(a.k.a. Reign of Terror). The French Revolution as film noir? Pourquoi pas? In an effort to avoid the clichés of the historical costume drama, Mann and cinematographer Alton cast The Black Book in the mold of their gangster films; its most famous line is given to Robespierre: “I told you never to call me Max.” The genre amalgam adds a disturbing element of determinism to the historical parade. Robert Cummings plays an emissary of Lafayette working undercover to effect the downfall of Robespierre, played by Richard Basehart as a death's-head figure, a monstrous godfather operating out of sinister digs behind a bakery. Paris is a city of angles and shadows, the politics of revolution a labyrinth of clandestine meetings, ruses, and false loyalties. This 1949 film is truest in mood to a contemporary “reign of terror,” McCarthyism, with its black list. Napoleon lurking in the shadows notes that the mark of a true Frenchman is his ability to know what is coming next.