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

almost part of a game, emphasising the character’s deception, all cunningly orchestrated by
her own husband to make his wife believe she is losing her sanity.
The film concentrates on processes of psychological torture in a relationship where
a husband isolates his wife, leading her to have a nervous breakdown and then menacing
her with threats of being interned in an asylum. Charles Boyer as the intimidating husband
is like many similar figures in the noir world, possessed of a strange, frightening quality
typical of the noir vision. While noir productions were male-oriented but often with
menacing male characters too, films of the forties were often concerned about women’s
madness and the way they were consequently treated and may be interpreted as an analysis
of the crisis of gender roles resulting from rapid historical changes (namely as a result of
the war and the massive number of women entering the workforce earlier in the decade).
The earliest period films in the noir style – The Lodger, Bluebeard, Gaslight – were
not greatly concerned with the generalised decay and corruption depicted in typical
contemporary film noir. Rather these films concentrated on exploiting the mental conflicts
and disturbances that afflicted weak personalities separated off from the rest of the society.
The nature of the disturbances displayed by actors like Cregar, Boyer, and Carradine
appeared to be self-contained, offering unmotivated villainy. The manner in which
Carradine’s “Bluebeard” is drawn helplessly towards murders; the ritualised washing of
the lodger’s blood-stained hands in the Thames; Boyer’s monomaniacal persecutions of his
wife – all are idealisations of evil. Many period films reflect an aura of ever-present evil,
balanced by narrative retribution and the restoration of order. The split between good and
evil is well defined, creating a moral stability that many noir films work against.
An RKO production of an adaptation of Ethel Lina White’s novel called Some Must
Watch - White was a rival of Agatha Christie as a creator of thrillers, most notably of The
Lady Vanishes (1938) - The Spiral Staircase goes well beyond the “realism” of the noir
world. Some of the ambience of film noir is present, but ultimately the nightmarish plot
confers a kind of salvation on Helen. The same happens, as seen above, with Night of the
Hunter because Harry Powell is too concrete a force of evil. In this latter case, it is a period
film too precise and absolute in its portrait of evil, yet preserving throughout a strong
moral framework. The difference between good and evil is so highly contrasted in Powell
(for a start, the words “love” and “hate” are tattooed on his knuckles) that this demented
evangelist becomes evil personified and not much more.
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