ABSTRACT
The Hollywood film factories were the providers of the nation’s popular
culture and mass movie-going was a favorite pastime of the era before TV.
Film stars were the royalty of America and the movies introduced fashions,
music and slang as well as reflecting the public’s desires and fantasies. Noir
films, like the films before and after them, never accurately reflected what
the real world was like, but rather gave a stylized view of what it could be.
Unlike the happy sparkly musicals of the Depression, noir reflected a more
somber view, but it was as styled as any other film genre.
