With respect to the respective French and German traditions you are no doubt correct although I am reluctant to see individual achievement reduced to archetypes.
That's what noir feels like to me. It feels like some kind of recurring dream with very strong archetypes operating. You know the guilty girl being pursued falling all kinds of stuff that we see in our dreams all the time.
Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor - with the cry of grave national emergency.