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

which is normally not associated with genre productions (though I am aware that
ambiguity itself (cf. opacity of motive) can be a genre feature itself). Durgnat’s discussion
of genre and its application to film noir is thus an important touchstone for defining the
problem this analysis seeks to address:
Film noir is sometimes called a genre, but it’s a moot point whether it’s normally
used for a perennial mood (a gloomy cynicism), or restricted to a particular
historical epoch (around the Forties); whether it’s a certain kind of a thriller, or
whether it includes Westerns, domestic dramas, and normally unclassified films
(Citizen Kane). Thus noir could signify an attitude, or a cycle, or a subgenre, or a
tonality. (Durgnat 1975:21)
Thus, I believe that film noir was more of a “transgeneric” form, a set of stylistic
innovations that influenced many studios genres or, as Andrew Spicer puts it, “a discursive
critical construction that has evolved over time” (Spicer 2002:24). In other words, film noir
is a concept that has emerged and developed as film theorists and critics wrote about the
phenomenon, but the new perspectives on crime and violence and public morality implied
by these noir productions also found an echo in many other (though related) genres. In this
study, I have situated film noir within a group of films that share a variety of similar visual
approaches, narrative strategies, subject matters and character types, underlining indeed
that film noir draws on a “literary tradition”, yet this thesis has been questioning its place
in a whole set of historical, social, and cultural frames. The critical concept of film noir,
also through its hard-boiled school, managed to dramatically change the traditional
narrative that Hollywood typically offered and that came to be marked as a rejection of the
usual entertainment values by French film culture. Leading French directors such as
François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and Claude Chabrol singled out noir conventions as
providing a new film-viewing experience, one that would follow the philosophy of a
“cinematic modernism” and potentially as endorsing a liberal / leftist perspective.
In other words, tone / style can also be a reflection of personality traits and of an
individual approach. Auteurists have also frequently used the concept of tone to describe a
director’s visible modifications of the institutional features he/she has had to comply with
under the American system. For this reason, perhaps, Paul Schrader has never given much
attention to theme in film noir as in his view it is not defined by content: “Like its
protagonists, film noir is more interested in style than theme” (in Simpson 2004:158). And,
as it has been made abundantly clear in this study, American critics have been
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