Prologue: overlooked noir
City of night: the advent of film noir. The black mask brigade: Dashiell Hammett, hard-boiled fiction, and film noir
Exploring film noir: Stranger on the third floor and other films
Nightmare town: Dashiell Hammett's fiction as film noir
John Huston: The Maltese falcon
Stuart Heisler: The glass key
Edward Buzzell: Song of the thin man
Darkness at noon: representative noir films. Fritz Lang: Ministry of fear and Scarlet Street
Alfred Hitchcock: Spellbound and Strangers on a train
George Cukor: A double life
Billy Wilder: Sunset Boulevard
Robert Siodmak: The killers (1946)
Don Siegel: The killers (1964)
Otto Preminger: Laura and Anatomy of a murder
Fred Zinnemann: Act of violence
Stanley Kubrick: The killing
Orson Welles: The stranger and Touch of evil
The lower depths: the rise of neo-noir. Dashiell Hammett and neo-noir: The Dain curse and Hammett
Anthony Minghella: The talented Mr. Ripley
Liliana Cavani: Ripley's game
Afterword / by James Welsh.
