"Between film noir's first wave during the 1940s and 50s and the neo-noirs that formed such a vital part of American cinema in the 1990s, some things didn't change. Four or five decades on, protagonists still comprised luckless folk drawn inexorably into complex situations they couldn't control. Bad people still did terrible things. Violence, lust and intoxication were still rampant. And some 90s noirs wouldn't contain one single happy scene, let alone that kind of ending.
Thankfully, some things had changed, and the 1990s saw a wider range of perspectives beginning to come to the fore. While male directors still dominated, neo-noir became one of the key modes of the emerging New Black Cinema, with African-American directors including Bill Duke, Carl Franklin, Charles Burnett and the Hughes brothers all riffing on noir themes."
