Noir films reveal the disconnect between Breen Office moral uplift and the darker reality of America

Contrary to general opinion, Noir films do not just show the grimmer parts of American life.

Their particular effectiveness is to give you both the official version and then show you the unofficial reality.

It was a bit like public school and high school in my day : we got plenty of sunny uplift from our unaltered textbooks, '40s and '50s NFB films and present day CBC radio school broadcasts.

But just outside the classroom, TV's noir and sci fi horror movies , combined with tv newscasts, told us all was not really that rosy in the human animal kingdom.

Of course, learning in school and on television about good old Uncle Joe Stalin's Katyn Forest mass graves, Auschwitz, DDT, Thalidomide and Nuclear Fallout had already prepared us to trust film noir far more than any government official ....

1945 Big Science's failed promises : synthetic stability and predictability

Chemically-minded/blinded scientists (and during WWII that included almost all scientists) hate, hate, hate penicillium mold.

To them , it is like an unbroken , un-house-trained mustang bronco .

A petulant two year old pooping penicillin all over the floor and then mutating like crazy so it now refuses to eat right, go to bed on cue or produce more penicillin on demand.

And natural penicillin itself - it also sometimes mysteriously lost its potency in mere days or even hours.

"For Darwin's Sake, give me man-made penicillin every time !" was their universal cry.