Film Noir Trivia
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48 free Film Noir trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Film noir trivia for classic-movie fans, TCM devotees and anyone who has ever quoted Double Indemnity in a rainstorm. The quiz starts with the arguments: who coined the term and when, whether noir is a genre or a style, and which film gets called the first true noir (hint: it lost RKO money and starred Peter Lorre). From there it covers the roots in German Expressionism, poetic realism and the hardboiled fiction of Hammett, Chandler, Cain and Cornell Woolrich; the classic-period landmarks from The Maltese Falcon and Laura through Out of the Past, Gun Crazy, Kiss Me Deadly and Touch of Evil; the directors, from Siodmak, Lang and Preminger to Ida Lupino, Hollywood's only woman director of the era; the femmes fatales of Stanwyck, Hayworth and Greer; and the visual grammar of Venetian-blind shadows, Dutch angles and night-for-night shooting. Later rounds go abroad to Rififi, The Third Man and Kurosawa, and forward to Chinatown, Taxi Driver, Blood Simple, L.A. Confidential and the neon-noir of Blade Runner. Questions run from easy to expert, and every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its source. See also our Humphrey Bogart, Alfred Hitchcock and classic Hollywood quizzes.
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Q 01Which French critic first applied the term 'film noir' to Hollywood films in 1946?
Nino Frank
Nino Frank, an Italian-born critic writing in Paris, coined the usage in a 1946 essay on Hollywood crime films; the Série noire paperback imprint, launched by Gallimard in 1945, likely inspired the label.
Q 02Which decades are generally regarded as the classic period of American film noir?
The 1940s and 1950s
The 1940s and 1950s form the classic period: the cycle began with low-budget crime thrillers in 1940 and is usually said to end in 1958, when the studio system itself was fading.
Q 03What did most Americans call films now labelled noir before the term caught on in the 1970s?
Melodramas
Melodramas, or crime melodramas, was the usual label at the time; the French term only caught on among American critics in the 1970s, who defined the category in retrospect.
Q 04Which two French critics wrote the 1955 Panorama, the first extended study of the subject?
Borde and Chaumeton
Borde and Chaumeton called noir 'oneiric, strange, erotic, ambivalent, and cruel'.
Q 05Noir's shadowy visual style has its roots in which artistic movement?
German Expressionism
German Expressionism, the 1920s cinema of stark shadows and distorted sets seen in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, reached Hollywood with émigré directors and cinematographers fleeing Europe in the 1930s.
Q 06Which 1931 Fritz Lang film about a child murderer is seen as an early fusion of noir style and plot?
M
M (1931) follows the hunt for a child murderer through a shadowed city; Lang's use of light, shadow and a doomed protagonist anticipated noir, and its star Peter Lorre soon carried that look to Hollywood.
Q 07Which 1941 film, though not itself a noir, had perhaps the greatest influence on the genre's development?
Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane is not a noir, but its deep-focus, low-key photography by Gregg Toland and its flashback structure built on conflicting testimony shaped dozens of classic noirs that followed.
Q 08Which literary school was the primary influence on film noir?
Hardboiled crime fiction
Hardboiled crime fiction, the tough, cynical American school that grew up in 1920s pulp magazines such as Black Mask, supplied noir's plots, private eyes and clipped dialogue.
Q 09Whose novels became Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce and The Postman Always Rings Twice?
James M. Cain
His less heroic protagonists gave a name to a subset of the hardboiled school: 'noir fiction'.
Q 10Whose novels were adapted into The Maltese Falcon and The Glass Key?
Dashiell Hammett
Dashiell Hammett wrote The Maltese Falcon (1930) and The Glass Key (1931) after years as a Pinkerton detective; his debut novel Red Harvest later loosely inspired the Coens' Miller's Crossing.
Q 11Which writer's work was the basis for more classic-period noirs than any other, thirteen in all?
Cornell Woolrich
He also wrote as George Hopley and William Irish; Black Angel and Phantom Lady are among the adaptations.
Q 12Which 1940 RKO B-picture is most commonly cited as the first true film noir?
Stranger on the Third Floor
Stranger on the Third Floor, directed by Boris Ingster and starring Peter Lorre, lost RKO $56,000 on release in 1940; only decades later was it hailed as the first true noir.
Q 13Which cinematographer shot both The Invisible Man (1933) and The Maltese Falcon (1941)?
Arthur Edeson
Q 21Fritz Lang's Scarlet Street (1945) was unusual among classic noirs for being what?
Officially censored in several places
It was officially censored in several places: its erotic innuendo and an unpunished killer got it temporarily banned in New York State, Milwaukee and Atlanta before cuts were agreed.
Q 22Jules Dassin's The Naked City (1948) was noted for which approach, inspired by Italian neorealism?
Documentary-style location shooting
Its documentary-style location shooting, borrowed from Italian neorealism, put real New York streets and crowds on screen; a narrator closes with 'There are eight million stories in the naked city.'
Q 23Which noir actress was the only woman directing Hollywood features in the 1950s?
Arthur Edeson photographed both: James Whale's The Invisible Man for Universal in 1933 and John Huston's The Maltese Falcon for Warner Bros. in 1941, and he went on to shoot Casablanca.
Q 14Who played Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1941)?
Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey Bogart played Sam Spade in John Huston's directing debut, after George Raft turned the part down; the role began Bogart's run as noir's defining leading man.
Q 15What was the name of Barbara Stanwyck's femme fatale in Double Indemnity?
Phyllis Dietrichson
Phyllis Dietrichson, the surname an apparent nod to Marlene Dietrich, lures insurance salesman Walter Neff into murdering her husband; Billy Wilder's 1944 film earned seven Oscar nominations.
Q 16Which actress played the title 'bad girl' in Gilda (1946)?
Rita Hayworth
Rita Hayworth's Gilda, introduced with a hair-flip and the line "Me?", made her the era's defining glamour icon; her satin-gloved "Put the Blame on Mame" number is the film's signature scene.
Q 17Which 1955 film ends with the 'great whatsit' revealed as an exploding atomic bomb?
Kiss Me Deadly
Kiss Me Deadly, Robert Aldrich's 1955 adaptation of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer novel, ends with the coveted box opened to unleash a blinding nuclear blast, the starkest Cold War image in noir.
Q 18Which 1958 Orson Welles film is frequently cited as the last noir of the classic period?
Touch of Evil
Touch of Evil, Welles's 1958 thriller set in a corrupt Mexican border town with Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh, is routinely named the last classic noir; Henry Mancini's score fixed the idea that noir sounds like sleazy jazz.
Q 19Which director made Laura (1944) and worked in the noir mode more than any other celebrated Hollywood director?
Otto Preminger
Otto Preminger's Laura (1944), with Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews, made his name, and he returned to noir with Fallen Angel, Whirlpool, Where the Sidewalk Ends and Angel Face.
Q 20Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard (1950) and Ace in the Hole (1951) are noirs satirising what?
Hollywood and the news media
The targets are Hollywood and the news media: Sunset Boulevard skewers a faded silent star's delusions and the studio system, while Ace in the Hole follows a reporter who prolongs a mine rescue for headlines.
Ida Lupino
Ida Lupino, the star of noirs such as Road House and On Dangerous Ground, turned director in 1949; her best-known film behind the camera, The Hitch-Hiker (1953), has no part for her.
Q 24Which cult 1945 noir did Edgar G. Ulmer direct for the Poverty Row studio PRC?
Detour
Detour, shot in about a week on a tiny PRC budget with Tom Neal and Ann Savage, became the archetypal Poverty Row noir and was added to the National Film Registry in 1992.
Q 25Gun Crazy (1950) is famous for a bank hold-up filmed how?
In one unbroken take of over three minutes
The hold-up is filmed in one unbroken take of over three minutes, shot from the back seat of the getaway car as it drives into town and out again; the screenplay was by the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, using a front.
Q 26The Killers (1946) marked the film debut of which star?
Burt Lancaster
Burt Lancaster made his screen debut as the doomed boxer 'Swede' in The Killers, adapted from Hemingway's short story; Ava Gardner's Kitty Collins was the femme fatale.
Q 27Which cinematographer, known for 'hypnotic moments of light-in-darkness', shot T-Men and The Big Combo?
John Alton
John Alton shot T-Men (1947) and Raw Deal (1948) for Anthony Mann and The Big Combo (1955) for Joseph H. Lewis, pushing low-key lighting to extremes; he also wrote the manual Painting with Light.
Q 28Which 1947 Jacques Tourneur film did Robert Ottoson call 'the ne plus ultra of forties film noir'?
Out of the Past
Out of the Past stars Robert Mitchum as a former private eye whose past, in the shape of Jane Greer's Kathie Moffat, catches up with him; it was Tourneur's first A-level production after years of B pictures.
Q 29Which 1949 Raoul Walsh noir climaxes with an explosion at a chemical plant?
White Heat
White Heat ends with James Cagney's Cody Jarrett atop a gas storage tank at a chemical plant, shouting 'Made it, Ma! Top of the world!' as it explodes.
Q 30Lady in the Lake (1947) is remarkable for being shot how?
Entirely from Philip Marlowe's point of view
It is shot entirely from Philip Marlowe's point of view, the camera standing in for the detective; star and director Robert Montgomery is seen only in mirrors and a few framing scenes.