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

Yet, we cannot ignore the fact that L.A., with the presence of its cinema industry, the
abundance of equipment suppliers, laboratories, and film schools also made independent
production possible, as was the case with micro-budget noir Edgar G. Ulmer’s Detour. For
the Europeans filmmakers, fleeing from the war, Hollywood presented for them the
opportunity to work in different parts of the American movie industry (as technicians,
cinematographers and directors). The style of German Expressionism they brought along
with them, combined with the gradual relaxation of the Hays code as the war progressed,
allowed more latitude in film content. This made Hollywood cinema receptive to a mood
and style characteristic of film noir of the forties, which very often would contain an urban
setting in their film plots. Émigrés like Billy Wilder were particularly sensitive to L.A.
architecture and its pretentiousness, as we can see from the opening scenes of Double
Indemnity. Indeed, many noir productions included the word “city” in their titles (see p.
411), perhaps as a reflection of or response to the mushroom-like growth of US cities. This
was actually widely perceived at the time:
It’s fast becoming a rule that if a studio isn’t making a picture with the name of a
city in a title the studio isn’t adhering to the call of the times. At least half a dozen
pictures currently are in production with such titles, and a number of others either
have recently been completed or are about to take off. (in Daily Variety, May 4,
1944)
The film noir cycle also explores the urban milieu that emerges as the product of
intersecting cultural, cinematic, and technological discourses. First, the typical noir
protagonists present in these films operate by means of a deceitful force, which is found in
the metropolis, with its rootless and unreliable women and the promise of easy and illgotten
money. One might cite the example of Naked City, where Jules Dassin weaves an
exciting tapestry of characters that move about in the real streets of New York. The noir
city gets “naked” as the film evolves only to reveal its verisimilitude and the immediacy of
potential violence and crime. This use of “centripetal space”, as Dimendberg calls it in
relation to the first part of the noir cycle, with films set largely in New York, helps to
understand the representation of urban space in film noir. In the case of Naked City, it is not
so much “the grittiness of the street” that is relevant as its illustration of the neurotic mass.
After all, as Dimendberg quotes Georg Simmel, “the modern city entails learning to ignore
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