There is a particular enjoyment to be found inmysterymovies, no matter how you watch them. Some audiences like playing detective, making each film a guessing game that they figure out before the final credits. Others prefer to sit back and let the events unfold. Whatever your poison (or robbery, murder, kidnapping, fraud, etc.), here are the twistiest, most mind-bending mysteries from the past 100 years, one from each decade (with runners-up in case your detective skills are out of this world.)
1920s: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
With a run-time of only 74 minutes, Robert Wiene’s 1920 silent film still manages to be a mystery masterpiece. The graphic German Expressionist set lays a haunting gothic scene from the very start, and we meet a man named Francis, who points out a distraught-looking woman, his fiancée, to his companion, an older man. The scene shifts to a flashback of Francis in happier times, when an enigmatic man named Dr. Caligari shows up, wanting to exhibit a somnambulist named Cesare at the local town fair. And that’s when the murders begin. This iconic film set the scene for countless mystery movies to come, and comes complete with a twist you won’t see coming.
Related:The Best Unconventional Detective TV Shows and Movies, Ranked
Runner-up: The Greene Murder Case (1929)
William Powell starred in this 1929 film in his second outing as amateur detective Philo Vance, and the movie contains a lot of the tropes that audiences would continue to crave for years to come: an unpleasant, wealthy family, a creepy castle, a disputed will. And of course, a series of murders that everyone seems powerless to stop, murders that could have been committed by any number of a cast of kooky characters.
1930s: M (1931)
Directed by the inimitable Fritz Lang in 1931, Peter Lorre gives an absolutely terrifying performance as Hans Beckert, a serial killer in Berlin who preys on children. It’s not a mystery in that the audience doesn’t know who the killer is, but they don’t know when, how, or even if he will be caught. The film is famous for its effective use of a leitmotif whistled by Beckert from Edvard Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King, and for its portrayal of Berlin’s seedy underworld, inspired by the real-life Ringvereine, criminal gangs that were rampant during the days of the Weimar Republic.
Runner-up: The Thin Man (1934)
In 1934, William Powell took on his most famous role, as another detective (seeThe Greene Murder Case, above), the incomparably classy Nick Charles, who, with his high-spirited wife Nora (Myrna Loy) and their adorable fox terrier Asta (Skippy), solved mysteries in pre-code hits. This first outing, based on the novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett (the title of which doesnotrefer to Nick Charles), involved the disappearance of an heiress’ father just before her wedding, and the subsequent death of his secretary. Nick and Nora drink cocktails, wear fabulous outfits, and exchange witty quips as they bring the guilty to justice. Five sequels were to follow.
1940s: The Third Man (1949)
Post-WWII Vienna is the dark, dank setting for Carol Reed’s 1949 film noir, starring Joseph Cotten as Holly Martens, an American writer who’s come to meet his friend, Harry Lime (Orson Welles). But upon arrival, Martens learns that Lime has been hit by a car and killed. Nagged by the feeling that something doesn’t seem quite right, Martens decides to stick around, and discovers that Lime had been stealing penicillin to sell on the black market. One night Martens realizes he’s being followed, realizes it is Lime who is very much still alive, and the chase is on. With a screenplay by Graham Greene and stars like Cotten and Welles, it’s no surprise that this remains one of the most effective film noirs ever.
Runner-up: The Maltese Falcon (1941)
John Huston’s 1941 debut (may every director be so lucky as to have a Humphrey Bogart in their debut film) was inspired both by Dashiell Hammett’s novel and its 1931 film adaptation. Bogart is detective Sam Spade, playing opposite client Ruth Wonderley (Mary Astor), who comes to him in search of her missing sister. But then the client disappears and Spade’s fellow detective is killed, and Spade realizes he’s not dealing with just a missing persons case. The twists and turns begin, as the client, admitting her name is really Brigid O’Shaughnessy, and she made the story up, which is about the time that Spade becomes aware of a very expensive statue called the Maltese Falcon. The intricate plot doesn’t miss a beat, and you’ll see just why this one is a classic.
Related:Humphrey Bogart’s Best Movies, Ranked
1950s: Vertigo (1958)
Mysteries in the ’50s belonged to Alfred Hitchcock, and this 1958 film is arguably his crown jewel.James Stewartand Kim Novak turn in performances of a lifetime as retired detective Scottie Ferguson, who suffers from vertigo, and Madeleine Elster, whose husband is worried that she’s not herself at the moment. Along with Ferguson, the audience is quickly sucked into Madeleine’s story, as well as that of Carlotta Valdez, whose grave and portrait obsess Madeleine. After rescuing Madeline from a suicide attempt, the two fall in love, but a happy ending is not in store. 65 years later, the exquisite mysteries of this masterpiece are still unparalleled, and with Hitchcock’s stunning signature visuals, a jarring soundtrack, and cinema’s first use of the dolly zoom to convey Ferguson’s fragile mental and neurological state, there has never been another film like it, and it will stay you long after the closing credits.
Runner-up: North by Northwest (1959)
It is of course difficult to say thatVertigois a better film thanNorth by Northwest, or vice versa, but either way, what an astounding achievement that Hitchcock released this film just one year later. Cary Grant is the epitome of sophistication, even as he’s bewildered to find that, through a case of mistaken identity, his life is turned completely upside down. He chases answers across the country, fortuitously meeting Eva Marie Saint’s Eve Kendall on a cross-country train. It’s a complicated tale of spies, secrets, and double-crosses, with some of the most iconic shots in film history, like Grant running through a cornfield from a crop-dusting plane, and Saint dangling by her elegant fingertips from the side of Mount Rushmore.
1960s: Charade (1963)
It’s known as “the best Hitchcock movie Hitchcock never made”, although Stanley Donen’s effective 1963 thriller throws in a romantic comedy angle to give it a lighter feel. Audrey Hepburn is elegance personified as Reggie Lampert, a sort-of-grieving widow whose wealthy older husband has been thrown off a train, apparently in possession of a quarter of a million dollars no one can seem to find. Walter Matthau is a bumbling CIA agent whose sure she knows more than she’s saying, and Cary Grant is a suave American with a habit of turning up a little too conveniently when Reggie is in peril, hounded as she is by three thuggish men who knew her husband in the war, and consider the missing money to be theirs. The relationship between Grant and Hepburn is almost impossibly charming, but can she trust him? An excellent Henry Mancini score ramps up the tension as cat-and-mouse games are played all over Paris.
Runner-up: Bunny Lake is Missing (1965)
Otto Preminger’s 1965 mystery didn’t garner much attention upon its release, but it has since been recognized as one of the ’60s best psychological thrillers. Single mother Ann Lake (Carol Lynley) is in the middle of a move to London, and amidst a busy day, goes to pick up her little girl Bunny from her first day of daycare. But not only is Bunny not there, no one at the school remembers her having been dropped off that morning, or even enrolled. Ann’s brother Steven (Keir Dullea) arrives to help, along with police Superintendent Newhouse (Laurence Olivier), who is the first suspect that Bunny’s disappearance may not be the problem at all, but that just maybe there is no Bunny at all. With Noel Coward in a small role as a lecherous neighbor, the movie has an air of creeping dread, as every time Ann thinks she has proof of something, it’s taken away, and she grows more and more desperate for someone, anyone to acknowledge Bunny’s existence.
