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

1.4 Pursuing Justice:
The Private Eye, the Homme Fatal and the Homme Attrapé
This chapter looks at the hard-boiled detective as a key iconographic figure in film
noir, particularly as exemplified by Humphrey Bogart in his performances as Sam Spade in
The Maltese Falcon and Marlowe in The Big Sleep. Operating among government agents,
killers and crooks, these conflicted hard-boiled private eyes were often morally-ambiguous
figures themselves although usually possessed of a redeeming and distinctly sardonic
personality. At the same time, I intend to analyse the male counterpart to the deadly female
and the opposite of the male victim. An exciting combination of sly, manipulative charm
and deep-rooted sexual sadism, the homme fatal can have connotations of sexual perversity
as well as showing signs of impotence, sexually repressed or deviant behaviour. Finally, I
will also make an analysis of the homme attrapé involved in both the acquiescence and
resistance to societal demands. In short, I will examine the male archetypes in noirs,
offering a reading of masculinity in film noir.
Noir characterisation of the detective role evolved in Hollywood noir productions
especially if we compare the early and the mid-forties with the early fifties. Although the
detective was maintained throughout the noir forties, the character seemed to become
progressively more susceptible and flawed. Noir started to embody another form, oriented
more towards helplessness and paranoia. Taking the example of Woolrich’s novels and
stories that were made into films (eleven in total from 1942 to 1949), we see lone wolves
and petty criminals and murderers, but the emphasis is now put not so much on the
detectives as on the defenceless characters caught up in the action. For instance, Vince
Grayson (DeForest Kelley) is hypnotised into thinking he is a murderer in Fear in the Night
(1947), or John Triton (Edward G. Robinson) is a mind-reader who predicts his own death
in Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1947) or Frank Bigelow (Edward O’Brien) is the poisoned
protagonist hunting his own killers in D.O.A. (1950), who hears the officer at the L.A.
Homicide Bureau telling him “I don’t think you fully understand, Bigelow. You’ve been
murdered.”
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