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

1.6 Noir Atmospherics: Cinematography and Iconography
Film noir’s visual style, as I have explained, can be traced back to German
Expressionism which emphasised exaggerated, recurrently grotesque, frightening images,
and, since many of the directors of noir were émigrés from the countries where this
movement was invented, they made vital contributions to film noir. It is at the level of
those visual techniques (sometimes referred to as “realist”: location photography, moving
camera, depth of field) that this cycle of films has to be perceived and accounted for. This
characteristic visual style is thus consistent both with the noir diegesis and the naturalism
of exterior and interior locales but, most importantly, in the relationship of setting to mental
states. The “realism” of a montage is often depicted through a cinematic aesthetic that
incorporates these visual tropes and helps to create the noir mood. Therefore, it is possible
to see that Paul Schrader is right when he maintains that:
Because film noir was first of all a style, because it worked out its conflict visually
rather thematically, because it was aware of its own identity, it was able to create
artistic solutions to sociological problems. (Schrader 1972:9)
The visual look found in noir productions needs to be understood as a way creative
personnel had to engineer the theme of a film. The stylistics of these movies was indeed
inherent to the styles of their directors, who found a pattern of generic development rising
from theme, but also from technique, through the use of voiceover, flashbacks,
expressionistic lighting and set designs, and low and high-angle camerawork, as seen
earlier. Finally, some of the finest black-and-white cinematography of the American screen
was also to be found in the work of cinematographers and responsible for the authorship of
that style. Among the many who contributed to the noir movement were Woody Bredell
(Phantom Lady, Christmas Holiday, The Killers), Franz Planer (The Chase, Criss Cross, 99
River Street), Nicholas Musuraca (Stranger on the Third Floor, Deadline at Dawn, Out of
the Past, The Hitch-Hiker, The Blue Gardenia), Joseph La Shelle (Laura, Fallen Angel,
Road House, Where the Sidewalk Ends, George E. Diskant (Desperate, They Live by Night,
On Dangerous Ground, Kansas City Confidential, The Narrow Margin), and John Alton
(T-Men, Raw Deal, Mystery Street, The People against O’hara, He Walked by Night, The
195