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

Adaptations of the Brontë sisters’ novels (1939-45) were distant antecedents for the
emergence of Gothic noir. The vogue for such material was at its height during the forties
and generated a surprisingly large number of films. Many of these films will be referred to
in connection with Robert Siodmak’s The Spiral Staircase. I intend to show that the
material present in these Gothic novels and the films made from them blur the boundary
between film noir and horror cinema. Indeed, when it comes to film noir we tend to regard
highly the contribution of the hard-boiled tradition, but as I have discussed before, the
Gothic legacy is indisputable and needs to be taken into account as well. Yet, the major
distinction between film noir and Gothic noir lies in the gender of the protagonist: while
the hard-boiled tradition was dominated by the male-oriented crime thriller, the Gothic
noirs privileged the role of imperilled victim-heroines, and are thus often referred to as the
“Female Gothic” films. After all, as noted by Andrew Spicer:
Hollywood drew extensively on this Gothic tradition in the 1940s as a branch of
the ‘woman’s film’, aimed at the numerically dominant female audience and
displaying an ambivalent attitude towards the Victorian period. The first Gothic
noir was Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940). (Spicer 2002:11)
As this suggests, it will be possible to reinforce how difficult genre separation can
be, as this group of films – film noir and Gothic noir - sharing similar styles and contexts
of production, are often judged to be two distinctive film categories. This debate also
occurs in literary fields where there still seems to be a generic conflict within the Gothic
novel (a novel of “terror” or a novel of “horror”?, as Robert Hume (1969:283) had
distinguished). With The Spiral Staircase I want to endorse what Raymond Durgnat
maintains about film noir that it “describes not genres but dominant cycles and motifs, but
in many, if not most, films would come under two headings, since interbreeding is intrinsic
to motif processes” (Durgnat 1970:51).
The Spiral Staircase is one of Siodmak’s most richly styled works, so it is proposed
to explore the set of devices used here by its director. In order to amplify the suspense and
sense of premonition, Helen Capel (Dorothy McGuire) is often watched only through the
menacing eyes of her stalker. I will then discuss the works of Michael Powell’s
psychological thriller Peeping Tom (1960) and John Carpenter’s horror film Halloween
(1978), as they are both usually credited with establishing the identification between the
camera, the spectator and murderous instincts. But Siodmak does it with masterly effect,
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