Film noir and the Gothic

In a fascinating article, ‘Gothic Cinema in the ‘40s: Doomed Romance and Murderous Melodrama‘, Samm Deighan explores the overlaps between horror, film noir, and women’s films of the 1940s, and finding the Gothic mode there. Deighan discusses well-known classics such as Rebecca, The Spiral Staircase, and Fritz Lang’s M, and alerts us to some less well known films which sound equally rewarding. Lang’s Secret Beyond the Door, with its Bluebeard fairy tale theme, is particularly intriguing.