The Best Movie Of Each Year From 1925-2025

Honourable Mentions: City Lights, Dracula, Frankenstein

While most famous for his long-reaching influence on science fiction with 1927's Metropolis, the expressionistic stylings of Austrian filmmaker Fritz Lang were most heavily felt within a different genre: film noir. Lang would cement this reputation with multiple genre classics in the 1950s (including one that makes an appearance on this list), but one of his boldest efforts remains one of his earlier films - a German-set thriller starring Peter Lorre, M.

Lang's first sound feature and one that catapulted Lorre to international stardom, M is both deliriously paranoid and unabashedly dark, focusing its action on Lorre's Hans Beckert - a serial killer who preys upon children in Berlin - as an investigation and manhunt slowly begins to tighten the noose around his neck.

Like Metropolis before it, M exemplifies the technical daring of Weimar-era cinema as well as its thematic maturity, and remains a touchstone of noir filmmaking.