David Wolfe nails the moody glamour that we associate with film noir, and gives us a fine overview of the genre. You never knew which side the noir femme fatale was playing, and that was more than half the fun.
Who can forget Mary Astor's nervous little laugh in The Maltese Falcon, when Bogart tells her she's taking the fall?
Another great scene: How the camera stays on Barbara Stanwyck's face in Double Indemnity, when Fred MacMurray murders her husband from the back seat of a car. I saw the play Billy and Ray a couple of months ago, about how Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder worked together on the film script to evade the censors and keep the spirit of Chandler's book intact. It was a daring film for its time.
These are perfection!
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