Grant's is absolutely indispensible for any fan of noir. I may be in a minority , but another "must have" book on film noir is the 700 page "The Film Noir Bible: When White People Had The Blues" by the anonymous Wampa 12. A mixture of fact, smart alecky humor, and some perverse opinions, which some purists are turned off by. If one has ever been to Noir City in San Francisco and have heard some of the younger audience members laugh at some parts of a film, it's somewhat akin to Wampa's attitude. However, rest assured, he/she has spent many, many hours sitting and taking notes over hundreds of films. Some of their pantheon selections are idiosyncratic, imo, like having "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and "The Hustler" among the top 12. Fine films, but certainly don't rank ahead of classics like "In A Lonely Place" and "Night And The City". Also, let's not forget another "must have" book - "Death On The Cheap: The Lost B Movies of Film Noir" by the late Arthur Lyons. Until this book came out in 2000 many of these films had been forgotten for decades.
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