To name the thing : film noir as style, as genre
German expressionism and the roots of the film noir
Fritz Lang
Robert Siodmak
The inception of the film noir in the French cinema of the 1930s
The film noir in France in the immediate postwar years
1. The noir in America
The noir city
Archetypes
protagonists
Abraham Polonsky
Nicholas Ray
Orson Welles
2. The hard-boiled fiction influence
Cornell Woolrich
The private detective
Humphrey Bogart, Spade, Marlowe, and the film noir
The gangster figure and the noir
John Huston
Violence in the noir
Samuel Fuller
Robert Aldrich
Don Siegel
Sexuality in the noir
Families in the noir
Joseph H. Lewis
3. Women as seen in the film noir
Otto Preminger
4. Noir production
Noir iconography
the use of voice-over narration
The flashback device
Amnesia as a storytelling device
The B noir production
Documentary realism in the noir
Critical and popular reception of the film noir
HUAC and the blacklist
Fight pictures
Caper films
Crime syndicate exposés
The Kefauver Crime hearings
Anthony Mann
Phil Karlson
5. The noir influence on the French new wave
Jean-Pierre Melville
Epilogue : comments on the classic film noir and the neo-noir.