You know film noir when you see it: the shadowed setting; the cynical detective; the femme fatale; and the twist of fate. Into the Dark captures this alluring genre with a cavalcade of compelling photographs and a guide to 82 of its best films.

Gloria Swanson, as Norma Desmond, an aging silent-film queen, and William Holden, as the struggling young screenwriter who is held in thrall by her madness, created two of the screen's most memorable characters in SUNSET BOULEVARD. Winner of three **Academy Awards**, director Billy Wilder's powerful orchestration of this bizarre tale is a true cinematic classic. From the unforgettable opening sequence - a body found floating in a decayed mansion's...

The story of Elena and Vladimir, an older couple. The wealthy but stingy Vladimir treats Elena more like a servant than a wife. They each have children from their first marriages, a son and a daughter. Elena's son is unemployed and can't feed his wife and two children; they live only on the money Elena provides them, while Vladimir's daughter lives a bohemian life. In the hospital following a heart attack, Vladimir's daughter visits him. Their time...

Naomi, an Israeli Mossad agent is sent to Germany to protect Mona, a Lebanese informant recovering from plastic surgery to assume her new identity. Together for two weeks in a quiet apartment in Hamburg, the relationship that develops between the two women is soon exposed to the threat of terror that is engulfing the world today. In this game of deception, beliefs are questioned, choices are made, and their fate takes a surprising turn in this suspense-laden,...

An amazingly sympathetic portrait of a figure historically given very short shrift: the title character is not only a two-timer—he’s a traveling salesman as well. But, as embodied by that perpetually pressured everyman of the 1950s, Edmond O’Brien, the bigamist comes across as a victim of his own sensitivity. Caught between two complementary spouses, O’Brien’s dazed indecisiveness dominates the narrative. As always in Ida Lupino’s directorial...

A noir classic about a police lieutenant who comes under pressure from a gang headed by a vicious thug. He is helped by the gangster's wife, jealous at her husband's affair with another woman, who supplies him with information to help him close the net on his foe. "*Where the usual noir takes place in a nightmare world, this one seems to inhabit a dream: there's no longer fear in the images, but rather a distanced, idealized beauty.*" - Dave Kehr,...

Once freed, gangster Joe Sullivan and his girl friend Pat set off to find the mobster who set him up. The kidnapping of Ann Martin, the social worker who wrote to Joe in prison, leads the fugitive into a romantic triangle.

From Poverty Row came a movie that, perhaps more than any other, epitomizes the dark fatalism at the heart of film noir. As he hitchhikes his way from New York to Los Angeles, a down-on-his-luck nightclub pianist finds himself with a dead body on his hands and nowhere to run--a waking nightmare that goes from bad to worse when he picks up the most vicious femme fatale in cinema history, Ann Savage's snarling, monstrously conniving drifter Vera. Working...

A unfaithful wife plots with her lover to kill her husband, but the lover is accidentally killed instead. The husband stays in hiding, and lets his wife be charged with conspiracy.

A former prostitute attempts to assimilate in suburbia after fleeing her pimp. She soon falls in love with a member of the town's wealthiest family, but shortly before her wedding, finds out that her philanthropic fiance has a horrific secret. A searing melodrama thematically ahead of his time, Samuel Fuller's classic film dares to explore taboo subjects with unique style and unforgettable performances. *"THE NAKED KISS finds Sam Fuller's tabloid...