Once the U.S. entered the Second World War, it become necessary for Hollywood to address certain aspects of grim reality which post-Depression era cinema had specialized in ignoring. After the war had ended, reality seemed to become even grimmer, and filmmakers responded by showing audiences a version of the world in which Hollywood’s conservative, romantic values were turned against themselves in the form of bleak, unremitting fatalism.
Many of these films, retrospectively identified by European critics as noir, were unsentimental tragedies, in which even the smallest errors of judgement can lead to earthly damnation. Much of the time, the world in these films, heavily swathed in shadow, is revealed by the end to be much brighter than it appears, but in more than a few cases, the stories are even darker than the shadows.