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

which are themselves historical events and social forces” (Kellner 1998:355) to understand
the cultural significance of film noir, but in my view, their indirect strategy of social
criticism was to leave a more unfocused message of fundamental disillusionment. The
style that is found in some of the above-mentioned movies is often more direct in its
didactic approach, offering explicit social-political statements.
In hindsight, the anti-communist witch hunt cut short the creativity of an important
number of left-liberal writers and directors, but it should also be remembered that
McCarthyism was only a part of a marked swing to the right in American culture in general
and which became reflected in noirs, principally those in the 1950s. This idea that film
noir’s major preoccupations are all related to alienated and despairing protagonists trapped
in dark cities, exposing rock bottom in American life, has to do with the temporary defeat
of the liberal-left. The politically relevant experiences and socially critical themes of such
leftist contributors to film noir in later years were arguably subsumed in diverse ways in
their films, often expressing a displaced sense of anxiety, enclosure, menace, and
generalised paranoia. These existentialist themes, along with the Hollywood’s vision of the
Freudian paradigm, will be further analysed in the chapters that follow.
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