American film noir

A wounded man tells in voice-over how he came to this: film noir often begins at the end. In the forties and fifties Hollywood produced these urban thrillers where the light comes from the side, rain shines on asphalt, and the femme fatale has more ideas than the hero. The genre owes much to German exiles trained in expressionism, to the hard-boiled fiction of Chandler and Cain, and to a disenchanted post-war mood. Double Indemnity, Laura and The Maltese Falcon fixed its grammar.

works 5

• CinemaThe Maltese FalconJohn Huston · 1941The third adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's novel by the same studio, after a film of 1931 and another of 1936, it is the first film of its director, until then a screenwriter.Cinema
• CinemaDouble IndemnityBilly Wilder · 1944The narrative is a confession that the insurance agent dictates into a dictaphone, told in flashback from the very first scene.Cinema
• CinemaLauraOtto Preminger · 1944The investigator gradually falls in love with the victim through her portrait, and the story shifts midway through the film.Cinema
• CinemaOut of the PastJacques Tourneur · 1947A man who runs a petrol station under a false name sees someone from the past walk in.Cinema
• CinemaThe Big HeatFritz Lang · 1953An American city held by the underworld, where a policeman stripped of his badge pursues his investigation alone.Cinema