Political events in Europe - the slow triumph of fascism, which eventually led to World War II - were also focusing the minds of American filmmakers on the possibilities of the cinematic medium, and its inherent dangers. In the 40s, then, Hollywood was in a state of creative tension, suspended between propaganda and political education, between realism and escapism. In many films, the war and the Depression seem to have written an almost subliminal subtext. Sometimes, indeed, the angst became explicit, as in the pessimistic thrillers that still epitomize the Hollywood of the 40s. We are referring, of course, to what we now know as film noir.
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