Film noir is darkness. Darkness in all its forms - from the characters, the situations, the settings, right through to the cinematography and shadowy goings-on. Noir should be watched in darkness too, adding further to the experience. As a viewer, noir draws us into a world far removed from our own lives, yet we can still almost always relate to the protagonists and their predicaments. This is because they are usually regular Joes, just like us, but who find themselves in unimaginable traps of one kind or another. As you will discover via these 1,000 films, the noir style, though mostly at home in the crime realm, has touched - with varying degrees of success - most of the other film genres, including the Western, horror and science fiction.
