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

(Gilda, White Heat, Scarlet Street, etc.). At times one guesses at sexual situations
that are abnormal or on the verge of anomaly: for example in Gilda, in which
several touches hint at the murky relations between men. (Borde & Chaumeton
2002:145)
Many noir films are characterised by this eroticism which is normally alluded to in
a symbolic manner or evoked, as Borde and Chaumeton suggest, by association. Later, in
an in-depth analysis of films in Part IV, I will focus on the presence of symbols as a part of
the noir visual style and comment on their effectiveness and suggestiveness. As Janey
Place notes, many of these symbols go beyond their customary meaning from a semiotic
point of view: a simple cigarette leaving clouds of smoke, for instance, can become a
prompt for mysterious and depraved sensuality or the iconography of violence (especially
the use of guns) can be a specific symbol of women’s “‘unnatural phallic power’” (as in
films like Kiss Me Deadly or The Big Heat).
The number of crime thrillers that contained Freudian motifs was unusually high,
especially in noir productions from the end of the war. In fact, many of these films depict a
wide variety of disturbed mental states and they certainly constitute one of the most
striking demonstrations of the implantation and growth of psychoanalysis in American
society. However, the various indirect references made to psychoanalytical concepts or to
psychiatrists represent much more than is required by the simple depiction of troubled
minds. They constitute a means of recognising and presenting the motivations, desires,
sexuality, and distressed states of mind of a range of characters that might appear
inexplicable under the Code. This emotional and affective noir world is repeatedly
suggestive of certain abstractions, such as alienation and obsession, showing that film noir
is openly dependent on external intellectual systems, such as Existentialism and
Freudianism, for its dramatic meanings.
Film noir resorts to a very precise mise-en-scène to yield suggestions of repressed
or hidden sexual desires and murderous impulses. Steve Thompson’s (Burt Lancaster)
pained avowal to fidelity to his former wife in Criss Cross is denotative of the desolate
quality of the typical noir figure’s obsession. In its sexual elements, it may appear
explicitly Freudian: Thompson is still emotionally and physically obsessed with and
attached to Anna (Yvonne De Carlo), as she symbolises not just sexual release but a
fantasy of escape from the present and its oppressive reality. In subsequent flashbacks the
viewer gets to know in a detailed manner the true nature of Thompson’s relationship with
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