Film Noir: Bringing Darkness to Light

Take a walk on the dark side with this fascinating look at the film noir genre!

Film noir is a hardluck loner, a slumming angel, a look that can kill. It is mood and menace, small budgets and big imagination. It is bleak, unsparing, a slap across the beezer, take it and like it. It is a parade of trenchcoated PIs, tough cookies, schemers, weasels and moneymen. And it has a single star. "The star of film noir is fate," explains Carol Littleton (editor of Body Heat). "It just doesn't get a screen credit."

Clips from noir classics and little-known gems, plus interviews with modern noir aficionados like directors Christopher Nolan and Frank Miller, writers James Ellroy and Brian Helgeland and others shape this multifaceted exploration of the movie style that grew out of the hard realities of post-World War II life. What is the difference between crime stories and noir? What was the first film noir movie? The answers are intriguing. And noir to the core. Take it and like it.