Most people can spot film noir, even if they've never seen it on a movie screen. From Calvin and Hobbes to flash animation on the Internet, we've all seen (usually) comical takes on the stock noir plot: a man making his way through a parade of flashy dames, dark alleyways, and murderous thugs before fate steps in and the curtains fall. Ask most people to pin down a definition of film noir, however, and there will most likely be some hesitation.

Bringing Darkness to Light, a documentary produced and directed by Gary Leva, whose resume runs from documentaries on Star Wars to Deep Throat (the man, not the movie), is a film to elaborate a little on the basic mechanics of noir: the characters, the look, and the feel. It's heavy on clips from films currently owned by Warner Brothers Studios, and especially the films included on its mother package, the Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 3. This might have been a drawback on another documentary, but here it becomes a boon; people who buy the box set can enlighten themselves about the genre by making connections with films they now have in their libraries.

The documentary goes for the contemporary take on noir, meaning that there are only a couple of older interviews that weren't shot for the film. Its main interviewees are people you would expect to have interesting things to say about noir: respected filmmakers, actors, and scholars. Some names include Paul Schrader, Christopher Nolan, Frank Miller, Brian Hegeland, Christopher McQuarrie, Eddie Muller, and even Michael Madsen and Henry Rollins(!). Their musings and insights make up the bulk of the documentary.

Divided into thematic sections each discussing an aspect of noir, Bringing Darkness to Light gives quick but useful coverage to its most salient features: femmes fatale, stoic antiheroes, dramatic lighting, and gritty underworld scenes. It also briefly surveys views on the origins of noir, the economic and cultural conditions that brought these pictures to motion, and how the movie-making shift that moved the crime drama into a new genre was so subtle that it took foreign film-lovers to notice it (hence the French name). All this information is presented in a lean, suitable style, with just the interview footage and clips from a wide selection of films driving it home.