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

Thematically, noir films as a group were understood and marketed as belonging to
other genres – the detective film, the woman’s picture, the thriller, and, most particularly,
the crime melodrama or mystery. Film directors themselves did not even acknowledge a
resemblance in the qualities that made these films dark. They were in fact seeking to
advance their own positions in Hollywood, and also (indirectly) reacting to the American
city and the speed of American life. With both A-productions and B-films during the early
1940s there was a strong inducement towards product differentiation. Furthermore,
Hollywood was faced with a number of economic restrictions, initially caused by the
exigencies of wartime production. Sound economics “dictated the recycling of existing
sets, exploiting stock film from studio libraries, and generally minimising shooting times”
(Silver&Ward 1992:34). Robert Sklar (1994:252-3) argues that not only did the material
restrictions imposed on the film industry – a twenty-five percent reduction in the allocation
of raw film stock to studios came into force in 1943, together with restrictions on the
amount that could be spent on set design and décor – result in a general shift towards black
and white thrillers that could be produced quite cheaply, but also encouraged an
ideological shift that accepted more complicated and contentious plot subjects. In short, the
flexibility of film noir made it a more profitable and cheaper proposition than many other
types of motion picture. As discussed above, both major studios and the so-called Poverty
Row outfits soon adapted to B-movie formats (of which many noir films were a part), run
at the bottom of double bills, as a way to guarantee their profitability.
In the introduction I stated that the origin of film noir as a new twist in both
wartime and postwar Hollywood cinema was subsequently analysed and discussed in
French film criticism. However, the term did not emerge prominently in Anglo-American
film criticism until the late 1960s and early 1970s. James Naremore points out that the
Zeitgeist developing in France predisposed them “to see America in certain ways”, and in
turn, Paul Schrader has suggested that “were it not for the war, film noir would have been
at full steam by the early forties. The need to produce allied propaganda abroad and to
promote patriotism at home blunted the fledging moves toward a dark cinema (…) Film
noir thrashed about in the studio system, not quite able to come into full prominence”
(Schrader 1972:8-9). Although this might be questionable, film noir is frequently
recognised as a postwar trend anticipated by the war. I have argued that pre- and post-war
productions are to be distinguished as they reflect the changes of their time. Hence, before
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