Individual reviews of 90+ films created and released before 1941 are included here in the first title-by-title reference guide to the forerunners of film noir. Silent Hitchcock thrillers and German expressionist masterpieces, French poetic realist dramas and forgotten Hollywood B-movies, pseudo-Freudian gangster films and costume melodramas are among the works covered.

The collection spans subgenres and cultures of filmmaking, aiming to demonstrate that the roots of noir were sown far and wide, long before the lasting and mysterious genre flowered in America during the war years.