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

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2.1.1 Scarlet Street (1945) and Rejecting the Mundane Directed by Fritz Lang Produced by Fritz Lang Written by Dudley Nichols; from the novel and play La Chienne by Georges de la Fouchardière in collaboration with Mouezy-Eon Starring Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, Dan Duryea, Jess Barker, Margaret Lindsay Photography by Milton Krasner Music Score by Hans J. Salter Costume Design by Travis Banton Film Editing by Arthur Hilton Scarlet Street was the debut of Diana Productions, the semi-independent production company Lang founded in 1945 with actress Joan Bennett (who participates in this movie) and her husband, Walter Wanger. Initially, the objective of Wanger, Lang and Bennett in establishing Diana Productions was to find a way of dealing with the numerous changes American cinema was going through. However, Fritz Lang soon realised that semi- 272
independent production companies in the forties could not significantly change the way films were made and they certainly did not enhance his power with the major studios. Joan Bennett made three noir films for Fritz Lang, 80 however just after Secret Beyond the Door (1948) - a psychological and melodramatic suspense tale and an updating of Ulmer’s Bluebeard of 1944 (see p. 334) – Bennett was to quit Diana Productions. Scarlet Street was based on Jean Renoir’s La Chienne and it shares its bleakness, though the tone and the way the characters react to each other, under the pressure of corrupting forces, give the American film a very different emphasis. Moreover, it is the way that it involves the audience in emotionally strange and improbable ways that makes it stand out. The film starts in a very simple manner but gradually piles on conflicting emotions, one after another, to the point that the spectator needs to step back, only to find him or herself in a weak position to judge. Evaluating right from wrong or the main character’s actions and attitudes in the film may seem undemanding, yet there comes a time in the movie that we understand that the right things are done for the wrong reasons and vice versa. Or that acts committed out of stupidity are sometimes worse than acts of cruelty, suggesting that an innocent person may be punished for a crime he did not commit and yet we feel he deserves the punishment anyway. This harsh morality tale presents us with a world where irony takes on its darkest tinge and underlines the pathos of the main male character of the film. Christopher Cross, played by Edward G. Robinson, is depicted as a lonely man, tied to an unremittingly shrewish wife and an incredibly monotonous job as a bank cashier. At first, he seems a good-natured man resigned to an everyday life which is as dreary as can be and this is made visible by the way Cross interacts submissively both at work with his boss and at home with his wife Adele (Rosalind Ivan). Nonetheless, the viewer begins with a fellow-feeling for the main character but ends up having little compassion towards the end of the film, at least as far as his actions are concerned. Soft-spoken, with a fragile demeanour and incapable of distrust, Cross looks wretched at times and ends in a totally deplorable state of distress and misfortune. 80 Scarlet Street, Woman in the Window and Secret Beyond the Door. 273
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Joaquim da Silva Universidade de Av
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To Antonio, who made this possible.
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Acknowledgements This long journey
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Finally, I owe a huge debt of grati
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keywords abstract Film Noir, genre,
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2 Social and Political Influences o
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2.4 Joseph H. Lewis................
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Figure 42. Force of Evil ..........
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I. Introduction: Paving the Way for
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term that the film industry itself
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about which films themselves consti
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also, in the films’ fundamental n
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American films after the Nazi occup
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we also find a disruption of the wo
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oth in these French productions of
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Hollywood feature films but it did
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throughout this work); and c) to di
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odies, or as killers and crooks, bu
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these films was to confer on them a
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writer, director, producer, and art
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cinema does not have the power of
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Before working on The Dark Mirror,
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y taking it “from the outside.”
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and many, if not most, films would
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1.1.1 Dashiell Hammett In 1929, Das
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tough appearance, by their occupati
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Apart from “The Continental Op”
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unsettling when for example shootin
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1.1.2 Raymond Chandler Raymond Chan
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Figure 4. The Big Sleep the chaotic
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eleased to the big screen by MGM wi
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most fastidious visions of London i
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hometowns and move into bigger citi
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Double Indemnity started the trend
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has happened, but, as if hypnotized
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destructive, or used by stronger wo
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Tomorrow Goodbye (1950) into a noir
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Home (1937) - were two living proof
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which collapses the distinction bet
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Figure 10. Deadline at Dawn Alex’
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1.1.6 William Riley Burnett Another
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Figure 11. High Sierra The Asphalt
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1.1.7 Conclusions What made the det
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fiction managed to provide for a de
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escalation in illegal drinking plac
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Ben Hecht story and despite being p
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Mercy! Is this the end of Rico?”
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The third originating gangster movi
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part of the recurrent patterns of v
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protagonist of Edgar Ulmer’s Deto
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exemplify in Part III (“Space and
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1.3 The Gothic Romance 87 And trave
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titlecard when the film opens alert
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In Rebecca the beautiful, desirable
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forties. Thematically, the represen
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To complicate this matter further,
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trampled under by war and revolutio
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he says, when Expressionism ended,
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These early Expressionist films, wi
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student, Balduin (Paul Wegener hims
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(Tragedy of the Street, 1927, aka W
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plots with calculating precision. G
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perverted and neurotic sex murderer
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1.5 French Poetic Realism Poetic Re
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(Michèle Morgan), whose godfather
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strikingly atmospheric view of the
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Jean Paulhan, editor of La Nouvelle
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Julien Duvivier’s Pépé Le Moko
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the combination of lighting effects
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peculiar expressionistic lighting a
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Figure 28. Son of Frankenstein This
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Figure 29. Murders in the Rue Morgu
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alienation mixed with nuanced perfo
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2 Social and Political Influences o
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Liberal reforms soon became a spuri
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Polonsky, Jules Dassin, and Edward
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which are themselves historical eve
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Production Code Administration. Thi
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In this particular case, one can se
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Neff: Will you be here too? Phyllis
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against any possible theft of groce
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2.3 Postwar Readjustment If the moo
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In this group of films, the bleak a
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explain, these noir heroes of the f
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(Gilda, White Heat, Scarlet Street,
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seething excitations” and adds th
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Romanticism present at the very hea
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to persist and overcome difficultie
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III. Noir Thematics 1 Essential Ele
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its modernist sensibility, enabled
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Wyatt), cooks breakfast, domestic r
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structures of constituted authority
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1.2 Space and the Noir City Film no
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other people and developing a calcu
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I am the city. Hub and heart of Ame
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1.3 Trouble With Girls: The Femme F
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intelligent and powerful, if destru
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significant discussion of film noir
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Nevertheless, the message is quite
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Another example of the evolution of
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deceiving women. Like many of their
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Either as a femme fatale or an homm
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1.5 Dazed and Confused: The Voiceov
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an impersonal “you” giving the
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of war veterans who, unfolding thei
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1.6 Noir Atmospherics: Cinematograp
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John Alton’s highly stylised phot
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Figure 41. Stranger on the Third Fl
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indoctrination in the movie in the
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in the popular imagination. While t
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1.7 Sounds of the City: Jazz Soundt
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music, combines with images of patr
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Figure 45. Out of the Past Non-dieg
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ealm of near-explicit sexual metaph
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the two, affirming that “Jazz is
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City, Paramount’s Union Station a
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In my analysis of The Big Combo in
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Consequently, in the fifties, we st
Page 237 and 238: 2 Noir and the Film Auteur 2.1 Aute
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Page 241 and 242: point out the fact that it is only
Page 243 and 244: elationship to the way a director t
Page 245 and 246: 2.1.1 Billy Wilder Billy Wilder pla
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Page 249 and 250: Figure 54. Sunset Boulevard Wilder
Page 251 and 252: Figure 55. Ace in the Hole All of B
Page 253 and 254: 2.1.2 Orson Welles He may have only
Page 255 and 256: For example, in the scene above (fi
Page 257 and 258: As Leo Braudy in The World in a Fra
Page 259 and 260: slanting compositions, and brillian
Page 261 and 262: 2.1.3 Otto Preminger Austrian film
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Page 265 and 266: Figure 61. Where the Sidewalk Ends
Page 267 and 268: project my viewpoint on the audienc
Page 269 and 270: postulated as the “doctrine of si
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Page 273 and 274: I am at the barber's, and a copy of
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Page 277 and 278: interpretant” (Stam 1992:6). Here
Page 279 and 280: The notion of “text” as a disco
Page 281 and 282: only agree that these disciplines s
Page 283 and 284: 2 The Universe of Motifs and Symbol
Page 285 and 286: Andrew Sarris once wrote that “If
Page 287: exception to this rule, his movies
Page 291 and 292: Figure 66. Double Indemnity In the
Page 293 and 294: Figure 67. Scarlet Street The symbo
Page 295 and 296: contorted Expressionistic grimace,
Page 297 and 298: Figure 70. Metropolis The clock mot
Page 299 and 300: Figure 71. Strangers on a Train The
Page 301 and 302: “When I was young I wanted to be
Page 303 and 304: themselves in the projection of inn
Page 305 and 306: woman in the portrait throughout I
Page 307 and 308: scenes as the attachment is purely
Page 309 and 310: (namely The Spiral Staircase and Ou
Page 311 and 312: Chris meets by accident, is a hellc
Page 313 and 314: 2.1.1.4 Conclusion All in all, ther
Page 315 and 316: Question: Scarlet Street had the sa
Page 317 and 318: an accepted and well-known screenwr
Page 319 and 320: Siodmak’s next two films for Univ
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Page 323 and 324: 2.2.1 The Spiral Staircase (1946) a
Page 325 and 326: here increased by the unsteady blac
Page 327 and 328: Figure 83. The Spiral Staircase Thi
Page 329 and 330: Warren, making either of them the p
Page 331 and 332: 2.2.1.2 The “Optical Unconscious
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Page 335 and 336: ordering” - appears to match this
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Figure 87. The Spiral Staircase Bas
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While Cross implicitly acknowledges
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Figure 89. Affair in Trinidad Other
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However, much of this iconography t
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long, wooden staircase while trying
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Figure 93. The Spiral Staircase Fig
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of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The B
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almost part of a game, emphasising
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2.3 Jacques Tourneur Born in Paris
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a laughing audience), and broken la
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violent mishaps could have led to h
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writers like Dashiell Hammett (who,
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Chuck Tatum, a cynical, frustrated
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on, Ann, who represents his hope fo
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This kind of temporal manipulation
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ought forward by the characters of
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found Kathie: “I was glad it was
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Figure 102. Out of the Past In this
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Figure 104. The Lady from Shanghai
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Jeff: Give him time. Kathie: You ar
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Figure 106. Out of the Past The sce
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Gun Crazy, a barrage of police gunf
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2.4 Joseph H. Lewis Considered as a
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untold storied of ordinary men and
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through windows, to provide the ind
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2.4.1 The Big Combo (1955) and the
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of most noir films including The Bi
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2.4.1.1 “First is First and Secon
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In The Big Combo the unconscious tr
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It is not only in terms of narrativ
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Although the idea is not to go into
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Figure 113. Scarlet Street Neff’s
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2.4.1.2 The Big Combo and Generic T
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and knowing they are both surrounde
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As the noir movement entered the la
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V. Conclusions: 1 Genre Revisited T
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on social aspects through a dramati
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Buscombe is right: if we take a gen
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constructions that make it difficul
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Such factors have been scrutinised
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Thematically, noir films as a group
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While enforcement of the Production
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are “as often nihilistic, cynical
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which is normally not associated wi
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morality brought about by these noi
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It is within this cinematic and cri
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____________ (1994). The Semiotic C
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____________ (1992b). Farewell, My
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E Easthope, Antony (1993). Contempo
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Greenberg, Joel & Higham, Charles (
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James, David E. (2005). The Most Ty
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Malkiewicz, Kris (1986). Film Light
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N Naremore, James (1978). The Magic
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Polan, Dana (1986). Power and Paran
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____________ (2006). Ava Gardner:
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Sullivan, Ellie (1986). Jacques Lac
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Wilson, Edmund (1962). Classics and
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Appendix I: Annotated Filmography T
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Beware, My Lovely RKO 1952. Prod: C
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Christmas Holiday Univ 1944. Prod:
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Dark Corner, The Fox 1946. Prod: Fr
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Framed Col 1947. Prod: Jules Schern
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House on 92 nd Street, The Fox 1945
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Killing, The UA 1956. Prod: James B
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Mildred Pierce WB 1945. Prod: Jerry
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One Way Street Univ 1950. Prod: Leo
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Repeat Performance EL 1947. Prod: A
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Stranger, The RKO 1946. Prod: S.P.
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Unsuspected, The WB 1947. Prod: Cha
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B) Other Relevant Filmography The f
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Last Laugh, The ScreenSound 1924. P
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Appendix II The Motion Picture P
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VIII. Religion 1. No film or episod
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B. By reason of the mobility of fil
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Reasons Underlying the Particular A
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VIII. Religion The reason why minis
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146, 152, 186, 192, 229, 250, 298,
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high-contrast, 11, 46, 172 Highway
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350, 352, 353, 354, 356, 357, 359,
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Walsh, Raoul, 56, 57, 66, 73, 223,
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