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

Staircases in noirs, for that matter, appear most of the time as grand stairs, denoting
a high point, with steps facilitating theatrical entrances and exits: in the case of Double
Indemnity, the femme fatale appears suddenly, like a vision of loveliness, first on the
landing and then on the steps, looking down on the suddenly stupefied man, forcing him to
crane his neck forward, to put her on a pedestal (fig. 90). In fig. 89 above, Hayworth
sensuously runs her elegant fingers along the handrail, just like Stanwyck as she comes
down the stairs in Double Indemnity. Whereas in Sunset Boulevard, the staircase through
which Norma Desmond descends, in imperious silence, provides the setting for a grand
entrance (and simultaneously the frustration at not having an audience at the bottom), and
so is also a parody of all fake grand entrances (fig. 91). The staircase in Vandamm’s house
in North by Northwest (1959) becomes itself a trap; or, in Guy Haines’s secret ascent of the
staircase in the Bruno Anthony’s household in Strangers on a Train, the whole scene
invokes memories of Bruno’s past. Ascents and descents of stairs are also climactic in
Notorious (1946).
Figure 90. Double Indemnity Figure 91. Sunset Boulevard
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