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

(chiaroscuro is often effected in cinema with the use of so-called “Rembrandt lighting”),
whose paintings depict subjects in dramatic lighting with pronounced cast shadows. Silver
and Ursini emphasise the deliberate relationship that existed between these styles and
about the iconic work of Weegee:
The audience which so readily embraced noir symbology is much the same as the
readers who scanned the tabloids for Weegee’s lurid photos. Just after World War
II, long after the age of innocence in America, long after a class system had
emerged (...), Weegee’s voyeuristic Speed Graphic celebrated the common man
and mocked those who led lives of privilege and wealth. Amidst the postwar ennui,
underneath a feeling of alienation and boredom, the anti-traditional images of
Weegee and film noir both provided a distracting and alternate view of the world.
(Silver & Ursini 1999a:44)
Moreover, the chiaroscuro effect is also reminiscent of German Expressionism with
its reliance on artificial studio lighting. Critics argue about the possible meanings of
chiaroscuro and what it might represent from a historical perspective. My task here is
rather to understand this lighting technique from a functional stylistic point of view as it
creates a new spatiality and brings a different psychological dimension to film, that chimes
in precisely with the affect and mood of film noir. Criminal deception and cunning
machination are enhanced by the use of this technique. Chiaroscuro develops thus dramatic
realism, and it also provides visual interest and thrills. In fact, this technique gives the
spectator clues as to the nature of the noir protagonists, how they seek redemption, how
they try to bring themselves out of the shadows metaphorically, often in the form of a
confession, as in the case of Walter Neff in Double Indemnity.
Boris Ingster’s Stranger on the Third Floor is considered to be the first true film
noir as it represents a distinct break in style and substance with the preceding mystery and
horror films of the thirties and because it also displays the most explicit influence of
German Expressionism and chiaroscuro. The scene below (fig. 41) is a good example of
that influence and the lighting techniques employed; it also contains some very important
symbolic elements. In this particular scene, filmed in chiaroscuro, the staircase, one of the
symbols that I will discuss later, divides up the two men engaged in a pursuit and the
image of Peter Lorre (he plays “the stranger”) with a white scarf around his neck appears
reflected on the stucco wall behind him and carefully contrived lighting casts the banister
bars as a sign of his imprisonment.
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