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

unexplored other side” (Sultanik 1986:201). Finally, in both films the performance of Joan
Bennett is perhaps the most expressive and entrancing narrative signifier as she manages to
draw from various personae (a gamine, a prostitute, a damsel in distress) to make an
impression and to draw Robinson into an infatuation with her.
Figure 78. The Woman in the Window
Few other directors of that period would have conceived of, and even fewer got
away with, this Langian pairing of sadomasochistic violence with illicit desire. The
Production Code office specifically forbad this kind of treatment of the topic. Movies like
Double Indemnity and Scarlet Street were able to artfully circumvent most of the rules put
forward by the Production Code. In fact, I strongly believe that these types of films led to
the Code’s demise. Unwelcome as the Code was, however, it forced filmmakers to suggest
rather than state and consequently the meanings of crime movies were left more open to
potentially rich interpretation. This situation obviously led to a necessary ambiguity and
mode of indirection in all movies regulated by the Production Code. Noir was already
embracing the non-naturalistic through Expressionist and Poetic Realist influences, as I
explained in Part II, and the Production Code unintentionally abetted this. Fritz Lang, in an
interview he gave, commented on the effects of censorship on his film and how he
managed to turn it to advantage:
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