This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross. We're ushering in the long holiday weekend today with some classic film noir. Here's a scene from the 1944 classic double indemnity.

As I killed him, I killed him for money, for a woman. I didn't get the money and I didn't get the woman.

That's how a lot of the men in film noir end up. They don't get the money and they don't get the woman. What they often do get is double crossed and killed.

Double indemnity is one of the films we're going to hear about today from Eddie Muller, host of the Turner Classic movie show noir Alley, where every Saturday night he screens a film noir.

Muller has impeccable noir credentials. His book, Dark City, The Lost World of Film noir, was just published last fall in a new expanded edition.

He's the founder and president of the Film noir Foundation, which has restored and preserved more than 30 nearly lost classics in partnership with the UCLA Film and Television Archive.

Some of the great film noir were set in the world of boxing. A world Mueller was well acquainted with through his father, also named Eddie Muller. He was considered the West Coast Dean of Boxing Writers, covering boxing for the San Francisco Examiner for over 50 years.

Terry spoke with Eddie Muller last fall.

Eddie Muller, welcome back to Fresh Air. It is such a treat to have you back on the show.

I am so happy to be here, Terry.

So let's talk about what you mean when you say film noir.

Well, yes, this is one of the reasons it remains so fresh is because it's debatable. Everybody gets to argue about what it is, which really isn't the case with Westerns or musicals or anything.

That's a big part of the appeal, I think. But for me, when I refer to film noir, I'm talking about an organic artistic movement that took place mostly in Hollywood in the mid 20th century.

And there's a lot of factors that go into making something of film noir. They're generally crime stories. And they present a very dark vision of existence, let's say.

How dark. More please.

I also consider film noir to be sort of the anti myth. If what Hollywood was always selling was that everything's going to be all right and we're all going to live happily ever after film noir was the flip side of that coin.

Saying you really can't trust anybody. The system does not really work for you, particularly.

You may have to steal to get what you want, just like Fred McMurray says at the top, you know, he wanted that woman and he's going to get the money and he's going to do it through devious means and these things rarely work out, but manage it.

It sure is fun watching people fail.

And as you pointed out, the most film noir combines like the sinister and the central.

Absolutely. Yeah, I think that's one of the reasons the films remain so popular is because they're very sexy. In a way that films aren't sexy today because they were made, you know, during the existence of the production code.

And that required a certain amount of restraint by the artists making these films, which is I think one of the great pleasures of the movies is is how the artists worked around the code and could be suggestive and therefore very sensual when they're when they're making these pictures.

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