Editing Film noir (section)

===Structure and narrational devices===
[[File:SorryWrongNumber2.jpg|thumb|right|alt=A man and a woman, seen in profile, starring intensely at each other. The man, on the left, is considerably taller. He wears a brown pin-striped suit, holds a key in one hand and grips the woman's arm with the other. She is wearing a pale green top. Lit from below and to the side, they cast bold, angled shadows on the wall behind them.|[[Barbara Stanwyck]] and [[Burt Lancaster]] were two of the most prolific stars of classic noir. The complex structure of ''[[Sorry, Wrong Number]]'' (1948) involves a real-time framing story, [[multiperspectivity|multiple narrators]], and flashbacks within flashbacks.<ref>Telotte (1989), pp. 74–87.</ref>]]

Films noir tend to have unusually convoluted story lines, frequently involving [[Flashback (literary technique)|flashbacks]] and other editing techniques that disrupt and sometimes obscure the [[narrative]] sequence. Framing the entire primary narrative as a flashback is also a standard device. Voiceover narration, sometimes used as a structuring device, came to be seen as a noir hallmark; while classic noir is generally associated with first-person narration (i.e., by the protagonist), Stephen Neale notes that third-person narration is common among noirs of the semidocumentary style.<ref>Neale (2000), pp. 166–67 n. 5.</ref> Neo-noirs as varied as ''The Element of Crime'' (surrealist), ''After Dark, My Sweet'' (retro), and ''Kiss Kiss Bang Bang'' (meta) have employed the flashback/voiceover combination.

Bold experiments in cinematic storytelling were sometimes attempted during the classic era: ''Lady in the Lake'', for example, is shot entirely from the [[Point of view shot|point of view]] of protagonist Philip Marlowe; the face of star (and director) [[Robert Montgomery (actor)|Robert Montgomery]] is seen only in mirrors.<ref>Telotte (1989), p. 106.</ref> ''[[The Chase (1946 film)|The Chase]]'' (1946) takes [[Oneiric (film theory)|oneirism]] and fatalism as the basis for its fantastical narrative system, redolent of certain horror stories, but with little precedent in the context of a putatively realistic genre. In their different ways, both ''Sunset Boulevard'' and ''D.O.A.'' are tales told by dead men. Latter-day noir has been in the forefront of structural experimentation in popular cinema, as exemplified by such films as ''Pulp Fiction'', ''Fight Club'', and ''Memento''.<ref>Rombes, Nicholas, ''New Punk Cinema'' (2005), pp. 131–36.</ref>