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Act of Violence

Armored Car Robbery

The Big Combo

The Big Sleep (1946)

The Black Angel

Born to Kill

Call Northside 777

Cape Fear (1991)

The Chaser

The Conversation

Crime Wave (1954)

Croupier

The Demon

Detour

Double Indemnity

Fargo

Femme Fatale

Frenzy

Get Carter (2000)

High and Low

A History of Violence

The House on 92nd Street

Laura

The Leopard Man

Kiss of Death (1948)

Memento

Nightmare Alley

No Country for Old Men

A Perfect Murder

Phantom Lady

Rififi

The Road to Perdition

Saboteur

The Scar

The Set-Up

A Simple Plan

The Street With No Name

Suspense (television series)

The Talented Mr. Ripley

The Thin Man

Underworld USA

Zero Focus

Raymond Chandler described the landscape of the hardboiled mystery, what the French called "roman noir," as a place where the streets are dark with something more than night. The hardboiled stories of Chandler, Dashiel Hammett, James M. Cain, Cornell Woolrich, Horace McCoy, David Goodis, Chester Himes, and Jim Thompson were characterized by cynical fatalism, a brutal existentialism, and casual, almost banal, nihilism. It's no wonder it was so appealing to the French.

Of course, not all mystery and supsense movies are descended from the bleak worldview of the hardboiled writers, but the films that ARE descended from hardboiled constitute their own sub-genre: Film Noir. This is a grouping of films that collectively influence the rest of cinema more than just about any other type of movie--out of all proportion to their numbers or their box office success.

The poet laureate of the Mystery and Suspense movie is Alfred Hitchock, a director whose films are suffused with such a darkness of heart and are mounted with such a mastery of cinematic technique that his name has become an adjective. So distinctive is the stamp of Hitchcock's anima on his films that many critics and viewers assign him his own sub-genre.





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