Borde and Chaumeton comment as well that film noir is defined by artistic style and sociological phenomenon and sometimes acts as the anti-genre as noir "inverts Hollywood formulas: place of straightforward narratives with clearly motivated characters" (xv). This in turn invents uncertainty and a feeling of suspense for the audience. Borde and Chaumeton see film noir as an intermingling of social realism, an erotic treatment of violence and feeling of psychological disorientation that only emphasizes more the building of the plot.

             Dirks agrees that the overall genre of film noir is not genre at all but "a mood, style, point of view, or tone of a film" (1). Film noir gets its foundation or basis from the literary world of crime fiction published during the 1930s and 1940s. All of this is conveyed on the screen by strategic lighting to enhance mood and heighten suspense. Dirks categorizes film noir as an offshoot or sub-genre of the generic crime/gangster and detective/mystery sagas of the 1930s, some based on real people such as Al Capone. The immediate source of film noir is obviously the hard-boiled detective novel of the American or English origin (Borde and Chaumeton 15). Most of Hollywood studios, however, stuck to simple adaptations of pulp novels. Robert Piluso discusses film noir as "arising as an American psycho-cultural response to World War II, these shadowy, strange stories were syntheses of humor, mystery, gangster and detective genres" (1). Dirks takes the definition of film noir further. He describes the moods of film noir being as "melancholy, alienation, bleakness, disillusionment, ambiguity, moral corruption, evil, guilt, desperation and paranoia" (2). The characters come from the underworld, gloomy and violent. They are lowlifes questioning morality. Much of what drives the story is told in flashback as a literary device. Dialogue also plays a huge role in driving the film noir story especially in sexual innuendo like the discussion of traffic laws found in Double Indemnity (Bugwin 1).