Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ...

forties. Thematically, the representation of the woman and the trope of the returning past in
the Gothic woman’s film is also to be found in film noir (in Laura, for example, the
heroine, who is thought to have been murdered, is “brought back” to life and subjected to
the work of investigation by the film’s detective / hero). Visually, the legacy of the Gothic
films is passed on to film noir in terms of the obscure lighting / chiaroscuro and its specific
architecture and sense of space.
Therefore, it is only natural that the Gothic cycle, as an unstable genre, spread its
features into various modes, among them the Victorian novel, novels for women, short
stories and operas, and later in the forties, into the noir movement. For this reason, many
noirs are also referred to as Gothic noir productions, such as Gaslight (1944), directed by
George Cukor and starring Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer and Joseph Cotten, or another
fine example of American Gothic-noir filmmaking, Robert Siodmak’s The Spiral
Staircase, with its stylistic dichotomy between the period film generic elements and noir
features (this film is further discussed in Part IV). In addition, the Gothic legacy is often
overlooked in its influence in favour of the hard-boiled tradition analysed earlier, which is
centred on the male hero. These films bear a close resemblance to hard-boiled noirs in both
styles and themes. The major difference is, however, that the Gothic noirs were
specifically targeted at a female audience, and they have as a central axis an imperiled
femininity, as seen above, while the hard-boiled fiction and film noir that continued into
the fifties were dominated by the male-orientated crime plots.
Another noir production that borders on the Gothic is The House on Telegraph Hill
(1951) directed by Robert Wise and produced by Robert Bassler. The film is considered
noir for its photography (by Lucien Ballard) and thematically for the fatalistically romantic
narration of Victoria Kowelska (Valentina Cortesa). At the end of the war, a German
concentration camp inmate Victoria Kowelska assumes the identity of Karin de Nakova so
she can be allowed to emigrate to the United States. Once she gets to San Francisco, she
claims to be the mother of the child, Chris, who lives with his wealthy great-aunt. Before
getting there, the aunt dies and, maintaining Karin’s identity, she inherits the estate, which
includes a mansion atop Telegraph Hill. In the meantime, she falls in love with the boy’s
trustee, Alan Spender (Richard Basehart), and they marry. Shortly after, however, a set of
inexplicable accidents occur and Victoria discovers that the motive behind his amorous
attentions was to assume control of the estate. He tries to poison her with the help of the
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