48 Fun Facts About Film Noir

Which French critic first applied the term 'film noir' to Hollywood films in 1946?

Nino Frank, an Italian-born critic writing in Paris, coined the usage in a 1946 essay on Hollywood crime films; the Série noire paperback imprint, launched by Gallimard in 1945, likely inspired the label.

Which decades are generally regarded as the classic period of American film noir?

The 1940s and 1950s form the classic period: the cycle began with low-budget crime thrillers in 1940 and is usually said to end in 1958, when the studio system itself was fading.

What did most Americans call films now labelled noir before the term caught on in the 1970s?

Melodramas, or crime melodramas, was the usual label at the time; the French term only caught on among American critics in the 1970s, who defined the category in retrospect.

Which two French critics wrote the 1955 Panorama, the first extended study of the subject?

Borde and Chaumeton called noir 'oneiric, strange, erotic, ambivalent, and cruel'.

Noir's shadowy visual style has its roots in which artistic movement?

German Expressionism, the 1920s cinema of stark shadows and distorted sets seen in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, reached Hollywood with émigré directors and cinematographers fleeing Europe in the 1930s.

Which 1931 Fritz Lang film about a child murderer is seen as an early fusion of noir style and plot?

M (1931) follows the hunt for a child murderer through a shadowed city; Lang's use of light, shadow and a doomed protagonist anticipated noir, and its star Peter Lorre soon carried that look to Hollywood.

Which 1941 film, though not itself a noir, had perhaps the greatest influence on the genre's development?

Citizen Kane is not a noir, but its deep-focus, low-key photography by Gregg Toland and its flashback structure built on conflicting testimony shaped dozens of classic noirs that followed.

Which literary school was the primary influence on film noir?

Hardboiled crime fiction, the tough, cynical American school that grew up in 1920s pulp magazines such as Black Mask, supplied noir's plots, private eyes and clipped dialogue.

Whose novels became Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce and The Postman Always Rings Twice?

His less heroic protagonists gave a name to a subset of the hardboiled school: 'noir fiction'.

Whose novels were adapted into The Maltese Falcon and The Glass Key?

Dashiell Hammett wrote The Maltese Falcon (1930) and The Glass Key (1931) after years as a Pinkerton detective; his debut novel Red Harvest later loosely inspired the Coens' Miller's Crossing.

Which writer's work was the basis for more classic-period noirs than any other, thirteen in all?

He also wrote as George Hopley and William Irish; Black Angel and Phantom Lady are among the adaptations.

Which 1940 RKO B-picture is most commonly cited as the first true film noir?

Stranger on the Third Floor, directed by Boris Ingster and starring Peter Lorre, lost RKO $56,000 on release in 1940; only decades later was it hailed as the first true noir.

Which cinematographer shot both The Invisible Man (1933) and The Maltese Falcon (1941)?

Arthur Edeson photographed both: James Whale's The Invisible Man for Universal in 1933 and John Huston's The Maltese Falcon for Warner Bros. in 1941, and he went on to shoot Casablanca.

Who played Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1941)?

Humphrey Bogart played Sam Spade in John Huston's directing debut, after George Raft turned the part down; the role began Bogart's run as noir's defining leading man.

What was the name of Barbara Stanwyck's femme fatale in Double Indemnity?

Phyllis Dietrichson, the surname an apparent nod to Marlene Dietrich, lures insurance salesman Walter Neff into murdering her husband; Billy Wilder's 1944 film earned seven Oscar nominations.

Which actress played the title 'bad girl' in Gilda (1946)?

Rita Hayworth's Gilda, introduced with a hair-flip and the line "Me?", made her the era's defining glamour icon; her satin-gloved "Put the Blame on Mame" number is the film's signature scene.

Which 1955 film ends with the 'great whatsit' revealed as an exploding atomic bomb?

Kiss Me Deadly, Robert Aldrich's 1955 adaptation of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer novel, ends with the coveted box opened to unleash a blinding nuclear blast, the starkest Cold War image in noir.

Which 1958 Orson Welles film is frequently cited as the last noir of the classic period?

Touch of Evil, Welles's 1958 thriller set in a corrupt Mexican border town with Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh, is routinely named the last classic noir; Henry Mancini's score fixed the idea that noir sounds like sleazy jazz.

Which director made Laura (1944) and worked in the noir mode more than any other celebrated Hollywood director?

Otto Preminger's Laura (1944), with Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews, made his name, and he returned to noir with Fallen Angel, Whirlpool, Where the Sidewalk Ends and Angel Face.

Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard (1950) and Ace in the Hole (1951) are noirs satirising what?

The targets are Hollywood and the news media: Sunset Boulevard skewers a faded silent star's delusions and the studio system, while Ace in the Hole follows a reporter who prolongs a mine rescue for headlines.

Fritz Lang's Scarlet Street (1945) was unusual among classic noirs for being what?

It was officially censored in several places: its erotic innuendo and an unpunished killer got it temporarily banned in New York State, Milwaukee and Atlanta before cuts were agreed.

Jules Dassin's The Naked City (1948) was noted for which approach, inspired by Italian neorealism?

Its documentary-style location shooting, borrowed from Italian neorealism, put real New York streets and crowds on screen; a narrator closes with 'There are eight million stories in the naked city.'

Which noir actress was the only woman directing Hollywood features in the 1950s?

Ida Lupino, the star of noirs such as Road House and On Dangerous Ground, turned director in 1949; her best-known film behind the camera, The Hitch-Hiker (1953), has no part for her.

Which cult 1945 noir did Edgar G. Ulmer direct for the Poverty Row studio PRC?

Detour, shot in about a week on a tiny PRC budget with Tom Neal and Ann Savage, became the archetypal Poverty Row noir and was added to the National Film Registry in 1992.

Gun Crazy (1950) is famous for a bank hold-up filmed how?

The hold-up is filmed in one unbroken take of over three minutes, shot from the back seat of the getaway car as it drives into town and out again; the screenplay was by the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, using a front.

The Killers (1946) marked the film debut of which star?

Burt Lancaster made his screen debut as the doomed boxer 'Swede' in The Killers, adapted from Hemingway's short story; Ava Gardner's Kitty Collins was the femme fatale.

Which cinematographer, known for 'hypnotic moments of light-in-darkness', shot T-Men and The Big Combo?

John Alton shot T-Men (1947) and Raw Deal (1948) for Anthony Mann and The Big Combo (1955) for Joseph H. Lewis, pushing low-key lighting to extremes; he also wrote the manual Painting with Light.

Which 1947 Jacques Tourneur film did Robert Ottoson call 'the ne plus ultra of forties film noir'?

Out of the Past stars Robert Mitchum as a former private eye whose past, in the shape of Jane Greer's Kathie Moffat, catches up with him; it was Tourneur's first A-level production after years of B pictures.

Which 1949 Raoul Walsh noir climaxes with an explosion at a chemical plant?

White Heat ends with James Cagney's Cody Jarrett atop a gas storage tank at a chemical plant, shouting 'Made it, Ma! Top of the world!' as it explodes.

Lady in the Lake (1947) is remarkable for being shot how?

It is shot entirely from Philip Marlowe's point of view, the camera standing in for the detective; star and director Robert Montgomery is seen only in mirrors and a few framing scenes.

Which shadow pattern, cast across an actor or set, is the most iconic noir visual cliché?

Venetian blinds throwing striped shadows across a face or wall became noir's signature image, a cheap way to get the high-contrast chiaroscuro look on a studio set.

Which tilted camera set-up is a common noir device of disorientation?

The Dutch angle, with the camera canted off the horizontal, tips the frame to suggest a world out of joint; noir used it alongside mirrors, frosted glass and night-for-night shooting.

Which colour films of 1945 and 1953 are routinely included in noir filmographies?

Leave Her to Heaven and Niagara are the best-known Technicolor entries in noir filmographies: the 1945 film has Gene Tierney as a murderously jealous wife, and the 1953 film has Marilyn Monroe plotting against her husband.

Historian Lee Server called which plot device 'noir's version of the common cold'?

Amnesia, which Server called 'noir's version of the common cold', drives plots such as Somewhere in the Night (1946) and Spellbound (1945), where a hero must reconstruct a past he cannot remember.

Which composer scored Double Indemnity, The Killers and Criss Cross?

Miklós Rózsa scored all three; his harsh, dissonant music for Double Indemnity (1944) so offended Paramount's music director that Billy Wilder had to defend it, and it earned an Oscar nomination.

The blacklisted Jules Dassin made which celebrated French noir in 1955?

He had shot his last English-language noir, Night and the City, in Britain under political pressure.

Which French director is known for minimalist noirs such as Le Samouraï and Le Cercle rouge?

Jean-Pierre Melville, who took his surname from the author of Moby-Dick, made spare, ritualised crime films with Alain Delon, including Le Samouraï (1967) and Le Cercle rouge (1970); Bob le flambeur came earlier, in the mid-1950s.

Which Japanese director made noirs including Stray Dog (1949) and High and Low (1963)?

Akira Kurosawa's Stray Dog follows a detective hunting his stolen pistol through postwar Tokyo, and High and Low turns an Ed McBain kidnapping novel into a study of class; Drunken Angel and The Bad Sleep Well share the vein.

Which 1974 Roman Polanski film, set in 1930s Los Angeles, is the most acclaimed neo-noir of its era?

Chinatown, written by Robert Towne and starring Jack Nicholson as private eye Jake Gittes, sets a water-rights conspiracy in 1937 Los Angeles; Towne won the film's only Oscar, for his screenplay.

Which 1995 Bryan Singer neo-noir is narrated by the con man Verbal Kint?

The Usual Suspects (1995) unfolds through the interrogation of Kevin Spacey's Verbal Kint, whose account of the mythical Keyser Söze won Spacey an Oscar and Christopher McQuarrie another for the screenplay.

Which 1981 film, set in humid Florida, confirmed the commercial viability of neo-noir?

Body Heat, Lawrence Kasdan's directing debut, reworked the Double Indemnity set-up with William Hurt and Kathleen Turner in a sweltering Florida town; its box-office success confirmed that neo-noir could sell.

Curtis Hanson's L.A. Confidential (1997) adapted a novel by which writer?

James Ellroy's 1990 novel, the third of his L.A. Quartet, was pared down by Hanson and Brian Helgeland into an Oscar-winning screenplay; the film keeps the early-1950s setting of corrupt LAPD detectives.

Which German-born director made eight classic-era noirs, including Phantom Lady and Criss Cross?

Robert Siodmak, who had begun in Berlin with the 1930 film People on Sunday, directed eight classic-era noirs, a tally matched only by Fritz Lang and Anthony Mann; The Killers and Cry of the City were also his.

Which 1947 British noir, adapted from a Graham Greene novel, was directed by John Boulting?

Brighton Rock (1947) stars Richard Attenborough as the teenage gangster Pinkie Brown; Graham Greene co-wrote the script from his own novel, with Terence Rattigan, and the Boulting brothers produced.

Which South Korean director made the noirs Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Thirst?

Park Chan-wook made Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002), the first of his Vengeance Trilogy completed by Oldboy and Lady Vengeance, and the vampire noir Thirst (2009), which won the Jury Prize at Cannes.

Which ultra-low-budget 1958 Columbia film may qualify as the first intentional neo-noir?

Murder by Contract, Irving Lerner's deadpan study of a coolly professional hitman played by Vince Edwards, is scored for solo guitar; Martin Scorsese has named it a key influence on Taxi Driver.

Which 1982 film, paying homage to classic noir, most directly influenced the cyberpunk genre?

Blade Runner, Ridley Scott's vision of a rain-soaked 2019 Los Angeles, gave Harrison Ford's Deckard a trench coat, a voiceover and a femme fatale; its look shaped the cyberpunk fiction that followed.

Which Coen brothers film of 2001 is a black-and-white crime melodrama set in 1949?

The Man Who Wasn't There stars Billy Bob Thornton as a laconic small-town barber drawn into blackmail and murder; Roger Deakins shot it in colour and printed it in black and white.