Into the Way Back Machine (for fans of Rocky and Bullwinkle): In the mid-1980s I compiled a list of film noirs (the document was titled The Film Noir File, which much later I used as the name of my film noir website). The list derived from multiple sources: the books by Ottoson and Selby and Silver/Ward and every film catalog of a noir series that I could lay my hands on. I said that if a source called a film to be a noir then I would include it in my list. I printed a lot of the document and delivered them to the Brattle (I lived in Cambridge) and asked that the price be only one dollar. I doubt that there was any prior such a comprehensive list of film noirs before mine.