Theme: Film Noir

Film Noir is a term given to a series of stylistically distinctive films to emerge from Hollywood between the early 1940s and the late 1950s. Film noir was always shot in black-and-white and features highly stylised lighting effects. These were usually crime stories and created a distinctive world of heroes (who are frequently world-weary private detectives outfitted in trench coat and fedora) investigating crimes in a morally ambiguous world. There are a series of familiar tropes from the voiceover dialogue to the Femme Fatale.

Film Noir is not in itself a fantastic genre but there are a number of works that overlap and later pastiches that blend fantastic elements such as occult detectives, voodoo, deals with The Devil and hologram/VR recreations. Blade Runner (1982) began the idea of quoting noir in a future setting.

For more detail and an overview of the genre see the Theme Essay Film Noir.