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

While enforcement of the Production Code (the precursor to the MPAA rating
system) ensured that “no movie character could literally get away with murder” or “make
criminals seem heroic and justified” (p. 471), the fact of the matter is that noir filmmakers,
relatively free from the typical big-picture constraints of the studio system, would
sometimes fly under the radar and present their protagonists awfully close to these
situations. In the Censorship and Politics section, I have pointed out that studios were
more or less forced to manufacture and market movies that were conservative, to a greater
or lesser degree, both socially and politically. To provide the subject matter with interest
and intrigue for a mass public, sometimes conventional A-films would deal with
controversial or disturbing topics. Yet, everything was handled in an ultimately benign
manner, and was expected to convey positive, reassuring messages to audiences. After all,
the Production Code stated that “no picture shall be produced that will lower the moral
standards of those who see it” (p. 465).
As its French name suggests, film noir is not an ordinary Hollywood “genre” (in
truth, the term sounds more artistic in French and was hardly ever translated as “black
cinema”). No director or screenwriter set out to make a film noir. Yet this was an
American type of film that has proved an interesting exception to many of the film forms
discussed, namely in terms of style, camerawork and editing techniques. Ironically, despite
all this surface technique, many noir films were viewed as more realistic than ordinary
Hollywood products, a feature of noirs often praised by American reviewers.
I have thus tried to explain that the connections between noir and realism (the
eventual combination of noir themes with realist techniques, especially location shooting
and documentary stylisation) are often intricate. They certainly were, however, a way of
paying close critical attention to social and political affairs (some noir films could even be
seen as being politically tendentious), and similarly, they were enjoyed by those who were
bored with the moral patness of the usual American product. La politique des auteurs or
auteur theory (its usual English rendering), discussed in section 2 of Part III, provided a
similar perspective on Hollywood creators for French film culture. These directors could
be considered and valued as auteurs because their films were felt to contain their own
creative voices and to echo their own ideas, personified their own style, and refused to bow
down to studio interference and be strictly commercial, at least from an ideological and
aesthetical standpoint. This critical and evaluative approach, established and maintained by
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