10 Great European Neo-Noir Films

This month, "The American Friend," a classic from German director Wim Wenders that until now was probably lesser known than his touchstones "Paris, Texas" and "Wings of Desire," comes to the Criterion Collection. As you'll read below, it's a grubby little story of antiheroes and their patsies that we, predictably, adore, and while its particular mix of independent gritty '70s aesthetic, European setting and director, American star and Patricia Highsmith source material makes it feel highly singular, it does in fact belong to a long and packed tradition: the European neo-noir.

If the precise definition of film noir is always cause for debate, the categorisation "neo-noir" is even looser. It's generally accepted to apply only to the post-noir "proper" heyday (which ran from the early '40s to the late '50s, or in filmic terms, from "The Maltese Falcon" to "Touch of Evil.") Classic noir encompasses elements like...