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

The existential angst that thoroughly influenced the noir universe after WWII was
also present in the period genre or the particular narrative situations found in the past. In
films such as The Spiral Staircase the directors, as I said above, manage to create an aura
of chaos, complicated by a loss of perception and sense of meaninglessness, that rival film
noir but in not such a focussed form. These period melodramas are permeated (and maybe
also influenced themselves) by the concurrent appearance of film noir. Therefore, popular
noir films, such as Shadow of a Doubt or Sorry, Wrong Number, though diverging
somewhat in plot and resolution, also convey the narrative mood of the so-called women’s
film. The story of the latter, for example, also takes place inside a house with a huge spiral
staircase to enhance Leona’s (Barbara Stanwyck) self-imprisonment (believing herself to
be helpless, she watches the murder’s shadow creep up the stairs) and her consequent
hysteria.
In short, Gothic melodrama produced uniquely feminine cinematic dramas of
suspicion and distrust, based on the recurrent theme of what can be described as the “Don’t
trust your husband” cycle of films of the forties. It started with Hitchcock’s films, namely
Rebecca, Suspicion (1941) and Shadow of a Doubt and continued with conventions of the
noir-related period films such as Gaslight in 1944, and Notorious and The Spiral Staircase,
both in 1946. These films exploit certain aspects of film noir, notably in terms of visual
iconography and narrative structure: the hints of sexual aberration, the intrusions of a
mysterious past, and the isolation and the life of a secluded woman, endangered by an
older, disturbed man, frequently her husband. And, in all of them, the house (usually a
symbol of protection in Hollywood movies), becomes a trap of terror, the ultimate
entrapment of the heroine in the old mansion.
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