Things might go by contraries, she thought.

A vaguely defined genre (as the name announces, it was first noticed by the French), Film Noir is one of the more complex and intelligent Hollywood styles. Part detective story, part gangster, part urban melodrama, Film Noir was identified best by its dark and pessimistic undercurrents.

[…] if there be any one supernumerary, or weak, or any-wise disserviceable […]

The primal scene is the site at which the issues of ego differentiation become translated into the issues of the oedipus complex.