It’s no secret mobile phones have reshaped the very notion of communication in today’s society. From the electronic equivalent of 2 cans and a string to commonplace video calls in a little over 100 years is remarkable. But with progress so comes loss. A not often recognized victim of telephone’s technological advances is film noir. The character in noir, and in its print cousin the hardboiled detective novel, is the phone itself. Aficionados of the genre easily recognize the pivotal shifts in plots telephones make in the telling of the dark tale.

It’s not by accident the protagonist spends so much time on the phone. The telephone is as important to the story as he is (always a he) (hey, it was mostly the 30s and 40s) (and these guys weren’t known for their “sensitivity” you know). When the good guy needs to determine if the bad guy (also almost always a guy) (they weren’t so sensitive either) is home (which is always a two-bit hotel room), he (the good guy) looks up the number and calls him (the bad guy). If he (the bad guy) isn’t in, he (the good guy) rips the page out of the phone book and heads over to lie in wait. If the bad guy wants to make a quick escape from the good guy, he (the bad guy) ducks into a phone booth, breaks the overhead light, then slinks back into the shadows. Fast forward to the 21st century and none of those scenes gets played out.

Of course in the 1946 classic “The Big Sleep,” Bogart and Bacall could have been using smoke signals and you would still need to sharpen your knife between scenes to cut through the tension. But then every good rule needs an exception and those two were particularly exceptional.