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

Anna. She stands there before him, all of sudden, not physically but oneirically, as if
coming back again from his early moments of reverie. Thompson is not unique in the way
he idealises a particular woman. The same heart-rending fault destroys other men in films
as varied as Scarlet Street (to be analysed in detail later), Angel Face (1953), and The
Locket (1947). These noir productions are some examples of destructive sexuality in male
protagonists, suggesting that their female counterparts are some sort of infection, like
Nancy (Laraine Day)’s illness in The Locket. The sexual content in these movies, melded
often with violence, is at times very pronounced.
At the same time, as Dana Polan has noted, the effect of bringing Freudian
psychoanalysis into the noir action can be interpreted in two patently opposing ways: on
the one hand, it was the kind of discourse that made the study of unconscious motivations
(the unknown forces of the psyche) appropriate; on the other hand, it was a rational,
positive science that claimed to provide the solution or a cure for an array of social and
psychic ills (Polan 1986:14-5). Mark Vernet, in his Freud: Effets Spéciaux Mise en Scène:
U.S.A., also refers to this “cure” as a cathartic method:
Le cinéma américain parle psychanalyse avec un fort accent. (…) Ce tamisage de la
psychanalyse par le cinéma de fiction explique que les films américains n'aient
retenu, comme modèle de cure, que celui défini par la méthode cathartique. Le
cinéma américain en fait Le modèle, alors qu'on sait qu'il ne s'agissait que de la
première étape, qui fut très vite dépassée et qui reste très limitée dans le temps.
Pourquoi des films tournés à partir de 1940 s’en tiennent-ils à l'état des travaux en
1890 (La conduite de la cure telle que Freud a pu la pratiquer entre 1880 et 1895: la
méthode cathartique) ? Mais parce que c'est ce modèle qui correspond le mieux aux
schémas du cinéma classique de fiction. (Vernet 1975:229) 49
As shown above, there is this sentiment for the noir protagonists that mysterious or
unrevealed forces exist and which determine their destiny. These unknown forces belong
to the psychic domain, a comeback of the repressed, as Mark Conard mentions, namely at
the level of the libido or the id (as Freud envisaged). In most leading examples of film noir,
the author concludes, it is the unidentified and unknowable id that is summoned up. As
Freud put it: “We approach the id with analogies: we call it a chaos, a cauldron full of
49 “The American cinema speaks of psychoanalysis with a strong accent. (…) This sifting of psychoanalysis
by fictional cinema explains why American movies never retained any other model of treatment than that
defined by the cathartic method. For American cinema it is The model. Yet we know that this model was
only a first stage - one which was very short-lived and remains very limited in time. Why would films shot
after 1940 keep to the state of the art of 1890 (the type of treatment conducted by Freud between 1880 and
1895: the cathartic method)? It is simply because this model is best suited for the patterns of classical fiction
cinema” (my translation).
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