Passage Dominated by Stock Character Types and Gloomy Urban Settings, Film

Passage
Dominated by stock character types and gloomy urban settings, film noir is a highly stylized art form with plots that pivot around crime and intrigue.  Chiefly a product of 1940s and 1950s Hollywood, noir was arguably more an approach, mood, or sensibility than a discrete genre.  Noir drew inspiration for its scenery from classic movies about bootlegging and heists but primarily imported its storylines and dialogue from the crime novels and pulp magazine tales of the Depression Era.  At the same time, noir imitated the unsettling cinematography of the German expressionist movement of the 1920s and borrowed from French poetic realist cinema a fundamentally jaundiced and tragic worldview.  As an unlikely amalgamation of ideas and styles, film noir also readily absorbed other contemporary cultural strains, notably existentialism and psychoanalysis.Most noir-type films belong to what is known as the "B" movie category-low-budget, black-and-white motion pictures originally produced to accompany a higher-budget or "A" film as a double feature-and display certain conventions that give them a distinguishing character.  Apart from a brooding mood, or pervasive sense of pessimism and meaninglessness, noir conventions include the investigation of a crime and a difficult-to-decipher plot unfolding in flashback sequences accompanied by voiceover narration.  Camera angles are distorting and disorienting, creating a sense of menace.  Chiaroscuro or contrast lighting predominates, with characters often appearing in silhouette or caught within the contrasting shadows cast by Venetian blinds.  Dark and rainy streets illuminated solely by flickering signs point to a dodgy underworld of corruption that is played out in crowded nightclubs, deserted warehouses, or dingy offices.Standard noir roles include an isolated, "hardboiled" detective and a dangerous female character who proves as duplicitous as she is sharp-tongued and glamorous.  Often, a kind of anti-hero is also featured-a man disillusioned and marginalized, down on his luck, desperate to escape his past, and morally ambivalent-who makes an easy target for the double-crossing woman.  Film noir is also replete with witty and ironic verbal exchanges that heighten the tension between characters who traverse treacherous ground in a hostile universe where fate is inexorable.  Such stylistic tropes, along with morally questionable character types, brought noir into conflict with mid-20^th-century American values.Despite conventions so recognizable they have hardened into clichés that lend themselves to parody, as a genre noir remains indistinct.  Although a few films, such as Double Indemnity and Out of the Past, seem paradigmatic of the style, most vary widely in the degree to which they follow the formula.  Many emphasize or are known for certain conceits: The Big Sleep and The Lady from Shanghai are notorious for the many twists and turns of their incoherent plots; Sunset Boulevard and Gilda for their deceptive female characters; and The Maltese Falcon for introducing the quintessential noir detective, deftly brought to life through the fedora-and-trench-coat-clad character of Sam Spade.Noir is so notoriously ambiguous and elusive that many films from the era flirt with the classification.  For example, 1941 saw the release of renowned film director Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, a quasi-documentary drama concerning a newspaper magnate, which has long been deemed a masterpiece and is considered noir by some critics.  At the least, it was heavily influential in the development of this film style due to its dark cinematography, enigmatic plot of an investigative nature, voiceover, multiple flashbacks, inventive camera angles, and themes of corruption.  Likewise, the 1942 World War II classic Casablanca features chiaroscuro lighting and flashback; moreover, it takes place in a crowded, urban setting filled with suspicious characters and spotlights a bitter loner haunted by his past.  Given such uncertainty, it is fitting that noir was a label applied only after the heyday of these films ended.
-Based on passage information, it can most reasonably be inferred that most of the conversation between characters in noir films from the 1940s and 1950s was derived from:

A) crime films from previous decades.
B) novels and magazines.
C) existentialism.
D) films of French poetic realism.