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

found Kathie: “I was glad it was and I suddenly knew why.” From their very first
encounter, they begin a wilful process of forgetfulness about each other’s past:
Kathie: You know, you’re a curious man.
Jeff: You’re gonna make every guy you meet a little bit curious.
Kathie: That’s not what I mean. You don’t ask questions. You don’t even ask me what my
name is.
Jeff: All right, what’s your name?
Kathie: Kathie.
Jeff: I like it.
Kathie: Or where I come from?
Jeff: I’m thinkin’ about where we’re going.
Kathie: Don’t you like it in here?
Jeff: I’m just not ready to settle down.
Kathie: Shall I take you somewhere else?
Jeff: You’re going to find it very easy to take me anywhere.
That night they decide to leave the bar and go and play the game of roulette. The
scene is rather gripping as we watch Kathie laying down huge sums of money on each spin
of the wheel. Metaphorically, the roulette wheel is a powerful signifier. The risk and the
chance factor that is associated with the game are then transposed to the characters’ lives in
the film. The abandonment of prudence and self-control expressed through the imagery of
such metaphors is a feature of various noirs, such as The Big Sleep, a film that focuses on
the world of illegal gaming which Philip Marlowe investigates and which insists on the
dark imagery of risk-taking (“like the diamonds on a roulette layouts”). The same is true in
the noir production The Shanghai Gesture by Josef von Sternberg. Poppy (Gene Tierney)
initially reacts to Mother Gin Sling’s (Ona Munson) gambling house with an open and
natural disdain, “What a witches’ Sabbath (…) so incredibly evil. I didn’t think such a
place existed except in my own imagination – like a half-remembered dream. Anything
could happen here at any moment.”, or additionally with the gaming context in Gilda’s
Buenos Aires. Indeed, the casino at the jazz clubs and the roulette game are a key marker
of noir fatalism. As a critical game of chance, the roulette that Kathie plays can be
regarded as a significant polysemic image.
In the theorisation of the image Roland Barthes argues that the image can be shared
with other signs, including linguistic signs as it has the property of being open to multiple
significations, thus making it characterised by polysemy. In this particular scene, in which
Kathie tries her luck, the image of the spinning roulette wheel suggests another “reading”
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