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

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and chaired by Martin Dies) involved in anti-communist investigations, but because it achieved its reputation for its efforts to inspect and regulate the Hollywood film industry. A couple of years after the end of WWII, the Committee started a powerful investigation of people working in the film industry, from screenwriters, directors to actors and actresses who might possibly be involved, or were cited as being suspect of communist activities or supporting beliefs in them. These movie professionals were brought to court to testify about their known or suspected membership of the Communist Party and/or association with its members. It was during these testimonies that what became known as the “$64,000 question” was asked: “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party of the United States?” Among the people sent to Court by the Committee were ten who firmly decided not to disclose the names of people involved. These people, who became known as “Hollywood Ten”, ended up being sentenced to prison, although they were evoking their legitimate First Amendment right to freedom of speech. Apart from being blacklisted from the world of entertainment, these people from the film industry had their integrity questioned in the service of a hysterical cause, better defended by a stricter adherence to American democratic and constitutional values. Interestingly, the dark and brooding tone of film noir, with its pervasive atmosphere of fear and paranoia, its sense of hopeless fatalism, echoed the dark, political accusatory climate that was the norm in Hollywood during the House’s hunt for communist insurgents and potential informers. All these factors are well documented, especially the unbalanced accusations made to the victims of McCarthyism, and the frantic subversion of their civil rights. I have already listed the various (cultural, historical and literary) influences that antedated film noir. However, the socio-political interventions that the film industry experienced in the post-World War II period are just as relevant. The noir discourse assumed by a minority of filmmakers began to send out signs of radical and critical distress, as a cultural expression of resistance to the political and artistic repression of in those years. Up to this point, it has been made clear that under the oppressive cloud of McCarthyism many entertainment careers were curtailed, and consequently many aspects of motion picture production were affected. However, these political influences cannot be dissociated from the social and historical factors that have also shaped the style, more explicitly, the threat of nuclear war which fuelled the paranoia that pervades the noir cycle. Many directors and producers associated with film noir – such as John Garfield, Abraham 134
Polonsky, Jules Dassin, and Edward Dmytryk – depicted in their films the general fear of the potential dangers of the Bomb and the anti-communist spirit. In addition, their works assessed critically the social and emotional costs of American society’s aggressive capitalism. Body and Soul (1947), written by Polonsky for Robert Rossen and starring John Garfield, has a heavy message about the greed encouraged by the capitalist system (the film is about the paradigmatic story of a slum-bred young man who becomes a successful boxer, but who is corrupted by material success). Garfield also starred in Polonsky’s leftwing Force of Evil (1948), a melodramatic thriller about a gambling syndicate Wall Street lawyer, Joe Morse (Garfield), who works for a powerful gangster and whose job is to turn the “number rackets” into a legal lottery (fig. 32). John Garfield ended up being blacklisted and Polonsky’s career was blighted when he was blacklisted after this film. Figure 32. Force of Evil Some other examples might be given, such as Night and the City by Jules Dassin (his last American film before being blacklisted as a communist) which maintains the formal conventions of film noir to present Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark) as an asthmatic and distressed dreamer who snakes through the wrestling foggy streets of postwar London. Through its mise-en-scène the film reveals him moving diagonally past dark 135
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Joaquim da Silva Universidade de Av
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To Antonio, who made this possible.
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Acknowledgements This long journey
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Finally, I owe a huge debt of grati
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keywords abstract Film Noir, genre,
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2 Social and Political Influences o
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2.4 Joseph H. Lewis................
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Figure 42. Force of Evil ..........
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I. Introduction: Paving the Way for
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term that the film industry itself
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about which films themselves consti
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also, in the films’ fundamental n
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American films after the Nazi occup
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we also find a disruption of the wo
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oth in these French productions of
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Hollywood feature films but it did
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throughout this work); and c) to di
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odies, or as killers and crooks, bu
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these films was to confer on them a
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writer, director, producer, and art
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cinema does not have the power of
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Before working on The Dark Mirror,
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y taking it “from the outside.”
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and many, if not most, films would
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1.1.1 Dashiell Hammett In 1929, Das
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tough appearance, by their occupati
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Apart from “The Continental Op”
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unsettling when for example shootin
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1.1.2 Raymond Chandler Raymond Chan
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Figure 4. The Big Sleep the chaotic
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eleased to the big screen by MGM wi
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most fastidious visions of London i
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hometowns and move into bigger citi
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Double Indemnity started the trend
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has happened, but, as if hypnotized
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destructive, or used by stronger wo
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Tomorrow Goodbye (1950) into a noir
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Home (1937) - were two living proof
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which collapses the distinction bet
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Figure 10. Deadline at Dawn Alex’
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1.1.6 William Riley Burnett Another
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Figure 11. High Sierra The Asphalt
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1.1.7 Conclusions What made the det
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fiction managed to provide for a de
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escalation in illegal drinking plac
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Ben Hecht story and despite being p
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Mercy! Is this the end of Rico?”
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The third originating gangster movi
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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
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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 and 134: Jean Paulhan, editor of La Nouvelle
Page 135 and 136: Julien Duvivier’s Pépé Le Moko
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: Liberal reforms soon became a spuri
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
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deceiving women. Like many of their
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Either as a femme fatale or an homm
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1.5 Dazed and Confused: The Voiceov
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an impersonal “you” giving the
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of war veterans who, unfolding thei
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1.6 Noir Atmospherics: Cinematograp
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John Alton’s highly stylised phot
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Figure 41. Stranger on the Third Fl
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indoctrination in the movie in the
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in the popular imagination. While t
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1.7 Sounds of the City: Jazz Soundt
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music, combines with images of patr
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Figure 45. Out of the Past Non-dieg
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ealm of near-explicit sexual metaph
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the two, affirming that “Jazz is
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City, Paramount’s Union Station a
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In my analysis of The Big Combo in
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Consequently, in the fifties, we st
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2 Noir and the Film Auteur 2.1 Aute
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noticeably the case, for example, w
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point out the fact that it is only
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elationship to the way a director t
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2.1.1 Billy Wilder Billy Wilder pla
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performance is full of understated
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Figure 54. Sunset Boulevard Wilder
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Figure 55. Ace in the Hole All of B
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2.1.2 Orson Welles He may have only
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For example, in the scene above (fi
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As Leo Braudy in The World in a Fra
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slanting compositions, and brillian
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2.1.3 Otto Preminger Austrian film
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plans, June still shows her love fo
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Figure 61. Where the Sidewalk Ends
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project my viewpoint on the audienc
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postulated as the “doctrine of si
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pouvait espérer sortir de la déno
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I am at the barber's, and a copy of
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certain community, our subjective r
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interpretant” (Stam 1992:6). Here
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The notion of “text” as a disco
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only agree that these disciplines s
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2 The Universe of Motifs and Symbol
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Andrew Sarris once wrote that “If
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exception to this rule, his movies
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independent production companies in
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Figure 66. Double Indemnity In the
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Figure 67. Scarlet Street The symbo
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contorted Expressionistic grimace,
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Figure 70. Metropolis The clock mot
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Figure 71. Strangers on a Train The
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“When I was young I wanted to be
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themselves in the projection of inn
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woman in the portrait throughout I
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scenes as the attachment is purely
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(namely The Spiral Staircase and Ou
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Chris meets by accident, is a hellc
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2.1.1.4 Conclusion All in all, ther
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Question: Scarlet Street had the sa
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an accepted and well-known screenwr
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Siodmak’s next two films for Univ
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money from Dundee. A more harrowing
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2.2.1 The Spiral Staircase (1946) a
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here increased by the unsteady blac
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Figure 83. The Spiral Staircase Thi
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Warren, making either of them the p
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2.2.1.2 The “Optical Unconscious
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camera is expressive, as it informs
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ordering” - appears to match this
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eyewitness, but at the same time, a
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Figure 87. The Spiral Staircase Bas
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While Cross implicitly acknowledges
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Figure 89. Affair in Trinidad Other
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However, much of this iconography t
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long, wooden staircase while trying
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Figure 93. The Spiral Staircase Fig
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of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The B
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almost part of a game, emphasising
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2.3 Jacques Tourneur Born in Paris
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a laughing audience), and broken la
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violent mishaps could have led to h
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writers like Dashiell Hammett (who,
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Chuck Tatum, a cynical, frustrated
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on, Ann, who represents his hope fo
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This kind of temporal manipulation
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ought forward by the characters of
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found Kathie: “I was glad it was
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Figure 102. Out of the Past In this
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Figure 104. The Lady from Shanghai
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Jeff: Give him time. Kathie: You ar
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Figure 106. Out of the Past The sce
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Gun Crazy, a barrage of police gunf
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2.4 Joseph H. Lewis Considered as a
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untold storied of ordinary men and
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through windows, to provide the ind
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2.4.1 The Big Combo (1955) and the
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of most noir films including The Bi
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2.4.1.1 “First is First and Secon
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In The Big Combo the unconscious tr
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It is not only in terms of narrativ
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Although the idea is not to go into
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Figure 113. Scarlet Street Neff’s
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2.4.1.2 The Big Combo and Generic T
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and knowing they are both surrounde
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As the noir movement entered the la
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V. Conclusions: 1 Genre Revisited T
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on social aspects through a dramati
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Buscombe is right: if we take a gen
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constructions that make it difficul
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Such factors have been scrutinised
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Thematically, noir films as a group
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While enforcement of the Production
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are “as often nihilistic, cynical
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which is normally not associated wi
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morality brought about by these noi
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It is within this cinematic and cri
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____________ (1994). The Semiotic C
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____________ (1992b). Farewell, My
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E Easthope, Antony (1993). Contempo
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Greenberg, Joel & Higham, Charles (
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James, David E. (2005). The Most Ty
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Malkiewicz, Kris (1986). Film Light
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N Naremore, James (1978). The Magic
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Polan, Dana (1986). Power and Paran
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____________ (2006). Ava Gardner:
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Sullivan, Ellie (1986). Jacques Lac
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Wilson, Edmund (1962). Classics and
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Appendix I: Annotated Filmography T
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Beware, My Lovely RKO 1952. Prod: C
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Christmas Holiday Univ 1944. Prod:
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Dark Corner, The Fox 1946. Prod: Fr
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Framed Col 1947. Prod: Jules Schern
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House on 92 nd Street, The Fox 1945
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Killing, The UA 1956. Prod: James B
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Mildred Pierce WB 1945. Prod: Jerry
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One Way Street Univ 1950. Prod: Leo
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Repeat Performance EL 1947. Prod: A
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Stranger, The RKO 1946. Prod: S.P.
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Unsuspected, The WB 1947. Prod: Cha
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B) Other Relevant Filmography The f
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Last Laugh, The ScreenSound 1924. P
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Appendix II The Motion Picture P
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VIII. Religion 1. No film or episod
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B. By reason of the mobility of fil
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Reasons Underlying the Particular A
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VIII. Religion The reason why minis
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146, 152, 186, 192, 229, 250, 298,
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high-contrast, 11, 46, 172 Highway
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350, 352, 353, 354, 356, 357, 359,
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Walsh, Raoul, 56, 57, 66, 73, 223,
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