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Essentially, defining noir is a matter of style and tone – the viewer knows it the instant she sees it. The Black Dahlia, Hollywoodland, et al.) harken back to the golden age but have added modern conventions, giving rise to the term “neo-noir.” The genre has even, arguably, made its way into the future with such dystopian noir offerings as Blade Runner (1972). The genre has also exceeded its original temporal boundaries – newer offerings such as 1974’s Chinatown and a spate of noirs in the 2000s (e.g. Some offerings often classified as noir have not a detective to be found, near domestic plotlines, were filmed in color, and even have a “happy ending” of sorts (e.g. But the genre quickly outgrew these roots, and even critics who specialize in film noir disagree on the essential elements a film must possess to be so designated. This genre finds its roots in the hard-boiled detective novels of the 1930s, the work of authors such as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. These plotlines often end badly for the protagonists, and it’s a fateful sort of journey the viewer knows where the road will end, it’s just a matter of the scenery on the way there. When one speaks of film noir (“black film”), it’s a genre that conjures immediate associations – highly stylized American films from the 1930s to 1950s, black and white, dramatic lighting focusing on harsh contrasts between shadow and light, and dark, crime-driven plotlines populated by hard-boiled private eyes and femme fatales. Femme fatale Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) and slick insurance salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) in 1944’s Double Indemnity.