tiny cast and follows a hitch-hiking pianist whose luck turns and keeps turning. It was made at PRC, one of the smallest studios in Hollywood, and it looks it. That poverty is part of why it works.

D.O.A. has the best opening premise in the genre: a man walks into a police station to report a murder, and the victim is himself. Edmond O'Brien spends the rest of the film chasing the people who poisoned him. Too Late for Tears belongs to Lizabeth Scott, whose character sees a bag of money land in the wrong car and decides to keep it.

The Hitch-Hiker is the leanest of the lot. Two men on a fishing trip give a lift to a stranger who turns out to be a killer, and most of its 71 minutes play out on the road through Mexico.

Scarlet Street is the bleakest of the bigger productions. Edward G. Robinson plays a cashier and Sunday painter who falls for the wrong woman, and Lang follows the story to an ending Hollywood rarely allowed. The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, at 116 minutes the longest film here, was Kirk Douglas's first screen role.

City films and country films

Noir is usually filed as an urban form, and some of these fit that picture exactly. He Walked by Night follows a police manhunt through Los Angeles. Woman on the Run turns San Francisco into a maze as a wife searches for her husband, a witness to a killing, before the killer finds him. Kansas City Confidential is a heist picture built on masks and a frame-up.

Others take the dread out of town. The Red House, with Edward G. Robinson, hides its secret in the woods behind a farm. Suddenly puts Frank Sinatra in a small Californian town, waiting with a rifle for a president whose train is due through that afternoon.

Then there are the ones that barely leave a room. Fear in the Night opens on a man who wakes certain he has killed someone in a mirrored chamber he cannot place, and the rest of the film is his attempt to prove it was a dream.

What free noir looks like on a small screen

The style depends on shadow, and shadow suffers most from a poor copy. The Big Combo and He Walked by Night were both photographed by John Alton, whose lighting is the reason people seek them out; a washed-out transfer loses most of what makes them worth the time. Uploads differ, so check the linked source record before you commit to one.

Sound matters too, because noir leans on the voice-over. Detour and D.O.A. are both told largely in flashback by their narrators, and the thinner recordings are easier to follow on headphones.

For a first evening, pair Detour with The Hitch-Hiker. They come to a little over two hours together, neither carries a wasted scene, and they show the genre at its cheapest and at its most controlled.

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Questions people ask

Why is so much film noir in the public domain?

Timing and paperwork, mostly. These films were released when an American copyright had to be renewed after 28 years, and many were made by small companies or independent producers who never filed the renewal. Once that deadline passed the film was free, and no later owner could take it back.

Is Detour really free, given it is in the National Film Registry?

Yes. The Registry recognises a film's cultural and historical importance and has nothing to do with who owns it. Detour is out of copyright in the United States and streams from the Internet Archive with no advertising and no account.

Which noir titles here are the shortest?

Detour at 68 minutes, Shock at 69, and Fear in the Night and The Hitch-Hiker at 71 each. The longest is The Strange Love of Martha Ivers at 116 minutes. Most of the noir titles run 90 minutes or less, so they turn up again in the weeknight collection.

Are there crime films in the catalogue that are not in this collection?

Yes. This page only takes public-domain titles tagged as noir, so every one is American and from the 1940s or 1950s. Crime and thriller films published free by studios, such as Scam Shikari or Kooman, sit in the language catalogues instead.