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As silent films gave way to “talkies,” the detective story became very popular. Characters in 1930’s cinema, such as Nick and Nora Charles, Charlie Chan, and Sherlock Holmes paved the way for their successors. With the 1940’s arrived the emergence of a new genre of film. You take a man, turn him into some form of a hero, add a femme fatale, stir in a mysterious plot, complete with convolutions and turns, add a pinch of cynicism and let it cook. When it’s done, you have a “film noir.” Classic film noir has many characteristics. The most important of these is the role of the protagonist. In early noir, this role was usually played as a hard-nosed man of the streets who “used his fists as often as his wits.” Other characteristics of film noir are plot twists, razor-sharp dialogue, dark or cynical characters, and moody lighting. Film noir was in its prime from the early 1940’s until the mid-1950’s. Essentially, film noir was born in 1941 with the release of John Huston’s directorial debut, The Maltese Falcon. This film is widely accepted as the first bona fide film noir. Humphrey Bogart, fresh from playing gangsters in B movies, portrayed private detective Sam Spade, a devil-may-care-cut-him-and