Smoke-filled rooms, femmes fatales and twisting crime plots are markers of a period in cinematography known as film noir.
Comprised mainly of films from the 1940s and 1950s, film noir features highly stylized characters and dramatic plot lines. Host Frank Stasio talks with Marsha Gordon, film professor at North Carolina State University, and Laura Boyes, film curator at the North Carolina Museum of Art, about the appeal of film noir. They hear listeners’ picks in the genre. The North Carolina Museum of Art hosts a series on the unreliable men of film noir, Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know, through December.
