of the field: expressionism the image and the hard-boiled novel the fiction".
             The term Film Noir was coined in 1946 by Nino Frank, a French film critic. He used the term to describe a new narrative and visual style within some Hollywood movies during the Second World War. Frank connected films like "Double Indemnity" and "The Maltese Falcon" with the 'hard-boiled' school of writing, as exemplified by James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler, among others. In France these publications were known as 'Serie Noire'. These novels portrayed "a grittily realistic world of criminals and detectives, but it's chief emphasis was on urban sordidness and melodrama". The tales of deception and deceit were perfectly suited to the screen and "the hard-boiled writers had a style made to order for the Film Noir".
             However, it was ten years between the birth of the hard-boiled school of writing and the first Film Noir. Marc Vernet argues that the the reason for this lies in the fact that "during the 1930s, the public was too affected by the
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