I have always been fascinated with the dark side. That is not to say that I bow down to Beelzebuub, or Darth Vader for that matter; but as an adolescent immersed in horror movies and thrash metal music, it became apparent to me that the dark side was infinitely more interesting. I mean, how much fun is it to be sweetness and light all the time! As time went by, my maturing tastes turned to more subtle forms of artistic expression and I began to find more appreciation for the nuances of film noir, than for the shock tactics of the splatter movie. Film Noir affirms the notions that there is a dark side within us all, and that the human mind has a capacity for evil that far outweighs the threat from monsters under the bed. The Noir world is enveloped by darkness. It's streets exude a kind of underlying menace and it's characterisation confirms this notion. In Noir, the bad guys are bad, but the good guys aren't much better. It is a world for the tough and the streetwise and there is no room for emotion. The motivation is greed and it does not matter who gets stepped on in the process. Film Noir seems to me to be a realists view of the world. In real life, the good do not always triumph and the bad continue to get away with it, the greedy run amok and one does not have to look too far to see a white collar thief. Film Noir reflects the jaded cynicism of the twentieth century, a time when the evil that men do has truly come to light through the eye of the media. It continues to have relevance so long as there is darkness within us.
             There is much debate over the true origins of Film Noir. It is the general consensus, however, that the two major sources of inspiration for Noir film-makers were the hard-boiled school of writing and German Expressionism.
             "Connecting Film Noir with expressionism, and linking it to the hard-boiled novel has the advantage of seeming to cover the totality...