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

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noir characters whose posture towards life and society in general was that of a victim. The rapid development of the pulp fiction market back in the forties was, as seen previously, the most significant contribution of the time to the phenomenon of the noir thriller. 160
III. Noir Thematics 1 Essential Elements in Film Noir Of late there has been a trend in Hollywood toward the wholesale production of lusty, gut-and-gore crime stories, all fashioned on a theme with a combination of plausibly motivated murder and studded with high-powered Freudian implication. Of the quantity of such films in vogue, “Double Indemnity”, “Murder, My Sweet”, “Conflict” and “Laura” are a quartet of the most popular which quickly come to mind (…) This quartet constitutes a mere vanguard of the cinematic homicide to come. Every studio in town has at least two or three similar blood-freezers before the camera right now, which means that within the next year or so movie murder – particularly with a psychological twist – will become almost as common as the weekly newsreel or musical. (Shearer 1945:7) This quotation makes two central assertions regarding film noir: that it is “a trend (…) with high-powered Freudian implication” and the “vanguard of the cinematic homicide.” To begin with, film directors of the forties and fifties did not know that they were making noir films. They would probably have called their productions crime thrillers but incontestably, as the French instantly noticed once these films were screened in postwar France, they were a vanguard. These films reflected a considerable change in the American psyche, very different from what the Europeans were used to seeing from the thirties. As for the “quartet” the quotation mentions, Curtis Bernhardt’s Conflict (1945) should be substituted by The Maltese Falcon, as although they both portray an uncommon mystery investigated by Humphrey Bogart, it was the latter that played a more determining role in the coinage of the term “film noir” by French cineastes. Shearer further affirms in his article that these crime films were “homicidal” and “lusty” and filled with “gut-and-gore crime”, a judgement that might surprise modern audiences. He does not say that the major studios, Paramount, Twentieth Century-Fox, MGM and Warner Bros generally consigned their “crime films” to B-units and released them on the bottom half of double bills. The other majors – RKO, Universal and Columbia – were often more enthusiastic to show them off and valued them more. For the first group, 161
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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
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protagonist of Edgar Ulmer’s Deto
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exemplify in Part III (“Space and
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1.3 The Gothic Romance 87 And trave
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titlecard when the film opens alert
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In Rebecca the beautiful, desirable
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forties. Thematically, the represen
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To complicate this matter further,
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trampled under by war and revolutio
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he says, when Expressionism ended,
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These early Expressionist films, wi
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student, Balduin (Paul Wegener hims
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(Tragedy of the Street, 1927, aka W
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plots with calculating precision. G
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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 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: to persist and overcome difficultie
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
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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
Page 461 and 462:
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
Page 495 and 496:
350, 352, 353, 354, 356, 357, 359,
Page 497:
Walsh, Raoul, 56, 57, 66, 73, 223,
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