The story of film noir is the story of a community of intellectuals who migrated to Hollywood from Europe and New York in the 1930s. The genre was born of a sort of industrial accident toward the end World War II, as an act of defiance against studio censorship, and reached great heights before being targeted by Mccarthyism. With bitter clarity, film noir turned hard-boiled Hollywood heroes into frightened failures riveted by rebellious femme fatales, and major metropolises into endless labyrinths.
Here are the history and sociology of a genre both popular and profoundly critical, commercial and yet avant-garde.