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

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Figure 107. Out of the Past 366
2.4 Joseph H. Lewis Considered as an American B-movie director, Joseph H. Lewis is best known for his work in film noir from the late forties and the fifties and the way he made notable use of location photography. His creative use of props and of shooting from odd perspectives, and his use of plots and characters with intricate or obscured strategies enhanced their strange power but no less importantly enabled him to face the rather difficult budgetary limitations of B-pictures. His reputation rests on two major contributions to the film noir canon: Gun Crazy, a transgressive and boundary-breaching of l’amour fou (or mad love, the epitome so often associated with couples on the run) and The Big Combo, a striking chiaroscuro film which will be analysed next. As for Gun Crazy, it is perhaps the most acclaimed noir production directed by Joseph H. Lewis. To recapitulate, this 1950 film stars Peggy Cummins and John Dall (as Annie Laurie Starr and Bart Tare, respectively) in a story about the crimespree of a gun-toting husband and wife, forerunners of the infamous film duo, Bonnie and Clyde. This dark romance about numerous stick-ups, a dominant femme fatale, an erotic love and gun-obsession is also remarkable for its use of location photography. This is a low-budget film with scenes of robberies all across the country filmed largely from the backseat of the holdup getaway car. This film is one of a trio of noir movies that also have this component of amour fou, with the flight of a fugitive pair of lovers running from the law: Fritz Lang’s You Only Live Once (1937) with Henry Fonda and Sylvia Sidney and Nicholas Ray’s They Live by Night (1948) with Farley Granger and Cathy O’Donnell. These films are generally seen as the forerunners to Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967) or the prototype for the “couple on the run” sub-genre. 98 However, in all of these three noir productions the main protagonists are either unfairly convicted of a crime (or murder, as is the case for Bowie (Farley Granger) in They Live by Night) or are just tempted to criminality by some deadly female, as in the case of Annie Laurie Starr in Gun Crazy. In any case, the compulsive 98 See chapter 1.2 “The Gangster Film” (p. 72). 367
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Joaquim da Silva Universidade de Av
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To Antonio, who made this possible.
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Acknowledgements This long journey
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Finally, I owe a huge debt of grati
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keywords abstract Film Noir, genre,
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2 Social and Political Influences o
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2.4 Joseph H. Lewis................
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Figure 42. Force of Evil ..........
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I. Introduction: Paving the Way for
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term that the film industry itself
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about which films themselves consti
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also, in the films’ fundamental n
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American films after the Nazi occup
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we also find a disruption of the wo
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oth in these French productions of
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Hollywood feature films but it did
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throughout this work); and c) to di
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odies, or as killers and crooks, bu
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these films was to confer on them a
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writer, director, producer, and art
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cinema does not have the power of
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Before working on The Dark Mirror,
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y taking it “from the outside.”
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and many, if not most, films would
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1.1.1 Dashiell Hammett In 1929, Das
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tough appearance, by their occupati
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Apart from “The Continental Op”
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unsettling when for example shootin
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1.1.2 Raymond Chandler Raymond Chan
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Figure 4. The Big Sleep the chaotic
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eleased to the big screen by MGM wi
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most fastidious visions of London i
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hometowns and move into bigger citi
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Double Indemnity started the trend
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has happened, but, as if hypnotized
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destructive, or used by stronger wo
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Tomorrow Goodbye (1950) into a noir
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Home (1937) - were two living proof
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which collapses the distinction bet
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Figure 10. Deadline at Dawn Alex’
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1.1.6 William Riley Burnett Another
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Figure 11. High Sierra The Asphalt
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1.1.7 Conclusions What made the det
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fiction managed to provide for a de
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escalation in illegal drinking plac
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Ben Hecht story and despite being p
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Mercy! Is this the end of Rico?”
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The third originating gangster movi
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part of the recurrent patterns of v
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protagonist of Edgar Ulmer’s Deto
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exemplify in Part III (“Space and
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1.3 The Gothic Romance 87 And trave
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titlecard when the film opens alert
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In Rebecca the beautiful, desirable
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forties. Thematically, the represen
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To complicate this matter further,
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trampled under by war and revolutio
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he says, when Expressionism ended,
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These early Expressionist films, wi
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student, Balduin (Paul Wegener hims
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(Tragedy of the Street, 1927, aka W
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plots with calculating precision. G
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perverted and neurotic sex murderer
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1.5 French Poetic Realism Poetic Re
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(Michèle Morgan), whose godfather
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strikingly atmospheric view of the
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Jean Paulhan, editor of La Nouvelle
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Julien Duvivier’s Pépé Le Moko
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the combination of lighting effects
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peculiar expressionistic lighting a
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Figure 28. Son of Frankenstein This
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Figure 29. Murders in the Rue Morgu
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alienation mixed with nuanced perfo
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2 Social and Political Influences o
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Liberal reforms soon became a spuri
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Polonsky, Jules Dassin, and Edward
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which are themselves historical eve
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Production Code Administration. Thi
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In this particular case, one can se
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Neff: Will you be here too? Phyllis
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against any possible theft of groce
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2.3 Postwar Readjustment If the moo
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In this group of films, the bleak a
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explain, these noir heroes of the f
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(Gilda, White Heat, Scarlet Street,
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seething excitations” and adds th
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Romanticism present at the very hea
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to persist and overcome difficultie
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III. Noir Thematics 1 Essential Ele
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its modernist sensibility, enabled
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Wyatt), cooks breakfast, domestic r
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structures of constituted authority
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1.2 Space and the Noir City Film no
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other people and developing a calcu
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I am the city. Hub and heart of Ame
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1.3 Trouble With Girls: The Femme F
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intelligent and powerful, if destru
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significant discussion of film noir
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Nevertheless, the message is quite
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Another example of the evolution of
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deceiving women. Like many of their
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Either as a femme fatale or an homm
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1.5 Dazed and Confused: The Voiceov
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an impersonal “you” giving the
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of war veterans who, unfolding thei
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1.6 Noir Atmospherics: Cinematograp
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John Alton’s highly stylised phot
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Figure 41. Stranger on the Third Fl
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indoctrination in the movie in the
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in the popular imagination. While t
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1.7 Sounds of the City: Jazz Soundt
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music, combines with images of patr
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Figure 45. Out of the Past Non-dieg
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ealm of near-explicit sexual metaph
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the two, affirming that “Jazz is
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City, Paramount’s Union Station a
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In my analysis of The Big Combo in
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Consequently, in the fifties, we st
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2 Noir and the Film Auteur 2.1 Aute
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noticeably the case, for example, w
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point out the fact that it is only
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elationship to the way a director t
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2.1.1 Billy Wilder Billy Wilder pla
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performance is full of understated
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Figure 54. Sunset Boulevard Wilder
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Figure 55. Ace in the Hole All of B
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2.1.2 Orson Welles He may have only
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For example, in the scene above (fi
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As Leo Braudy in The World in a Fra
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slanting compositions, and brillian
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2.1.3 Otto Preminger Austrian film
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plans, June still shows her love fo
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Figure 61. Where the Sidewalk Ends
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project my viewpoint on the audienc
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postulated as the “doctrine of si
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pouvait espérer sortir de la déno
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I am at the barber's, and a copy of
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certain community, our subjective r
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interpretant” (Stam 1992:6). Here
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The notion of “text” as a disco
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only agree that these disciplines s
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2 The Universe of Motifs and Symbol
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Andrew Sarris once wrote that “If
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exception to this rule, his movies
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independent production companies in
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Figure 66. Double Indemnity In the
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Figure 67. Scarlet Street The symbo
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contorted Expressionistic grimace,
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Figure 70. Metropolis The clock mot
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Figure 71. Strangers on a Train The
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“When I was young I wanted to be
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themselves in the projection of inn
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woman in the portrait throughout I
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scenes as the attachment is purely
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(namely The Spiral Staircase and Ou
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Chris meets by accident, is a hellc
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2.1.1.4 Conclusion All in all, ther
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Question: Scarlet Street had the sa
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an accepted and well-known screenwr
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Siodmak’s next two films for Univ
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money from Dundee. A more harrowing
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2.2.1 The Spiral Staircase (1946) a
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here increased by the unsteady blac
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Figure 83. The Spiral Staircase Thi
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Warren, making either of them the p
Page 331 and 332: 2.2.1.2 The “Optical Unconscious
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Page 339 and 340: Figure 87. The Spiral Staircase Bas
Page 341 and 342: While Cross implicitly acknowledges
Page 343 and 344: Figure 89. Affair in Trinidad Other
Page 345 and 346: However, much of this iconography t
Page 347 and 348: long, wooden staircase while trying
Page 349 and 350: Figure 93. The Spiral Staircase Fig
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Page 355 and 356: 2.3 Jacques Tourneur Born in Paris
Page 357 and 358: a laughing audience), and broken la
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Page 361 and 362: writers like Dashiell Hammett (who,
Page 363 and 364: Chuck Tatum, a cynical, frustrated
Page 365 and 366: on, Ann, who represents his hope fo
Page 367 and 368: This kind of temporal manipulation
Page 369 and 370: ought forward by the characters of
Page 371 and 372: found Kathie: “I was glad it was
Page 373 and 374: Figure 102. Out of the Past In this
Page 375 and 376: Figure 104. The Lady from Shanghai
Page 377 and 378: Jeff: Give him time. Kathie: You ar
Page 379 and 380: Figure 106. Out of the Past The sce
Page 381: Gun Crazy, a barrage of police gunf
Page 385 and 386: untold storied of ordinary men and
Page 387 and 388: through windows, to provide the ind
Page 389 and 390: 2.4.1 The Big Combo (1955) and the
Page 391 and 392: of most noir films including The Bi
Page 393 and 394: 2.4.1.1 “First is First and Secon
Page 395 and 396: In The Big Combo the unconscious tr
Page 397 and 398: It is not only in terms of narrativ
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Page 401 and 402: Figure 113. Scarlet Street Neff’s
Page 403 and 404: 2.4.1.2 The Big Combo and Generic T
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Page 407 and 408: As the noir movement entered the la
Page 409 and 410: V. Conclusions: 1 Genre Revisited T
Page 411 and 412: on social aspects through a dramati
Page 413 and 414: Buscombe is right: if we take a gen
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Page 417 and 418: Such factors have been scrutinised
Page 419 and 420: Thematically, noir films as a group
Page 421 and 422: While enforcement of the Production
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Page 429 and 430: It is within this cinematic and cri
Page 431 and 432: ____________ (1994). The Semiotic C
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____________ (1992b). Farewell, My
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E Easthope, Antony (1993). Contempo
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Greenberg, Joel & Higham, Charles (
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James, David E. (2005). The Most Ty
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Malkiewicz, Kris (1986). Film Light
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N Naremore, James (1978). The Magic
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Polan, Dana (1986). Power and Paran
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____________ (2006). Ava Gardner:
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Sullivan, Ellie (1986). Jacques Lac
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Wilson, Edmund (1962). Classics and
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Appendix I: Annotated Filmography T
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Beware, My Lovely RKO 1952. Prod: C
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Christmas Holiday Univ 1944. Prod:
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Dark Corner, The Fox 1946. Prod: Fr
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Framed Col 1947. Prod: Jules Schern
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House on 92 nd Street, The Fox 1945
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Killing, The UA 1956. Prod: James B
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Mildred Pierce WB 1945. Prod: Jerry
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One Way Street Univ 1950. Prod: Leo
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Repeat Performance EL 1947. Prod: A
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Stranger, The RKO 1946. Prod: S.P.
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Unsuspected, The WB 1947. Prod: Cha
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B) Other Relevant Filmography The f
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Last Laugh, The ScreenSound 1924. P
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Appendix II The Motion Picture P
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VIII. Religion 1. No film or episod
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B. By reason of the mobility of fil
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Reasons Underlying the Particular A
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VIII. Religion The reason why minis
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146, 152, 186, 192, 229, 250, 298,
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high-contrast, 11, 46, 172 Highway
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350, 352, 353, 354, 356, 357, 359,
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Walsh, Raoul, 56, 57, 66, 73, 223,
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