Page "Film noir" Paragraph 26

As noted above, however, most of the Hollywood films now considered classic noirs fall into the broad category of the " B movie ".

Some were Bs in the most precise sense, produced to run on the bottom of double bills by a low-budget unit of one of the major studios or by one of the smaller, so-called Poverty Row outfits, from the relatively well-off Monogram to shakier ventures such as Producers Releasing Corporation ( PRC ).

Jacques Tourneur had made over thirty Hollywood Bs ( a few now highly regarded, most completely forgotten ) before directing the A-level Out of the Past, described by scholar Robert Ottoson as " the ne plus ultra of forties film noir ".

Movies with budgets a step up the ladder, known as " intermediates " within the industry, might be treated as A or B pictures depending on the circumstance — Monogram created a new unit, Allied Artists, in the late 1940s to focus on this sort of production.

Such films have long colloquially been referred to as B movies.

Robert Wise ( Born to Kill, The Set-Up ) and Anthony Mann ( T-Men, Raw Deal ) each made a series of impressive intermediates, many of them noirs, before graduating to steady work on big-budget productions.

Mann did some of his most celebrated work with cinematographer John Alton, a specialist in what critic James Naremore describes as " hypnotic moments of light-in-darkness ".

He Walked by Night ( 1948 ), shot by Alton and, though credited solely to Alfred Werker, directed in large part by Mann, demonstrates their technical mastery and exemplifies the late 1940s trend of " police procedural " crime dramas.

Put out, like other Mann – Alton noirs, by the small Eagle-Lion company, it was the direct inspiration for the Dragnet series, which debuted on radio in 1949 and television in 1951.