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

the war, we have the moviegoer habituated to specific conventions that were intrinsic to
American adventure films, with “a logical development of the action, a clear distinction
between good and evil, well-defined characters, sharp motives, scenes more showy than
authentically violent, a beautiful heroine and an honest hero” (Borde & Chaumeton
1996:24). The atmosphere represented in these films was predicated on the necessity to
raise the American people’s morale, springing from the austerity of the Depression era.
Compared to what was to follow, World War II-era noir films were an immediate
reaction to the new challenges and anxieties of wartime. Borde and Chaumeton noticed
however that after the war the familiar reference points can no longer be found by the
spectator who now notices how good and evil go hand in hand; how moral values lose their
centrality; “the myth of Superman and his chaste fiancée” (2002:12) also fades; the logic of
the action and the motives of the characters dissipate, creating a sense of chaos and
estrangement in the spectator who, as Borde and Chaumeton conclude, “co-experience[s]
the anguish and insecurity which are true emotions of contemporary film noir, whose aim
was to create a specific alienation” (Borde & Chaumeton 1996:25, original emphasis).
Schrader actually reiterates this by pointing out that:
As soon as the war was over, however, American films became markedly more
sardonic – and there was a boom in the crime film. For fifteen years, the pressures
against America’s amelioristic cinema had been building up, and given the freedom,
audiences and artists were now eager to take a less optimistic view of things. The
disillusionment many soldiers, small businessmen, and housewife / factory
employees felt in returning to a peacetime economy was directly mirrored in the
sordidness of the urban crime film. (Schrader 1972:9)
Therefore, wartime film noir is an important contributor to our understanding of
American culture and society during World War II because these films reflect a different
set of anxieties (war, shortages, anti-communism, etc) from those we see in the noirs of the
postwar era and result from a diverse set of circumstances in the Hollywood production
system. As Sheri Chinen Biesen states,
The wartime American sociocultural and Hollywood filmmaking climate also
allowed more latitude in film content – endorsing more crime and violence,
particularly sexual violence, in these motion pictures. The cultural, production, and
censorship climate in the United States changed as the war progressed. Eventually,
newsreels and other propaganda openly depicted combat violence, war crimes, and
atrocities, undermining Hollywood’s moral patrol of the screen (Biesen 2005:7).
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