The American film noir , the popular genre that focused on urban crime and corruption in the 1940s and 1950s, exhibits the greatest amount of narrative experimentation in the modern American cinema. Spurred by postwar disillusionment, cold war anxieties, and changing social circumstances, these films revealed the dark side of American life and , in doing so, created unique narrative structures in order to speak of that darkness. J.P. Telotte's in-depth discussion of classic films noir --including The Lady from Shanghai, The Lady in the Lake, Dark Passage, Double Indemnity, Kiss Me Deadly, and Murder, My Sweet --draws on the work of Michel Foucault to examine four dominant noir narrative strategies.   The American film noir, the genre that focused on urban crime and corruption in the 1940's and 1950's, exhibits the greatest amount of narrative experimentation in the modern American cinema. Spurred by postwar disillusionment, cold war anxieties, and changing social circumstances, these films revealed the dark side of American life and created unique narrative structures to speak of that darkness. J.P. Telotte is associate profesor of English at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the author of Dreams of Darkness: Fantasy and the Films of Val Lewton.