The genre known as film noir emerged from economic, political, and moral crises in European and American cultures in the years leading up to World War II. Its American origins are in the "toughguy" and "hard-boiled" novels that became popular in the 1920s and 1930s, and which, as Hollywood became more liberal in the 1940s and 1950s, could more easily be adapted for the movies than before. Such novels were also popular in Europe, particularly in France, where they were known as "romans noirs," and were published under imprints with titles such as "La Série Noire." When the embargo on American films that existed in France under German occupation was lifted in 1944, many of the films that first arrived were based on hard-boiled novels, and it seems natural for French critics to have begun categorizing these films as "film noir." The European influence on film...