Top 10 Alaina Silvera

Významný americký odborník na film noir, Alain Silver, uveřejnil v roce 1993 v časopise Variety svou noirovou top 10, kterou i s původním komentářem publikoval v úvodu jím a Jamesem Ursinim editovaném sborníku Film Noir Reader 4 z roku 2004. 

Pro představu a pokochání si ji dovolím ocitovat i s jeho komentářem:

1. Kiss Me Deadly

2. Gun Crazy

3. Pojistka smrti (Double Indemnity)

4. Criss Cross

5. Žena za výlohou (Woman in the Window)

6. Ride the Pink Horse

7. Pryč od minulosti (Out of the Past)

8. Noc a město (Night and the City)

9. Caught 

10. Bílý žár (White Heat) a Hluboký spánek (The Big Sleep)

"I cheated with number ten; but this list is neither chronological nor alphabetical. I admire Sam Fuller's Underworld U.S.A. and Kubrick's The Killing and think they are better movies than White Heat; but they're not better film noir. I love Cry of the City, Phantom Lady, and The Killers, too, but I did have one rule: a single movie per director, otherwise Siodmak, Lang, Ophuls and Wilder might have overwhelmed the field and made it an all-émigré list. No Anthony Mann? Another great filmmaker with lot of noir titles, but no. No John Huston, either; Maltese Falcon helped start it all but got left in the dust and Asphalt Jungle, just not quite. A nearer miss for the lesser-known Henry Hathaway and John Farrow, whose The Dark Corner or Kiss of Death and His Kind of Woman or The Big Clock are nothing to sneeze at. I'm out of words, so you figure out why. Hint: this list has it all: tortured, obsessed, warscarred, psychotic, truck-driving, insurance-selling escapes and ex-cons and their exotic, blonde and brunette femme fatales." (1)

(1) SILVER, Alain, URSINI, James. Film Noir Reader 4. The Crucial Films and Themes. New Jersey : Limelight Editions, 2004, str. 3.