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

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Figure 108. My Name Is Julia Ross Using various noir conventions (namely, the exotic femme fatale or the corrupt villainy), A Lady without Passport (1950) was shot in a semi-documentary style without having the intricate ethos of true film noir of that period. Again the film draws on different stylistic elements and mixes elements of the exotic and tropical adventure with fascinating location footage in Cuba and Southern Florida (the Everglades region) which helps to supply an authentic touch. The final scenes of the film are perhaps the most impressive ones regarding camera movements. These circular camera movements (aerial shots in complete circles of plane / camera which recalls the scenes from Gun Crazy) are indeed quite rare in film history. So Dark the Night (1946) might remind us of some of the films by Fritz Lang, notably Scarlet Street. Under comparable budget constraints, Lewis this time tries to recreate a rural French village (with some scenes in Paris as well). His film is yet another endeavour in the noir style and it again emphasises his ability to permeate a pastoral setting with maudit elements. Lewis required cinematographer Burnett Guffey to apply an atypical visual style using a curious range of deep blacks, depth staging, and shooting 370
through windows, to provide the indispensable expressionistic touch. Myron Meisel accounts for this distinctive feature of the director’s style: Lewis also displays his penchant for objects in hard focus in the foreground while the action takes place farther back in the frame. The death of the girl’s mother is evoked through the metaphor of a dripping faucet and a steaming teapot, our view of them obscured by the clutter of various other kitchen objects. All of these visual devices converge in the stunningly designed climax, in which the complex motifs of framing, objects in the foreground, reprised bells on the sound track, deep focus, mirror images, and ratcheted light are orchestrated to the theme of realization. (Meisel 1975:110) Henri Cassin (Steven Geray), the renowned detective of the Paris Sûreté, falls in love with an innkeeper’s pretty, young daughter Nanette Michaud (Micheline Cheirel), while on an extended long due holiday (his first break after eleven years). One night, Nanette disappears during her engagement party only to turn up dead later. Cassin reckons that Leon (Paul Marion), her old boyfriend, is the suspect for her murder, but soon he is also found dead. The high pressures of his job and the dissatisfactory love affair, with all its implications of amour fou, are what has caused Cassin’s split personality, which kills when away from his rational mind. This is most evident in the amazing final scene: as Cassin lies dying of a bullet wound on the floor of the inn, he peers through the window (the consistent visual motif of this film) and sees himself as he appeared when he first arrived, as a seemingly unworried man. This image fuses with that of him as a disgraced killer, whereupon Henri smashes the window in a vain attempt to eradicate both of his “reflections”. Acknowledging his illness, perhaps for the first time, he exclaims: “Henri Cassin is no more. I have caught him and killed him.” Lewis’s visual style and his construction of unusual visual compositions seem to constitute his eccentric approach to his subjects. As seen, the mise-en-scène in his films highlights the physical (and often mental) entrapment of his characters, with, for instance, Nina Foch framed behind a barred window (fig. 108) in My Name Is Julia Ross; or Peggy Cummins and John Dall, at the rear of a claustrophobic diner with distorted walls that appear to be closing in on them. The mise-en-scène and lighting in fig. 109, for example, create a host of implications. One of the bars of the window is sharply reflected across Annie Laurie’s face, cutting it into two parts, underlining her split personality. Her facial expression confirms that she will not give up; it is her determination which (she believes) 371
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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
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2.2.1.2 The “Optical Unconscious
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camera is expressive, as it informs
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Page 337 and 338: eyewitness, but at the same time, a
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 and 382: Gun Crazy, a barrage of police gunf
Page 383 and 384: 2.4 Joseph H. Lewis Considered as a
Page 385: untold storied of ordinary men and
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
Page 399 and 400: Although the idea is not to go into
Page 401 and 402: Figure 113. Scarlet Street Neff’s
Page 403 and 404: 2.4.1.2 The Big Combo and Generic T
Page 405 and 406: and knowing they are both surrounde
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
Page 415 and 416: constructions that make it difficul
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
Page 433 and 434: ____________ (1992b). Farewell, My
Page 435 and 436: 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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