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

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From the first thirty minutes of the film, Fritz Lang gives the viewer every reason to understand why a decent respectable man suddenly abandons his ideals, starts stealing to maintain his delusional dependence on Kitty, and hits rock bottom at the conclusion of the film. Once again, the parallelism with Renoir’s La Chienne is obvious. Using repeated imagery of mirrors and reflections 84 and portraits, Lang visually accentuates the selfentrapping model of duplicity and deceitfulness characteristic to exploitive human relationships. The countless mirrors that appear, especially inside the apartment, displaying reflections of Kitty, are crucial symbolic elements. They appear throughout the film apparently randomly but are in fact positioned so that the viewer can gradually understand Kitty’s two-faced nature. 85 In part, this leads me to the point of Plato’s metaphor (the allegory of the cave) which he used to contrast the common understanding of knowledge, truth, and reality with what seemed an obvious “un-reality”, the cinematic projection of images. This powerful symbol in the film manages to expose plainly what is before us, forcing us to interpret and evaluate what we see. Whereas Kitty uses them as a means to emphasise her vanity and superficiality, for us these meta-projections of images within images stand for distortions of the true ugliness of the character. Very often we see Kitty gazing at her own reflections in a Narcissus-like manner enjoying what she sees. Just like the object in the director’s viewfinder, the mirrors delimit excerpts from a diversity of pictures either through their outlines or through their frames. Depending on their position (as with the camera), a mirror can tilt these frames or put them at a disturbing angle. Similarly, the camerawork of Fritz Lang provides a noir mise-en-abyme story in The Woman in the Window, about the virtual dreamlike world and the imprisoned Id of a criminal psychology professor, an ordinary middle-aged man, invited by a young, goodlooking woman to go to her apartment to see some drawings. The frame below (fig. 76) is chosen to illustrate Alice Reed (Joan Bennett) with a nude female torso ironically being reflected in the mirror behind her, as a symbol of professor Wanley’s forbidden desire. I will come back to this issue of mirrors and reflections in my analysis of subsequent films 84 A good example of a mirror reflection is the image of despair reflected on a mirrored wardrobe whilst Chris is on his knees in their bedroom rummaging around in search of the insurance money from Adele’s first husband’s death which she has hidden some place (in a replica scene of Renoir’s Adele (Magdeleine Bérubet)). 85 Or the double-faced nature of Chris Cross for that matter: in the room scene above (fig. 67), Chris’s leaning body holding the ice-pick to kill Kitty is ingeniously reflected in the mirror of the wardrobe, emphasising thus the other side of his personality. 292
(namely The Spiral Staircase and Out of the Past), but, on the whole, I consider that this film has more mirror shots than any other noir production and they certainly stand as Fritz Lang’s trademark visual trope, that is, to have one person filmed from two dissimilar perspectives. Figure 76. The Woman in the Window In Scarlet Street Alexander Golitzen (a renowned art director and production designer) recreated Jean Renoir’s Montmartre as New York’s Greenwich Village, a seedy Bohemia, where Cross bought a loft for Kitty and for him to express his artistic aspirations (and his emotional release). However, the apartment is soon metamorphosed into a place where hideous stratagems are elaborated between Kitty and Johnny, with Chris stuck between them (reinforcing the idea of a triangular relationship). This space will be invaded by ludicrous subterfuges coming from all characters; by love declarations (it is here that we hear Chris telling Kitty “I think of you all the time. All I want is to see you, be near you”) the spectator gets the first hints of Chris’s Machiavellian plans: “If I had no wife… if something would happen to her that would make me free, would you marry me?” At his job, Chris pretends to be working later than usual and for the first time we see him embezzling company funds (this time he does not hold back) to pay for his 293
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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
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2 Noir and the Film Auteur 2.1 Aute
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noticeably the case, for example, w
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point out the fact that it is only
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elationship to the way a director t
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2.1.1 Billy Wilder Billy Wilder pla
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performance is full of understated
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Figure 54. Sunset Boulevard Wilder
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Figure 55. Ace in the Hole All of B
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2.1.2 Orson Welles He may have only
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For example, in the scene above (fi
Page 257 and 258: As Leo Braudy in The World in a Fra
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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 and 288: exception to this rule, his movies
Page 289 and 290: independent production companies in
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
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Page 307: scenes as the attachment is purely
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
Page 333 and 334: camera is expressive, as it informs
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Page 337 and 338: eyewitness, but at the same time, a
Page 339 and 340: Figure 87. The Spiral Staircase Bas
Page 341 and 342: While Cross implicitly acknowledges
Page 343 and 344: Figure 89. Affair in Trinidad Other
Page 345 and 346: However, much of this iconography t
Page 347 and 348: long, wooden staircase while trying
Page 349 and 350: Figure 93. The Spiral Staircase Fig
Page 351 and 352: of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The B
Page 353 and 354: almost part of a game, emphasising
Page 355 and 356: 2.3 Jacques Tourneur Born in Paris
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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
Page 435 and 436:
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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