frfilmtv1-7, Exercise 1: Sources of the polar

Model answer:

Two sources fed the polar: the American crime film and hard-boiled novel (popular in France through the Serie noire paperbacks), and French poetic realism, with its doomed men and shadowy streets, in which Jean Gabin had already played the criminal who cannot escape his fate.

"Film noir" crossed the Atlantic twice because French critics coined the term in the 1940s for dark American crime films that reached France after the war. French directors then imitated the style, and Hollywood in turn imitated the French versions.