This bountiful anthology combines all the key early writings on film noir with many newer essays, including some published here for the first time. Part one reprints eight seminal essays that classify and analyse the period and its product and also offers the initial extensive discussion of film noir in English. In Part Two there are 'case studies' of individual film and film makers. Part Three probes deeper into the question 'What Is This Thing Called Noir?' -- the title of one of the new essays. Other original pieces consider such issues as narrative structure, the femme fatale, the influence of film noir on early television and, finally the rebirth of the genre in the neo-noir films of our own day.