Of all the collections in all the card games, she had to walk into mine. A dangerous dame with an unobtainable standard of beauty steps into my office. I’m sitting in the dark with only the grimy streetlight shining through the venetian blinds, sipping on whisky (even though it’s 10am) and smoking my sixth cigarette of the day (again, it’s only 10am). Oh and it’s raining. It’s always got to be raining. Looks like we got the perfect opening scene for a Film Noir.

Categorised by detective tales, femme fatales and dramatic lighting, Film Noir rose to popularity in the 1940s and 50s (although had appeared as early as the 1920s), with some of the most iconic titles being The Big Sleep, Double Indemnity and The Third Man. The films are dark, gritty, and occasionally inspired by pulp crime novels. They feature tortured souls, innocent people done wrong, and plenty of dastardly double-crossing.

In contemporary cinema, the genre “Neo-Noir” was born from its predecessor and gave us films like David Fincher’s Se7en, Bound by the Wachowskis, Christopher Nolan’s Memento and the dream that is LA Confidential.

If your watchlist hasn’t doubled just from reading the back of this card, then we recommend you pop on a fedora, dim the lights and enjoy some monochromatic melodrama.