28.03.2013
•
Views
within themselves psychologically, the protagonists in French Poetic Realism seem to get stuck, unable to progress and remain hopeless until death. This dark mood followed the lines of German Expressionism and German cinema in general, as Poetic Realism’s style is indeed much indebted to Weimar cinema. Moreover, German cameramen and set designers were often employed, as were many German directors, including Fritz Lang and Robert Siodmak, who worked in French cinema before moving to America. However, this close interconnection between the two countries and their artistic production does not mean that Poetic Realism did not follow a distinctive path from Expressionism, exhibiting a softer and less extreme use of chiaroscuro. In turn, as various film critics have agreed, it is rather difficult to establish the type of influence that French Poetic Realism had on American film noir. Nonetheless, from what I have suggested, it is fair to acknowledge that French artists portrayed an image of fatalism in their films which would be further taken up and developed in film noir. As Ginette Vincendeau observed, French Poetic Realism’s stylistic and thematic influence “filled the gap between German Expressionism and classical Hollywood cinema” (in Cameron 1992:55), and I should add that the elements of passivity and self-destructiveness and nightmarish or violent behaviour certainly bear parallels with the elements found later in American film noir. Another good example that makes clear the distinction between the fatalism peculiar to French cinema in the thirties and the determinism of the German screen in the twenties is Jean Renoir’s La Chienne (1931). Based on Georges La Fouchardière novel, this film will be analysed in detail in Part IV of this thesis as it was remade fourteen years later in Hollywood as Scarlet Street, one of Lang’s great noir films. That said, it is clear that Renoir was more concerned with showing the tragic events of the characters as opposed to the more castigatory and bleak vision of Lang transmitted through his protagonist, Chris Cross (Edward G. Robinson), who disintegrates psychologically at the end of the film. In his own words, Renoir affirmed that in La Chienne he “came near to the style that I call poetic realism. There is not a yard of dubbed film in La Chienne. When shooting out doors, we sought to damp down background noise with hangings and mattresses. I soon discovered that by suitable adjustment an outdoor scene shot on a grey day could give splendid night effects. This was the method I used later in La Nuit du Carrefour” (Renoir 1974:106). 118
Julien Duvivier’s Pépé Le Moko made in 1937 also belongs to that group of films which is irredeemably pessimistic in its message. The film stars Jean Gabin, in the role of an infamous gangster, Pépé le Moko (“moko” being a slang word for someone from Marseilles), who holes up from the police in the Casbah in Algiers. He feels quite safe there among the members of his gang and surrounded by beautiful women, managing to escape from the police on several occasions (fig. 26). Figure 26. Pépé le Moko The sense of criminal doom featured in this movie stands as a model for an entire cultural identity, with Pépé establishing a character paradigm that still persists today, and which would create a precedent for the noir actor icons, like Humphrey Bogart, or John Garfield, or Robert Mitchum. This romantic tragedy reveals exotic places of the Casbah which defines the “fate of Gabin [which] is precisely to be duped by life”, writes André Bazin in 1957 about the differences between Pépé le Moko’s Jean Gabin and noir hero 119
-
Page 1 and 2:
Joaquim da Silva Universidade de Av
-
Page 3 and 4:
To Antonio, who made this possible.
-
Page 5 and 6:
Acknowledgements This long journey
-
Page 7 and 8:
Finally, I owe a huge debt of grati
-
Page 9 and 10:
keywords abstract Film Noir, genre,
-
Page 11 and 12:
2 Social and Political Influences o
-
Page 13 and 14:
2.4 Joseph H. Lewis................
-
Page 15 and 16:
Figure 42. Force of Evil ..........
-
Page 17 and 18:
I. Introduction: Paving the Way for
-
Page 19 and 20:
term that the film industry itself
-
Page 21 and 22:
about which films themselves consti
-
Page 23 and 24:
also, in the films’ fundamental n
-
Page 25 and 26:
American films after the Nazi occup
-
Page 27 and 28:
we also find a disruption of the wo
-
Page 29 and 30:
oth in these French productions of
-
Page 31 and 32:
Hollywood feature films but it did
-
Page 33 and 34:
throughout this work); and c) to di
-
Page 35 and 36:
odies, or as killers and crooks, bu
-
Page 37 and 38:
these films was to confer on them a
-
Page 39 and 40:
writer, director, producer, and art
-
Page 41 and 42:
cinema does not have the power of
-
Page 43 and 44:
Before working on The Dark Mirror,
-
Page 45 and 46:
y taking it “from the outside.”
-
Page 47 and 48:
and many, if not most, films would
-
Page 49 and 50:
1.1.1 Dashiell Hammett In 1929, Das
-
Page 51 and 52:
tough appearance, by their occupati
-
Page 53 and 54:
Apart from “The Continental Op”
-
Page 55 and 56:
unsettling when for example shootin
-
Page 57 and 58:
1.1.2 Raymond Chandler Raymond Chan
-
Page 59 and 60:
Figure 4. The Big Sleep the chaotic
-
Page 61 and 62:
eleased to the big screen by MGM wi
-
Page 63 and 64:
most fastidious visions of London i
-
Page 65 and 66:
hometowns and move into bigger citi
-
Page 67 and 68:
Double Indemnity started the trend
-
Page 69 and 70:
has happened, but, as if hypnotized
-
Page 71 and 72:
destructive, or used by stronger wo
-
Page 73 and 74:
Tomorrow Goodbye (1950) into a noir
-
Page 75 and 76:
Home (1937) - were two living proof
-
Page 77 and 78:
which collapses the distinction bet
-
Page 79 and 80:
Figure 10. Deadline at Dawn Alex’
-
Page 81 and 82:
1.1.6 William Riley Burnett Another
-
Page 83 and 84:
Figure 11. High Sierra The Asphalt
-
Page 85 and 86:
1.1.7 Conclusions What made the det
-
Page 87 and 88:
fiction managed to provide for a de
-
Page 89 and 90:
escalation in illegal drinking plac
-
Page 91 and 92:
Ben Hecht story and despite being p
-
Page 93 and 94:
Mercy! Is this the end of Rico?”
-
Page 95 and 96:
The third originating gangster movi
-
Page 97 and 98:
part of the recurrent patterns of v
-
Page 99 and 100:
protagonist of Edgar Ulmer’s Deto
-
Page 101 and 102:
exemplify in Part III (“Space and
-
Page 103 and 104:
1.3 The Gothic Romance 87 And trave
-
Page 105 and 106:
titlecard when the film opens alert
-
Page 107 and 108:
In Rebecca the beautiful, desirable
-
Page 109 and 110:
forties. Thematically, the represen
-
Page 111 and 112:
To complicate this matter further,
-
Page 113 and 114:
trampled under by war and revolutio
-
Page 115 and 116:
he says, when Expressionism ended,
-
Page 117 and 118:
These early Expressionist films, wi
-
Page 119 and 120:
student, Balduin (Paul Wegener hims
-
Page 121 and 122:
(Tragedy of the Street, 1927, aka W
-
Page 123 and 124:
plots with calculating precision. G
-
Page 125 and 126:
perverted and neurotic sex murderer
-
Page 127 and 128:
1.5 French Poetic Realism Poetic Re
-
Page 129 and 130:
(Michèle Morgan), whose godfather
-
Page 131 and 132:
strikingly atmospheric view of the
-
Page 133:
Jean Paulhan, editor of La Nouvelle
-
Page 137 and 138:
the combination of lighting effects
-
Page 139 and 140:
peculiar expressionistic lighting a
-
Page 141 and 142:
Figure 28. Son of Frankenstein This
-
Page 143 and 144:
Figure 29. Murders in the Rue Morgu
-
Page 145 and 146:
alienation mixed with nuanced perfo
-
Page 147 and 148:
2 Social and Political Influences o
-
Page 149 and 150:
Liberal reforms soon became a spuri
-
Page 151 and 152:
Polonsky, Jules Dassin, and Edward
-
Page 153 and 154:
which are themselves historical eve
-
Page 155 and 156:
Production Code Administration. Thi
-
Page 157 and 158:
In this particular case, one can se
-
Page 159 and 160:
Neff: Will you be here too? Phyllis
-
Page 161 and 162:
against any possible theft of groce
-
Page 163 and 164:
2.3 Postwar Readjustment If the moo
-
Page 165 and 166:
In this group of films, the bleak a
-
Page 167 and 168:
explain, these noir heroes of the f
-
Page 169 and 170:
(Gilda, White Heat, Scarlet Street,
-
Page 171 and 172:
seething excitations” and adds th
-
Page 173 and 174:
Romanticism present at the very hea
-
Page 175 and 176:
to persist and overcome difficultie
-
Page 177 and 178:
III. Noir Thematics 1 Essential Ele
-
Page 179 and 180:
its modernist sensibility, enabled
-
Page 181 and 182:
Wyatt), cooks breakfast, domestic r
-
Page 183 and 184:
structures of constituted authority
-
Page 185 and 186:
1.2 Space and the Noir City Film no
-
Page 187 and 188:
other people and developing a calcu
-
Page 189 and 190:
I am the city. Hub and heart of Ame
-
Page 191 and 192:
1.3 Trouble With Girls: The Femme F
-
Page 193 and 194:
intelligent and powerful, if destru
-
Page 195 and 196:
significant discussion of film noir
-
Page 197 and 198:
Nevertheless, the message is quite
-
Page 199 and 200:
Another example of the evolution of
-
Page 201 and 202:
deceiving women. Like many of their
-
Page 203 and 204:
Either as a femme fatale or an homm
-
Page 205 and 206:
1.5 Dazed and Confused: The Voiceov
-
Page 207 and 208:
an impersonal “you” giving the
-
Page 209 and 210:
of war veterans who, unfolding thei
-
Page 211 and 212:
1.6 Noir Atmospherics: Cinematograp
-
Page 213 and 214:
John Alton’s highly stylised phot
-
Page 215 and 216:
Figure 41. Stranger on the Third Fl
-
Page 217 and 218:
indoctrination in the movie in the
-
Page 219 and 220:
in the popular imagination. While t
-
Page 221 and 222:
1.7 Sounds of the City: Jazz Soundt
-
Page 223 and 224:
music, combines with images of patr
-
Page 225 and 226:
Figure 45. Out of the Past Non-dieg
-
Page 227 and 228:
ealm of near-explicit sexual metaph
-
Page 229 and 230:
the two, affirming that “Jazz is
-
Page 231 and 232:
City, Paramount’s Union Station a
-
Page 233 and 234:
In my analysis of The Big Combo in
-
Page 235 and 236:
Consequently, in the fifties, we st
-
Page 237 and 238:
2 Noir and the Film Auteur 2.1 Aute
-
Page 239 and 240:
noticeably the case, for example, w
-
Page 241 and 242:
point out the fact that it is only
-
Page 243 and 244:
elationship to the way a director t
-
Page 245 and 246:
2.1.1 Billy Wilder Billy Wilder pla
-
Page 247 and 248:
performance is full of understated
-
Page 249 and 250:
Figure 54. Sunset Boulevard Wilder
-
Page 251 and 252:
Figure 55. Ace in the Hole All of B
-
Page 253 and 254:
2.1.2 Orson Welles He may have only
-
Page 255 and 256:
For example, in the scene above (fi
-
Page 257 and 258:
As Leo Braudy in The World in a Fra
-
Page 259 and 260:
slanting compositions, and brillian
-
Page 261 and 262:
2.1.3 Otto Preminger Austrian film
-
Page 263 and 264:
plans, June still shows her love fo
-
Page 265 and 266:
Figure 61. Where the Sidewalk Ends
-
Page 267 and 268:
project my viewpoint on the audienc
-
Page 269 and 270:
postulated as the “doctrine of si
-
Page 271 and 272:
pouvait espérer sortir de la déno
-
Page 273 and 274:
I am at the barber's, and a copy of
-
Page 275 and 276:
certain community, our subjective r
-
Page 277 and 278:
interpretant” (Stam 1992:6). Here
-
Page 279 and 280:
The notion of “text” as a disco
-
Page 281 and 282:
only agree that these disciplines s
-
Page 283 and 284:
2 The Universe of Motifs and Symbol
-
Page 285 and 286:
Andrew Sarris once wrote that “If
-
Page 287 and 288:
exception to this rule, his movies
-
Page 289 and 290:
independent production companies in
-
Page 291 and 292:
Figure 66. Double Indemnity In the
-
Page 293 and 294:
Figure 67. Scarlet Street The symbo
-
Page 295 and 296:
contorted Expressionistic grimace,
-
Page 297 and 298:
Figure 70. Metropolis The clock mot
-
Page 299 and 300:
Figure 71. Strangers on a Train The
-
Page 301 and 302:
“When I was young I wanted to be
-
Page 303 and 304:
themselves in the projection of inn
-
Page 305 and 306:
woman in the portrait throughout I
-
Page 307 and 308:
scenes as the attachment is purely
-
Page 309 and 310:
(namely The Spiral Staircase and Ou
-
Page 311 and 312:
Chris meets by accident, is a hellc
-
Page 313 and 314:
2.1.1.4 Conclusion All in all, ther
-
Page 315 and 316:
Question: Scarlet Street had the sa
-
Page 317 and 318:
an accepted and well-known screenwr
-
Page 319 and 320:
Siodmak’s next two films for Univ
-
Page 321 and 322:
money from Dundee. A more harrowing
-
Page 323 and 324:
2.2.1 The Spiral Staircase (1946) a
-
Page 325 and 326:
here increased by the unsteady blac
-
Page 327 and 328:
Figure 83. The Spiral Staircase Thi
-
Page 329 and 330:
Warren, making either of them the p
-
Page 331 and 332:
2.2.1.2 The “Optical Unconscious
-
Page 333 and 334:
camera is expressive, as it informs
-
Page 335 and 336:
ordering” - appears to match this
-
Page 337 and 338:
eyewitness, but at the same time, a
-
Page 339 and 340:
Figure 87. The Spiral Staircase Bas
-
Page 341 and 342:
While Cross implicitly acknowledges
-
Page 343 and 344:
Figure 89. Affair in Trinidad Other
-
Page 345 and 346:
However, much of this iconography t
-
Page 347 and 348:
long, wooden staircase while trying
-
Page 349 and 350:
Figure 93. The Spiral Staircase Fig
-
Page 351 and 352:
of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The B
-
Page 353 and 354:
almost part of a game, emphasising
-
Page 355 and 356:
2.3 Jacques Tourneur Born in Paris
-
Page 357 and 358:
a laughing audience), and broken la
-
Page 359 and 360:
violent mishaps could have led to h
-
Page 361 and 362:
writers like Dashiell Hammett (who,
-
Page 363 and 364:
Chuck Tatum, a cynical, frustrated
-
Page 365 and 366:
on, Ann, who represents his hope fo
-
Page 367 and 368:
This kind of temporal manipulation
-
Page 369 and 370:
ought forward by the characters of
-
Page 371 and 372:
found Kathie: “I was glad it was
-
Page 373 and 374:
Figure 102. Out of the Past In this
-
Page 375 and 376:
Figure 104. The Lady from Shanghai
-
Page 377 and 378:
Jeff: Give him time. Kathie: You ar
-
Page 379 and 380:
Figure 106. Out of the Past The sce
-
Page 381 and 382:
Gun Crazy, a barrage of police gunf
-
Page 383 and 384:
2.4 Joseph H. Lewis Considered as a
-
Page 385 and 386:
untold storied of ordinary men and
-
Page 387 and 388:
through windows, to provide the ind
-
Page 389 and 390:
2.4.1 The Big Combo (1955) and the
-
Page 391 and 392:
of most noir films including The Bi
-
Page 393 and 394:
2.4.1.1 “First is First and Secon
-
Page 395 and 396:
In The Big Combo the unconscious tr
-
Page 397 and 398:
It is not only in terms of narrativ
-
Page 399 and 400:
Although the idea is not to go into
-
Page 401 and 402:
Figure 113. Scarlet Street Neff’s
-
Page 403 and 404:
2.4.1.2 The Big Combo and Generic T
-
Page 405 and 406:
and knowing they are both surrounde
-
Page 407 and 408:
As the noir movement entered the la
-
Page 409 and 410:
V. Conclusions: 1 Genre Revisited T
-
Page 411 and 412:
on social aspects through a dramati
-
Page 413 and 414:
Buscombe is right: if we take a gen
-
Page 415 and 416:
constructions that make it difficul
-
Page 417 and 418:
Such factors have been scrutinised
-
Page 419 and 420:
Thematically, noir films as a group
-
Page 421 and 422:
While enforcement of the Production
-
Page 423 and 424:
are “as often nihilistic, cynical
-
Page 425 and 426:
which is normally not associated wi
-
Page 427 and 428:
morality brought about by these noi
-
Page 429 and 430:
It is within this cinematic and cri
-
Page 431 and 432:
____________ (1994). The Semiotic C
-
Page 433 and 434:
____________ (1992b). Farewell, My
-
Page 435 and 436:
E Easthope, Antony (1993). Contempo
-
Page 437 and 438:
Greenberg, Joel & Higham, Charles (
-
Page 439 and 440:
James, David E. (2005). The Most Ty
-
Page 441 and 442:
Malkiewicz, Kris (1986). Film Light
-
Page 443 and 444:
N Naremore, James (1978). The Magic
-
Page 445 and 446:
Polan, Dana (1986). Power and Paran
-
Page 447 and 448:
____________ (2006). Ava Gardner:
-
Page 449 and 450:
Sullivan, Ellie (1986). Jacques Lac
-
Page 451 and 452:
Wilson, Edmund (1962). Classics and
-
Page 453 and 454:
Appendix I: Annotated Filmography T
-
Page 455 and 456:
Beware, My Lovely RKO 1952. Prod: C
-
Page 457 and 458:
Christmas Holiday Univ 1944. Prod:
-
Page 459 and 460:
Dark Corner, The Fox 1946. Prod: Fr
-
Page 461 and 462:
Framed Col 1947. Prod: Jules Schern
-
Page 463 and 464:
House on 92 nd Street, The Fox 1945
-
Page 465 and 466:
Killing, The UA 1956. Prod: James B
-
Page 467 and 468:
Mildred Pierce WB 1945. Prod: Jerry
-
Page 469 and 470:
One Way Street Univ 1950. Prod: Leo
-
Page 471 and 472:
Repeat Performance EL 1947. Prod: A
-
Page 473 and 474:
Stranger, The RKO 1946. Prod: S.P.
-
Page 475 and 476:
Unsuspected, The WB 1947. Prod: Cha
-
Page 477 and 478:
B) Other Relevant Filmography The f
-
Page 479 and 480:
Last Laugh, The ScreenSound 1924. P
-
Page 481 and 482:
Appendix II The Motion Picture P
-
Page 483 and 484:
VIII. Religion 1. No film or episod
-
Page 485 and 486:
B. By reason of the mobility of fil
-
Page 487 and 488:
Reasons Underlying the Particular A
-
Page 489 and 490:
VIII. Religion The reason why minis
-
Page 491 and 492:
146, 152, 186, 192, 229, 250, 298,
-
Page 493 and 494:
high-contrast, 11, 46, 172 Highway
-
Page 495 and 496:
350, 352, 353, 354, 356, 357, 359,
-
Page 497:
Walsh, Raoul, 56, 57, 66, 73, 223,
Change language