The postwar Hollywood crime melodramas that eventually got dubbed “film noir” were, like the gangster sagas which occupied their lurid place in moviegoing popularity during the 1930s, identified almost exclusively with urban life—big cities being where all the sin and violence lived, at least in collective imagination. Of course, small towns have those things too… they’re just better at hushing them up. And a significant minority of noirs during that genre’s original prime era were set well outside the usual metropolis, locating similar perils in seemingly wholesome all-American hamlets, in rural areas, on the open road, or even at sea.

“In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City,” a seven-week series at Berkeley’s BAMPFA starting this Fri/6, gathers a dozen of those films to cool your s

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