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film noir
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Jacques Tourneur: Out of the Past The Maltese Falcon Laura Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake stand close together in dramatic lighting, with Ladd holding a pistol, in a scene from the film The Blue Dahlia. Conrad Veidt carries Lil Dagover across a sharply angled, surreal rooftop set in a scene from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, directed by Robert Wiene. Black-and-white scene from Metropolis directed by Fritz Lang, showing people fleeing through waist-deep water in a flooded industrial setting with a large circular machine in the background. Max Schreck as Graf Orlok in Nosferatu (1922) crouches over a bed, with a bald head, pointed ears, and long clawed fingers, in a dimly lit room. Orson Welles as Charles Foster Kane stands at a podium giving a speech, with a large banner of his character's face and the word Kane behind him in Citizen Kane. A scene from Double Indemnity Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond descends a staircase, arm raised dramatically, surrounded by police, photographers, and reporters in the final scene of Sunset Boulevard.
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Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale, with her dog, Toto, from the motion picture film The Wizard of Oz (1939); directed by Mervyn LeRay. (cinema, movies)
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Publicity still showing Harold Lloyd from the motion picture film "Safety Last!" (1923); directed by Fred Newmeyer and Sam Taylor. (movies, cinema)
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film noir: References & Edit History

Additional Reading

The classic essay on the genre is Raymond Borde and Étienne Chaumeton, A Panorama of American Film Noir, 1941–1953 (2002, originally published in French, 1955), translated by Paul Hammond. James Naremore, More Than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts (1998); and Andrew Spicer, Film Noir (2002), provide excellent introductions to the subject. General reference works include Robert Ottoson, A Reference Guide to the American Film Noir, 1940–1958 (1981); Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward (eds.), Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style, 3rd ed., revised and expanded (1992); David N. Meyer, A Girl and A Gun: The Complete Guide to Film Noir on Video (1998); and Michael F. Keaney, Film Noir Guide: 745 Films of the Classic Era, 1940–1959 (2003). A guide to less-known films in the genre is Arthur Lyons, Death on the Cheap: The Lost B Movies of Film Noir (2000). An excellent series of essays can be found in Foster Hirsch, The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir (1981, reprinted 2001); and Alain Silver and James Ursini (eds.), Film Noir Reader (1996), and Film Noir Reader 2 (1999). A third book in the Reader series is Robert Porfirio, Alain Silver, and James Ursini, Film Noir Reader 3: Interviews with Filmmakers of the Classic Noir Period (2001). Eddie Muller, Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir (1998) is a popular treatment. Books on particular aspects of film noir include Eddie Muller, Dark City Dames: The Wicked Women of Film Noir (2001), and The Art of Noir: The Posters and Graphics From the Classic Era of Film Noir (2002); and Alain Silver and James Ursini, The Noir Style (1999). Edward Gorman, Martin H. Greenburg, and Lee Server (eds.), The Big Book of Noir (1998) includes a discussion of fiction, comic books, radio, and television, as well as film.

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Article History

Type Description Contributor Date
Add new Web site: UT San Antonio Pressbooks - History of Film - Film Noir. Jun 05, 2026
Add new Web site: BBC - Witness History - The making of the Third Man: A film noir classic. Jan 24, 2026
Add new Web site: NPR - The World Of Film Noir. Nov 14, 2025
Add new Web site: Whitworth Digital Commons - The Stuff that American Dreams are Made of: Why the Film Noir Genre Emerged in the Midst of Religious Fervor in Postwar America (PDF). Sep 20, 2025
Add new Web site: ABC listen - The lost world of film noir. Mar 19, 2025
Add new Web site: John F. Kennedy Institute, Berlin - Mass Culture Modernism: Guilt and Subjectivity in Film Noir (PDF). Feb 08, 2025
Add new Web site: The New York Times - FILM; In Film Noir, the Past Is Present and Perfect. Aug 22, 2024
Add new Web site: Annenberg Learner - Film Noir. Jun 26, 2024
Link added. May 20, 2024
Add new Web site: LiveAbout - What is Film Noir? Aug 11, 2023
Add new Web site: William and Mary Research University - Welcome to an introduction to Film Noir. May 20, 2023
Links added. Apr 06, 2023
Link added. Feb 10, 2023
Add new Web site: Nashville Film Institute - Film Noir. Nov 24, 2022
Add new Web site: Filmsite - Film Noir. Aug 31, 2022
Added contemporary examples of the genre. Sep 26, 2017
Add new Web site: Official Site of Film Noir Foundation. Jun 07, 2017
Add new Web site: Academia - Out of the Past: Film Noir, Structure and Temporality (PDF). Jun 07, 2017
Replaced photograph. May 15, 2014
New article added. Mar 10, 2005
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