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

1966:85). Helen relates only to the image being reflected and the film expresses a
considerable deviation between two readings of that image (one male, the other female).
Thus, the narcissism of the imaginary relation consists in its twofold nature, and
consequently a sign of confrontation in the triangular structure of the symbolic. Hence too
Lacan’s association of aggressivity with narcissism, primary identification, and the
imaginary.
Many noir films allude to the symbology of the staircase, both as a means of
entrapment or as an enhancement of the feeling of vertiginous descent, as is the case of
Chris Emery (Rita Hayworth) in Affair in Trinidad (1952) in the figure below (fig. 89).
The staircase she descends is presented in a pattern of crosscut lines, with shadows, striped
ropes, and other décorative elements. To a great extent, it is similar to a spider web, with
Hayworth, the archetypal spider woman, rising from the centre, as Silver and Ursini point
out. She throws an ill-omened “shadow on the wall to her right, a distorted silhouette
which further enhances the feeling of threat and doom”. Her pose is majestic “as she places
her left hand on the handrail and throws her bare shoulders back, as if consciously waiting”
(Silver & Ursini 1996:96) for the pose to be fixed in photograph or painting. Her long
white scarf waves down the stairs in front of her like a bride. The background décor is also
extremely well-selected to underscore this ambiguity: the wall painting shows intertwined
figures and the primitive dancing woman that forms the base of the lamp on the telephone
table underscore and unify the topics of “eroticism and feminine control”.
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