Film noir is a distinct branch, sub-genre or offshoot of the crime/gangster sagas from the 1930s (i.e., Little Caesar (1930), Public Enemy (1931) and Scarface (1932)), but different in tone and characterization. The criminal, violence or greed elements in film noir are a metaphoric symptom of society's evils, with a strong undercurrent of moral conflict. Strictly speaking, however, film noir is not a genre, but rather the mood, style or tone of a film.

The themes of noir, derived from sources in Europe, were imported to Hollywood by emigre film-makers. (Noirs were rooted in German Expressionism of the 1920s and 1930s, such as in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) or Fritz Lang's M (1931), and in the French sound films of the 30s.) Classic film noir developed during and after World War II, taking advantage of the post-war ambience of anxiety, pessimism

Primary Characteristics and Conventions of Film Noir:

Early classic non-detective film noirs include Fritz Lang's steamy and fatalistic Scarlet Street (1945) - one of the moodiest, blackest thrillers ever made, about a mild-mannered painter's (Edward G. Robinson) unpunished and unsuspected murder of an amoral femme fatale (Joan Bennett) after she had led him to commit embezzlement - and murder, director Abraham Polonsky's expressionistic, politically-subversive Force of Evil (1948) with John Garfield as a corrupt mob attorney, British director Carol Reed's tense tale of treachery The Third Man (1949) with a climactic shootout in a noirish underground sewer, and the nightmarishly-dark and definitive D.O.A. (1949) from cinematographer/director Rudolph Mate - with the flashback story of a lethally-poisoned and doomed protagonist (Edmond O'Brien) who announced in the opening: "I want to report a murder - mine."

• Elliott Gould in Robert Altman's spoof The Long Goodbye (1973) (based upon Chandler's 1953 novel) set in modern-day Los Angeles, in which the lone, unconventional sleuth investigated the murder of a friend's wife

Twisted, shocking melodramatic film noirs featuring deadly femme fatales on a path of romance and self-destruction (romance noirs) with the men in their lives include the following:

The earliest film noirs were detective thrillers, with plots and themes often taken from adaptations of literary works - preferably from best-selling, hard-boiled, pulp novels and crime fiction by Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain or Dashiell Hammett. Very often, a film noir story was developed around a male character [e.g., Robert Mitchum, Fred MacMurray, or Humphrey Bogart] who encountered a beautiful but promiscuous and seductive femme fatale [e.g., Mary Astor, Veronica Lake, Barbara Stanwyck, or Lana Turner] who used her feminine wiles and sexuality to manipulate him into becoming the fall guy - often following a murder. After a double-cross, she was frequently destroyed as well, often at the cost of the hero's life.

• in director John Cromwell's Dead Reckoning (1947), an on-the-run WWII veteran's alluring Southern girlfriend (Lizabeth Scott) threatened military buddy Humphrey Bogart

Some topics in this essay:
Film Noir, Public Enemy, Lana Turner, Edward Robinson, War II, Robert Mitchum, Gene Tierney, Fritz Lang's, Fatales Twisted, Rita Hayworth, film noir, femme fatale, film noirs, robert mitchum, fritz lang's, • robert, humphrey bogart, femme fatales, classic film noir, raymond chandler, james cain's, • fritz lang's, film noirs detective, james cain's novel, • robert mitchum,