The gentlemanly, artistocratic, independently-wealthy New Yorker, amateur detective Philo Vance was introduced in the works of Willard Huntington Wright (S.S. Van Dine), first in his 1926 novel The Benson Murder Mystery. Thin Man star William Powell and others portrayed Philo Vance from 1929 to 1947:

During the silent era, Ben Lyon played the crime sleuth Michael Lanyard (The Lone Wolf), derived from the novels by Louis Joseph Vance. The Lone Wolf invariably was an international ex-jewel thief who also served on the side of the law after a change of heart. The Columbia series was capped by nine performances from Warren William (from 1939-1943) as the upper-class retired crook:

The most popular film detectives of the 1930s were a delightful, high-society sleuthing couple: the inebriated Nick Charles with his wife Nora (and dog Asta). The characters in MGM's The Thin Man (1934) were derived from Dashiell Hammett's 1934 novel of the same title. The sophisticated, wise-cracking, boozing couple (magnificently portrayed by William Powell and Myrna Loy) managed to solve crimes and crack jokes in a long series of screwball-mystery gems. After their first film in 1934, there were five more grade-A sequels from 1936-1947 from MGM, although none were as good as their first effort. The first four films were directed by W.S. Van Dyke:

In 1935, Mascot Pictures, Consolidated Film Industries and Monogram Pictures joined with several independent producers to form Republic Pictures. The newly-formed studio became a major serial producer for the next 20 years.

Drums of Fu Manchu - 1940The directing team of William Witney and Jon (or John) English (usually working together but sometimes apart) were the pre-eminent, enduring serial directors of the sound era ("The Golden Age of the Serials"), especially during their time at Republic in the mid-30s and early 40s, where they directed some of the best examples of the B-movie serial 'genre' (in many forms, including super hero stories, jungle adventures, sci-fi and crime/detective tales, westerns, and more).

Tragically-realistic films were a big part of the silent film era - the silents naturally lent themselves to melodrama. The only means by which an actor or actress could communicate meaning and feelings was through facial expressions and gestures. One of the earliest melodramas was director Frank Powell's silent film (based upon a stage play) titled A Fool There Was (1915), with Theda Bara (in her star-making film debut) cast as an evil, dark, wicked and mysterious vampire who seductively lures a weak-willed family man away and controls his heart with her sexy wiles.

Cast:

Bruce Willis, William Sadler, John Amos, Dennis Franz, Fred Dalton Thomas, Art Evans, Bonnie Bedelia, William Atherton

A major cast shake-up confirmed that Sienna Miller, William H. Macy, Brendan Fraser, Matt Dillon and Craig Robinson have left writer/director Charles Matthau’s adaptation of the Elmore Leonard crime novel Freaky Deaky.

Another hardboiled detective, a suave and sophisticated sleuth named the Falcon, was featured in another RKO series during the 1940s - almost a carbon-copy of RKO's former Saint. The debonair and aristocratic Falcon character was taken from Michael Arlen's detective stories. In six years, there were 13 black and white films in the RKO series. Various actors portrayed the Britisher (named Gay Falcon, Tom Falcon, and Mike Waring) in the 16 Falcon pictures, including the former Saint George Sanders (1941-1942) in the first four, and then Tom Conway (Sander's real-life brother) in the next nine (from 1943-1946). After a two-year break, independent low-budget Film Classics bought the rights to the Falcon, and produced three more entires with John Calvert (1948-49):

By the late 1920s and during the 1930s, more US serials featured male heroes, such as body-building strong man and stunt double Joe Bonomo, Jack Mulhall, Francis Ford, William Desmond, Franklyn Farnum, and Walter Miller. Four studios, including several independent ones, were responsible for producing most of the serials during the sound era: Mascot, Universal, Columbia, and Republic, while major studios (such as MGM, Fox, Warners, and Paramount) declined to produce sound serials. RKO-Radio's sole sound serial was The Last Frontier (1932).

Filmmakers often attempt to pay homage to filmmaking techniques of a bygone era. Frequent and recent attempts include stabs at grind house and blaxploitation cinema, but those films come with a built-in genre audience which makes them seem like less riskier efforts than what writer/director Michel Hazanavicius (OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies) has attempted to pull off.