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

through the films’ remarkable style, and simultaneously through the films’ terse and
oblique dialogues from hard-boiled fiction so popular in the thirties. In films like Rudolph
Maté’s Union Station (1950), Nicholas Ray’s They Live by Night (1948), and Robert
Siodmak’s The Killers (1946) there is a cynical outlook that moves beyond the simple
apprehension of the criminals’ ways of being through an anxious, exciting combination of
realism and expressionism.
I would contend, however, that although such cohesion is clearly not coincidental,
there is no express chain of causality here. Visual experimentation in the gangster and
horror genres during the thirties extended the number of filmmakers familiar with exterior
and low-key photography. Therefore, in Chapter 1, I deal with the heritage of German
Expressionism and the sensibilities of the émigrés from Germany. However, reviewing the
techniques of moving camera, oddly angled shots, high contrast between light and dark
shading, eccentric set designs, a gauzy focus, a chiaroscuro framing, etc, it becomes clear
that the characteristic noir qualities or moods – those of claustrophobia and alienation – are
not intrinsically connoted by the camera movements or the intensity of the light.
To the spectator the attributes of film noir are fairly perceptible and uncomplicated:
dark streets of a night-time city, rain-washed shadows reflecting the neon signs, in short,
“shadow upon shadow upon shadow” (Greenberg 1968:18). The common stylistic
approach in this group of films creates certain expectations similar to those in the Western,
war, or horror film. For example, in a Western film, a comboy on horseback with a pistol
may imply a gunfight, in a war movie, a set of planes may suggest an air attack, or finally
in a horror film, blood stains on the floor or the neck may indicate the presence of a
vampire. In noir films such elements may be more than a matter of style and help narrative
events as they are ultimately combined with the characters’ emotions and feelings. As an
example, Joe Beacom (Lyle Bettger) in Union Station is led through a moral labyrinth,
metaphorically speaking, as we see him literally squeezing through the real tunnels where
he is being chased and where he eventually dies.
The characters’ emotions are frequently indicative of a variety of abstractions,
which are often tantamount to their mental states, such as despair, paranoia or alienation.
Still, in most cases, for example, by encouraging the audience to empathise with the male
protagonist’s uncontrollable attraction to a female (or femme fatale), the noir director
compels the spectator to coexperience both the male’s hopes for ultimate salvation and
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