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

short, the interpretative community exercised an influence over genre, and therefore, it was
more important to place an a priori meaning on a text regardless of a specific audience.
This notion contributes to a more conventional approach to text in which the
analysis is grounded in a comparative overview of several noir productions and noir
filmmakers. In this respect, I agree with Patricia Pisters when she writes about cinema
genre:
In talking about cinema, I have been talking about life as well; however, I do not
want to make too many claims. I am not arguing that this perspective offers in
some sense a better view of the world (there is no hierarchy). I simply want to
indicate that some mutations are taking place, both in the image and in the world.
Developments in science, art and philosophy all indicate changes in perception and
changes in our relation to the world. It may be that this involves a generational shift
(…) Ultimately, we have no choice but to change. (Pisters 2003:223)
Although this may sound a bit too general, I cite these remarks because the
“mutations (...) both in the image and in the world” were, back then, more like
metamorphoses; they helped to achieve a generic cast to the individual image for each
movie.
While some critics, like Thomas Sobchack, believe that “the subject matter of a
genre film is a story” or that “[it] is not something that matters outside the film, even if it
inadvertently tells us something about the time and place of its creation” (Sobchack
1975:196), one could argue that this does not lay sufficient emphasis on the fact that genres
go through cycles of popularity even if the basic coordinates of genre have remained stable
over time. This also reinforces what I explained above, that back in classic Hollywood,
studios recognised that genres were part of the whole movie business’s drive for
profitability, so well-established film companies sought identification with popular genres.
Therefore, spectators were to a limited extent able to identify genres by the corporate
names and logos of the studios. Thomas Sobchack also justifies the existence of genre as a
way “to make concrete and perceivable the configuration inherent in its ideal form” (ibid.).
In the case of film noir, the “ideal form” is implicit in its iconography. Furthermore, its
“ideal form” is materialised through its narrative properties, or rather certain patterns of
visual narration, delimited by a tangible timeframe (essentially from the forties and fifties).
On the whole, therefore, I consider that many of the theoretical problems of talking
about genre have been overlooked, especially in the case of film noir. Genres are protean
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