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

Big Combo). Although I acknowledge the input of all these cinematographers, I chose here
John Alton as the one who had the clearest impact on the evolution of many directors’ noir
oeuvre. Alton was adept in the techniques of “mystery lighting” as one reads in his book
Painting with Light (1949). “Black and white are colors” (Alton 1995:ix), he claimed, and
he also noted the striking effects of the “passing automobile headlights on the ceiling of a
dark interior” and “fluctuating neon or other electrical signs”, as well as the play of light on
“shiny, wet surfaces” (Alton 1995:47-8). For a cinematographer who “could see more in
the dark than I could in color”, Schrader remarks that,
Perhaps the greatest master of noir was Hungarian-born John Alton, an
expressionist cinematographer who could relight Times Square at noon if
necessary. No cinematographer better adapted the old expressionist techniques to
the new desire for realism. (Schrader 1972:10)
A freeze-frame which is most emblematic of this noir cinematographer’s art comes
from the end of the film The Big Combo, one that portrays the silhouettes of Susan Lowell
(Jean Wallace) and Leonard Diamond (Cornel Wilde) with striking contrasts in the black
and white photography (fig. 39), combined with a mastery of visual composition (see also
p. 387). Alton reveals here that:
Fog photographs lighter than it looks to the eye. Actors are dressed in dark
wardrobe, so that they stand out against the back haze (...) with a remarkable thirddimensional
feeling. Fog is particularly suitable for outstanding light effects in the
form of shafts of light. (Alton 1995:118)
Figure 39. The Big Combo
196