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

characteristically more interested in theme than style. The manner in which film noir
operates with theme embedded and subsumed in the style might possibly be the reason
why sociological critics have always been more enthusiastic about the themes of the
Western or the gangster film, shying away from the largely stylistic tools of analysis
needed for film noir. Once again (see p. 5), it is worth recalling Schrader’s remarks in his
“Notes on Film Noir”:
(...) because it worked out its conflicts visually rather than thematically, because it
was aware of its own identity, [film noir] was able to create artistic solutions to
sociological problems. And for these reasons films like Kiss Me Deadly, Kiss
Tomorrow Goodbye and Gun Crazy can be works of art in a way that gangster
films like Scarface, Public Enemy and Little Caesar can never be. (Schrader
1972:14)
In Part V, “Genre Revisited”, I have indicated that the antecedents of film noir are
much more diverse than with any other film genres, like science fiction, for instance, or
screwball comedy, which derive mostly from a pre-existing literary genre and a more or
less specific period of American history. I have also concluded that, on the other hand,
genre applications tend to lack fixed limits, and many works also extend into multiple
genres. James Naremore also states that “Neither the industry nor the audience follows
structuralist rules, and movie conventions have always been blended together in
mongrelized ways” (Naremore 1998:6). In this respect, the quotation from Robert Stam on
page 395 goes on:
Are genre timeless Platonic essences or ephemeral, time-bound entities? Are genres
culture-bound or trans-cultural? Should genre analysis be descriptive or
prescriptive? (…) While some genres are based on story content (the war film),
other are borrowed from literature (comedy, melodrama) or from other media (the
musical). Some are performed-based (the Astaire-Rogers films) or budget-based
(blockbusters), while others are based on artistic status (the art film), racial identity
(Black cinema), location (the Western) or sexual orientation (Queer cinema). (Stam
2000:14)
Film noir was more of an innovative set of stylistic tropes that influenced many
studio genres or, as said above, “a discursive critical construction that has evolved over
time”. In other words, it is a concept that has developed as film theorists and critics have
written about the phenomenon but the new perspectives on crime and violence and public
410