"There is indeed a dream-like quality to the convolutions of the narrative". [Walker: 1993 (ed. Cameron)] Walker made this comment on the film "The Big Sleep" (1946), yet it can easily be applied to other early film noir, such as "The Maltese Falcon" (1941), and "Scarlet Street" (1945). Films are probably the closest medium we have to experiencing the inexplicable quality of the dream in our waking lives. Rich in symbol, metaphor, movement and mystery, films like dreams, enable us to participate in another reality, and, through that participation, to be transformed. Just as we may ask ourselves, "what did my dream mean?" many too may seek the meanings to examples of early film noir, and just as people find the need to interpret dreams, so too do film noir movies, with their witty, 'round-about' dialogue and their complex plots, need to be interpreted. We, in a sense, become the detectives seeking "to express meanings that lie beneath the surface." [Walker: 1993 (ed. Cameron)]
             In the early 40's a new form of cinema emerged in America. Dark and gloom laden, it reflected the anxieties of a country entering a new era. Cynical and subversive in attitude, here was the antithesis of Hollywood's glamour productions of the 30's. French critics, finally having access to American films at the end of the war, saw a radical shift in tone and a general melancholy permeating each storyline. They christened this new movement film noir – 'black film', a succinct label, that took its origin in the popular crime novels called series noirs. These critics of Cashiers du Cinema were ahead of their time in their appreciation; it wouldn't be until the sixties that American film criticism even accepted the term film noir.
             Unlike other forms of cinema, film noir has no elements that it can truly call its own. Rather, film noir borrows elements from o...