The term noir means ‘black’ or ‘dark’ and was applied in 1946 by several French critics who referenced the term towards several American films made during World War II. Much of the gloomy fatalistic style of the film noir derived from American hard-boiled detective novels from the 1920’s, involving gritty social themes such as moral corruption and masculine ideals, which were written by authors Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and James M. Cain. And yet the roots of the film noir began much earlier, with many theorists suggesting its birth began all the way from Europe, in German’s silent German Expressionism film period of the 1920’s with films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919), Nosferatu (1922) and M (1931). The style of German Expressionism immigrated to Hollywood (along with several of their German filmmakers like Fritz Lang) when the Nazis gained power, ultimately incorporating itself into the Pre-code American gangster films of the 1930’s. Much of noir’s key elements like lighting, shadows and the tragic fatalism of its characters began with the American gangster films of Public Enemy (1931) Little Caesar (1931) and Scarface (1932); films which derived much of its social themes from the time like Prohibition, the Great Depression and organized crime. After the strict enforcement of the Production Code began to take hold in the late 30’s, the genre of the gangster film began to quickly taper off, allowing once again for its style to change and evolve. Finally the movement found its official mark with John Huston’s private eye classic the Maltese Falcon in 1941. Not only did the film establish and popularize many of the conventions of the film noir genre, it also made legendary actor Humphrey Bogart into a major star. The formulaic conventions of the film noir included various flawed male detectives or criminals, filled with conflicted, cynical feelings of self-doubt, pessimism and a cold, detached view of the world. The noir genre is famously known to include despicable and unlikable anti-heroes, characters who clearly have three things on their mind: sex, greed and murder. Most of the men nonchalantly strut through the formula of a routine murder plot or thrilling crime drama; constantly using cold sex play and stoic mannerisms while spurting out tough talk and arrogant macho attitude. The women in the films (femme-fatales) are usually sexually manipulative and treacherous characters, purposely luring the men into danger or death, all for their own selfish reasons. Most noir narratives are told nonlinear, either through a series of flashbacks or revealed unchronologically. Much of these iconic conventions spawned several noir films of the era; many looked at today as cinematic classics, most famously Double Indemnity (1944), Out of the Past (1947) and The Third Man (1949). Many critics believe the film-noir movement officially began with the Maltese Falcon and ultimately came to an end with Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil in 1958. Since Touch of Evil (1958) there have been various other films which many critics label as neo-noir, noir-like films that either pay homage or even parody the conventions of the film noir genre like Chinatown (1972), Blood Simple (1984) and L.A. Confidential (1997).