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

also, in the films’ fundamental noir statement, the moral necessity of one of the
protagonist’s deaths, generally that of the man.
As Paul Schrader noted, “the typical film noir would rather move the scene
cinematographically around the actor than have the actor control the scene by physical
action” (1972:11). The characters were (are) surreptitiously more complex, mirroring a
society which was not always or often fair. In turn, the ambiguous representation of the
criminal, aggressive, misogynistic, hard-boiled and the privileging of the greedy
perspectives of anti-heroes in film noir 3 were just signs of the problems the actual society
was experiencing, emphasing the moral conflict and the lack of justice that was felt in
general. In this case, the identification of a noir film might be achieved through the visual
motifs and more recurrently in the types of protagonist and theme presented. This is the
reason why I stress that film noir can also concentrate on characters’ emotions which are,
as I said above, repeatedly suggestive of certain abstractions (like, for instance, the mood
of a temps perdu: an irreversible past, a predetermined fate and total desperation).
Through the analysis of some major noir productions, it is my purpose to show that
the noir cycle is the result of a complex process that certainly takes on visual conventions,
but which is also centred on extrinsic intellectual currents, such as Existentialism or
Freudianism, for its dramatic significance. Finally, my goal is to concentrate on iconic
notations which, in my opinion, go well beyond the visual stylistic approach and which
often are not correctly elucidated by critics or are simply left unexplained. With this
importance given to iconographic forms, to be explored in the film analysis in Part IV, I
further elaborate on the noir cycle to explain it from a semiotic angle. This original
approach will hopefully help isolate the various casual and intentional elements that bear
out my idea of noir as a coalescing of film techniques into a stylistic schema.
For practical reasons, I have restricted the scope of my investigation specifically to
the classic period of film noir, that is, 1941 to 1958, the so-called “pure noir” period. This
time span usually encompasses two films that are often quoted as forming the outer limits
of the cycle, The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Touch of Evil (1958), 4 the latter considered to
be the epitaph for films noirs. In seeking out films that belong to these years for analysis,
3 See Part III and the sections about the femme fatale and homme fatal.
4 Borde and Chaumeton, op. cit., would finish this classic noir span in 1955 with Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me
Deadly (1955). As I argue here, Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil seems amply to justify the extension of the
period until 1958.
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