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

1.8 “Just the facts, Ma’am”: Noir Documentary Style
Towards the end of the forties, the studios began to move out and shoot on location
and the expressionist style began to be more and more displaced by a documentary-style
realism. When still facing budget-cuts and restrictions on sets, directors shot on location as
a way to relieve pressure on studios and consequently provide them with more
independence in the use of their camerawork. These developments resulted in the semidocumentary,
a story shot on location and often in a more self-reflexive manner, drawing
attention to the way the films were shot. I should also point out that these noir semidocumentaries
tend to privilege the disruptions of a well-functioning social system over
psycho-sexual issues from earlier noirs (the first phases of film noir, also referred to as
“Studio Expressionism” which roughly – but certainly not strictly - ranged from 1944 to
1947).
Producer Louis de Rochemont’s The House on 92 nd Street, directed by Henry
Hathaway, is considered to be one of the first films shot on location (alternating between
Washington and New York). The film gained even more “documentary authenticity” as
many of the actors were not professionals (some were F.B.I. personnel playing themselves)
and it employed actual F.B.I. footage of photographed surveillance. The story is concerned
with F.B.I. agents infiltrating and destroying a cell of “fifth-columnist” agents. The film
opens with the national anthem and it is, we are told, the reconstruction of the actual case
thereby giving apparent authenticity to the whole story. 62 Despite using an appropriate
warning voiceover (from a bombastic narrator), the film lacks the subjective perspective
usually present in film noir, and thus it might be considered too patriotic for noir.
Although the semi-documentary was developed by Twentieth Century-Fox, all the
major studios followed suit and produced similar films including Universal’s The Naked
62 The film opens with typed credits: “(...) photographed in the localities of the incident depicted (...).
Wherever possible in the actual places the original incidents occurred, using FBI employees, except for the
principal players.” The same happens with The Street with No Name (1948) with its extensive location
filming and minor parts played by actual F.B.I. personnel: “The motion picture you are about to see was
adapted from the files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Wherever possible it was photographed in the
original locale and played by the actual F.B.I. personnel.”
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