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

1.1 Radical Individualism
This chapter brings to the fore the issue of radical individualism associated with
crime / violence and personal greed since these form, as seen in Part II, the subtexts of preproduction
code films of the thirties (with the gangster pictures, for instance). In many
respects film noir represents a manifestation of fragmentation at the several levels
described in the foregoing sections. Here I would like to concentrate on the individual, on
the psychological disintegration of the noir protagonist, and simultaneously to reference
other disruptive effects registered in noir productions.
Psychologically, therefore, the noir narrative is indeed an exploration of the
personal identity crises of its protagonists. The many examples of films given so far that
depict the dominant worldview in noir clearly express a paranoid and claustrophobic state
of mind on the part of the main protagonist. The impersonality of noir cities, such as Los
Angeles and San Francisco, is then transposed to the “inner city” of the hero’s imagination
in which desperation and alienation seem to govern. The urban landscape shows no
independent existence from the noir hero, but rather functions as a symbolic immoral
correlative of the futile search for happiness, implying destruction of the self and that of
others too. This hostile urban jungle is very similar to the personal jungles encountered in
films like Pitfall or more strikingly in Robert Siodmak’s Criss Cross. Narrative devices
reinforce how much the action of the noir characters are a product of fate and constrained
by their troubled pasts. These devices further accentuate the doomed and desolate world
characterised by predatory sexuality, darkness and violence and it all eventually translates
into enigmas of personal identity which function as expository of or even as a form of
psychoanalysis of the main character (adumbrating, fragmentation, fractional recovery, but
then ultimate loss).
Thematically, the topic of fragmentation is emblematically expressed through the
dissolution of the family unit like in Pitfall, this unit traditionally being the mainstay in
American conservative cinema. The opening scenes of the film set up the life of John
Forbes (Dick Powell) in terms of home, family and work. While his wife, Sue (Jane
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