Editing Film noir (section)

===Overview===
The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the classic period of American film noir. While ''City Streets'' and other pre-WWII crime melodramas such as ''[[Fury (1936 film)|Fury]]'' (1936) and ''[[You Only Live Once (1937 film)|You Only Live Once]]'' (1937), both directed by Fritz Lang, are categorized as full-fledged noir in Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward's film noir encyclopedia, other critics tend to describe them as "proto-noir" or in similar terms.<ref>Silver and Ward (1992), p. 333, as well as entries on individual films, pp. 59–60, 109–10, 320–21. For description of ''City Streets'' as "proto-noir", see Turan (2008). For description of ''Fury'' as "proto-noir", see Machura, Stefan, and Peter Robson, ''Law and Film'' (2001), p. 13. For description of ''You Only Live Once'' as "pre-noir", see Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 9.</ref>

The film now most commonly cited as the first "true" film noir is ''[[Stranger on the Third Floor]]'' (1940), directed by Latvian-born, Soviet-trained [[Boris Ingster]].<ref name=3d>See, e.g., Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 19; Irwin (2006), p. 210; Lyons (2000), p. 36; Porfirio (1980), p. 269.</ref> Hungarian émigré [[Peter Lorre]]—who had starred in Lang's ''[[M (1931 film)|M]]''—was top-billed, although he did not play the primary lead. (He later played [[character actor|secondary roles]] in several other formative American noirs.) Although modestly budgeted, at the high end of the [[B movie]] scale, ''Stranger on the Third Floor'' still lost its studio, [[RKO]], US$56,000 ({{Inflation|US|56000|1940|fmt=eq}}), almost a third of its total cost.<ref>Biesen (2005), p. 33.</ref> ''[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]]'' magazine found Ingster's work: "...too studied and when original, lacks the flare {{sic}} to hold attention. It's a film too arty for average audiences, and too humdrum for others."<ref>''Variety'' (1940).</ref> ''Stranger on the Third Floor'' was not recognized as the beginning of a trend, let alone a new genre, for many decades.<ref name=3d/>

{{Quote box
|quote  = Whoever went to the movies with any regularity during 1946 was caught in the midst of Hollywood's profound postwar affection for morbid drama. From January through December deep shadows, clutching hands, exploding revolvers, sadistic villains and heroines tormented with deeply rooted diseases of the mind flashed across the screen in a panting display of psychoneurosis, unsublimated sex and murder most foul.
|source = Donald Marshman, ''Life'' (August 25, 1947)<ref>Marshman (1947), pp. 100–1.</ref>
|width  = 35%
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Most film noirs of the classic period were similarly low- and modestly-budgeted features without major stars—[[B movies]] either literally or in spirit. In this production context, writers, directors, cinematographers, and other craftsmen were relatively free from typical big-picture constraints. There was more visual experimentation than in Hollywood filmmaking as a whole: the Expressionism now closely associated with noir and the semi-documentary style that later emerged represent two very different tendencies. Narrative structures sometimes involved convoluted flashbacks uncommon in non-noir commercial productions. In terms of content, enforcement of the [[Production Code]] ensured that no film character could literally get away with murder or be seen sharing a bed with anyone but a spouse; within those bounds, however, many films now identified as noir feature plot elements and dialogue that were very risqué for the time.<ref>Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 4, 19–26, 28–33; Hirsch (2001), pp. 1–21; Schatz (1981), pp. 111–16.</ref>

[[File:OutOfThePastMitchumGreer.jpg|thumb|alt=Black-and-white image of a man and a woman sitting side by side on a couch, viewed at an angle. The man, in profile in the left foreground, stares off to the right of frame. He wears a trenchcoat, and his face is shadowed by a fedora. He holds a cigarette in his left hand. The woman, to the right and rear, stares at him. She wears a dark dress and lipstick of a deeply saturated hue.|''[[Out of the Past]]'' (1947) directed by [[Jacques Tourneur]], features many of the genre's hallmarks: a cynical private detective as the protagonist, a [[femme fatale]], multiple [[Flashback (literary technique)|flashbacks]] with [[voiceover]] narration, [[chiaroscuro|dramatically shadowed]] photography, and a [[fatalism|fatalistic]] mood leavened with provocative banter. Pictured are noir icons [[Robert Mitchum]] and [[Jane Greer]].]] 
Thematically, films noir were most exceptional for the relative frequency with which they centered on [[Portrayal of women in film noir|portrayals of women]] of questionable virtue—a focus that had become rare in Hollywood films after the mid-1930s and the end of the [[Pre-Code Hollywood|pre-Code]] era. The signal film in this vein was ''[[Double Indemnity]]'', directed by Billy Wilder; setting the mold was [[Barbara Stanwyck]]'s [[femme fatale]], Phyllis Dietrichson—an apparent nod to [[Marlene Dietrich]], who had built her extraordinary career playing such characters for Sternberg. An A-level feature, the film's commercial success and seven [[Academy Awards|Oscar]] nominations made it probably the most influential of the early noirs.<ref>See, e.g., Naremore (2008), pp. 81, 319 n. 13; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 86–88.</ref> A slew of now-renowned noir "bad girls" followed, such as those played by [[Rita Hayworth]] in ''[[Gilda (film)|Gilda]]'' (1946), [[Lana Turner]] in ''[[The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946 film)|The Postman Always Rings Twice]]'' (1946), [[Ava Gardner]] in ''[[The Killers (1946 film)|The Killers]]'' (1946), and [[Jane Greer]] in ''[[Out of the Past]]'' (1947). The iconic noir counterpart to the femme fatale, the private eye, came to the fore in films such as ''[[The Maltese Falcon (1941 film)|The Maltese Falcon]]'' (1941), with [[Humphrey Bogart]] as [[Sam Spade]], and ''[[Murder, My Sweet]]'' (1944), with [[Dick Powell]] as [[Philip Marlowe]].

The prevalence of the private eye as a lead character declined in film noir of the 1950s, a period during which several critics describe the form as becoming more focused on extreme psychologies and more exaggerated in general.<ref>See, e.g., Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 30; Hirsch (2001), pp. 12, 202; Schrader (1972), pp. 59–61 [in Silver and Ursini].</ref> A prime example is ''[[Kiss Me Deadly]]'' (1955); based on a novel by [[Mickey Spillane]], the best-selling of all the hardboiled authors, here the protagonist is a private eye, [[Mike Hammer (character)|Mike Hammer]]. As described by [[Paul Schrader]], "[[Robert Aldrich]]'s teasing direction carries ''noir'' to its sleaziest and most perversely erotic. Hammer overturns the underworld in search of the 'great whatsit' [which] turns out to be—joke of jokes—an exploding atomic bomb."<ref>Schrader (1972), p. 61.</ref> Orson Welles's baroquely styled ''[[Touch of Evil]]'' (1958) is frequently cited as the last noir of the classic period.<ref>See, e.g., Silver (1996), p. 11; Ottoson (1981), pp. 182–183; Schrader (1972), p. 61.</ref> Some scholars believe film noir never really ended, but continued to transform even as the characteristic noir visual style began to seem dated and changing production conditions led Hollywood in different directions—in this view, post-1950s films in the noir tradition are seen as part of a continuity with classic noir.<ref>See, e.g., Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 19–53.</ref> A majority of critics, however, regard comparable films made outside the classic era to be something other than genuine film noir. They regard true film noir as belonging to a temporally and geographically limited cycle or period, treating subsequent films that evoke the classics as fundamentally different due to general shifts in filmmaking style and latter-day awareness of noir as a historical source for [[allusion]].<ref>See, e.g., Hirsch (2001), pp. 10, 202–7; Silver and Ward (1992), p. 6 (though they phrase their position more ambiguously on p. 398); Ottoson (1981), p. 1.</ref> These later films are often called [[neo-noir]].