Film Noir Trivia

Perhaps not surprisingly, the director known as the "Master of Suspense" was responsible for some of the most enduring films noir. Alfred Hitchcock directed these four classics, along with 1940's Best Picture Oscar winner, "Rebecca."

"Touch of Evil" (1958) is considered the last great film directed by Orson Welles, who also scripted and starred. Unlike most of his other works, Welles managed to shoot "Touch of Evil" without studio interference. 

It wasn't until afterward, when Universal edited the film—into a version which Welles himself called "an odious thing"—that the problems began, effectively ending Welles' Hollywood career.

In 1946, Italian-born French film critic Nino Frank first used the term "film noir" to refer to 1940s U.S. crime dramas, such as "Double Indemnity" (1944) and "The Woman in the Window" (1944).

Set in the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles during the 1930s, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" (1988) pays loving homage to the same neo-noir universe as 1974's "Chinatown."

It was rumored that "Chinatown" was the first chapter of a trilogy written by Robert Towne. The second, "The Two Jakes," was made in 1990. The third (which never got beyond the story phase) concerned a company named Cloverleaf that buys up all the public transportation in Los Angeles in order to build freeways; this story is a major plot point of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit." 

Gene Hackman won an Academy Award for Best Actor for the first of his early 1970s trio of neo-noir classics, "The French Connection" (1971).