Whether film noir is a genre or a style (the subject of debate), this much can be agreed upon: from roughly 1941 to 1958, Hollywood produced a flood of deliciously dark, devilishly told tales that rendered the distinction between “high” and “low” art meaningless. Stories out of pulp fiction were filmed with visually dazzling innovation—high contrast lighting, off-kilter angles, and lingering shadows behind which anything could materialize. Some of Hollywood’s greatest icons populate these films, delivering blistering dialogue as they twist and turn their way through some of the most devious plots ever devised. Small-time crooks in over their heads. Ordinary people drawn into extraordinary situations. Surly private eyes swimming upstream against corruption. Irresistible femmes fatale. Cons, dupes, and dead-people-who-aren’t-really-dead. The wrongly accused, and the erroneously exonerated. Whodunnits, whatsits, and who-are-they-really’s. In film noir, the past always catches up to you, and the only thing you know for sure is you’re probably wrong about what you know. It’s impossible to imagine the medium as a whole without film noir, not only because of the classics produced during that era, but all that have come since under the banner of neo-noir: films like CHINATOWN and THE LONG GOODBYE in the 1970s, BLUE VELVET, BLOOD SIMPLE, and even BLADE RUNNER in the 1980s, and L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, RESERVOIR DOGS, and THE USUAL SUSPECTS in the 1990s. To name a few. Investigate their origins. Look into their backgrounds. You’ll find the trail leads right here.