The question of what defines film noir and what sort of category it is, provokes continuing debate. "We'd be oversimplifying things in calling film noir oneiric, … See more

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) and You Only Live Once (1937), both directed by … See more

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 … See more

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. That same year, Deanna Durbin was the singing lead in the comedic noir Lady on a Train See more

Cinematic sources
The aesthetics of film noir were influenced by German Expressionism, an artistic movement of the 1910s and 1920s that involved theater, … See more

The neo-noir film genre developed mid-way into the Cold War. This cinematological trend reflected much of the cynicism and the … See more

In their original 1955 canon of film noir, Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton identified twenty-two Hollywood films released between … See more