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{{Short description|Style of crime drama films}}
{{redirect|Film Noir|the Carly Simon album|Film Noir (album){{!}}''Film Noir'' (album)}}
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{{Infobox film movement
| name         = Film noir
| image        = BigComboTrailer.jpg
| caption      = Two silhouetted figures in ''[[The Big Combo]]'' (1955). The film's [[cinematography|cinematographer]], [[John Alton]], is sometimes credited as the creator of many of film noir's stylized images.
| yearsactive  = [[Film_noir#Classic_period|Classic period]]: 1940s and 1950s; earlier films are often referred to as proto-noirs and later films as [[neo-noir]]s
| country      = United States
| majorfigures =[[Humphrey Bogart]] <br> [[Robert Mitchum]] <br> [[Peter Lorre]] <br> [[Robert Ryan]] 
| influences   = *[[German expressionist cinema|German expressionism]]
*[[Poetic realism|French poetic realism]]
*[[Italian neorealism]]
*[[Hardboiled|American hardboiled fiction]]
| influenced = *[[French New Wave]]
*[[Neo-noir]] 
*[[Tech noir]]
}}

'''Film noir''' ({{IPAc-en|n|w|ɑːr}}; {{IPA|fr|film nwaʁ|lang}}) is a style of [[Cinema of the United States|Hollywood]] [[Crime film|crime drama]] that emphasizes [[cynicism (contemporary)|cynical]] attitudes and motivations. The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of American film noir. Film noir of this era is associated with a [[low-key lighting|low-key]], [[black-and-white]] visual style that has roots in [[German expressionist cinema]]tography. Many of the prototypical stories and attitudes expressed in classic noir derive from the [[hardboiled]] school of [[crime fiction]] that emerged in the United States during the [[Great Depression]], known as [[noir fiction]].<ref>{{cite web|url = https://www.learner.org/series/american-cinema/film-noir/|publisher = Annenberg Learner|work = American Cinema|title = Film Noir|access-date = 2021-04-18|archive-date = 2021-04-18|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20210418071813/https://www.learner.org/series/american-cinema/film-noir/|url-status = live}}</ref> 

The term ''film noir'', French for "black film" (literal) or "dark film" (closer meaning),<ref>See, e.g., Biesen (2005), p. 1; Hirsch (2001), p. 9; Lyons (2001), p. 2; Silver and Ward (1992), p. 1; Schatz (1981), p. 112. Outside the field of film noir scholarship, "dark film" is also offered on occasion; see, e.g., Block, Bruce A., ''The Visual Story: Seeing the Structure of Film, TV, and New Media'' (2001), p. 94; Klarer, Mario, ''An Introduction to Literary Studies'' (1999), p. 59.</ref> was first applied to [[Hollywood film]]s by French critic [[Nino Frank]] in 1946, but was unrecognized by most American film industry professionals of that era.<ref>Naremore (2008), pp. 4, 15–16, 18, 41; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 4–5, 22, 255.</ref> Frank is believed to have been inspired by the French literary publishing imprint [[Série noire]], founded in 1945.

Cinema historians and critics defined the category retrospectively. Before the notion was widely adopted in the 1970s, many of the classic film noirs{{Ref label|A|a|none}} were referred to as "[[melodrama]]s". Whether film noir qualifies as a distinct [[film genre|genre]] or whether it should be considered a filmmaking style is a matter of ongoing and heavy debate among film scholars.

Film noir encompasses a range of plots; common archetypical protagonists include a private investigator (''[[The Big Sleep (1946 film)|The Big Sleep]]''), a [[Plainclothes law enforcement|plainclothes police officer]] (''[[The Big Heat]]''), an aging boxer (''[[The Set-Up (1949 film)|The Set-Up]]''), a hapless [[Confidence trick|grifter]] (''[[Night and the City]]''), a law-abiding citizen lured into a life of crime (''[[Gun Crazy]]''), a [[femme fatale]] (''[[Gilda (film)|Gilda]]'') or simply a victim of circumstance (''[[D.O.A. (1950 film)|D.O.A.]]''). Although film noir was originally associated with American productions, the term has been used to describe films from around the world. Many films released from the 1960s onward share attributes with film noirs of the classical period, and often treat its conventions [[Self-reference|self-referentially]]. Latter-day works are typically referred to as [[neo-noir]]. The clichés of film noir have inspired parody since the mid-1940s.<ref>{{cite web|first = Nandia|last = Foteini Vlachou|url = https://iknowwhereimgoing.wordpress.com/2016/09/06/parody-and-the-noir/|title = Parody and the noir|website = I Know Where I'm Going|date = 6 September 2016|access-date = 19 November 2020|archive-date = 27 November 2020|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20201127201850/https://iknowwhereimgoing.wordpress.com/2016/09/06/parody-and-the-noir/|url-status = live}}</ref>

==Definition==
[[File:The Stranger (Orson Welles, 1946).webm|thumb|thumbtime=25|''[[The Stranger (1946 film)|The Stranger]]'' (1946), directed by [[Orson Welles]]]]
The question of what defines film noir and what sort of category it is, provokes continuing debate.<ref>Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 3.</ref> "We'd be oversimplifying things in calling film noir [[oneiric (film theory)|oneiric]], strange, erotic, ambivalent, and cruel&nbsp;..."—this set of attributes constitutes the first of many attempts to define film noir made by French critics {{interlanguage link|Raymond Borde|fr}} and Étienne Chaumeton in their 1955 book ''Panorama du film noir américain 1941–1953'' (''A Panorama of American Film Noir''), the original and seminal extended treatment of the subject.<ref>Borde and Chaumeton (2002), p. 2.</ref> They emphasize that not every noir film embodies all five attributes in equal measure—one might be more dreamlike; another, particularly brutal.<ref>Borde and Chaumeton (2002), pp. 2–3.</ref> The authors' caveats and repeated efforts at alternative definition have been echoed in subsequent scholarship, but in the words of cinema historian Mark Bould, film noir remains an "elusive phenomenon."<ref>Bould (2005), p. 13.</ref>

Though film noir is often identified with a visual style that emphasizes [[low-key lighting]] and [[Composition (visual arts)|unbalanced compositions]],<ref>See, e.g., Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 4; Bould (2005), p. 12; Place and Peterson (1974).</ref> films commonly identified as noir evidence a variety of visual approaches, including ones that fit comfortably within the Hollywood mainstream.<ref>See, e.g., Naremore (2008), p. 167–68; Irwin (2006), p. 210.</ref> Film noir similarly embraces a variety of genres, from the [[mob film|gangster film]] to the [[police procedural]] to the [[gothic fiction|gothic romance]] to the [[social problem film|social problem picture]]—any example of which from the 1940s and 1950s, now seen as noir's classical era, was likely to be described as a melodrama at the time.<ref>Neale (2000), p. 166; Vernet (1993), p. 2; Naremore (2008), pp. 17, 122, 124, 140; Bould (2005), p. 19.</ref>

{{Quote box
| quote = It is night, always. The hero enters a labyrinth on a quest. He is alone and off balance. He may be desperate, in flight, or coldly calculating, imagining he is the pursuer rather than the pursued.

A woman invariably joins him at a critical juncture, when he is most vulnerable. [Her] eventual betrayal of him (or herself) is as ambiguous as her feelings about him.
| author = [[Nicholas Christopher (writer)|Nicholas Christopher]]
| source = ''Somewhere in the Night'' (1997)<ref>{{Cite book |last=Christopher |first=Nicholas  |title=Somewhere in the Night: Film Noir and the American City |date=1997 |isbn=0-684-82803-0 |publisher=[[Free Press (publisher)|Free Press]] |location=New York, NY |oclc=36330881|page=7}}</ref>

| align = left
| width = 25%
}}While many critics refer to film noir as a genre itself, others argue that it can be no such thing.<ref>For overview of debate, see, e.g., Bould (2005), pp. 13–23; Telotte (1989), pp. 9–10. For description of noir as a genre, see, e.g., Bould (2005), p. 2; Hirsch (2001), pp. 71–72; Tuska (1984), p. xxiii. For the opposing viewpoint, see, e.g., Neale (2000), p. 164; Ottoson (1981), p. 2; Schrader (1972); Durgnat (1970).</ref> Foster Hirsch defines a genre as determined by "conventions of narrative structure, characterization, theme, and visual design." Hirsch, as one who has taken the position that film noir is a genre, argues that these elements are present "in abundance." Hirsch notes that there are unifying features of tone, visual style and narrative sufficient to classify noir as a distinct genre.<ref>{{cite book  | last=Conrad |first=Mark T. |title=The Philosophy of Film Noir| publisher=University Press of Kentucky |date=2006}}</ref>

Others argue that film noir is not a genre. It is often associated with an urban setting, but many classic noirs take place in small towns, suburbia, rural areas, or on the open road; setting is not a determinant, as with the [[Western (genre)|Western]]. Similarly, while the [[private investigator|private eye]] and the [[femme fatale]] are [[stock character]] types conventionally identified with noir, the majority of films in the genre feature neither. Nor does film noir rely on anything as evident as the monstrous or supernatural elements of the [[horror film]], the speculative leaps of the [[science fiction film]], or the song-and-dance routines of the [[musical film|musical]].<ref>Ottoson (1981), pp. 2–3.</ref>

An analogous case is that of the [[screwball comedy film|screwball comedy]], widely accepted by film historians as constituting a "genre": screwball is defined not by a fundamental attribute, but by a general disposition and a group of elements, some—but rarely and perhaps never all—of which are found in each of the genre's films.<ref>See Dancyger and Rush (2002), p. 68, for a detailed comparison of screwball comedy and film noir.</ref> Because of the diversity of noir (much greater than that of the screwball comedy), certain scholars in the field, such as film historian [[Tom Schatz (professor)|Thomas Schatz]], treat it as not a genre but a "style".<ref>Schatz (1981), pp. 111–15.</ref> [[Alain Silver]], the most widely published American critic specializing in film noir studies, refers to film noir as a "cycle"<ref>Silver (1996), pp. 4, 6 passim. See also Bould (2005), pp. 3, 4; Hirsch (2001), p. 11.</ref> and a "phenomenon",<ref>Silver (1996), pp. 3, 6 passim. See also Place and Peterson (1974).</ref> even as he argues that it has—like certain genres—a consistent set of visual and thematic codes.<ref>Silver (1996), pp. 7–10.</ref> Screenwriter [[Eric R. Williams]] labels both film noir and screwball comedy a "pathway" in his screenwriters taxonomy; explaining that a pathway has two parts: 1) the way the audience connects with the protagonist and 2) the trajectory the audience expects the story to follow.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Williams|first=Eric R.|title=The screenwriters taxonomy : a roadmap to collaborative storytelling|publisher=Routledge Studies in Media Theory and Practice|year=2017|isbn=978-1-315-10864-3|location=New York, NY|oclc=993983488}}</ref> Other critics treat film noir as a "mood,"<ref>See, e.g., Jones (2009).</ref> a "series",<ref>See, e.g., Borde and Chaumeton (2002), pp. 1–7 passim.</ref> or simply a chosen set of films they regard as belonging to the noir "canon."<ref>See, e.g., Telotte (1989), pp. 10–11, 15 passim.</ref> There is no consensus on the matter.<ref>For survey of the lexical variety, see Naremore (2008), pp. 9, 311–12 n. 1.</ref>

==Background==

===Cinematic sources===
[[File:Marlene Dietrich circa 1930 (cropped).png|thumb|[[Marlene Dietrich]], an actress frequently called upon to play a [[femme fatale]].]]

The aesthetics of film noir were influenced by [[German Expressionism]], an artistic movement of the 1910s and 1920s that involved theater, music, photography, painting, sculpture and architecture, as well as cinema. The opportunities offered by the booming Hollywood film industry and then the threat of [[Nazism|Nazi]]sm led to the emigration of many film artists working in Germany who had been involved in the Expressionist movement or studied with its practitioners.<ref>Bould (2005), pp. 24–33.</ref> ''[[M (1931 film)|M]]'' (1931), shot only a few years before director [[Fritz Lang]]'s departure from Germany, is among the first crime films of the [[Sound film|sound era]] to join a characteristically noirish visual style with a noir-type plot, in which the protagonist is a criminal (as are his most successful pursuers). Directors such as Lang, [[Jacques Tourneur]], [[Robert Siodmak]] and [[Michael Curtiz]] brought a dramatically shadowed lighting style and a psychologically expressive approach to visual composition (''[[mise en scène|mise-en-scène]]'') with them to Hollywood, where they made some of the most famous classic noirs.<ref>Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 9–11.</ref>

By 1931, Curtiz had already been in Hollywood for half a decade, making as many as six films a year. Movies of his such as ''[[20,000 Years in Sing Sing]]'' (1932) and ''[[Private Detective 62]]'' (1933) are among the early Hollywood sound films arguably classifiable as noir—scholar Marc Vernet offers the latter as evidence that dating the initiation of film noir to 1940 or any other year is "arbitrary".<ref>Vernet (1993), p. 15.</ref> Expressionism-orientated filmmakers had free stylistic rein in [[Universal Pictures|Universal]] horror pictures such as ''[[Dracula (1931 English-language film)|Dracula]]'' (1931), ''[[The Mummy (1932 film)|The Mummy]]'' (1932)—the former [[cinematography|photographed]] and the latter directed by the Berlin-trained [[Karl Freund]]—and ''[[The Black Cat (1934 film)|The Black Cat]]'' (1934), directed by Austrian émigré [[Edgar G. Ulmer]].<ref>Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 11–13.</ref> The Universal horror film that comes closest to noir, in story and sensibility, is ''[[The Invisible Man (1933 film)|The Invisible Man]]'' (1933), directed by Englishman [[James Whale]] and photographed by American [[Arthur Edeson]]. Edeson later photographed ''[[The Maltese Falcon (1941 film)|The Maltese Falcon]]'' (1941), widely regarded as the first major film noir of the classic era.<ref>Davis (2004), p. 194. See also Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 133; Ottoson (1981), pp. 110–111. Vernet (1993) notes that the techniques now associated with Expressionism were evident in the American cinema from the mid-1910s (pp. 9–12).</ref>

[[Josef von Sternberg]] was directing in Hollywood during the same period. Films of his such as ''[[Shanghai Express (film)|Shanghai Express]]'' (1932) and ''[[The Devil Is a Woman (1935 film)|The Devil Is a Woman]]'' (1935), with their hothouse eroticism and baroque visual style anticipated central elements of classic noir. The commercial and critical success of Sternberg's silent ''[[Underworld (1927 film)|Underworld]]'' (1927) was largely responsible for spurring a trend of Hollywood gangster films.<ref>Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 6.</ref> Successful films in that genre such as ''[[Little Caesar (film)|Little Caesar]]'' (1931), ''[[The Public Enemy]]'' (1931) and ''[[Scarface (1932 film)|Scarface]]'' (1932) demonstrated that there was an audience for crime dramas with morally reprehensible protagonists.<ref>Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 6–9; Silver and Ward (1992), pp. 323–24.</ref> An important, possibly influential, cinematic antecedent to classic noir was 1930s French [[poetic realism]], with its romantic, [[fatalism|fatalistic]] attitude and celebration of doomed heroes.<ref>Spicer (2007), pp. 26, 28; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 13–15; Bould (2005), pp. 33–40.</ref> The movement's sensibility is mirrored in the [[Warner Bros.]] drama ''[[I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang]]'' (1932), a forerunner of noir.<ref>McGarry (1980), p. 139.</ref> Among films not considered noir, perhaps none had a greater effect on the development of the genre than ''[[Citizen Kane]]'' (1941), directed by [[Orson Welles]]. Its visual intricacy and complex, [[voiceover]] narrative structure are echoed in dozens of classic film noirs.<ref>Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 20; Schatz (1981), pp. 116–22; Ottoson (1981), p. 2.</ref>

[[Italian neorealism]] of the 1940s, with its emphasis on [[semidocumentary|quasi-documentary]] authenticity, was an acknowledged influence on trends that emerged in American noir. ''[[The Lost Weekend (film)|The Lost Weekend]]'' (1945), directed by [[Billy Wilder]], another Vienna-born, Berlin-trained American [[auteur]], tells the story of an alcoholic in a manner evocative of neorealism.<ref>Biesen (2005), p. 207.</ref> It also exemplifies the problem of classification: one of the first American films to be described as a film noir, it has largely disappeared from considerations of the field.<ref>Naremore (2008), pp. 13–14.</ref> Director [[Jules Dassin]] of ''[[The Naked City]]'' (1948) pointed to the neorealists as inspiring his use of location photography with non-professional extras. This semidocumentary approach characterized a substantial number of noirs in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Along with neorealism, the style had an American precedent cited by Dassin, in director [[Henry Hathaway]]'s ''[[The House on 92nd Street]]'' (1945), which demonstrated the parallel influence of the cinematic newsreel.<ref>Krutnik, Neale, and Neve (2008), pp. 147–148; Macek and Silver (1980), p. 135.</ref>

===Literary sources===
[[File:BlackMask1934Oct.jpg|thumb|alt=Magazine cover with illustration of a terrified-looking, red-haired young woman gagged and bound to a post. She is wearing a low-cut, arm-bearing yellow top and a red skirt. In front of her, a man with a large scar on his cheek and a furious expression heats a branding iron over a gas stove. In the background, a man wearing a trenchcoat and fedora and holding a revolver enters through a doorway. The text includes the tagline "Smashing Detective Stories" and the cover story's title, "Finger Man".|The October 1934 issue of ''[[Black Mask (magazine)|Black Mask]]'' featured the first appearance of the detective character whom [[Raymond Chandler]] developed into the famous [[Philip Marlowe]].<ref>Widdicombe (2001), pp. 37–39, 59–60, 118–19; {{cite web|author=Doherty, Jim|url=http://www.thrillingdetective.com/carmady.html|title=Carmady|publisher=Thrilling Detective Web Site|access-date=2010-02-25|archive-date=2010-01-04|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100104102528/http://thrillingdetective.com/carmady.html|url-status=live}}</ref>]]

The primary literary influence on film noir was the [[History of crime fiction#Hardboiled American crime-fiction writing|hardboiled]] school of American [[detective fiction|detective]] and [[crime fiction]], led in its early years by such writers as [[Dashiell Hammett]] (whose first novel, ''[[Red Harvest]]'', was published in 1929) and [[James M. Cain]] (whose ''[[The Postman Always Rings Twice (novel)|The Postman Always Rings Twice]]'' appeared five years later), and popularized in [[pulp magazine]]s such as ''[[Black Mask (magazine)|Black Mask]]''. The classic film noirs ''[[The Maltese Falcon (1941 film)|The Maltese Falcon]]'' (1941) and ''[[The Glass Key (1942 film)|The Glass Key]]'' (1942) were based on novels by Hammett; Cain's novels provided the basis for ''[[Double Indemnity]]'' (1944), ''[[Mildred Pierce (film)|Mildred Pierce]]'' (1945), ''[[The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946 film)|The Postman Always Rings Twice]]'' (1946), and ''[[Slightly Scarlet (1956 film)|Slightly Scarlet]]'' (1956; adapted from ''Love's Lovely Counterfeit''). A decade before the classic era, a story by Hammett was the source for the gangster melodrama ''[[City Streets (1931 film)|City Streets]]'' (1931), directed by [[Rouben Mamoulian]] and photographed by [[Lee Garmes]], who worked regularly with Sternberg. Released the month before Lang's ''M'', ''City Streets'' has a claim to being the first major film noir; both its style and story had many noir characteristics.<ref>See, e.g., Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 6; Macek (1980), pp. 59–60.</ref>

[[Raymond Chandler]], who debuted as a novelist with ''[[The Big Sleep]]'' in 1939, soon became the most famous author of the hardboiled school. Not only were Chandler's novels turned into major noirs—''[[Murder, My Sweet]]'' (1944; adapted from ''[[Farewell, My Lovely]]''), ''[[The Big Sleep (1946 film)|The Big Sleep]]'' (1946), and ''[[Lady in the Lake]]'' (1947)—he was an important [[screenwriter]] in the genre as well, producing the scripts for ''Double Indemnity'', ''[[The Blue Dahlia]]'' (1946), and ''[[Strangers on a Train (film)|Strangers on a Train]]'' (1951). Where Chandler, like Hammett, centered most of his novels and stories on the character of the private eye, Cain featured less heroic protagonists and focused more on psychological exposition than on crime solving;<ref>Irwin (2006), pp. 71, 95–96.</ref> the Cain approach has come to be identified with a subset of the hardboiled genre dubbed "[[noir fiction]]". For much of the 1940s, one of the most prolific and successful authors of this often downbeat brand of suspense tale was [[Cornell Woolrich]] (sometimes under the pseudonym George Hopley or William Irish). No writer's published work provided the basis for more noir films of the classic period than Woolrich's: thirteen in all, including ''[[Black Angel (1946 film)|Black Angel]]'' (1946), ''[[Deadline at Dawn]]'' (1946), and ''[[Fear in the Night (1947 film)|Fear in the Night]]'' (1947).<ref>Irwin (2006), pp. 123–24, 129–30.</ref>

Another crucial literary source for film noir was [[William R. Burnett|W. R. Burnett]], whose first novel to be published was ''Little Caesar'', in 1929. It was turned into a hit for [[Warner Bros.]] in 1931; the following year, Burnett was hired to write dialogue for ''Scarface'', while ''[[The Beast of the City]]'' (1932) was adapted from one of his stories. At least one important reference work identifies the latter as a film noir despite its early date.<ref>White (1980), p. 17.</ref> Burnett's characteristic narrative approach fell somewhere between that of the quintessential hardboiled writers and their noir fiction compatriots—his protagonists were often heroic in their own way, which happened to be that of the gangster. During the classic era, his work, either as author or screenwriter, was the basis for seven films now widely regarded as noir, including three of the most famous: ''[[High Sierra (film)|High Sierra]]'' (1941), ''[[This Gun for Hire]]'' (1942), and ''[[The Asphalt Jungle]]'' (1950).<ref>Irwin (2006), pp. 97–98, 188–89.</ref>

==Classic period==

===Overview===
The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the classic period of American film noir. While ''City Streets'' and other pre-WWII crime melodramas such as ''[[Fury (1936 film)|Fury]]'' (1936) and ''[[You Only Live Once (1937 film)|You Only Live Once]]'' (1937), both directed by Fritz Lang, are categorized as full-fledged noir in Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward's film noir encyclopedia, other critics tend to describe them as "proto-noir" or in similar terms.<ref>Silver and Ward (1992), p. 333, as well as entries on individual films, pp. 59–60, 109–10, 320–21. For description of ''City Streets'' as "proto-noir", see Turan (2008). For description of ''Fury'' as "proto-noir", see Machura, Stefan, and Peter Robson, ''Law and Film'' (2001), p. 13. For description of ''You Only Live Once'' as "pre-noir", see Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 9.</ref>

The film now most commonly cited as the first true film noir is ''[[Stranger on the Third Floor]]'' (1940), directed by Latvian-born, Soviet-trained [[Boris Ingster]].<ref name=3d>See, e.g., Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 19; Irwin (2006), p. 210; Lyons (2000), p. 36; Porfirio (1980), p. 269.</ref> Hungarian émigré [[Peter Lorre]]—who had starred in Lang's ''[[M (1931 film)|M]]''—was top-billed, although he did not play the primary lead. (He later played [[character actor|secondary roles]] in several other formative American noirs.) Although modestly budgeted, at the high end of the [[B movie]] scale, ''Stranger on the Third Floor'' still lost its studio, [[RKO]], US$56,000 ({{Inflation|US|56000|1940|fmt=eq}}), almost a third of its total cost.<ref>Biesen (2005), p. 33.</ref> ''[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]]'' magazine found Ingster's work: "...too studied and when original, lacks the flare {{sic}} to hold attention. It's a film too arty for average audiences, and too humdrum for others."<ref>''Variety'' (1940).</ref> ''Stranger on the Third Floor'' was not recognized as the beginning of a trend, let alone a new genre, for many decades.<ref name=3d/>

{{Quote box
|quote  = Whoever went to the movies with any regularity during 1946 was caught in the midst of Hollywood's profound postwar affection for morbid drama. From January through December deep shadows, clutching hands, exploding revolvers, sadistic villains and heroines tormented with deeply rooted diseases of the mind flashed across the screen in a panting display of psychoneurosis, unsublimated sex and murder most foul.
|source = Donald Marshman, ''Life'' (August 25, 1947)<ref>Marshman (1947), pp. 100–1.</ref>
|width  = 35%
|align  = right
|salign  = right
}}
Most film noirs of the classic period were similarly low- and modestly-budgeted features without major stars—[[B movies]] either literally or in spirit. In this production context, writers, directors, cinematographers, and other craftsmen were relatively free from typical big-picture constraints. There was more visual experimentation than in Hollywood filmmaking as a whole: the Expressionism now closely associated with noir and the semi-documentary style that later emerged represent two very different tendencies. Narrative structures sometimes involved convoluted flashbacks uncommon in non-noir commercial productions. In terms of content, enforcement of the [[Production Code]] ensured that no film character could literally get away with murder or be seen sharing a bed with anyone but a spouse; within those bounds, however, many films now identified as noir feature plot elements and dialogue that were very risqué for the time.<ref>Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 4, 19–26, 28–33; Hirsch (2001), pp. 1–21; Schatz (1981), pp. 111–16.</ref>

[[File:OutOfThePastMitchumGreer.jpg|thumb|alt=Black-and-white image of a man and a woman sitting side by side on a couch, viewed at an angle. The man, in profile in the left foreground, stares off to the right of frame. He wears a trenchcoat, and his face is shadowed by a fedora. He holds a cigarette in his left hand. The woman, to the right and rear, stares at him. She wears a dark dress and lipstick of a deeply saturated hue.|''[[Out of the Past]]'' (1947) directed by [[Jacques Tourneur]], features many of the genre's hallmarks: a cynical private detective as the protagonist, a [[femme fatale]], multiple [[Flashback (literary technique)|flashbacks]] with [[voiceover]] narration, [[chiaroscuro|dramatically shadowed]] photography, and a [[fatalism|fatalistic]] mood leavened with provocative banter. Pictured are noir icons [[Robert Mitchum]] and [[Jane Greer]].]] 
Thematically, film noirs were most exceptional for the relative frequency with which they centered on [[Portrayal of women in film noir|portrayals of women]] of questionable virtue—a focus that had become rare in Hollywood films after the mid-1930s and the end of the [[Pre-Code Hollywood|pre-Code]] era. The signal film in this vein was ''[[Double Indemnity]]'', directed by Billy Wilder; setting the mold was [[Barbara Stanwyck]]'s [[femme fatale]], Phyllis Dietrichson—an apparent nod to [[Marlene Dietrich]], who had built her extraordinary career playing such characters for Sternberg. An A-level feature, the film's commercial success and seven [[Academy Awards|Oscar]] nominations made it probably the most influential of the early noirs.<ref>See, e.g., Naremore (2008), pp. 81, 319 n. 13; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 86–88.</ref> A slew of now-renowned noir "bad girls" followed, such as those played by [[Rita Hayworth]] in ''[[Gilda (film)|Gilda]]'' (1946), [[Lana Turner]] in ''[[The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946 film)|The Postman Always Rings Twice]]'' (1946), [[Ava Gardner]] in ''[[The Killers (1946 film)|The Killers]]'' (1946), and [[Jane Greer]] in ''[[Out of the Past]]'' (1947). The iconic noir counterpart to the femme fatale, the private eye, came to the fore in films such as ''[[The Maltese Falcon (1941 film)|The Maltese Falcon]]'' (1941), with [[Humphrey Bogart]] as [[Sam Spade]], and ''[[Murder, My Sweet]]'' (1944), with [[Dick Powell]] as [[Philip Marlowe]].

The prevalence of the private eye as a lead character declined in film noir of the 1950s, a period during which several critics describe the form as becoming more focused on extreme psychologies and more exaggerated in general.<ref>See, e.g., Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 30; Hirsch (2001), pp. 12, 202; Schrader (1972), pp. 59–61 [in Silver and Ursini].</ref> A prime example is ''[[Kiss Me Deadly]]'' (1955); based on a novel by [[Mickey Spillane]], the best-selling of all the hardboiled authors, here the protagonist is a private eye, [[Mike Hammer (character)|Mike Hammer]]. As described by [[Paul Schrader]], "[[Robert Aldrich]]'s teasing direction carries ''noir'' to its sleaziest and most perversely erotic. Hammer overturns the underworld in search of the 'great whatsit' [which] turns out to be—joke of jokes—an exploding atomic bomb."<ref>Schrader (1972), p. 61.</ref> Orson Welles's baroquely styled ''[[Touch of Evil]]'' (1958) is frequently cited as the last noir of the classic period.<ref>See, e.g., Silver (1996), p. 11; Ottoson (1981), pp. 182–183; Schrader (1972), p. 61.</ref> Some scholars{{By whom|date=September 2025}} believe film noir never really ended, but continued to transform even as the characteristic noir visual style began to seem dated and changing production conditions led Hollywood in different directions—in this view, post-1950s films in the noir tradition are seen as part of a continuity with classic noir.<ref>See, e.g., Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 19–53.</ref> A majority of critics, however, regard comparable films made outside the classic era to be something other than genuine film noir. They regard true film noir as belonging to a temporally and geographically limited cycle or period, treating subsequent films that evoke the classics as fundamentally different due to general shifts in filmmaking style and latter-day awareness of noir as a historical source for [[allusion]].<ref>See, e.g., Hirsch (2001), pp. 10, 202–7; Silver and Ward (1992), p. 6 (though they phrase their position more ambiguously on p. 398); Ottoson (1981), p. 1.</ref> These later films are often called [[neo-noir]].

===Directors and the business of noir===
[[File:LonelyPlaceTrailer.jpg|thumb|alt=Black-and-white image of a man and woman, both with downcast expressions, sitting side by side in the front seat of a convertible. The man, on the right, grips the steering wheel. He wears a jacket and a pullover shirt. The woman wears a checkered outfit. Behind them, in the night, the road is empty, with a two widely separated lights way off in the distance.|A scene from ''[[In a Lonely Place]]'' (1950), directed by [[Nicholas Ray]] and based on a novel by [[Hardboiled#Noir fiction|noir fiction]] writer [[Dorothy B. Hughes]]. Two of noir's defining actors, [[Gloria Grahame]] and [[Humphrey Bogart]], portray star-crossed lovers in the film.]]

While the inceptive noir, ''Stranger on the Third Floor'', was a B picture directed by a virtual unknown, many of the film noirs still remembered were A-list productions by well-known film makers. Debuting as a director with ''[[The Maltese Falcon (1941 film)|The Maltese Falcon]]'' (1941), [[John Huston]] followed with ''[[Key Largo (film)|Key Largo]]'' (1948) and ''[[The Asphalt Jungle]]'' (1950). Opinion is divided on the noir status of several [[Alfred Hitchcock]] thrillers from the era; at least four qualify by consensus: ''[[Shadow of a Doubt]]'' (1943), ''[[Notorious (1946 film)|Notorious]]'' (1946), ''[[Strangers on a Train (film)|Strangers on a Train]]'' (1951) and ''[[The Wrong Man]]'' (1956),<ref>See, e.g., entries on individual films in Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 34, 190–92; Silver and Ward (1992), pp. 214–15; 253–54, 269–70, 318–19.</ref> [[Otto Preminger]]'s success with ''[[Laura (1944 film)|Laura]]'' (1944) made his name and helped demonstrate noir's adaptability to a high-gloss [[20th Century-Fox]] presentation.<ref>Biesen (2005), p. 162.</ref> Among Hollywood's most celebrated directors of the era, arguably none worked more often in a noir mode than Preminger; his other noirs include ''[[Fallen Angel (1945 film)|Fallen Angel]]'' (1945), ''[[Whirlpool (1949 film)|Whirlpool]]'' (1949), ''[[Where the Sidewalk Ends (film)|Where the Sidewalk Ends]]'' (1950) (all for Fox) and ''[[Angel Face (1952 film)|Angel Face]]'' (1952). A half-decade after ''Double Indemnity'' and ''The Lost Weekend'', Billy Wilder made ''[[Sunset Boulevard (film)|Sunset Boulevard]]'' (1950) and ''[[Ace in the Hole (1951 film)|Ace in the Hole]]'' (1951), noirs that were not so much crime dramas as satires on Hollywood and the news media respectively. ''[[In a Lonely Place]]'' (1950) was [[Nicholas Ray]]'s breakthrough; his other noirs include his debut, ''[[They Live by Night]]'' (1948) and ''[[On Dangerous Ground]]'' (1952), noted for their unusually sympathetic treatment of characters alienated from the social mainstream.<ref>Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 188, 202–3.</ref>

[[File:Lady from Shanghai trailer rita hayworth6.JPG|thumb|left|[[Rita Hayworth]] in the trailer for ''[[The Lady from Shanghai]]'' (1947)]]
Orson Welles had notorious problems with financing but his three film noirs were well-budgeted: ''[[The Lady from Shanghai]]'' (1947) received top-level, "prestige" backing, while ''[[The Stranger (1946 film)|The Stranger]]'' (1946), his most conventional film, and ''[[Touch of Evil]]'' (1958), an unmistakably personal work, were funded at levels lower but still commensurate with headlining releases.<ref>For overview of Welles's noirs, see, e.g., Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 210–11. For specific production circumstances, see Brady, Frank, ''Citizen Welles: A Biography of Orson Welles'' (1989), pp. 395–404, 378–81, 496–512.</ref> Like ''The Stranger'', Fritz Lang's ''[[The Woman in the Window (1944 film)|The Woman in the Window]]'' (1944) was a production of the independent International Pictures. Lang's follow-up, ''[[Scarlet Street]]'' (1945), was one of the few classic noirs to be officially censored: filled with erotic innuendo, it was temporarily banned in Milwaukee, Atlanta and New York State.<ref>Bernstein (1995).</ref> ''Scarlet Street'' was a semi-independent, cosponsored by [[Universal Pictures|Universal]] and Lang's Diana Productions, of which the film's co-star, [[Joan Bennett]], was the second biggest shareholder. Lang, Bennett and her husband, the Universal veteran and Diana production head [[Walter Wanger]], made ''[[Secret Beyond the Door]]'' (1948) in similar fashion.<ref>McGilligan (1997), pp. 314–17.</ref>

Before leaving the United States while subject to the [[Hollywood blacklist]], Jules Dassin made two classic noirs that also straddled the major/independent line: ''[[Brute Force (1947 film)|Brute Force]]'' (1947) and the influential documentary-style ''[[The Naked City]]'' (1948) were developed by producer [[Mark Hellinger]], who had an "inside/outside" contract with Universal similar to Wanger's.<ref>Schatz (1998), pp. 354–58.</ref> Years earlier, working at Warner Bros., Hellinger had produced three films for [[Raoul Walsh]], the proto-noirs ''[[They Drive by Night]]'' (1940), ''[[Manpower (1941 film)|Manpower]]'' (1941) and ''[[High Sierra (film)|High Sierra]]'' (1941), now regarded as a seminal work in noir's development.<ref>See, e.g., Schatz (1981), pp. 103, 112.</ref> Walsh had no great name during his half-century as a director but his noirs ''[[The Man I Love (1947 film)|The Man I Love]]'' (1947), ''[[White Heat]]'' (1949) and ''[[The Enforcer (1951 film)|The Enforcer]]'' (1951) had A-list stars and are seen as important examples of the cycle.<ref>See, e.g., entries on individual films in Silver and Ward (1992), pp. 97–98, 125–26, 311–12.</ref> Other directors associated with top-of-the-bill Hollywood film noirs include [[Edward Dmytryk]] (''[[Murder, My Sweet]]'' (1944), ''[[Crossfire (film)|Crossfire]]'' (1947))—the first important noir director to fall prey to the industry blacklist—as well as [[Henry Hathaway]] (''[[The Dark Corner]]'' (1946), ''[[Kiss of Death (1947 film)|Kiss of Death]]'' (1947)) and [[John Farrow]] (''[[The Big Clock (1948 film)|The Big Clock]]'' (1948), ''[[Night Has a Thousand Eyes]]'' (1948)).

Most of the Hollywood films considered to be classic noirs fall into the category of the B movie.<ref>See Naremore (2008), pp. 140–55, on "B Pictures versus Intermediates".</ref> Some were Bs in the most precise sense, produced to run on the bottom of [[double feature|double bills]] by a low-budget unit of one of the [[studio system|major studios]] or by one of the smaller [[Poverty Row]] outfits, from the relatively well-off [[Monogram Pictures|Monogram]] to shakier ventures such as [[Producers Releasing Corporation|Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC)]]. [[Jacques Tourneur]] had made over thirty Hollywood Bs (a few now highly regarded, most forgotten) before directing the A-level ''Out of the Past'', described by scholar Robert Ottoson as "the ''ne plus ultra'' of forties film noir".<ref>Ottoson (1981), p. 132.</ref> Movies with budgets a step up the ladder, known as "intermediates" by the industry, might be treated as A or B pictures depending on the circumstances. Monogram created [[Allied Artists Pictures Corporation|Allied Artists]] in the late 1940s to focus on this sort of production. [[Robert Wise]] (''[[Born to Kill (1947 film)|Born to Kill]]'' [1947], ''[[The Set-Up (1949 film)|The Set-Up]]'' [1949]) and [[Anthony Mann]] (''[[T-Men]]'' [1947] and ''[[Raw Deal (1948 film)|Raw Deal]]'' [1948]) each made a series of impressive intermediates, many of them noirs, before graduating to steady work on big-budget productions. Mann did some of his most celebrated work with cinematographer [[John Alton]], a specialist in what James Naremore called "hypnotic moments of light-in-darkness".<ref>Naremore (2008), p. 173.</ref> ''[[He Walked by Night]]'' (1948), shot by Alton though credited solely to Alfred Werker, directed in large part by Mann, demonstrates their technical mastery and exemplifies the late 1940s trend of "[[police procedural]]" crime dramas. It was released, like other Mann-Alton noirs, by the small [[Eagle-Lion Films|Eagle-Lion]] company; it was the inspiration for the ''[[Dragnet (series)|Dragnet]]'' series, which debuted on radio in 1949 and television in 1951.<ref>Hayde (2001), pp. 3–4, 15–21, 37.</ref>

[[File:DetourPoster1.jpg|thumb|left|alt=Movie poster with a border of diagonal black and white bands. On the upper right is a tagline: "He went searching for love&nbsp;... but fate forced a DETOUR to ''Revelry&nbsp;... Violence&nbsp;... Mystery!''" The image is a collage of stills: a man playing the clarinet; a smiling man and woman in evening dress; the same man, with a horrified expression, holding the body of another man with a bloody head injury; the body of a woman, asleep or dead, splayed out over the end of a bed, a telephone beside her; leaning against either side of a lamppost, the same man a third time, wearing a green suit and tie and holding a cigarette, and a woman wearing a knee-length red dress and black pumps, smoking. Credits at the bottom feature the names of three actors: Tom Neal, Ann Savage, and Claudia Drake.|''[[Detour (1945 film)|Detour]]'' (1945) cost $117,000 to make when the biggest Hollywood studios spent around $600,000 on the average feature. Produced at small [[Producers Releasing Corporation|PRC]], however, the film was 30 percent over budget.<ref>Erickson (2004), p. 26.</ref>]]
Several directors associated with noir built well-respected oeuvres largely at the B-movie/intermediate level. [[Samuel Fuller]]'s brutal, visually energetic films such as ''[[Pickup on South Street]]'' (1953) and ''[[Underworld U.S.A.]]'' (1961) earned him a unique reputation; his advocates praise him as "primitive" and "barbarous".<ref>Sarris (1985), p. 93.</ref><ref>Thomson (1998), p. 269.</ref> [[Joseph H. Lewis (director)|Joseph H. Lewis]] directed noirs as diverse as ''[[Gun Crazy]]'' (1950) and ''[[The Big Combo]]'' (1955). The former—whose screenplay was written by the blacklisted [[Dalton Trumbo]], disguised by a front—features a bank hold-up sequence shown in an unbroken take of over three minutes that was influential.<ref>Naremore (2008), pp. 128, 150–51; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 97–99.</ref> ''The Big Combo'' was shot by John Alton and took the shadowy noir style to its outer limits.<ref>Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 59–60.</ref> The most distinctive films of [[Phil Karlson]] (''[[The Phenix City Story]]'' [1955] and ''[[The Brothers Rico]]'' [1957]) tell stories of vice organized on a monstrous scale.<ref>Clarens (1980), pp. 245–47.</ref> The work of other directors in this tier of the industry, such as [[Felix E. Feist]] (''[[The Devil Thumbs a Ride]]'' [1947], ''[[Tomorrow Is Another Day (1951 American film)|Tomorrow Is Another Day]]'' [1951]), has become obscure. [[Edgar G. Ulmer]] spent most of his Hollywood career working at B studios and once in a while on projects that achieved intermediate status; for the most part, on unmistakable Bs. In 1945, while at PRC, he directed a noir cult classic, ''[[Detour (1945 film)|Detour]]''.<ref>See, e.g., Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 83–85; Ottoson (1981), pp. 60–61.</ref> Ulmer's other noirs include ''[[Strange Illusion]]'' (1945), also for PRC; ''[[Ruthless (1948 film)|Ruthless]]'' (1948), for Eagle-Lion, which had acquired PRC the previous year and ''[[Murder Is My Beat]]'' (1955), for Allied Artists.

A number of low- and modestly-budgeted noirs were made by independent, often actor-owned, companies contracting with larger studios for distribution. Serving as producer, writer, director and top-billed performer, [[Hugo Haas]] made films like ''[[Pickup (1951 film)|Pickup]]'' (1951), ''[[The Other Woman (1954 film)|The Other Woman]]'' (1954) and Jacques Tourneur, ''[[The Fearmakers]] (1958)''. It was in this way that accomplished noir actress [[Ida Lupino]] established herself as the sole female director in Hollywood during the late 1940s and much of the 1950s. She does not appear in the best-known film she directed, ''[[The Hitch-Hiker]]'' (1953), developed by her company, The Filmakers, with support and distribution by RKO.<ref>Muller (1998), pp. 176–77.</ref> It is one of the seven classic film noirs produced largely outside of the major studios that have been chosen for the United States [[National Film Registry]]. Of the others, one was a small-studio release: ''Detour''. Four were independent productions distributed by [[United Artists]], the "studio without a studio": ''Gun Crazy''; ''Kiss Me Deadly''; ''[[D.O.A. (1949 film)|D.O.A.]]'' (1950), directed by [[Rudolph Maté]] and ''[[Sweet Smell of Success]]'' (1957), directed by [[Alexander Mackendrick]]. One was an independent distributed by [[Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer|MGM]], the industry leader: ''[[Force of Evil]]'' (1948), directed by [[Abraham Polonsky]] and starring [[John Garfield]], both of whom were blacklisted in the 1950s.<ref>Krutnik, Neale, and Neve (2008), pp. 259–60, 262–63.</ref> Independent production usually meant restricted circumstances but ''Sweet Smell of Success'', despite the plans of the production team, was clearly not made on the cheap, though like many other cherished A-budget noirs, it might be said to have a B-movie soul.<ref>See Mackendrick (2006), pp. 119–20.</ref>

Perhaps no director better displayed that spirit than the German-born [[Robert Siodmak]], who had already made a score of films before his 1940 arrival in Hollywood. Working mostly on A features, he made eight films now regarded as classic-era noir (a figure matched only by Lang and Mann).<ref>See, e.g., Silver and Ward (1992), pp. 338–39. Ottoson (1981) also lists two period pieces directed by Siodmak (''[[The Suspect (1944 film)|The Suspect]]'' [1944] and ''[[The Spiral Staircase (1946 film)|The Spiral Staircase]]'' [1946]) (pp. 173–74, 164–65). Silver and Ward list nine classic-era film noirs by Lang, plus two from the 1930s (pp. 338, 396). Ottoson lists eight (excluding ''[[Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956 film)|Beyond a Reasonable Doubt]]'' [1956]), plus the same two from the 1930s (passim). Silver and Ward list seven by Mann (p. 338). Ottoson also lists ''[[Reign of Terror (film)|Reign of Terror]]'' (a.k.a. ''The Black Book''; 1949), set during the French Revolution, for a total of eight (passim). See also Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 241.</ref> In addition to ''The Killers'', [[Burt Lancaster]]'s debut and a Hellinger/Universal co-production, Siodmak's other important contributions to the genre include 1944's ''[[Phantom Lady (1944 film)|Phantom Lady]]'' (a top-of-the-line B and Woolrich adaptation), the ironically titled ''[[Christmas Holiday]]'' (1944), and ''[[Cry of the City]]'' (1948). ''[[Criss Cross (1949 film)|Criss Cross]]'' (1949), with Lancaster again the lead, exemplifies how Siodmak brought the virtues of the B-movie to the A noir. In addition to the relatively looser constraints on character and message at lower budgets, the nature of B production lent itself to the noir style for economic reasons: dim lighting saved on electricity and helped cloak cheap sets (mist and smoke also served the cause). Night shooting was often compelled by hurried production schedules. Plots with obscure motivations and intriguingly elliptical transitions were sometimes the consequence of hastily written scripts. There was not always enough time or money to shoot every scene. In ''Criss Cross'', Siodmak achieved these effects, wrapping them around [[Yvonne De Carlo]], who played the most understandable of femme fatales; [[Dan Duryea]], in one of his many charismatic villain roles; and Lancaster as an ordinary laborer turned armed robber, doomed by a romantic obsession.<ref>Clarens (1980), pp. 200–2; Walker (1992), pp. 139–45; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 77–79.</ref>

{|  style="width:94%; margin:auto; text-align:center; font-size:87%; clear:both;"
|-
| style="text-align:center;"|
! style="background:#dbdaba; font-weight:normal; line-height:normal;"| <span style="font-size: 14px;">'''Classic-era film noirs in the [[National Film Registry]]'''</span>
|-
!  style="background-color:#fff; width:55px; background-color:#dbdaba; font-size:11px;"|[[1940s in film|1940–49]]
| style="background:#f5f5ec;"|
{{flatlist|
*''[[The Maltese Falcon (1941 film)|The Maltese Falcon]]'' 
*''[[Shadow of a Doubt]]'' 
*''[[Laura (1944 film)|Laura]]'' 
*''[[Double Indemnity]]'' 
*''[[Mildred Pierce (film)|Mildred Pierce]]'' 
*''[[The Lost Weekend]]'' 
*''[[Detour (1945 film)|Detour]]'' 
*''[[Gilda (film)|Gilda]]'' 
*''[[The Big Sleep (1946 film)|The Big Sleep]]'' 
*''[[The Killers (1946 film)|The Killers]]'' 
*''[[Notorious (1946 film)|Notorious]]''
*''[[Out of the Past]]'' 
*''[[The Lady from Shanghai]]'' 
*''[[Force of Evil]]'' 
*''[[The Naked City]]'' 
*''[[All the King's Men (1949 film)|All the King's Men]]'' 
*''[[White Heat]]''}}
|-
! style="background:#dbdaba; font-size:11px;"|[[1950s in film|1950–58]]
| style="background:#f5f5ec;"|
{{flatlist|
*''[[Gun Crazy]]'' 
*''[[D.O.A. (1949 film)|D.O.A.]]'' 
*''[[In a Lonely Place]]'' 
*''[[The Asphalt Jungle]]'' 
*''[[Sunset Boulevard (film)|Sunset Boulevard]]'' 
*''[[The Hitch-Hiker]]'' 
*''[[The Big Heat]]'' 
*''[[Kiss Me Deadly]]'' 
*''[[The Night of the Hunter (film)|The Night of the Hunter]]'' 
*''[[The Phenix City Story]]''
*''[[Sweet Smell of Success]]'' 
*''[[Touch of Evil]]''
}}
|}

==Outside the United States==
{{listen|filename=17 Generique.ogg|title="Générique" ("Nuit sur les Champs-Élysées")| description= The moody, evocative music improvised by jazz trumpeter [[Miles Davis]]'s quintet for ''[[Ascenseur pour l'échafaud]]'' (1958) is regarded as one of the definitive noir scores.<ref>Butler (2002), p. 12.</ref>}}
Some critics regard classic film noir as a cycle exclusive to the United States; Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward, for example, argue, "With the Western, film noir shares the distinction of being an indigenous American form&nbsp;... a wholly American film style."<ref>Silver and Ward (1992), p. 1.</ref> However, although the term "film noir" was originally coined to describe Hollywood movies, it was an international phenomenon.<ref>See Palmer (2004), pp. 267–68, for a representative discussion of film noir as an international phenomenon.</ref> Even before the beginning of the generally accepted classic period, there were films made far from Hollywood that can be seen in retrospect as film noirs, for example, the French productions ''[[Pépé le Moko]]'' (1937), directed by [[Julien Duvivier]], and ''[[Le Jour se lève]]'' (1939), directed by [[Marcel Carné]].<ref>Spicer (2007), pp. 5–6, 26, 28, 59; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 14–15.</ref> In addition, [[Mexico]] experienced a vibrant film noir period from roughly 1946 to 1952, which was around the same time film noir was blossoming in the United States.<ref>{{cite news|last=Jones|first=Kristin|date=2015-07-21|access-date=2018-04-30|title=A Series on Mexican Noir Films Illuminates a Dark Genre|url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-series-on-mexican-noir-films-illuminates-a-dark-genre-1437513037|newspaper=The Wall Street Journal|archive-date=2018-04-26|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180426012214/https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-series-on-mexican-noir-films-illuminates-a-dark-genre-1437513037|url-status=live}}</ref>

During the classic period, there were many films produced in Europe, particularly in France, that share elements of style, theme, and sensibility with American film noirs and may themselves be included in the genre's canon. In certain cases, the interrelationship with Hollywood noir is obvious: American-born director [[Jules Dassin]] moved to France in the early 1950s as a result of the [[Hollywood blacklist]], and made one of the most famous French film noirs, ''[[Rififi]]'' (1955). Other well-known French films often classified as noir include ''[[Quai des Orfèvres]]'' (1947) and ''[[Les Diaboliques (film)|Les Diaboliques]]'' (1955), both directed by [[Henri-Georges Clouzot]]. ''[[Casque d'Or]]'' (1952), ''[[Touchez pas au grisbi]]'' (1954), and ''[[Le Trou]]'' (1960) directed by [[Jacques Becker]]; and ''[[Ascenseur pour l'échafaud]]'' (1958), directed by [[Louis Malle]]. French director [[Jean-Pierre Melville]] is widely recognized for his tragic, minimalist film noirs—''[[Bob le flambeur]]'' (1955), from the classic period, was followed by ''[[Le Doulos]]'' (1962), ''[[Le deuxième souffle (1966 film)|Le deuxième souffle]]'' 1966), ''[[Le Samouraï]]'' (1967), and ''[[Le Cercle rouge]]'' (1970).<ref>Spicer (2007), pp. 32–39, 43; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 255–61.</ref> In the 1960s, Greek film noirs "''The Secret of the Red Mantle''"<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Gaedtke |first=Andrew |date=December 2009 |title=The Politics and Aesthetics of Disability: A Review of Michael Davidson's ''Concerto for the Left Hand: Disability and the Defamiliar Body'' |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.2979/jml.2009.33.1.164 |journal=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=33 |issue=1 |pages=164–170 |doi=10.2979/jml.2009.33.1.164 |s2cid=146184141 |issn=0022-281X|url-access=subscription }}</ref> and "''[[The Fear (1966 film)|The Fear]]''" allowed audience for an anti-ableist reading which challenged stereotypes of disability.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Fessas |first=Nikitas |date=2020-08-01 |title=Representations of Disability in 1960s Greek Film Noirs |url=http://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/journals/article/57763 |journal=Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies |language=en |volume=14 |issue=3 |pages=281–300 |doi=10.3828/jlcds.2020.18 |s2cid=225451304 |issn=1757-6466 |access-date=2022-06-06 |archive-date=2022-01-20 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220120041539/https://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/journals/article/57763/ |url-status=live |url-access=subscription }}</ref>

[[File:StrayDogShadows.jpg|right|thumb|alt=Black-and-white image of two men facing the left of frame, walking in front of a brick wall. A bold series of vertically striped shadows covers the entire image. The middle-aged man to the right wears a white fedora, a medium-dark suit, and an open-collared white shirt. In front of him, to the left of the image, a younger, taller man wears a cream-toned suit, a white beret and shirt, and a light striped tie. Each man holds a pistol in his right hand.|''[[Stray Dog (film)|Stray Dog]]'' (1949), directed and cowritten by [[Akira Kurosawa]], contains many cinematographic and narrative elements associated with classic American film noir.]]
Scholar Andrew Spicer argues that British film noir evidences a greater debt to French poetic realism than to the expressionistic American mode of noir.<ref>Spicer (2007), p. 9.</ref> Examples of British noir (sometimes described as "Brit noir") from the classic period include ''[[Brighton Rock (1947 film)|Brighton Rock]]'' (1947), directed by [[John Boulting]]; ''[[They Made Me a Fugitive]]'' (1947), directed by [[Alberto Cavalcanti]]; ''[[The October Man]]'' (1947), directed by [[Roy Ward Baker]]; ''[[The Small Back Room]]'' (1948), directed by [[Michael Powell]] and [[Emeric Pressburger]]; and ''[[Cast a Dark Shadow]]'' (1955), directed by [[Lewis Gilbert]]. [[Terence Fisher]] directed several low-budget thrillers in a noir mode for [[Hammer Film Productions]], including ''[[The Last Page]]'' (a.k.a. ''Man Bait''; 1952), ''[[Stolen Face]]'' (1952), and ''[[Murder by Proxy]]'' (a.k.a. ''Blackout''; 1954). Before leaving for France, Jules Dassin had been obliged by political pressure to shoot his last English-language film of the classic noir period in Great Britain: ''[[Night and the City]]'' (1950). Though it was conceived in the United States and was not only directed by an American but also stars two American actors—[[Richard Widmark]] and [[Gene Tierney]]—it is technically a UK production, financed by [[20th Century-Fox]]'s British subsidiary. The most famous of classic British noirs is director [[Carol Reed]]'s ''[[The Third Man]]'' (1949), from a screenplay by [[Graham Greene]]. Set in Vienna immediately after World War II, it also stars two American actors, [[Joseph Cotten]] and [[Orson Welles]], who had appeared together in ''Citizen Kane''.<ref>Spicer (2007), pp. 16, 91–94, 96, 100; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 144, 249–55; Lyons (2000), p. 74, 81, 114–15.</ref>

Elsewhere, Italian director [[Luchino Visconti]] adapted Cain's ''The Postman Always Rings Twice'' as ''[[Ossessione]]'' (1943), regarded both as one of the great noirs and a seminal film in the development of neorealism.<ref>Spicer (2007), pp. 13, 28, 241; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 264, 266.</ref> (This was not even the first screen version of Cain's novel, having been preceded by the French ''[[Le Dernier Tournant]]'' in 1939.)<ref>Spicer (2007), pp. 19 n. 36, 28.</ref> In Japan, the celebrated [[Akira Kurosawa]] directed several films recognizable as film noirs, including ''[[Drunken Angel]]'' (1948), ''[[Stray Dog (film)|Stray Dog]]'' (1949), ''[[The Bad Sleep Well]]'' (1960), and ''[[High and Low (1963 film)|High and Low]]'' (1963).<ref>Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 266–68.</ref> Spanish author Mercedes Formica's novel ''[[La ciudad perdida (novel)|La ciudad perdida]]'' (The Lost City) was adapted into [[The Lost City (1955 film)|film in 1955]].<ref>García López (2015), pp. 46–53.</ref>

Among the first major [[neo-noir]] films—the term often applied to films that consciously refer back to the classic noir tradition—was the French ''[[Shoot the Piano Player|Tirez sur le pianiste]]'' (1960), directed by [[François Truffaut]] from a novel by one of the gloomiest of American noir fiction writers, [[David Goodis]].<ref>Spicer (2007), p. 241; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 257.</ref> Noir crime films and melodramas have been produced in many countries in the post-classic area. Some of these are quintessentially self-aware neo-noirs—for example, ''[[The Conformist (film)|Il Conformista]]'' (1969; Italy), ''[[The American Friend|Der Amerikanische Freund]]'' (1977; Germany), ''[[The Element of Crime]]'' (1984; Denmark), and ''[[El Aura]]'' (2005; Argentina). Others simply share narrative elements and a version of the hardboiled sensibility associated with classic noir, such as ''[[Castle of Sand]]'' (1974; Japan), ''[[Insomnia (1997 film)|Insomnia]]'' (1997; Norway), ''[[Croupier (film)|Croupier]]'' (1998; UK), and ''[[Blind Shaft]]'' (2003; China).<ref>Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 253, 255, 263–64, 266, 267, 270–74; Abbas (1997), p. 34.</ref>

==Neo-noir and echoes of the classic mode==
{{See also|Neo-noir}}
The neo-noir film genre developed mid-way into the Cold War. This cinematological trend reflected much of the cynicism and the possibility of nuclear annihilation of the era. This new genre introduced innovations that were not available to earlier noir films. The violence was also more potent.<ref name="Schwartz">{{cite web |url=http://chapters.scarecrowpress.com/08/108/081085676Xch1.pdf |title=Neo-Noir The New Film Noir Style from Psycho to Collateral |last=Schwartz |first=Ronald |publisher=The Scarecrow Press Inc. |year=2005 |access-date=2013-03-31|url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131104224706/http://chapters.scarecrowpress.com/08/108/081085676Xch1.pdf |archive-date=2013-11-04}}</ref>

===1960s and 1970s===
While it is hard to draw a line between some of the noir films of the early 1960s such as ''[[Blast of Silence]]'' (1961) and ''[[Cape Fear (1962 film)|Cape Fear]]'' (1962) and the noirs of the late 1950s, new trends emerged in the post-classic era. ''[[The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)|The Manchurian Candidate]]'' (1962), directed by [[John Frankenheimer]], ''[[Shock Corridor]]'' (1963), directed by [[Samuel Fuller]], and ''[[Brainstorm (1965 film)|Brainstorm]]'' (1965), directed by experienced noir character actor [[William Conrad]], all treat the theme of mental dispossession within stylistic and tonal frameworks derived from classic film noir.<ref name=u284286/> ''The Manchurian Candidate'' examined the situation of [[Korean War POWs detained in North Korea|American prisoners of war]] (POWs) during the [[Korean War]]. Incidents that occurred during the war as well as those post-war functioned as an inspiration for a "Cold War Noir" subgenre.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.koreanconfidential.com/koreanpowfilmnoir.html |title=Cold War Noir and the Other Films about Korean War POWs |access-date=2013-03-31|url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130218203603/http://www.koreanconfidential.com/koreanpowfilmnoir.html |last=Sautner|first=Mark|archive-date=2013-02-18}}</ref><ref name="Conway">{{cite web |url=http://www.articledestination.com/Article/Korean-War-Film-Noir--the-POW-Movies/12753 |title=Korean War Film Noir: the POW Movies |last=Conway |first=Marianne B. |access-date=2013-03-31 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130217064144/http://www.articledestination.com/Article/Korean-War-Film-Noir--the-POW-Movies/12753 |archive-date=2013-02-17}}</ref> The television series ''[[The Fugitive (1963 TV series)|The Fugitive]]'' (1963–67) brought classic noir themes and mood to the small screen for an extended run.<ref name=u284286>Ursini (1995), pp. 284–86; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 278.</ref>

[[File:1BelmondoDoesBogey.jpg|thumb|left|alt=Black-and-white image of a man seen from mid-chest up, wearing a fedora and a jacket with a houndstooth-like pattern. He holds a cigarette between the middle and index fingers of his left hand and strokes his upper lip with his thumb. He stands in front of what appears to be a mirrored doorway.|As car thief Michel Poiccard, a.k.a. Laszlo Kovacs, [[Jean-Paul Belmondo]] in ''[[Breathless (1960 film)|À bout de souffle]]'' (''Breathless''; 1960). Poiccard reveres and styles himself after [[Humphrey Bogart]]'s screen persona. Here he imitates a characteristic Bogart gesture, one of the film's [[Motif (narrative)|motifs]].<ref>Appel (1974), p. 4.</ref>]]
In a different vein, films began to appear that self-consciously acknowledged the conventions of classic film noir as historical [[archetypes]] to be revived, rejected, or reimagined. These efforts typify what came to be known as neo-noir.<ref>Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 41.</ref> Though several late classic noirs, ''[[Kiss Me Deadly]]'' (1955) in particular, were deeply self-knowing and post-traditional in conception, none tipped its hand so evidently as to be remarked on by American critics at the time.<ref>See, e.g., ''Variety'' (1955). For a latter-day analysis of the film's self-consciousness, see Naremore (2008), pp. 151–55. See also Kolker (2000), p. 364.</ref> The first major film to overtly work this angle was French director [[Jean-Luc Godard]]'s ''[[À bout de souffle]]'' (''Breathless''; 1960), which pays its literal respects to Bogart and his crime films while brandishing a bold new style for a new day.<ref>Greene (1999), p. 161.</ref> In the United States, [[Arthur Penn]] (1965's ''[[Mickey One]]'', drawing inspiration from Truffaut's ''[[Shoot the Piano Player|Tirez sur le pianiste]]'' and other [[French New Wave]] films), [[John Boorman]] (1967's ''[[Point Blank (1967 film)|Point Blank]]'', similarly caught up, though in the ''[[French New Wave|Nouvelle vague']]''s deeper waters), and [[Alan J. Pakula]] (1971's ''[[Klute]]'') directed films that knowingly related themselves to the original film noirs, inviting audiences in on the game.<ref>For ''Mickey One'', see Kolker (2000), pp. 21–22, 26–30. For ''Point Blank'', see Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 36, 38, 41, 257. For ''Klute'', see Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 114–15.</ref>

A manifest affiliation with noir traditions—which, by its nature, allows different sorts of commentary on them to be inferred—can also provide the basis for explicit critiques of those traditions. In 1973, director [[Robert Altman]] flipped off noir piety with ''[[The Long Goodbye (film)|The Long Goodbye]]''. Based on the novel by Raymond Chandler, it features one of Bogart's most famous characters, but in [[iconoclasm|iconoclastic]] fashion: Philip Marlowe, the prototypical hardboiled detective, is replayed as a hapless misfit, almost laughably out of touch with contemporary [[mores]] and morality.<ref>Kolker (2000), pp. 344, 363–73; Naremore (2008), pp. 203–5; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 36, 39, 130–33.</ref> Where Altman's subversion of the film noir mythos was so irreverent as to outrage some contemporary critics,<ref>Kolker (2000), p. 364; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 132.</ref> around the same time [[Woody Allen]] was paying affectionate, at points idolatrous homage to the classic mode with ''[[Play It Again, Sam (1972 film)|Play It Again, Sam]]'' (1972). The "[[blaxploitation]]" film ''[[Shaft (1971 film)|Shaft]]'' (1971), wherein [[Richard Roundtree]] plays the titular African-American private eye, [[John Shaft]], takes conventions from classic noir.

The most acclaimed of the neo-noirs of the era was director [[Roman Polanski]]'s 1974 ''[[Chinatown (1974 film)|Chinatown]]''.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/the-ten-greatest-neo-noir-films-a7340126.html|title=10 best neo-noir films of all time: From Chinatown to LA Confidential|author=Ross, Graeme|date=March 11, 2019|publisher=[[The Independent]]|website=independent.co.uk|access-date=August 27, 2017|archive-date=January 22, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180122113842/http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/the-ten-greatest-neo-noir-films-a7340126.html|url-status=live}}</ref> Written by [[Robert Towne]], it is set in 1930s Los Angeles, an accustomed noir locale nudged back some few years in a way that makes the pivotal loss of innocence in the story even crueler. Where Polanski and Towne raised noir to a black apogee by turning rearward, director [[Martin Scorsese]] and screenwriter [[Paul Schrader]] brought the noir attitude crashing into the present day with ''[[Taxi Driver]]'' (1976), a crackling, bloody-minded gloss on bicentennial America.<ref>Kolker (2000), pp. 207–44; Silver and Ward (1992), pp. 282–83; Naremore (1998), pp. 34–37, 192.</ref> In 1978, [[Walter Hill (filmmaker)|Walter Hill]] wrote and directed ''[[The Driver]]'', a chase film as might have been imagined by Jean-Pierre Melville in an especially abstract mood.<ref>Silver and Ward (1992), pp. 398–99.</ref>

Hill was already a central figure in 1970s noir of a more straightforward manner, having written the script for director [[Sam Peckinpah]]'s ''[[The Getaway (1972 film)|The Getaway]]'' (1972), adapting a novel by pulp master [[Jim Thompson (writer)|Jim Thompson]], as well as for two tough private eye films: an original screenplay for ''[[Hickey & Boggs]]'' (1972) and an adaptation of a novel by [[Ross Macdonald]], the leading literary descendant of Hammett and Chandler, for ''[[The Drowning Pool (film)|The Drowning Pool]]'' (1975). Some of the strongest 1970s noirs, in fact, were unwinking remakes of the classics, "neo" mostly by default: the heartbreaking ''[[Thieves Like Us (film)|Thieves Like Us]]'' (1974), directed by Altman from the same source as Ray's ''They Live by Night'', and ''[[Farewell, My Lovely (1975 film)|Farewell, My Lovely]]'' (1975), the Chandler tale made classically as ''Murder, My Sweet'', remade here with Robert Mitchum in his last notable noir role.<ref>For ''Thieves Like Us'', see Kolker (2000), pp. 358–63. For ''Farewell, My Lovely'', see Kirgo (1980), pp. 101–2.</ref> Detective series, prevalent on American television during the period, updated the hardboiled tradition in different ways, but the show conjuring the most noir tone was a horror crossover touched with shaggy, ''Long Goodbye''-style humor: ''[[Kolchak: The Night Stalker]]'' (1974–75), featuring a Chicago newspaper reporter investigating strange, usually supernatural occurrences.<ref>Ursini (1995), p. 287.</ref>

===1980s and 1990s===
[[File:StoneSmoking.jpg|thumb|alt=A blonde woman wearing a white jacket, top, and short skirt, her face half in shadow, sitting in an arm chair with her legs crossed. She holds a cigarette to her mouth with her right hand, and raises a lighter with her left. Behind her is dark furniture and the corner of the room, walled with white brick. From between the furniture and walls, unseen, floor-level lights cast a bluish glow over the scene.|[[Sharon Stone]] as [[Catherine Tramell]], archetypal modern [[femme fatale]], in ''[[Basic Instinct]]'' (1992). Her diabolic nature is underscored by an "extra-lurid visual code", as in the notorious interrogation scene.<ref name=W209>Williams (2005), p. 229.</ref>]]

The turn of the decade brought Scorsese's black-and-white ''[[Raging Bull]]'' (1980, cowritten by Schrader). An acknowledged masterpiece{{--}}in 2007 the [[American Film Institute]] ranked it as the greatest American film of the 1980s and the fourth greatest of all time{{--}}it tells the story of a boxer's moral self-destruction that recalls in both theme and visual ambiance noir dramas such as ''[[Body and Soul (1947 film)|Body and Soul]]'' (1947) and ''[[Champion (1949 film)|Champion]]'' (1949).<ref>For AFI ranking, see {{cite web|url=http://www.afi.com/100Years/movies10.aspx|title=AFI's 100 Years&nbsp;... 100 Movies—10th Anniversary Edition|publisher=American Film Institute|year=2007|access-date=2012-04-19|archive-date=2012-06-04|archive-url=https://archive.today/20120604135712/http://www.afi.com/100years/movies10.aspx|url-status=live}} For kinship to classic noir boxing films, see Muller (1998), pp. 26–27.</ref> From 1981, ''[[Body Heat]]'', written and directed by [[Lawrence Kasdan]], invokes a different set of classic noir elements, this time in a humid, erotically charged Florida setting. Its success confirmed the commercial viability of neo-noir at a time when the major Hollywood studios were becoming increasingly risk averse. The mainstreaming of neo-noir is evident in such films as ''[[Black Widow (1987 film)|Black Widow]]'' (1987), ''[[Shattered (1991 film)|Shattered]]'' (1991), and ''[[Final Analysis]]'' (1992).<ref>Silver and Ward (1992), pp. 400–1, 408.</ref> Few neo-noirs have made more money or more wittily updated the tradition of the noir double entendre than ''[[Basic Instinct]]'' (1992), directed by [[Paul Verhoeven]] and written by [[Joe Eszterhas]].<ref>See, e.g., Grothe, Mardy, ''Viva la Repartee: Clever Comebacks and Witty Retorts from History's Great Wits & Wordsmiths'' (2005), p. 84.</ref> The film also demonstrates how neo-noir's polychrome palette can reproduce many of the expressionistic effects of classic black-and-white noir.<ref name=W209 />

Like ''Chinatown'', its more complex predecessor, [[Curtis Hanson]]'s Oscar-winning ''[[L.A. Confidential (film)|L.A. Confidential]]'' (1997), based on the [[James Ellroy]] novel, demonstrates the opposite tendency—the deliberately retro film noir; its tale of corrupt cops and femmes fatale is seemingly lifted straight from a film of 1953, the year in which it is set.<ref>Naremore (2008), p. 275; Wager (2005), p. 83; Hanson (2008), p. 141.</ref> Director [[David Fincher]] followed the immensely successful neo-noir ''[[Seven (1995 film)|Seven]]'' (1995) with a film that developed into a cult favorite after its original, disappointing release: ''[[Fight Club]]'' (1999), a ''[[sui generis]]'' mix of noir aesthetic, perverse comedy, speculative content, and satiric intent.<ref>Wager (2005), p. 101–14.</ref>
{{listen|filename=Dub Driving Sample from Lost Highway CD (Interscope Records).ogg|title="Dub Driving"| description= [[Angelo Badalamenti]] has scored most of [[David Lynch]]'s noir-related work. His work on this track typifies a "modern noir" style, which the director explicitly sought for ''[[Lost Highway (film)|Lost Highway]]'' (1997).<ref>Lynch and Rodley (2005), p. 241.</ref>}}
Working generally with much smaller budgets, brothers [[Joel and Ethan Coen]] have created one of the most extensive oeuvres influenced by classic noir, with films such as ''[[Blood Simple]]'' (1984)<ref>{{cite magazine |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1985/02/25/plain-and-simple |title=The Current Cinema: PLAIN AND SIMPLE |magazine=[[The New Yorker]] |first=Pauline |last=Kael |authorlink1=Pauline Kael |date=February 17, 1985 |accessdate=March 21, 2024}}</ref> and ''[[Fargo (1996 film)|Fargo]]'' (1996), the latter considered by some a supreme work in the neo-noir mode.<ref>Hirsch (1999), pp. 245–47; Maslin (1996).</ref> The Coens cross noir with other generic traditions in the gangster drama ''[[Miller's Crossing]]'' (1990)—loosely based on the Dashiell Hammett novels ''Red Harvest'' and ''[[The Glass Key]]''—and the comedy ''[[The Big Lebowski]]'' (1998), a tribute to Chandler and an homage to Altman's version of ''The Long Goodbye''.<ref>For ''Miller's Crossing'', see Martin (1997), p. 157; Naremore (2008), p. 214–15; {{cite news|author=Barra, Allen|url=http://dir.salon.com/story/books/feature/2005/02/28/hammett/index.html|title=From 'Red Harvest' to 'Deadwood'|work=Salon|date=2005-02-28|access-date=2009-09-29|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100330053905/http://dir.salon.com/story/books/feature/2005/02/28/hammett/index.html|archive-date=2010-03-30}} For ''The Big Lebowski'', see Tyree and Walters (2007), pp. 40, 43–44, 48, 51, 65, 111; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 237.</ref> The characteristic work of [[David Lynch]] combines film noir tropes with scenarios driven by disturbed characters such as the sociopathic criminal played by [[Dennis Hopper]] in ''[[Blue Velvet (film)|Blue Velvet]]'' (1986) and the delusionary protagonist of ''[[Lost Highway (film)|Lost Highway]]'' (1997). The ''Twin Peaks'' cycle, both the [[Twin Peaks|TV series]] (1990–91) and a film, ''[[Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me|Fire Walk with Me]]'' (1992), puts a detective plot through a succession of bizarre spasms. [[David Cronenberg]] also mixes surrealism and noir in ''[[Naked Lunch (film)|Naked Lunch]]'' (1991), inspired by [[William S. Burroughs]]' [[Naked Lunch|novel]].

Perhaps no American neo-noirs better reflect the classic noir B movie spirit than those of director-writer [[Quentin Tarantino]].<ref>James (2000), pp. xviii–xix.</ref> Neo-noirs of his such as ''[[Reservoir Dogs]]'' (1992) and ''[[Pulp Fiction]]'' (1994) display a relentlessly self-reflexive, sometimes tongue-in-cheek sensibility, similar to the work of the New Wave directors and the Coens. Other films from the era readily identifiable as neo-noir (some retro, some more au courant) include director [[John Dahl]]'s ''[[Kill Me Again]]'' (1989), ''[[Red Rock West]]'' (1992), and ''[[The Last Seduction]]'' (1993); four adaptations of novels by Jim Thompson—''[[The Kill-Off]]'' (1989), ''[[After Dark, My Sweet]]'' (1990), ''[[The Grifters (film)|The Grifters]]'' (1990), and the remake of ''[[The Getaway (1994 film)|The Getaway]]'' (1994); and many more, including adaptations of the work of other major noir fiction writers: ''[[The Hot Spot]]'' (1990), from ''Hell Hath No Fury'', by [[Charles Williams (U.S. author)|Charles Williams]]; ''[[Miami Blues]]'' (1990), from the novel by [[Charles Willeford]]; and ''[[Out of Sight (1998 film)|Out of Sight]]'' (1998), from the novel by [[Elmore Leonard]].<ref name=rough279/> Several films by director-writer [[David Mamet]] involve noir elements: ''[[House of Games]]'' (1987), ''[[Homicide (1991 film)|Homicide]]'' (1991),<ref name="criterion.com">{{cite web| url = https://www.criterion.com/shop/collection/17-noir-and-neonoir| title = Noir and Neonoir{{!}}The Criterion Collection| access-date = 2020-02-15| archive-date = 2020-02-15| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20200215014638/https://www.criterion.com/shop/collection/17-noir-and-neonoir| url-status = live}}</ref> ''[[The Spanish Prisoner]]'' (1997), and ''[[Heist (2001 film)|Heist]]'' (2001).<ref>See, e.g., Silver and Ward (1992), pp. 398, 402, 407, 412.</ref> On television, ''[[Moonlighting (TV series)|Moonlighting]]'' (1985–89) paid homage to classic noir while demonstrating an unusual appreciation of the sense of humor often found in the original cycle.<ref name=rough279>Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 279.</ref> Between 1983 and 1989, [[Mickey Spillane]]'s hardboiled private eye Mike Hammer was played with wry gusto by [[Stacy Keach]] in a [[Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer (1984 TV series)|series]] and several stand-alone television films (an unsuccessful revival followed in 1997–98). The British miniseries ''[[The Singing Detective]]'' (1986), written by [[Dennis Potter]], tells the story of a mystery writer named Philip Marlow; widely considered one of the finest neo-noirs in any medium, some critics rank it among the greatest television productions of all time.<ref>Creeber, (2007), p. 3. ''The Singing Detective'' is the sole TV production cited in {{cite news|author1=Corliss, Richard |author2=Richard Schickel |url=http://www.time.com/time/2005/100movies/the_complete_list.html |title=All-Time 100 Movies |publisher=[[Time (magazine)|Time]] |date=2005-05-23 |access-date=2009-09-29 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100312021319/http://www.time.com/time/2005/100movies/the_complete_list.html |archive-date=2010-03-12 |url-status=dead}}</ref>

===Neon-noir===
Among big-budget auteurs, [[Michael Mann (film director)|Michael Mann]] has worked frequently in a neo-noir mode, with such films as ''[[Thief (film)|Thief]]'' (1981)<ref name="criterion.com"/> and ''[[Heat (1995 film)|Heat]]'' (1995) and the TV series ''[[Miami Vice]]'' (1984–89) and ''[[Crime Story (U.S. TV series)|Crime Story]]'' (1986–88). Mann's output exemplifies a primary strain of neo-noir, or as it is affectionately called, "neon noir",<ref>{{cite web| url = https://mubi.com/lists/neon-noir| title = NEON-NOIR — Movie List on MUBI| access-date = 2020-01-28| archive-date = 2020-01-28| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20200128203252/https://mubi.com/lists/neon-noir| url-status = live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web| url = https://vimeo.com/385716226| title = Neon Noir (series trailer) on Cinefamily Archive's Vimeo channel| access-date = 2020-01-30| archive-date = 2020-07-31| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20200731170638/https://vimeo.com/385716226| url-status = live}}</ref> in which classic themes and tropes are revisited in a contemporary setting with an up-to-date visual style and [[Rock music|rock]]- or [[Hip hop music|hip hop]]-based musical [[soundtrack]].<ref>Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 44, 47, 279–80.</ref>

Neon-noir film borrows from and reflects many of the characteristics of the film noir: the presence of crime and violence, complex characters and plot-lines, mystery, and moral ambivalence, all of which come into play in the neon-noir sub-genre. But more than just exhibiting the superficial traits of the genre, neon-noir emphasizes the socio-critique of film noir, recalling the specific socio-cultural dimensions of the interwar years when noirs first became prominent; a time of global existential crisis, depression and the mass movement of the rural population to cities. Long shots or montages of cityscapes, often portrayed as dark and menacing, are suggestive of what Dueck referred to as a ‘bleak societal perspective’,<ref>Dueck, Cheryl. (November 2016) 'Secret Police in Style: The Aesthetics of Remembering Socialism'.
A Journal of Germanic Studies, Volume 52:4</ref> providing a critique on [[global capitalism]] and [[consumerism]]. Other characteristics include the use of highly stylized lighting techniques such [[chiaroscuro]], and neon signs and brightly lit buildings that provide a sense of [[Social alienation|alienation]] and [[entrapment]].

Accentuating the use of artificial and neon lighting in the films-noir of the '40s and '50s, neon-noir films accentuate this aesthetic with electrifying color and manipulated light in order to highlight their socio-cultural critiques and their references to contemporary and pop culture. In doing so, neon-noir films present the themes of urban decay, consumerist decadence and capitalism, [[existentialism]], sexuality, and issues of [[race and violence]] in the contemporary culture, not only in America, but the globalized world at large.

Neon-noirs seek to bring the contemporary noir, somewhat diluted under the umbrella of neo-noir, back to the exploration of culture: class, race, gender, patriarchy, and capitalism. Neon-noirs present an existential exploration of society in a hyper-technological and globalized world. Illustrating society as decadent and [[consumerist]], and identity as confused and anxious, neon-noirs reposition the contemporary noir in the setting of [[urban decay]], often featuring scenes set in underground city haunts: brothels, nightclubs, casinos, strip bars, pawnshops, laundromats.

Neon-noirs were popularized in the '70s and '80s by films such as ''[[Taxi Driver]]'' (1976), ''[[Blade Runner]]'' (1982),<ref>{{cite web| url = https://scene360.com/light/78553/neon-light-movies/| title = 10 Visually Stunning Movies with Neon Lighting{{!}}Scene360| access-date = 2020-01-30| archive-date = 2020-07-31| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20200731165210/https://scene360.com/light/78553/neon-light-movies/ | url-status = live}}</ref> and films from [[David Lynch]], such as ''[[Blue Velvet (film)|Blue Velvet]]'' (1986) and later, ''[[Lost Highway (film)|Lost Highway]]'' (1997). Other titles from this era included [[Brian De Palma]]'s ''[[Blow Out]]'' (1981) and the [[Coen Brothers]]' debut ''[[Blood Simple]]'' (1984).<ref>{{cite web| url = https://www.criterionchannel.com/neonoir| title = Neonoir – The Criterion Channel| access-date = 2021-07-02| archive-date = 2021-07-01| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20210701153906/https://www.criterionchannel.com/neonoir| url-status = dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | url = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpljUgXMoFs| title = Neonoir – Criterion Channel teaser – criterioncollection on YouTube| website = [[YouTube]]| date = July 2021| access-date = 2021-07-02| archive-date = 2021-07-02| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20210702021755/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpljUgXMoFs| url-status = live}}</ref> More currently, films such as [[Harmony Korine]]’s highly provocative ''[[Spring Breakers]]'' (2012),<ref>{{cite web| url = https://www.thatmomentin.com/5-neon-noir-movies-watch-blade-runner-2049/| title = 5 Neon-Noir Movies to Watch After Blade Runner 2049{{!}}That Moment In| date = 3 November 2017| access-date = 2020-01-30| archive-date = 2020-07-31| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20200731155852/https://www.thatmomentin.com/5-neon-noir-movies-watch-blade-runner-2049/| url-status = live}}</ref> and [[Danny Boyle]]’s ''[[Trance (2013 film)|Trance]]'' (2013) have been especially noted for their neon-infused rendering of film noir; while ''Trance'' was celebrated for ‘shak(ing) the ingredients (of the noir) like colored sand in a jar’, ''Spring Breakers'' notoriously produced a slew of criticism<ref>{{Cite web |url-status=live|url=https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/22/spring-breakers-fever-dream_n_2929231.html |last=Rosen|first= Christopher|title= 'Spring Breakers' Is A 'Fever Dream'; Or, The Most Common Description Of Harmony Korine's New Film |website=[[HuffPost]] |date=22 March 2013 |access-date = |archive-date=2016-04-09 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160409155134/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/22/spring-breakers-fever-dream_n_2929231.html  }}</ref> referring to its ‘fever-dream’ aesthetic and ‘neon-caked explosion of excess’ (Kohn).<ref>Kohn, Eric.'From 'Trance' to 'Spring Breakers,' Is This the Golden Age of Film Noir?'. March 23, 2016. [https://www.indiewire.com/2013/03/from-trance-to-spring-breakers-is-this-the-golden-age-of-film-noir-39990/ Indiewire Online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220610070446/https://www.indiewire.com/2013/03/from-trance-to-spring-breakers-is-this-the-golden-age-of-film-noir-39990/ |date=2022-06-10 }}</ref>

Neon-noir can be seen as a response to the over-use of the term neo-noir. While the term neo-noir functions to bring noir into the contemporary landscape, it has often been criticized for its dilution of the noir genre. Author Robert Arnett commented on its "amorphous" reach: "any film featuring a detective or crime qualifies".<ref>Arnett, Robert (October 2006) Eighties Noir: The Dissenting Voice in Reagan's America'. [[Journal of Popular Film and Television]] : 123</ref> The neon-noir, more specifically, seeks to revive noir sensibilities in a more targeted manner of reference, focalizing socio-cultural commentary and a hyper-stylized aesthetic.

===2000s and 2010s===
The Coen brothers make reference to the noir tradition again with ''[[The Man Who Wasn't There (2001 film)|The Man Who Wasn't There]]'' (2001); a black-and-white crime melodrama set in 1949; it features a scene apparently staged to mirror one from ''Out of the Past''. Lynch's ''[[Mulholland Drive (film)|Mulholland Drive]]'' (2001) continued in his characteristic vein, making the classic noir setting of Los Angeles the venue for a noir-inflected psychological jigsaw puzzle. British-born director [[Christopher Nolan]]'s black-and-white debut, ''[[Following]]'' (1998), was an overt homage to classic noir. During the new century's first decade, he was one of the leading Hollywood directors of neo-noir with the acclaimed ''[[Memento (film)|Memento]]'' (2000) and the remake of ''[[Insomnia (2002 film)|Insomnia]]'' (2002).<ref>Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 49, 51, 53, 235.</ref>

Director [[Sean Penn]]'s ''[[The Pledge (film)|The Pledge]]'' (2001), though adapted from a very self-reflexive novel by [[Friedrich Dürrenmatt]], plays noir comparatively straight, to devastating effect{{POV statement|date=September 2023}}.<ref>Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 50.</ref> Screenwriter [[David Ayer]] updated the classic noir bad-cop tale, typified by ''[[Shield for Murder]]'' (1954) and ''[[Rogue Cop]]'' (1954), with his scripts for ''[[Training Day]]'' (2001) and, adapting a story by James Ellroy, ''[[Dark Blue (film)|Dark Blue]]'' (2002); he later wrote and directed the even darker ''[[Harsh Times (film)|Harsh Times]]'' (2006). Michael Mann's ''[[Collateral (film)|Collateral]]'' (2004) features a performance by [[Tom Cruise]] as an assassin in the lineage of ''Le Samouraï''. The torments of ''[[The Machinist]]'' (2004), directed by [[Brad Anderson (director)|Brad Anderson]], evoke both ''Fight Club'' and ''Memento''.<ref>{{cite magazine|author=Hibbs, Thomas|url=http://www.nationalreview.com/hibbs/hibbs200412030831.asp|title=Bale Imitation|magazine=National Review Online|date=2004-12-03|access-date=2010-02-11|archive-url =https://web.archive.org/web/20090322131118/http://www.nationalreview.com/hibbs/hibbs200412030831.asp|archive-date=2009-03-22}}</ref> In 2005, [[Shane Black]] directed ''[[Kiss Kiss Bang Bang]]'', basing his screenplay in part on a crime novel by [[Brett Halliday]], who published his first stories back in the 1920s. The film plays with an awareness not only of classic noir but also of neo-noir reflexivity itself.<ref>Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 107–109.</ref>

With ultra-violent films such as ''[[Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance]]'' (2002) and ''[[Thirst (2009 film)|Thirst]]'' (2009), [[Park Chan-wook]] of South Korea has been the most prominent director outside of the United States to work regularly in a noir mode in the new millennium.<ref>{{cite web |author=Macaulay, Scott |date=2009-05-19 |title=Cinema with Bite: On the Films of Park Chan-wook |url=http://www.filminfocus.com/article/cinema_with_bite__on_the_films_of_park_chan_wook |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090825122606/http://filminfocus.com/article/cinema_with_bite__on_the_films_of_park_chan_wook |archive-date=2009-08-25 |access-date=2009-09-29 |publisher=Film in Focus}} {{cite web |author=Accomando |first=Beth |author-link=Beth Accomando |date=2009-08-20 |title=Thirst |url=http://www.kpbs.org/news/2009/aug/20/thirst/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091005200427/http://www.kpbs.org/news/2009/aug/20/thirst/ |archive-date=2009-10-05 |access-date=2009-09-29 |publisher=KPBS.org}}</ref> The most commercially successful neo-noir of this period has been ''[[Sin City (film)|Sin City]]'' (2005), directed by [[Robert Rodriguez]] in extravagantly stylized black and white with splashes of color.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://boxofficemojo.com/genres/chart/?id=neonoir.htm|title=Neo Noir Movies at the Box Office|website=Box Office Mojo|access-date=2010-09-15|archive-date=2010-08-17|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100817184313/http://www.boxofficemojo.com/genres/chart/?id=neonoir.htm|url-status=live}}</ref> The film is based on [[Sin City|a series of comic books]] created by [[Frank Miller]] (credited as the film's codirector), which are in turn openly indebted to the works of Spillane and other [[pulp magazine|pulp]] mystery authors.<ref>Naremore (2008), pp. 256, 295–96</ref><ref>Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 52.</ref> Similarly, [[graphic novels]] provide the basis for ''[[Road to Perdition]]'' (2002), directed by [[Sam Mendes]], and ''[[A History of Violence (film)|A History of Violence]]'' (2005), directed by [[David Cronenberg]]; the latter was voted best film of the year in the annual ''[[Village Voice]]'' poll.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.villagevoice.com/2008-12-31/film/2008-film-poll-results/|title=2008 Film Poll Results|website=Village Voice|date=2008-12-30|access-date=2009-09-29|archive-date=2009-09-01|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090901132553/http://www.villagevoice.com/2008-12-31/film/2008-film-poll-results|url-status=dead}}</ref> Writer-director [[Rian Johnson]]'s ''[[Brick (film)|Brick]]'' (2005), featuring present-day high schoolers speaking a version of 1930s hardboiled argot, won the Special Jury Prize for Originality of Vision at the [[Sundance Film Festival]]. The television series ''[[Veronica Mars]]'' (2004–07, 2019) and the movie ''[[Veronica Mars]]'' (2014) also brought a youth-oriented twist to film noir. Examples of this sort of generic crossover have been dubbed "teen noir".<ref>Naremore (2008), p. 299</ref><ref>{{Cite news|author=Hughes, Sarah|url=https://www.theguardian.com/film/2006/mar/26/features.review1|title=Humphrey Bogart's Back—But This Time Round He's at High School|newspaper=The Guardian|date=2006-03-26|access-date=2010-10-10|archive-date=2017-08-31|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170831002500/https://www.theguardian.com/film/2006/mar/26/features.review1|url-status=live}}</ref>

Neo-noir films released in the 2010s include [[Kim Jee-woon]]’s ''[[I Saw the Devil]]'' (2010), Fred Cavaye’s ''[[Point Blank (2010 film)|Point Blank]]'' (2010), [[Na Hong-jin]]’s ''[[The Yellow Sea (film)|The Yellow Sea]]'' (2010), [[Nicolas Winding Refn]]’s ''[[Drive (2011 film)|Drive]]'' (2011),<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2014/the-20-best-neo-noir-films-of-the-2000s/ |title=The 20 Best Neo-Noir Films Of The 2000s |publisher=Tasteofcinema.com |date=2014-05-03 |access-date= |first=Terek |last=Puckett |archive-date=2022-06-02 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220602061256/http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2014/the-20-best-neo-noir-films-of-the-2000s/ |url-status=live }}</ref> [[Claire Denis]]' ''[[Bastards (2013 film)|Bastards]]'' (2013)<ref>{{cite journal |url=https://www.filmcomment.com/article/claire-denis-bastards-review/ |title=Review: Bastards |last=Nelson |first=Max |journal=[[Film Comment]] |issue=September/October 2013 |access-date=2017-06-03 |archive-date=2017-11-28 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171128221809/https://www.filmcomment.com/article/claire-denis-bastards-review/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www2.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/comment/festivals/cannes-2013-this-noir |title=This is Noir: The Bastards |last=Taubin |first=Amy |author-link=Amy Taubin |website=[[Sight & Sound]] |date=2013 |access-date=2017-06-03 |archive-date=2017-11-17 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171117095001/http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/comment/festivals/cannes-2013-this-noir |url-status=live }}</ref> and [[Dan Gilroy]]'s ''[[Nightcrawler (film)|Nightcrawler]]'' (2014).

===2020s===
The [[Science Channel]] broadcast the 2021 science documentary series ''[[Killers of the Cosmos]]'' in a format it describes as "space noir." In the series, actor [[Aidan Gillen]] in animated form serves as the host of the series while portraying a [[private investigator]] who takes on "cases" in which he "hunts down" lethal threats to humanity posed by the [[cosmos]]. The animated sequences combine the characteristics of film noir with those of a pulp fiction graphic novel set in the mid-20th century, and they link conventional live-action documentary segments in which experts describe the potentially deadly phenomena.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Kanter|first=Jake|date=2020-11-20|title='Game Of Thrones' Star Aidan Gillen To Front Genre-Bending Discovery Cosmology Series 'Killers Of The Cosmos'|url=https://deadline.com/2020/11/aidan-gillen-science-channel-series-killers-of-the-cosmos-wall-to-wall-1234618542/|access-date=2021-10-31|website=Deadline|language=en-US|archive-date=2021-10-31|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211031013634/https://deadline.com/2020/11/aidan-gillen-science-channel-series-killers-of-the-cosmos-wall-to-wall-1234618542/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=Killer of the Cosmos : Programs : Science Channel : Discovery Press Web|url=https://press.discovery.com/us/sci/programs/killer-cosmos/|access-date=2021-10-31|website=press.discovery.com|archive-date=2021-10-30|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211030221032/https://press.discovery.com/us/sci/programs/killer-cosmos/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=When Outer Space Meets Film Noir|url=https://www.discovery.com/dnews/when-outer-space-meets-film-noir|access-date=2021-10-31|website=Discovery|language=en|archive-date=2021-10-30|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211030221032/https://www.discovery.com/dnews/when-outer-space-meets-film-noir|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|title=Killers of the Cosmos &#124; TVmaze|date=24 October 2021 |url=https://www.tvmaze.com/shows/57201/killers-of-the-cosmos|language=en|access-date=2021-10-31|archive-date=2021-10-30|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211030221032/https://www.tvmaze.com/shows/57201/killers-of-the-cosmos|url-status=live}}</ref>

===Science fiction noir===
{{See also|Tech noir}}
[[File:BladeRunnerSS.jpg|thumb|alt=A man with close-cropped hair wearing a brown jacket sits at a counter, holding a pair of chopsticks poised over a rice bowl. Rain cascades down beside him as if from the edge of an awning. In the foreground is a teapot, several bottles, and other dining accessories. Steam or smoke rises from an unseen source. In the background, two standing men look down at the central figure. The goateed man on the left wears a dark snap-brim hat, a black coat with upturned collar, and a gold-trimmed vest. The man on the right, partly obscured by the steam, is wearing a constabulary-style uniform, featuring large wrap-around shades and a hat or helmet with a glossy, stiff brim. There is a bluish cast to the entire image.|[[Harrison Ford]] as detective Rick Deckard in ''[[Blade Runner]]'' (1982). Like many classic noirs, the film is set in a version of Los Angeles where it constantly rains.<ref>Hunter (1982), p. 197.</ref> The steam in the foreground is a familiar noir trope, while the "bluish-smoky exterior" updates the black-and-white mode.<ref>Kennedy (1982), p. 65.</ref>]]

In the post-classic era, a significant trend in noir crossovers has involved [[science fiction]]. In Jean-Luc Godard's ''[[Alphaville (film)|Alphaville]]'' (1965), Lemmy Caution is the name of the old-school private eye in the city of tomorrow. ''[[The Groundstar Conspiracy]]'' (1972) centers on another implacable investigator and an amnesiac named Welles. ''[[Soylent Green]]'' (1973), the first major American example, portrays a dystopian, near-future world via a noir detection plot; starring [[Charlton Heston]] (the lead in ''Touch of Evil''), it also features classic noir standbys Joseph Cotten, Edward G. Robinson, and [[Whit Bissell]]. The film was directed by [[Richard Fleischer]], who two decades before had directed several strong B noirs, including ''[[Armored Car Robbery]]'' (1950) and ''[[The Narrow Margin]]'' (1952).<ref>Downs (2002), pp. 171, 173.</ref>

The cynical and stylized perspective of classic film noir had a formative effect on the [[cyberpunk]] genre of science fiction that emerged in the early 1980s; the film most directly influential on cyberpunk was ''[[Blade Runner]]'' (1982), directed by [[Ridley Scott]], which pays evocative homage to the classic noir mode<ref>Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 242.</ref> (Scott subsequently directed the poignant 1987 noir crime melodrama ''[[Someone to Watch Over Me (film)|Someone to Watch Over Me]]''). Scholar Jamaluddin Bin Aziz has observed how "the shadow of [[Philip Marlowe]] lingers on" in such other "future noir" films as ''[[12 Monkeys]]'' (1995), ''[[Dark City (1998 film)|Dark City]]'' (1998) and ''[[Minority Report (film)|Minority Report]]'' (2002).<ref>Aziz (2005), section "Future Noir and Postmodernism: The Irony Begins". Ballinger and Graydon note "future noir" synonyms: "'cyber noir' but predominantly 'tech noir'" (p. 242).</ref> Fincher's feature debut was ''[[Alien 3]]'' (1992), which evoked the classic noir jail film ''[[Brute Force (1947 film)|Brute Force]]''.

David Cronenberg's ''[[Crash (1996 film)|Crash]]'' (1996), an adaptation of [[Crash (1973 novel)|the speculative novel]] by [[J. G. Ballard]], has been described as a "film noir in bruise tones".<ref>{{cite news|author=Dougherty, Robin |url=http://www.salon.com/march97/crash970321.html|title=Sleek Chrome + Bruised Thighs|work=Salon|date=1997-03-21|access-date=2009-09-29|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110123090727/http://www.salon.com/march97/crash970321.html|archive-date=2011-01-23}}</ref> The hero is the target of investigation in ''[[Gattaca]]'' (1997), which fuses film noir motifs with a scenario indebted to ''[[Brave New World]]''. ''[[The Thirteenth Floor]]'' (1999), like ''Blade Runner'', is an explicit homage to classic noir, in this case involving speculations about [[virtual reality]]. Science fiction, noir, and [[anime]] are brought together in the Japanese films of 90s ''[[Ghost in the Shell (1995 film)|Ghost in the Shell]]'' (1995) and ''[[Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence]]'' (2004), both directed by [[Mamoru Oshii]].<ref name=bg234/> ''[[The Animatrix]]'' (2003), based on and set within the world of ''[[The Matrix (franchise)|The Matrix]]'' film trilogy, contains an anime short film in classic noir style titled "A Detective Story".<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/movies/movie/282083/The-Animatrix-A-Detective-Story/overview|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141129215154/http://www.nytimes.com/movies/movie/282083/The-Animatrix-A-Detective-Story/overview|url-status=dead|archive-date=2014-11-29|department=Movies & TV Dept.|work=[[The New York Times]]|author=Cammila Collar|date=2014|title=The Animatrix: A Detective Story (2003)|access-date=2014-03-26}}</ref> Anime television series with science fiction noir themes include ''[[Noir (anime)|Noir]]'' (2001)<ref name=bg234>Dargis (2004); Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 234.</ref> and ''[[Cowboy Bebop]]'' (1998).<ref>{{cite magazine|author=Jeffries, L. B. |url=https://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/115481-the-film-noir-roots-of-cowboy-bebop|title=The Film Noir Roots of Cowboy Bebop|magazine=PopMatters|date=2010-01-19|access-date=2012-01-25}}</ref>

The 2015 film ''[[Ex Machina (film)|Ex Machina]]'' puts an understated film noir spin on the [[Frankenstein]] mythos, with the sentient [[android (robot)|android]] Ava as a potential ''femme fatale'', her creator Nathan embodying the abusive husband or father trope, and her would-be rescuer Caleb as a "clueless drifter" enthralled by Ava.<ref>{{cite web|author=Matt Zoller Seitz|url=https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/ex-machina-2015|title=Ex Machina|publisher=rogerebert.com|date=2015-04-09|access-date=2015-06-03|archive-date=2015-04-12|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150412001200/https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/ex-machina-2015|url-status=live}}</ref>

{{Clear}}
===Rural/outback noir===
{{also|Rural noir (fiction)}}
<!---a couple of paragraphs to allow for redirects to target this - possibly an article later--->
A sub-genre of noir fiction has been named "rural noir" in the US;<ref name=rise2019>{{cite web |title=The Rise of Rural Noir: Southern Crime Fiction |website=The Bitter Southerner |date=21 July 2019 |url=https://bittersoutherner.com/the-rise-of-rural-noir-southern-crime-fiction |access-date=27 October 2024}}</ref><ref name=bouman2015>{{cite web |last=Bouman |first=Tom |author-link= Tom Bouman| title=Top 10 rural noir novels |website=The Guardian |date=20 May 2015 |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/may/20/top-10-rural-noir-novels-american-fiction |access-date=27 October 2024}}</ref> and sometimes "outback noir" in Australia.<ref name=heath2023>{{cite web |last=Heath |first=Nicola |title=What is outback noir and why is so much crime fiction set in regional Australia |website=[[ABC News (Australia)|ABC News]] |date=25 December 2023 |url=https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-26/outback-noir-australian-crime-fiction-scrublands-the-dry/103229200 |access-date=27 October 2024}}</ref><ref name=burge2024>{{cite web |last=Burge |first=Michael |title=Australian rural crime fiction is booming – it's time it represented the true diversity of the bush |website=The Guardian |date=8 June 2024 |url=https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jun/09/australian-rural-fiction-is-booming-its-time-it-represented-the-true-diversity-of-the-bush |access-date=27 October 2024}}</ref> Many rural noir novels have been adapted for film and TV series in both countries, such as ''[[Ozark (TV series)|Ozark]]'', ''[[No Country for Old Men]]'',<ref name=rise2019/> and ''[[Big Sky (American TV series)|Big Sky]]'' in the US,<ref>{{cite web |last=Roysdon |first=Keith |title=Spotlighting Rural Crime Fiction |website=The Daily Yonder |date=10 August 2023 |url=https://dailyyonder.com/spotlighting-rural-crime-fiction-small-town-sins-the-hunt-longmire-joe-pickett-quinn-colson/2023/08/10/ |access-date=27 October 2024}}</ref> and ''[[Troppo (TV series)|Troppo]]'', ''[[The Dry (film)|The Dry]]'' (and its sequel ''[[Force of Nature: The Dry 2]]''), ''[[Scrublands (TV series)|Scrublands]]'',<ref name=heath2023/> and ''[[High Country (TV series)|High Country]]'' (2024) in Australia.<ref>{{cite web |first=Stephen|last= Gaunson |title=High Country delivers a fresh take on Australian rural noir |website=[[InReview]] |date=20 March 2024 |url=https://inreview.com.au/inreview/film/2024/03/20/high-country-delivers-a-fresh-take-on-australian-rural-noir/ |access-date=27 October 2024}}</ref>

In Australia, outback noir increasingly includes issues relating to [[Indigenous Australians]],<ref name=heath2023/> such as the dispossession of land from [[Aboriginal Australians|Aboriginal peoples]]<ref >{{cite web |last=King |first=Stewart |title=Indigenous crime fiction is rare, but in Madukka the River Serpent systemic violence and connection to Country are explored |website=[[The Conversation (website)|The Conversation]] |date=6 February 2024 |url=https://theconversation.com/indigenous-crime-fiction-is-rare-but-in-madukka-the-river-serpent-systemic-violence-and-connection-to-country-are-explored-201860 |access-date=27 October 2024}}</ref> and [[Racism in Australia|racism]]. Filmmaker [[Ivan Sen]] is known for his exploration of such themes in his ''[[Mystery Road (TV series)|Mystery Road]]'' TV series and [[Mystery Road (film)|film of the same name]] with its prequel ''[[Goldstone (film)|Goldstone]]'',<ref>{{cite web |last=Das |first=Parvathy |title=Land in Outback Noir Films: Trope of Spatial Alienation of Aboriginal People in Ivan Sen's Mystery Road (2013) and Goldstone (2016) |website=Offscreen |date=2 July 2021 |url=https://offscreen.com/view/land-in-outback-noir-films-trope-of-spatial-alienation-of-aboriginal-people-in-ivan-sens-mystery-road-2013-and-goldstone-2016 |access-date=27 October 2024}}</ref> and his more recent award-winning film ''[[Limbo (2023 film)|Limbo]]'' (2023).<ref>{{cite web |last=Comini |first=Rebecca |title=Outback noir lays out the racism faced by Indigenous Australians |website=CathNews |date=1 June 2023 |url=https://cathnews.com/2023/06/02/outback-noir-lays-out-the-racism-faced-by-indigenous-australians/ |access-date=27 October 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Clarke |first=Rhiannon |title=Renowned Indigenous filmmaker Ivan Sen returns to screens with critically acclaimed outback noir film 'Limbo' |website=[[National Indigenous Times]] |date=13 April 2023 |url=https://nit.com.au/13-04-2023/5589/renowned-indigenous-filmmaker-ivan-sen-returns-to-screens-with-critically-acclaimed-outback-noir-film-limbo |access-date=27 October 2024}}</ref>

==Parodies==
Film noir has been parodied many times in many manners. In 1945, [[Danny Kaye]] starred in what appears to be the first intentional film noir parody, ''[[Wonder Man (film)|Wonder Man]]''.<ref name=SW_parody>Silver and Ward (1992), p. 332.</ref> That same year, [[Deanna Durbin]] was the singing lead in the comedic noir ''[[Lady on a Train]]'', which makes fun of Woolrich-brand wistful miserablism. [[Bob Hope]] inaugurated the private-eye noir parody with ''[[My Favorite Brunette]]'' (1947), playing a baby-photographer who is mistaken for an ironfisted detective.<ref name="SW_parody"/> In 1947 as well, [[The Bowery Boys]] appeared in ''[[Hard Boiled Mahoney]]'', which had a similar mistaken-identity plot; they spoofed the genre once more in ''[[Private Eyes (1953 film)|Private Eyes]]'' (1953). Two RKO productions starring Robert Mitchum take film noir over the border into self-parody: ''[[The Big Steal]]'' (1949), directed by [[Don Siegel]], and ''[[His Kind of Woman]]'' (1951).{{Ref label|B|b|none}} The "Girl Hunt" ballet in [[Vincente Minnelli]]'s ''[[The Band Wagon]]'' (1953) is a ten-minute distillation of—and play on—noir in dance.<ref>Richardson (1992), p. 120.</ref> ''[[The Cheap Detective]]'' (1978), starring [[Peter Falk]], is a broad spoof of several films, including the Bogart classics ''The Maltese Falcon'' and ''[[Casablanca (film)|Casablanca]]''. [[Carl Reiner]]'s black-and-white ''[[Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid]]'' (1982) appropriates clips of classic noirs for a farcical [[Pastiche#Hodge-podge|pastiche]], while his ''[[Fatal Instinct]]'' (1993) sends up noir classic (''Double Indemnity'') and neo-noir (''Basic Instinct''). [[Robert Zemeckis]]'s ''[[Who Framed Roger Rabbit]]'' (1988) develops a noir plot set in 1940s Los Angeles around a host of cartoon characters.<ref>{{cite web|last=Springer|first=Katherine|url=http://www.filmfracture.com/frame_of_mind/touch_of_noir_top_5_film_noir_parodies|title=Touch Of Noir: Top 5 Film Noir Parodies|work=FilmFracture |date=2013-06-23|access-date=2018-04-25|archive-date=2018-04-26|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180426080159/http://www.filmfracture.com/frame_of_mind/touch_of_noir_top_5_film_noir_parodies|url-status=live}}</ref>

[[File:TaxiDriver1.jpg|thumb|left|alt=Head and right hand of a man, shot from a slightly low angle. The man, whose hair is in a Mohawk, looks down at the camera with an odd smile. A spot of blood is on his upper left cheek, and a three-inch line of blood runs from his lower left cheek to his jaw. With his blood-drenched thumb and index finger, he makes the shape of a pistol, pointed at the side of his head.|"Loneliness has followed me my whole life, everywhere. In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere. There's no escape. I'm God's lonely man." [[Robert De Niro]] as neo-noir [[antihero]] Travis Bickle in ''[[Taxi Driver]]'' (1976)]]

Noir parodies come in darker tones as well. ''[[Murder by Contract]]'' (1958), directed by [[Irving Lerner]], is a deadpan joke on noir, with a denouement as bleak as any of the films it kids. An ultra-low-budget [[Columbia Pictures]] production, it may qualify as the first intentional example of what is now called a neo-noir film; it was likely a source of inspiration for both Melville's ''Le Samouraï'' and Scorsese's ''[[Taxi Driver]]''.<ref>Naremore (2008), p. 158.</ref> Belying its parodic strain, ''[[The Long Goodbye (film)|The Long Goodbye]]''{{'}}s final act is seriously grave. ''Taxi Driver'' caustically [[deconstruction|deconstructs]] the "dark" crime film, taking it to an absurd extreme and then offering a conclusion that manages to mock every possible anticipated ending—triumphant, tragic, artfully ambivalent—while being each, all at once.<ref>See, e.g., Kolker (2000), pp. 238–41.</ref> Flirting with [[splatter film|splatter]] status even more brazenly, the Coens' ''[[Blood Simple]]'' is both an exacting [[Genre parodies|pastiche]] and a gross exaggeration of classic noir.<ref>Silver and Ward (1992), p. 419.</ref> Adapted by director Robinson Devor from a novel by [[Charles Willeford]], ''[[The Woman Chaser]]'' (1999) sends up not just the noir mode but the entire Hollywood filmmaking process, with each shot seemingly staged as the visual equivalent of an acerbic Marlowe wisecrack.<ref>Holden (1999).</ref>

In other media, the television series ''[[Sledge Hammer!]]'' (1986–88) lampoons noir, along with such topics as [[capital punishment]], gun [[fetishism]], and [[Harry Callahan (character)|Dirty Harry]]. ''[[Sesame Street]]'' (1969–curr.) occasionally casts [[Kermit the Frog]] as a private eye; the sketches refer to some of the typical motifs of noir films, in particular the voiceover. [[Garrison Keillor]]'s radio program ''[[A Prairie Home Companion]]'' features the recurring character [[Guy Noir]], a hardboiled detective whose adventures always wander into farce (Guy also appears in the [[A Prairie Home Companion (film)|Altman-directed film]] based on Keillor's show). [[Firesign Theatre]]'s Nick Danger has trodden the same not-so-mean streets, both on radio and in comedy albums. Cartoons such as ''[[Garfield's Babes and Bullets]]'' (1989) and [[comic strip]] characters such as [[Calvin's alter egos (Calvin and Hobbes)#Tracer Bullet|Tracer Bullet]] of ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]'' have parodied both film noir and the kindred hardboiled tradition—one of the sources from which film noir sprang and which it now overshadows.<ref>Irwin (2006), p. xii.</ref> ''[[It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia]]'' parodied the noir genre in its [[It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia season 14|season 14]] episode "The Janitor Always Mops Twice."<ref>{{Cite web |last=Harley |first=Nick |date=2019-10-31 |title=Always Sunny Season 14 Episode 6 Review: The Janitor Always Mops Twice |url=https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/always-sunny-season-14-episode-6-review-the-janitor-always-mops-twice/ |access-date=2023-02-03 |website=Den of Geek |language=en-US |archive-date=2023-02-03 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230203073418/https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/always-sunny-season-14-episode-6-review-the-janitor-always-mops-twice/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=2019-10-31 |title=Charlie is his own film noir hero in tonight's killer It's Always Sunny pastiche |url=https://www.avclub.com/charlie-is-his-own-film-noir-hero-in-tonights-its-alway-1839472006 |access-date=2023-02-03 |website=The A.V. Club |language=en |archive-date=2023-02-03 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230203073411/https://www.avclub.com/charlie-is-his-own-film-noir-hero-in-tonights-its-alway-1839472006 |url-status=live }}</ref>

==Identifying characteristics==
[[File:VertigoHangTrailer.jpg|thumb|right|alt=A man, seen from mid-chest up, hangs by his hands from the edge of an apparently tall structure, gazing down in fear. He is wearing a dark suit and an orange tie with a clip. In the distance behind him is a cityscape at night or in the early morning. There is a bluish cast to the background.|Some consider ''[[Vertigo (film)|Vertigo]]'' (1958) a noir on the basis of plot and tone and various motifs, but it has a modernist graphic design typical of the 1950s and a more modern set design,<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/sep/26/poster.vertigo|title=Vertigo: Disorientation in orange|last=Rennie|first=Paul|date=2008-09-29|access-date=2018-04-25|newspaper=The Guardian|archive-date=2023-09-01|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230901080244/https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/sep/26/poster.vertigo|url-status=live}}</ref> which would remove it from the category of film noir. Others say the combination of color and the specificity of director [[Alfred Hitchcock]]'s vision exclude it from the category.<ref>Bould (2005), p. 18.</ref>]]

In their original 1955 canon of film noir, Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton identified twenty-two Hollywood films released between 1941 and 1952 as core examples; they listed another fifty-nine American films from the period as significantly related to the field of noir.<ref>Borde and Chaumeton (2002), pp. 161–63.</ref> A half-century later, film historians and critics had come to agree on a canon of approximately three hundred films from 1940 to 1958.<ref>Silver and Ward (1992) list 315 classic film noirs (passim), and Tuska (1984) lists 320 (passim). Later works are much more inclusive: Paul Duncan, ''The Pocket Essential Film Noir'' (2003), lists 647 (pp. 46–84). The title of Michael F. Keaney's ''Film Noir Guide: 745 Films of the Classic Era, 1940–1959'' (2003) is self-explanatory.</ref> There remain, however, many differences of opinion over whether other films of the era, among them a number of well-known ones, qualify as film noirs or not. For instance, ''[[The Night of the Hunter (film)|The Night of the Hunter]]'' (1955), starring Robert Mitchum in an acclaimed performance, is treated as a film noir by some critics, but not by others.<ref>Treated as noir: Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 34; Hirsch (2001), pp. 59, 163–64, 168. Excluded from canon: Silver and Ward (1992), p. 330. Ignored: Bould (2005); Christopher (1998); Ottoson (1981).</ref> Some critics include ''[[Suspicion (1941 film)|Suspicion]]'' (1941), directed by Alfred Hitchcock, in their catalogues of noir; others ignore it.<ref>Included: Bould (2005), p. 126; Ottoson (1981), p. 174. Ignored: Ballinger and Graydon (2007); Hirsch (2001); Christopher (1998). Also see Silver and Ward (1992): ignored in 1980; included in 1988 (pp. 392, 396).</ref> Concerning films made either before or after the classic period, or outside of the United States at any time, consensus is even rarer.

To support their categorization of certain films as noirs and their rejection of others, many critics refer to a set of elements they see as marking examples of the mode. The question of what constitutes the set of noir's identifying characteristics is a fundamental source of controversy. For instance, critics tend to define the model film noir as having a tragic or bleak conclusion,<ref>See, e.g., Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 4; Christopher (1998), p. 8.</ref> but many acknowledged classics of the genre have clearly happy endings (e.g., ''Stranger on the Third Floor,'' ''The Big Sleep'', ''Dark Passage'', and ''The Dark Corner''), while the tone of many other noir [[denouement]]s is ambivalent.<ref>See, e.g., Ray (1985), p. 159.</ref> Some critics perceive classic noir's hallmark as a distinctive visual style. Others, observing that there is actually considerable stylistic variety among noirs, instead emphasize plot and character type. Still others focus on mood and attitude. No survey of classic noir's identifying characteristics can therefore be considered definitive. In the 1990s and 2000s, critics have increasingly turned their attention to that diverse field of films called neo-noir; once again, there is even less consensus about the defining attributes of such films made outside the classic period.<ref>Williams (2005), pp. 34–37.</ref> Roger Ebert offered "A Guide to Film Noir", writing that "Film noir is...

# A French term meaning 'black film', or film of the night, inspired by the Series Noir, a line of cheap paperbacks that translated hard-boiled American crime authors and found a popular audience in France
# A movie which at no time misleads you into thinking there is going to be a happy ending.
# Locations that reek of the night, of shadows, of alleys, of the back doors of fancy places, of apartment buildings with a high turnover rate, of taxi drivers and bartenders who have seen it all.
# Cigarettes. Everyone in film noir is always smoking, as if to say, 'On top of everything else, I've been assigned to get through three packs today. The best smoking movie of all time is ''[[Out of the Past]]'', in which [[Robert Mitchum]] and [[Kirk Douglas]] smoke furiously at each other. At one point, Mitchum enters a room, Douglas extends a pack and says 'Cigarette?' and Mitchum, holding up his hand, says, 'Smoking.'
# Women who would just as soon kill you as love you, and vice versa. 
# For women: low necklines, floppy hats, mascara, lipstick, dressing rooms, boudoirs, calling the doorman by his first name, high heels, red dresses, elbowlength gloves, mixing drinks, having gangsters as boyfriends, having soft spots for alcoholic private eyes, wanting a lot of someone else's women, sprawling dead on the floor with every limb meticulously arranged and every hair in place.
# For men: fedoras, suits and ties, shabby residential hotels with a neon sign blinking through the window, buying yourself a drink out of the office bottle, cars with running boards, all-night diners, protecting kids who shouldn't be playing with the big guys, being on first-name terms with homicide cops, knowing a lot of people whose descriptions end in 'ies,' such as bookies, newsies, junkies, alkys, jockeys and cabbies.
# Movies either shot in [[black-and-white]], or feeling like they were. 
# Relationships in which love is only the final flop card in the poker game of death. 
# The most American film genre, because no other society could have created a world so full of doom, fate, fear and betrayal, unless it were essentially naive and optimistic."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Ebert |first=Roger |date=January 30, 1995 |title=A Guide to Film Noir |work=[[Chicago Sun Times]] |url=https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/a-guide-to-film-noir-genre |access-date=February 22, 2023 |archive-date=September 1, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230901080239/https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/a-guide-to-film-noir-genre |url-status=live }}</ref>

===Visual style===
The [[low-key lighting]] schemes of many classic film noirs are associated with stark light/dark [[contrast (vision)|contrasts]] and dramatic shadow patterning—a style known as [[chiaroscuro]] (a term adopted from Renaissance painting).{{Ref label|C|c|none}} The shadows of Venetian blinds or banister rods, cast upon an actor, a wall, or an entire set, are an iconic visual in noir and had already become a [[cliché]] well before the neo-noir era. Characters' faces may be partially or wholly obscured by darkness—a relative rarity in conventional Hollywood filmmaking. While black-and-white cinematography is considered by many to be one of the essential attributes of classic noir, the color films ''[[Leave Her to Heaven]]'' (1945) and ''[[Niagara (1953 film)|Niagara]]'' (1953) are routinely included in noir filmographies, while ''[[Slightly Scarlet (1956 film)|Slightly Scarlet]]'' (1956), ''[[Party Girl (1958 film)|Party Girl]]'' (1958), and ''[[Vertigo (film)|Vertigo]]'' (1958) are classified as noir by varying numbers of critics.<ref>See Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 31, on general issue. Christopher (1998) and Silver and Ward (1992), for instance, include ''Slightly Scarlet'' and ''Party Girl'', but not ''Vertigo'', in their filmographies. By contrast, Hirsch (2001) describes ''Vertigo'' as among those Hitchcock films that are "richly, demonstrably ''noir''" (p. 139) and ignores both ''Slightly Scarlet'' and ''Party Girl''; Bould (2005) similarly includes ''Vertigo'' in his filmography, but not the other two. Ottoson (1981) includes none of the three in his canon.</ref>

Film noir is also known for its use of [[low-angle shot|low-angle]], [[wide-angle lens|wide-angle]], and [[Dutch angle|skewed, or Dutch angle]] shots. Other devices of disorientation relatively common in film noir include shots of people reflected in one or more mirrors, shots through curved or frosted glass or other distorting objects (such as during the strangulation scene in ''Strangers on a Train''), and special effects sequences of a sometimes bizarre nature. [[Night-for-night]] shooting, as opposed to the Hollywood norm of [[day-for-night]], was often employed.<ref>Place and Peterson (1974), p. 67.</ref> From the mid-1940s forward, [[location shooting]] became increasingly frequent in noir.<ref>Hirsch (2001), p. 67.</ref>

In an analysis of the visual approach of ''[[Kiss Me Deadly]]'', a late and self-consciously stylized example of classic noir, critic Alain Silver describes how cinematographic choices emphasize the story's themes and mood. In one scene, the characters, seen through a "confusion of angular shapes", thus appear "caught in a tangible vortex or enclosed in a trap." Silver makes a case for how "side light is used&nbsp;... to reflect character ambivalence", while shots of characters in which they are lit from below "conform to a convention of visual expression which associates shadows cast upward of the face with the unnatural and ominous".<ref>Silver (1995), pp. 219, 222.</ref>

Certain technological advancements in film stock allowed for film noir to achieve its distinctive look. Beginning in 1935, [[Kodak|Eastman Kodak]] released a new, higher-speed [[film stock]], which found particular usage in [[Documentary film|documentary]]/[[newsreel]]-types of filmmaking where on-location shooting was required.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Biesen |first=S. C. |title=Through a noir lens: Adapting film noir visual style |date=2024 |publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=978-0-231-21563-3 |location=New York}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Spicer |first=A. |title=A companion to film noir |last2=Hanson |first2=H. |date=2013 |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |isbn=978-1-4443-3627-6 |location=Malden, MA}}</ref> Cinematographers soon caught on to the potential for this new technology and began using it.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Versteirt |first=B. |date=August 18, 2020 |title=Pushing low-key limits: A cinematographic history of noir and neo-noir |url=https://photogenie.be/pushing-low-key-limits-a-cinematographic-history-of-noir-and-neo-noir/ |access-date= |website=Photogénie |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Keating |first=P. |title=Hollywood lighting from the silent era to film noir |date=2010 |publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=978-0-231-14903-7 |series=Film and culture |location=New York}}</ref> The advantage of this new film stock was that, because it captured light faster, the film cells could effectively absorb more light with each [[Exposure (photography)|exposure]], eliminating the need to flood the set with light. Thus, cinematographers could be far more expressive in their lighting, allowing for darker scenes dominated by shadows.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Spicer |first=A. |title=A companion to film noir |last2=Hanson |first2=H. |date=2013 |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |isbn=978-1-4443-3627-6 |location=Malden, MA}}</ref> However, by the 1950s, the very unstable [[Silver nitrate|nitrate]] film stock was universally replaced with the far more stable acetate "[[Cellulose acetate film|safety film]]." The trade-off, however, was that this film stock produced an image with significantly less contrast. Thus, the high-contrast, black-and-white imagery that was essential to film noir effectively disappeared with the more greyscale imagery of the acetate, and it forced the other elements of film noir to be emphasized.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Biesen |first=S. C. |title=Through a noir lens: Adapting film noir visual style |date=2024 |publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=978-0-231-21563-3 |location=New York}}</ref>

===Structure and narrational devices===
[[File:SorryWrongNumber2.jpg|thumb|right|alt=A man and a woman, seen in profile, starring intensely at each other. The man, on the left, is considerably taller. He wears a brown pin-striped suit, holds a key in one hand and grips the woman's arm with the other. She is wearing a pale green top. Lit from below and to the side, they cast bold, angled shadows on the wall behind them.|[[Barbara Stanwyck]] and [[Burt Lancaster]] were two of the most prolific stars of classic noir. The complex structure of ''[[Sorry, Wrong Number]]'' (1948) involves a real-time framing story, [[multiperspectivity|multiple narrators]], and flashbacks within flashbacks.<ref>Telotte (1989), pp. 74–87.</ref>]]

Film noirs tend to have unusually convoluted story lines, frequently involving [[Flashback (literary technique)|flashbacks]] and other editing techniques that disrupt and sometimes obscure the [[narrative]] sequence. Framing the entire primary narrative as a flashback is also a standard device. Voiceover narration, sometimes used as a structuring device, came to be seen as a noir hallmark; while classic noir is generally associated with first-person narration (i.e., by the protagonist), Stephen Neale notes that third-person narration is common among noirs of the semidocumentary style.<ref>Neale (2000), pp. 166–67 n. 5.</ref> Neo-noirs as varied as ''The Element of Crime'' (surrealist), ''After Dark, My Sweet'' (retro), and ''Kiss Kiss Bang Bang'' (meta) have employed the flashback/voiceover combination.

Bold experiments in cinematic storytelling were sometimes attempted during the classic era: ''Lady in the Lake'', for example, is shot entirely from the [[Point of view shot|point of view]] of protagonist Philip Marlowe; the face of star (and director) [[Robert Montgomery (actor)|Robert Montgomery]] is seen only in mirrors.<ref>Telotte (1989), p. 106.</ref> ''[[The Chase (1946 film)|The Chase]]'' (1946) takes [[Oneiric (film theory)|oneirism]] and fatalism as the basis for its fantastical narrative system, redolent of certain horror stories, but with little precedent in the context of a putatively realistic genre. In their different ways, both ''Sunset Boulevard'' and ''D.O.A.'' are tales told by dead men. Latter-day noir has been in the forefront of structural experimentation in popular cinema, as exemplified by such films as ''Pulp Fiction'', ''Fight Club'', and ''Memento''.<ref>Rombes, Nicholas, ''New Punk Cinema'' (2005), pp. 131–36.</ref>

===Plots, characters, and settings===
Crime, usually murder, is an element of almost all film noirs; in addition to standard-issue greed, jealousy is frequently the criminal motivation. A crime investigation—by a private eye, a police detective (sometimes acting alone), or a concerned amateur—is the most prevalent, but far from dominant, basic plot. In other common plots the protagonists are implicated in [[heist film|heists]] or [[confidence trick|con games]], or in murderous conspiracies often involving adulterous affairs. False suspicions and accusations of crime are frequent plot elements, as are betrayals and double-crosses. According to J. David Slocum, "protagonists assume the literal identities of dead men in nearly fifteen percent of all noir."<ref>Slocum (2001), p. 160.</ref> [[Amnesia]] is fairly epidemic—"noir's version of the common cold", in the words of film historian [[Lee Server]].<ref>Server (2006), p. 149.</ref>

[[File:PursuedPoster.jpg|thumb|left|alt=Black-and-white film poster with an image of a young man and woman holding each other. They are surrounded by an abstract, whirlpool-like image; the central arc of the thick black line that define it encircles their head. Both are wearing white shirts and look forward with tense expressions; his right arm cradles her back, and in his hand he holds a revolver. The stars' names—Teresa Wright and Robert Mitchum—feature at the top of the whirlpool; the title and remainder of the credits are below.|By the late 1940s, the noir trend was leaving its mark on other genres. A prime example is the Western ''[[Pursued]]'' (1947), filled with psychosexual tensions and behavioral explanations derived from [[Psychoanalysis|Freudian theory]].<ref>Ottoson (1981), p. 143.</ref>]]

Film noirs tend to revolve around heroes who are more flawed and morally questionable than the norm, often [[fall guy]]s of one sort or another. The characteristic protagonists of noir are described by many critics as "[[Social alienation|alienated]]";<ref>See, e.g., Naremore (2008), p. 25; Lyons (2000), p. 10.</ref> in the words of Silver and Ward, "filled with [[existentialism|existential]] bitterness".<ref>Silver and Ward (1992), p. 6.</ref> Certain archetypal characters appear in many film noirs—hardboiled detectives, femme fatales, corrupt policemen, jealous husbands, intrepid [[claims adjuster]]s, and down-and-out writers. Among characters of every stripe, cigarette smoking is rampant.<ref>See, e.g., Hirsch (2001), pp. 128, 150, 160, 213; Christopher (1998), pp. 4, 32, 75, 83, 116, 118, 128, 155.</ref> From historical commentators to neo-noir pictures to pop culture ephemera, the private eye and the femme fatale have been adopted as the quintessential film noir figures, though they do not appear in most films now regarded as classic noir. Of the twenty-six National Film Registry noirs, in only four does the star play a private eye: ''The Maltese Falcon'', ''The Big Sleep'', ''Out of the Past'', and ''Kiss Me Deadly''. Just four others readily qualify as detective stories: ''Laura'', ''The Killers'', ''The Naked City'', and ''Touch of Evil''. There is usually an element of drug or alcohol use, particularly as part of the detective's method to solving the crime, as an example the character of Mike Hammer in the 1955 film ''[[Kiss Me Deadly]]'' who walks into a bar saying "Give me a double bourbon, and leave the bottle". Chaumeton and Borde have argued that film noir grew out of the "literature of drugs and alcohol".<ref>{{cite book  | last=Abrams |first=Jerold J. |title=The Philosophy of Film Noir| publisher=University Press of Kentucky |date=2006}}</ref>

Film noir is often associated with an urban setting, and a few cities—Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Chicago, in particular—are the location of many of the classic films. In the eyes of many critics, the city is presented in noir as a "labyrinth" or "maze".<ref>See, e.g., Hirsch (2001), p. 17; Christopher (1998), p. 17; Telotte (1989), p. 148.</ref> Bars, lounges, nightclubs, and gambling dens are frequently the scene of action. The climaxes of a substantial number of film noirs take place in visually complex, often industrial settings, such as refineries, factories, trainyards, power plants—most famously the explosive conclusion of ''White Heat'', set at a chemical plant.<ref>Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 217–18; Hirsch (2001), p. 64.</ref> In the popular (and, frequently enough, critical) imagination, in noir it is always night and it always raining.<ref>Bould (2005), p. 18, on the critical establishment of this iconography, as well as p. 35; Hirsch (2001), p. 213; Christopher (1998), p. 7.</ref>

A substantial trend within latter-day noir—dubbed "film soleil" by critic [[D. K. Holm]]—heads in precisely the opposite direction, with tales of deception, seduction, and corruption exploiting bright, sun-baked settings, stereotypically the desert or open water, to searing effect. Significant predecessors from the classic and early post-classic eras include ''The Lady from Shanghai''; the [[Robert Ryan]] vehicle ''[[Inferno (1953 film)|Inferno]]'' (1953); the French adaptation of [[Patricia Highsmith]]'s ''[[The Talented Mr. Ripley]]'', ''[[Plein Soleil|Plein soleil]]'' (''Purple Noon'' in the United States, more accurately rendered elsewhere as ''Blazing Sun'' or ''Full Sun''; 1960); and director Don Siegel's version of ''[[The Killers (1964 film)|The Killers]]'' (1964). The tendency was at its peak during the late 1980s and 1990s, with films such as ''[[Dead Calm (film)|Dead Calm]]'' (1989), ''[[After Dark, My Sweet]]'' (1990), ''[[The Hot Spot]]'' (1990), ''[[Delusion (1991 film)|Delusion]]'' (1991), ''[[Red Rock West]]'' (1993) and the television series ''[[Miami Vice]]''.<ref>Holm (2005), pp. 13–25 passim.</ref>

===Worldview, morality, and tone===
[[File:BigClinch.jpg|thumb|right|alt=Black-and-white image of a man and a woman, seen from mid-chest up, their faces in profile, gazing into each other's eyes. He embraces her in a dip with his right arm and holds her right hand to his chest with his left hand. He wears a pin-striped suit and a dark tie. She wears a white top. On the left, the background is black; on the right, it is lighter, with a series of diagonal shadows descending from the upper corner.|"You've got a touch of class, but I don't know how far you can go."<br/>"A lot depends on who's in the saddle."<br/>[[Humphrey Bogart|Bogart]] and [[Lauren Bacall|Bacall]] in ''[[The Big Sleep (1946 film)|The Big Sleep]]''.]]

Film noir is often described as essentially pessimistic.<ref>See, e.g., Naremore (2008), p. 37, on the development of this viewpoint, and p. 103, on contributors to Silver and Ward encyclopedia; Ottoson (1981), p. 1.</ref> The noir stories that are regarded as most characteristic tell of people trapped in unwanted situations (which, in general, they did not cause but are responsible for exacerbating), striving against random, uncaring fate, and are frequently doomed. The films are seen as depicting a world that is inherently corrupt.<ref>See, e.g., Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 4; Christopher (1998), pp. 7–8.</ref> Classic film noir has been associated by many critics with the American social landscape of the era—in particular, with a sense of heightened anxiety and alienation that is said to have followed World War II. In author [[Nicholas Christopher (writer)|Nicholas Christopher]]'s opinion, "it is as if the war, and the social eruptions in its aftermath, unleashed demons that had been bottled up in the national psyche."<ref>Christopher (1998), p. 37.</ref> Film noirs, especially those of the 1950s and the height of the [[Red Scare]], are often said to reflect cultural paranoia; ''[[Kiss Me Deadly]]'' is the noir most frequently marshaled as evidence for this claim.<ref>See, e.g., Muller (1998), p. 81, on analyses of the film; Silver and Ward (1992), p. 2.</ref>

Film noir is often said to be defined by "moral ambiguity",<ref>See, e.g., Naremore (2008), p. 163, on critical claims of moral ambiguity; Lyons (2000), pp. 14, 32.</ref> yet the [[Motion Picture Production Code|Production Code]] obliged almost all classic noirs to see that steadfast virtue was ultimately rewarded and vice, in the absence of shame and redemption, severely punished (however dramatically incredible the final rendering of mandatory justice might be). A substantial number of latter-day noirs flout such conventions: vice emerges triumphant in films as varied as the grim ''Chinatown'' and the ribald ''Hot Spot''.<ref>See Skoble (2006), pp. 41–48, for a survey of noir morality.</ref>

The tone of film noir is generally regarded as downbeat; some critics experience it as darker still—"overwhelmingly black", according to Robert Ottoson.<ref>Ottoson (1981), p. 1.</ref> Influential critic (and filmmaker) Paul Schrader wrote in a seminal 1972 essay that "''film noir'' is defined by tone", a tone he seems to perceive as "hopeless".<ref>Schrader (1972), p. 54 [in Silver and Ursini]. For characterization of definitive tone as "hopeless", see pp. 53 ("the tone more hopeless") and 57 ("a fatalistic, hopeless mood").</ref> In describing the adaptation of ''Double Indemnity,'' noir analyst Foster Hirsch describes the "requisite hopeless tone" achieved by the filmmakers, which appears to characterize his view of noir as a whole.<ref>Hirsch (2001), p. 7. Hirsch subsequently states, "In character types, ''mood'' [emphasis added], themes, and visual composition, ''Double Indemnity'' offer[s] a lexicon of ''noir'' stylistics" (p. 8).</ref> On the other hand, definitive film noirs such as ''The Big Sleep'', ''The Lady from Shanghai'', ''Scarlet Street'' and ''Double Indemnity'' itself are famed for their hardboiled repartee, often imbued with sexual innuendo and self-reflexive humor.<ref>Sanders (2006), p. 100.</ref>

=== Music ===
The music of film noir was typically orchestral, per the Hollywood norm, but often with added dissonance.<ref>{{Cite book |last=BUTLER |first=DAVID |title=Film noir and music |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2016 |isbn=9781107476493 |pages=175–186 |language=English}}</ref> Many of the prime composers, like the directors and cameramen, were European émigrés, e.g., [[Max Steiner]] (''[[The Big Sleep (1946 film)|The Big Sleep]]'', ''Mildred Pierce''), [[Miklós Rózsa]] (''[[Double Indemnity]]'', ''[[The Killers (1946 film)|The Killers]]'', ''[[Criss Cross (film)|Criss Cross]]''), and [[Franz Waxman]] (''[[Fury (1936 film)|Fury]]'', ''[[Sunset Boulevard (film)|Sunset Boulevard]]'', ''[[Night and the City]]''). ''Double Indemnity'' is a seminal score, initially disliked by Paramount's music director for its harshness but strongly endorsed by director Billy Wilder and studio chief [[Buddy DeSylva]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Rózsa |first1=Miklós |title=Double Life |date=1982 |publisher=The Baton Press |location=London |isbn=0-85936-209-4 |pages=121–122}}</ref> There is a widespread popular impression that "sleazy" jazz saxophone and pizzicato bass constitute the sound of noir, but those characteristics arose much later, as in the late-1950s music of [[Henry Mancini]] for ''[[Touch of Evil]]'' and television's ''[[Peter Gunn]]''. [[Bernard Herrmann]]'s score for ''[[Taxi Driver]]'' makes heavy use of saxophone.{{Citation needed|date=July 2023}}

==See also==
* [[B movie]]
* [[Film gris]]
* [[List of film noir titles]]
* [[List of neo-noir titles]]
* [[Minimalist film]]
* [[Maximalist film]]
* [[Modernist film]]
* [[Neo-noir]]
* [[Noirvember]]
* [[Postmodern film]]
* [[Pulp noir]]
* [[Scandinavian noir]]

==Notes==
{{refbegin}}
<ol type="a">
<li>{{Note label|A|a|none}} The plural forms of ''film noir'' in English include ''films noirs'' ([[English plurals#French compounds|derived from the French]]), ''films noir'', and ''film noirs''. [[Merriam-Webster]], which acknowledges all three styles as acceptable, favors ''film noirs'',<ref name="plurals">{{cite web |url=http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/film%20noir |title=film noir |access-date=2009-02-10 |website=Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary |publisher=[[Merriam–Webster|Merriam-Webster Online]] |quote=Inflected Form(s): plural film noirs \-'nwär(z)\ or films noirs or films noirs \-'nwär\ |archive-date=2023-09-01 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230901080239/https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/film%20noir |url-status=live }}
</ref> while the ''[[Oxford English Dictionary]]'' lists only ''films noirs''.<ref>OED Third Edition, September 2016</ref></li>
<li>{{Note label|B|b|none}} ''His Kind of Woman'' was originally directed by John Farrow, then largely reshot under Richard Fleischer after studio owner [[Howard Hughes]] demanded rewrites. Only Farrow was credited.<ref>Server (2002), pp. 182–98, 209–16; Downs (2002), p. 171; Ottoson (1981), pp. 82–83.</ref></li>
<li>{{Note label|C|c|none}} In ''Academic Dictionary of Arts'' (2005), Rakesh Chopra notes that the high-contrast film lighting schemes commonly referred to as "chiaroscuro" are more specifically representative of [[tenebrism]], whose first great exponent was the Italian painter [[Caravaggio]] (p.&nbsp;73). See also Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p.&nbsp;16.</li>
</ol>
{{refend}}

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{{Reflist}}

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* Vernet, Marc (1993). "''Film Noir'' on the Edge of Doom", in Copjec, ''Shades of Noir'', pp.&nbsp;1–31.
* Wager, Jans B. (2005). ''Dames in the Driver's Seat: Rereading Film Noir''. Austin: University of Texas Press. {{ISBN|978-0-292-70966-9}}
* Walker, Michael (1992). "Robert Siodmak", in Cameron, ''The Book of Film Noir'', pp.&nbsp;110–51.
* White, Dennis L. (1980). "''Beast of the City'' (1932)", in Silver and Ward, ''Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference'', pp.&nbsp;16–17.
* Widdicombe, Toby (2001). ''A Reader's Guide to Raymond Chandler''. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood. {{ISBN|978-0-313-30767-6}}
* Williams, Linda Ruth (2005). ''The Erotic Thriller in Contemporary Cinema''. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. {{ISBN|978-0-253-34713-8}}
{{Refend}}

==Suggested reading==
{{Refbegin|30em}}
* Auerbach, Jonathan (2011). ''Film Noir and American Citizenship.'' Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. {{ISBN|978-0-8223-4993-8}}
* Chopra-Gant, Mike (2005). ''Hollywood Genres and Postwar America: Masculinity, Family and Nation in Popular Movies and Film Noir''. London: IB Tauris. {{ISBN|978-1-85043-838-0}}
* Cochran, David (2000). ''America Noir: Underground Writers and Filmmakers of the Postwar Era''. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. {{ISBN|978-1-56098-813-7}}
* Dickos, Andrew (2002). ''Street with No Name: A History of the Classic American Film Noir''. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. {{ISBN|978-0-8131-2243-4}}
* Dimendberg, Edward (2004). ''Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity''. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London: Harvard University Press. {{ISBN|978-0-674-01314-8}}
* Dixon, Wheeler Winston (2009). ''Film Noir and the Cinema of Paranoia''. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. {{ISBN|978-0-8135-4521-9}}
* García Martín, J. H. (2018). La musicalización diegética de la crisis en el cine negro holliwodiense de los años 40. La música clásica como signo del conflicto. Área abierta, 18(3), 389-407. https://doi.org/10.5209/ARAB.58492
* Grossman, Julie (2009). ''Rethinking the Femme Fatale in Film Noir: Ready for Her Close-Up''. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. {{ISBN|978-0-230-23328-7}}
* Hannsberry, Karen Burroughs (1998). ''Femme Noir: Bad Girls of Film''. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. {{ISBN|978-0-7864-0429-2}}
* Hannsberry, Karen Burroughs (2003). ''Bad Boys: The Actors of Film Noir''. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. {{ISBN|978-0-7864-1484-0}}
* Hare, William (2003). ''Early Film Noir: Greed, Lust, and Murder Hollywood Style''. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. {{ISBN|978-0-7864-1629-5}}
* Hogan, David J. (2013). ''Film Noir FAQ''. Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard. {{ISBN|978-1-55783-855-1}}
* Kaplan, E. Ann, ed. (1998). ''Women in Film Noir'', new ed. London: British Film Institute. {{ISBN|978-0-85170-666-5}}
* Keaney, Michael F. (2003). ''Film Noir Guide: 745 Films of the Classic Era, 1940–1959''. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. {{ISBN|978-0-7864-1547-2}}
* Mason, Fran (2002). ''American Gangster Cinema: From'' Little Caesar ''to'' Pulp Fiction. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave. {{ISBN|978-0-333-67452-9}}
* Mayer, Geoff, and Brian McDonnell (2007). ''Encyclopedia of Film Noir''. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood. {{ISBN|978-0-313-33306-4}}
* McArthur, Colin (1972). ''Underworld U.S.A.'' New York: Viking. {{ISBN|978-0-670-01953-3}}
* Naremore, James (2019). ''Film Noir: A Very Short Introduction''. Oxford: Oxford University Press. {{ISBN|978-0-19-879174-4}}
*Osteen, Mark. ''Nightmare Alley: Film Noir and the American Dream'' (Johns Hopkins University Press; 2013) 336 pages; interprets film noir as a genre that challenges the American mythology of upward mobility and self-reinvention.
* Palmer, R. Barton (1994). ''Hollywood's Dark Cinema: The American Film Noir''. New York: Twayne. {{ISBN|978-0-8057-9335-2}}
* Palmer, R. Barton, ed. (1996). ''Perspectives on Film Noir''. New York: G.K. Hall. {{ISBN|978-0-8161-1601-0}}
* Pappas, Charles (2005). ''It's a Bitter Little World: The Smartest, Toughest, Nastiest Quotes from Film Noir''. Iola, Wisc.: Writer's Digest Books. {{ISBN|978-1-58297-387-6}}
* Rabinowitz, Paula (2002). ''Black & White & Noir: America's Pulp Modernism''. New York: Columbia University Press. {{ISBN|978-0-231-11481-3}}
* Schatz, Thomas (1997). ''Boom and Bust: American Cinema in the 1940s''. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press. {{ISBN|978-0-684-19151-5}}
* Selby, Spencer (1984). ''Dark City: The Film Noir''. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. {{ISBN|978-0-89950-103-1}}
* Shadoian, Jack (2003). ''Dreams and Dead Ends: The American Gangster Film'', 2d ed. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. {{ISBN|978-0-19-514291-4}}
* Silver, Alain, and James Ursini (1999). ''The Noir Style''. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press. {{ISBN|978-0-87951-722-9}}
* Silver, Alain, and James Ursini (2016). ''Film Noir Compendium''. Milwaukee, WI: Applause. {{ISBN|978-1-49505-898-1}}
* Spicer, Andrew (2002). ''Film Noir''. Harlow, UK: Pearson Education. {{ISBN|978-0-582-43712-8}}
* Starman, Ray (2006). ''TV Noir: the 20th Century''. Troy, N.Y.: The Troy Bookmakers Press. {{ISBN|978-1-933994-22-2}}
{{Refend}}

==Suggested listening==
* ''Murder is My Beat: Classic Film Noir Themes and Scenes'' (1997, Rhino Movie Music) – 18-track audio CD
* ''Maltese Falcons, Third Men & Touches of Evil-The Sound of Film Noir 1941–1950'' (2019, Jasmine Records [UK]) – 42-track audio CD 
* ''Film Noir: Six Classic Soundtracks'' (2016, Real Gone Jazz [UK]) – 57 tracks on 4 audio CDs

==External links==
{{Spoken Wikipedia|Film_Noir.ogg|date=2019-7-26}}
* {{Commons category-inline}}
* [http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/Noirbib.html Film Noir: A Bibliography of Materials] and [http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/Noirfilm.html Film Videography] holdings of the [[UC Berkeley]] Library
* [http://www.imagesjournal.com/issue02/infocus/filmnoir.htm Film Noir: An Introduction] essay with links to discussions of ten important noirs; part of ''Images: A Journal of Film and Popular Culture''
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20080701164215/http://www.filmnoirstudies.com/home.asp Film Noir Studies] writings by John Blaser, with film noir glossary, timeline, and noir-related media
* [http://alainsilver.vacau.com/noirkmd/noirkmd1.htm ''Kiss Me Deadly'': Evidence of A Style (part 1)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190212011714/http://alainsilver.vacau.com/noirkmd/noirkmd1.htm |date=2019-02-12 }} unrevised online version of essay by [[Alain Silver]] in three parts: [http://alainsilver.vacau.com/noirkmd/noirkmd2.htm (2)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190212011716/http://alainsilver.vacau.com/noirkmd/noirkmd2.htm |date=2019-02-12 }} and [http://alainsilver.vacau.com/noirkmd/noirkmd.htm (3)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190212011821/http://alainsilver.vacau.com/noirkmd/noirkmd.htm |date=2019-02-12 }}
* [http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19950130/COMMENTARY/11010314/1023 A Guide to Film Noir Genre] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130120234128/http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F19950130%2FCOMMENTARY%2F11010314%2F1023 |date=2013-01-20 }} ten deadeye bullet points from [[Roger Ebert]]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20060803235034/http://www.crimeculture.com/Contents/NeoNoir.html An Introduction to Neo-Noir] essay by [[Lee Horsley]]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20061007085926/http://www.crimeculture.com/Contents/Noir%20Thriller%20Intro.html ''The Noir Thriller'': Introduction] excerpt from 2001 book by Lee Horsley
* [http://alainsilver.vacau.com/screenie/Queen/noir2.htm What Is This Thing Called Noir?: Parts I, II] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304070818/http://alainsilver.vacau.com/screenie/Queen/noir2.htm |date=2016-03-04 }} and [http://alainsilver.vacau.com/screenie/Queen/noir.htm III] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304081706/http://alainsilver.vacau.com/screenie/Queen/noir.htm |date=2016-03-04 }} essay by [[Alain Silver]] and [[Linda Brookover]]
* [http://arthurlyonsfilmnoir.ning.com/ Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120926183713/http://arthurlyonsfilmnoir.ning.com/ |date=2012-09-26 }}, co-sponsored by the [[Palm Springs, California|Palm Springs]] [http://thepalmspringsculturalcenter.org/ Cultural Center]
*[https://www.criterion.com/shop/collection/17-noir-and-neonoir Noir and Neonoir | The Criterion Collection]
*[https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/notebook-primer-film-noir Notebook Primer: Film Noir]
*[https://exchange.umma.umich.edu/resources/23715 Collection: "Film Noir, Visuality and Themes"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240708093029/https://exchange.umma.umich.edu/resources/23715 |date=July 8, 2024 }} from the [[University of Michigan Museum of Art]]

{{Crime fiction}}
{{film genres}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Film Noir}}
[[Category:Film noir| ]]
[[Category:Film and video terminology]]
[[Category:Film genres]]
[[Category:History of film]]
[[Category:1930s in film]]
[[Category:1940s in film]]
[[Category:1950s in film]]
[[Category:1940s neologisms]]