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

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Investigators in these case-history reconstructions remain disinterested. They are professionals doing a job. Yet they are fired by goals higher than Marlowe’s – higher, that is, than interest and pleasure in cracking a case. These hunters are patriots, crusading journalists, lawyers determined to defeat a corrupt political machine, FBI men bent on toppling a crime syndicate. In these hard-hitting problem dramas, noir emerges from the fictional labyrinth to become a form of propaganda: the crime thriller as a social pamphlet, as journalistic exposé, as contemporary crusade. The narrative structure of these semi-documentary films is much the same as that of private eye whodunits: an outside investigator confronts a maze. The plotting is as complicated and gnarled as the crack questioner grills a series of witnesses. (Hirsch 1981:177) Normally shot on location, and featuring a narration that would later become the signature of Jack Webb’s Dragnet television series, these noir semi-documentaries from the forties and early fifties indeed offered meticulous accounts of the manner law enforcement agencies, such as the FBI, operate, concentrating on the techniques and investigation procedures used. Some remarkable examples, such as Henry Hathaway’s The House on 92 nd Street, or its follow-up William Keighley’s The Street with No Name, or yet Jules Dassin’s The Naked City and Hathaway’s Call Northside 777, all come from 1948. Although there were other examples of noir semi-documentaries made throughout the fifties, like Elia Kazan’s Panic in the Streets, Gordon Douglas’s I Was a Communist for the FBI (1951) or Alfred Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man (1956), this form of film differ from the earlier semi-documentaries in various ways. In fact, the earlier semidocumentaries, also called “docu-noirs”, often set in dark, rain-swept, crime-ridden urban areas (in other words, set in the same locales as the noir “private eye whodunits” films, as Hirsch states) were filmed in the actual locations of real-life events. In these “new police hero” films, the police investigators were not working for national organisations, like Dennis O’Brien (Dennis O’Keefe) who was an undercover agent for the Treasury Department in Anthony Mann’s T-Men or the undercover agent Gene Cordell (Mark Stevens) who worked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation in The Street with No Name. The policemen fighting crime in these mid-1950s noir films, such as The Racket or The Big Combo, are now isolated heroes, that is, cops with little help from the rest of the force. For example, Police Lt Leonard Diamond (Cornel Wilde) of The Big Combo, unlike in the case of the team-oriented semi-documentaries of the late forties, is not an undercover agent who has gone “rogue” in hiding from his adversaries. His identity is known to all the mobsters right from the beginning and he operates in public – and thus a new public awareness of organised crime was accepted and incorporated into the narrative. 376
2.4.1.1 “First is First and Second Is Nobody”: The Underworld of Brutality and Sexual Innuendo Many of the scenes in the film take place at the police station, where high technology equipment (of that time) is being used. In his quest for the sinister mob head, Diamond uses a lie detector and also has recourse to a photographic enlargement laboratory. One could easily argue that these were essential instruments present in any police station. In the film, however, they highlight how much The Big Combo is structured as a mystery story. That detective paraphernalia symbolises the uses of melodramatic revelations and the gradual search for truth of Lt Diamond. This soon becomes a voyage to the unconscious where personal revelations of the characters’ psyches may be opened up against their wills. This voyage follows the many different routes that are suggested by the numerous maps displayed on the walls of the police station. Unlike other Lewis’s films, 104 these maps do not contain any immediate relevance for the viewer of The Big Combo. A number of mechanisms come into play here. The truth sometimes surfaces from altered states of consciousness. This happens many times in the film, especially during the brutal sequences of the movie (one might recall in this context the sophisticated fistfights in Lewis’s films), like for example, when Brown tortures Diamond by alcohol intoxication or by sticking thug Joe McClure’s (Brian Donlevy) hearing aid into his ear, turning the volume to the maximum setting, and then yelling into it. Despite the expressions of agony on the detective’s face, Lewis chooses not to let us hear anything, making it thus a subjective representation of the sound with an explicit desire to see pain inflicted on the screen. I will come back below to the significance of another similar scene in which the victim’s hearing aid is ripped away creating total silence while the assassins’ tommy guns fire away. 104 So Dark the Night and A Lady Without Passport. 377
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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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ordering” - appears to match this
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eyewitness, but at the same time, a
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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
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Page 349 and 350: Figure 93. The Spiral Staircase Fig
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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 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: of most noir films including The Bi
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
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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
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
Page 437 and 438: Greenberg, Joel & Higham, Charles (
Page 439 and 440: James, David E. (2005). The Most Ty
Page 441 and 442: 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
Page 495 and 496:
350, 352, 353, 354, 356, 357, 359,
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Walsh, Raoul, 56, 57, 66, 73, 223,
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