Masters of Darkness and Light: Film Noir’s Unheralded Geniuses

The word noir summons a host of images: -shadows of venetian blinds splayed across the wall of a dingy office -a man, his eyes obscured by a fedora, smoking a cigarette in the rain -a woman leaning over a body in the trembling glow of a street lamp. But why these? Like their antecedents in…