Into the Dark: The Hidden World of Film Noir, 1941–1950

In the years before, during, and after World War II, the Hollywood studios cranked out a series of films featuring world-weary, hard-boiled men, often private investigators, and femmes fatales, acting out their sweaty, amoral impulses of lust, betrayal, and murder. Later called film noir, at the time "crime thrillers" or "murder dramas," some of these pictures such as Citizen Kane and The Lost Weekend were not centered on crime. This book, published in association with Turner Classic Movies, reviews 82 films released between 1941 and 1950, with comments from critics, exhibitors, stars, and directors. This reviewer found some of the coverage of individual films too brief (e.g., the classic The Spiral Staircase only receives a page). Changing mores, censorship issues, and that many actors, directors, and writers became victims of Hollywood's blacklist eventually doomed the genre, although it enjoyed a revival in the 1960s and 1970s. Movie buffs will be thrilled with the many lovingly produced shots of actors, reproduced in (mostly) rich black-and-white portraits.