The “noirists” and the academics and the fans all agree that Anthony Mann is one of the most important directors in the canon of film noir. To follow his films from “The Great Flamarion” to “He Walked By Night” is to trace how politics in Hollywood would slowly suffocate film noir until it became the instrument of social propaganda.
The revisionists who created the theory and definitions of “film noir” concentrated on style and shadow and missed the real drama that played out behind the scenes. The following essays trace the changes in the films . . .