What is the best film noir of the 1940s?

Cigarette smoke, femmes fatales, and shadows with something to hide — the 1940s noir canon set the template for every dark thriller that followed. Which one is the purest masterpiece?

1. 1
   Double Indemnity

   Billy Wilder's 1944 definitive film noir about an insurance salesman seduced into a murder plot by a calculating femme fatale.
2. 2
   Laura

   Otto Preminger's 1944 stylish whodunit in which a detective investigating a woman's murder becomes obsessed with her portrait.
3. 3
   The Maltese Falcon

   John Huston's 1941 classic adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's novel featuring Humphrey Bogart as cynical private eye Sam Spade.
4. 4
   The Big Sleep

   Howard Hawks's 1946 labyrinthine Raymond Chandler adaptation with Bogart as Philip Marlowe navigating a bewilderingly corrupt Los Angeles.
5. 5
   Out of the Past

   Jacques Tourneur's 1947 quintessential noir about a former private eye whose past catches up with him after he falls for a gangster's girlfriend.
6. 6
   Gilda

   Charles Vidor's 1946 provocative noir starring Rita Hayworth in her most iconic role as a captivating and destructive femme fatale in Buenos Aires.
7. 7
   Mildred Pierce

   Michael Curtiz's 1945 Joan Crawford Oscar vehicle — a melodramatic noir about a self-made woman whose devotion to her daughter proves her undoing.
8. 8
   The Postman Always Rings Twice

   Tay Garnett's 1946 steamy noir about a drifter who plots with a restless married woman to kill her husband.
9. 9
   Murder, My Sweet

   Edward Dmytryk's 1944 pulpy Chandler adaptation featuring Dick Powell reinventing himself as a hard-boiled Philip Marlowe.
10. 10
    The Blue Dahlia

    George Marshall's 1946 Raymond Chandler original screenplay following a war veteran who returns home to find his wife murdered.
11. 11
    Dark Passage

    Delmer Daves's 1947 inventive Bogart-Bacall noir with a daring first-person camera perspective as a wrongly convicted man escapes prison.
12. 12
    Notorious

    Alfred Hitchcock's 1946 romantic spy thriller about an FBI agent who recruits a woman to infiltrate a Nazi organization by seducing its leader.