Are most noir films “B” movies?
That’s a misconception. There were plenty of short, bare-bones “B” crime thrillers made during the 40s, but not many of them packed the noir pedigree of “A” productions like Double Indemnity, The Killers, Kiss of Death, Out of the Past or The Asphalt Jungle. Those are films that set the era’s artistic agenda for cinematic crime – the “B” pictures from the majors, and the stuff from Monogram and PRC and Eagle-Lion studios, mainly copied what the “A” films did successfully. While I sincerely believe that noir was the only truly organic artistic movement in Hollywood’s classic period, I’m just as sure that economics played an equal part in that movement. Audiences were captivated (for a while) by this nasty new type of adult fare, and producers appreciated that these movies didn’t cost nearly as much to produce. Hence, an avalanche of these movies. The movement finally played itself out in terms of box office but the allure has proven to be timeless. So noir ended because people stopped p
