Since the beginning of modern cinema, viewers and critics alike have been transfixed by light contrasted with darkness. This interplay of light and dark was typical of film noir, a metaphor of good and evil in plots that featured crime, detectives, and mystery. We celebrate this genre through a salute to Augustin-Jean Fresnel, the inventor of a lens for lighthouses that was later used for movie and theatre lighting. Light Years features serial murder and a star-studded group of suspects over a half-century of film. Whodunnit? Ultimately, we learn that the Fatal Fresnel Lens has incinerated five cameras that recorded their own demise.