1946 film by Tay Garnett

Jeff Bailey seems to be a mundane gas station owner in remote Bridgeport, California. He is dating local girl Ann Miller and lives a quiet life. But Jeff has a secret past, and when a mysterious stranger arrives in town, Jeff is forced to return to the dark world he had tried to escape.

A hack screenwriter writes a screenplay for a former silent film star who has faded into Hollywood obscurity.

A police detective falls in love with the woman whose murder he's investigating.

1944 film by George Cukor

In Depression-era West Virginia, a serial-killing preacher hunts two young children who know the whereabouts of a stash of money.

TAKE A WALK ON THE DARK SIDE WITH THIS FASCINATING LOOK AT THE FILM NOIR GENRE! Film noir is a hardluck loner, a slumming angel, a look that can kill. It is mood and menace, small budgets and big imagination. It is bleak, unsparing, a slap across the beezer, take it and like it. It is a parade of trenchcoated PIs, tough cookies, schemers, weasels and moneymen. And it has a single star. "The star of film noir is fate," explained Carol Littleton (editor of Body Heat). "It just doesn't get a screen credit." Clips from noir classics and little-known gems, plus interviews with morden noir aficionados like directors Christopher Nolan and Frank Miller, writers James Ellroy and Brian Helgeland and others shape this multifaceted exploration of the movie style that grew out of the hard realities of post-World II life. What is the difference between crime stories and noir? What was the first film noir movie? The answers are intriguing. And noir to the core. Take it and like it.