Film noir is the term used to describe a style of 1940's and 1950's Hollywood crime drama. The term "film noir" literally means "black movie", which is descriptive of both the physical and psychological aspects of the genre. Classic films shot in the film noir style include, The Maltese Falcon, Shadow of a Doubt, Laura, and The Hitch-Hiker. The use of shadows and silhouettes is characteristic of film noir.

Many film historians trace the origins of film noir to the economic and political climate of the 1920s and 1930s. In the years leading up to the Great Depression in the United States, authors such as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and James Cain published detective fiction that reflected the fear and anxiety Americans were feeling during the period. During the same time, in Germany, directors such as Otto Preminger and Billy Wilder were producing movies in a dark and highly crafted style that is seen as a reflection of the post World War I climate in Germany. When these German film-makers emigrated to the United States as a result World War II, the combination of depression-era American crime fiction with German film-making resulted in films such as Double Indemnity and Laura, now seen as two of the first film noir movies.GreenCine: Film Noir

"“The disillusionment many soldiers, small businessmen and housewife/factory employees felt in returning to a peacetime economy was directly mirrored in the sordidness of the urban crime film."—Paul SchraderThe Wilson Quarterly: Rerunning Film Noir (Summer 2007)