Noir Dirt Cheap takes the reader to a literary cinema where the committed and the curious will discover marvelous and eccentric insights into film noir. Noir Dirt Cheap is a series of picture essays on noir films in the public domain. That means the films have no copyright owner. In six pictorial essays, Bernie Dowling explores the rise of Hollywood film noir from the ashes of war and the glorious pessimism of European theatrical and cinematic art. Noir shone a light on greed, lust, power, injustice, and fighting back. Its craftspeople endured personal tragedies, censorship, and blacklisting. Noir Dirt Cheap explores Poverty-Row studios, what makes film noir, its art and craft, sexism, homophobia, class division, censorship, copyright, human foibles, and the love of classic film noir. You've read the abstract theories. Now read and see the humanity that was film noir.