It’s tough deciding what to write about first for a film festival. For my AFI FEST 2011 series I tried to go in linear order as best I could, but that went out the window as later showings all vied for my attention. In the end I only reviewed a handful of films when I could have reviewed pretty much everything. This year I aim to fix that and put more of a Flickchart spin on my festival coverage, starting with the TCM Classic Film Fest 2012. There will be a couple of single reviews, of course, but I’ll also be ranking and comparing some of the films I’ve seen based on a theme or particular element that ties the films together.

I’d like to start this post series with a look at TCM’s selection of Noir films. Considering the theme of the festival was “style in the movies,” it’s only natural that they would have films from that genre handy. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to work all the Noir films into my schedule, but the ones that I did see were an absolute treat.

But which one was best? Which one had the edge over the others? In true noir fashion, let’s set all the cards on the table and see how it all shakes out!

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