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

dangerous and sad city of the imagination which is so much more important, which is the
modern world” (Warshow 1972:131). King Vidor’s Beyond the Forest (1949) reinforces
even more the complexity of these contrasting value systems. Rosa Moline (Bette Davis),
unhappy with her home and marriage to a small-town doctor, demands that her husband’s
patients pay their bills so that she can use the money for a trip to the city of Chicago,
otherwise, she claims: “If I don’t get out of here, I’ll die; if I don’t get out of here, I hope I
die”. The countryside is certainly not idyllic for Rosa, and the aspiring city is perceived by
her as a place of hope for a better life, which will put an end to her own sense of
oppression. After many tumultuous episodes (stressed by the visuals which repeatedly
capture her crazed behaviour), the city becomes noirishly twisted, hostile, and a place of
despair for Rosa, and eventually the place where she dies.
In conclusion, the city in film noir is never presented in a neutral manner, never
simply an amorphous background. It takes part in and defines the action, comments on the
characters as seen above, and supplies mood and tension. Noir films reproduce thus the
urban landscape, both physically and emotionally, making the American city an
indissociable factor of film noir. The architectural excess found in these cities (one only
need recall Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard with its magnificent shots of the expansive city)
evoke the incredible construction boom that characterised the first forty years of the
century but which also occurred sociologically, creating mass migrations and new unrooted
communities. We can finally say that these noir films showing the great, sprawling
American city, constantly in transformation, both fabulous and sordid, changed our
perception of it and our feelings about it. Over the past hundred years, the modern
megapolis has had an incalculable impact on all the arts and on popular styles, and noir was
one of the first forms to register and concentrate on its alienating effects.
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