12 characteristics of film noir

I recently joined the social-media Q&A site, Quora.
This adds to my list of sites where I am a member but I don't really know what the site is all about.
It's like I am in the middle of a film noir and I know I will leave the cinema without having figured it out. Luckily Film Noir is one of the topics they ask questions on and that is a topic I do know lots about. Here is one of my answers:

Watch a film classic for free

PLEASE sir, can I have some more film noir?

       Like Oliver Twist, we are asking the question, only we will not be turned away with a clip across the ear.

       Today we will go to the land of Charles Dickens to continue our feast of noir.

      As we now know, classic noir refers to Hollywood films from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. But that is just an easy definition to cover many noirs because Gaslight is a British film made in 1940.

       If Hollywood had had its way, we would not be watching Gaslight later today.

Gaslight started life as the 1938 play Gas Light by Patrick Hamilton. Theatre buffs can imagine how astounding the play would have been with the central gaslight icon and the glorious role-reversal scene towards the end.

       The play made it to Broadway with a strange name change to Angel Street. If anyone knows the story behind the name change I would love to hear it.

       Anyway, the British movie and the Broadway play, both called Angel Street were successful and the Hollywood studio MGM paid its respects. It bought the remake rights. But  - and some like big buts in Hollywood – MGM demanded all existing prints of the British version be destroyed. The studio further demanded the negatives be obliterated as well. Luckily this outrageous caveat was not met.

Eddie coils to strike in noir

ONE name won’t spring to the lips of critics naming the most accomplished classic noir actors. As you may recall, classic noir usually refers to stylised Hollywood crime films made from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Robert Mitchum who is universally recognised as an essential noir anti-hero, or maybe ant-hero, responded to the exotic title of film noir in laconic noirish fashion. “We used to call them B-pictures,” he said.

       Humphrey Bogart is the other icon of male leads in noir acting. After this duo, the picture gets a little fuzzy with the names Sterling Hayden and Dick Powell likely to rise from the mist. Maybe Kirk Douglas. James Cagney, George Raft and Edward G. Robinson if you want to stretch it to the gangster guys. No Edmond O’Brien.

       Oh, yair, Edmond O’Brien. Eddie O’Brien. Forgot about him. O’Brien starred in maybe a dozen or more noirs, including four of the most famous, The Killers (1946) White Heat (1949) The Hitch Hiker (1953) and the movie we will enjoy later D.O.A. (1950). He also played Winston Smith in the first cinematic adaptation of George Orwell’s novel 1984.