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

It is within this cinematic and critical context that Schrader presented his view of
film noir. As he says, “Film noir is (...) interesting to critics. It offers writers a cache of
excellent, little-known films (...) and gives auteur-weary critics an opportunity to apply
themselves to the newer questions of classification and transdirectorial style” (in Chartier
1946:69). This “transdirectorial style” implies the common way of working of film artists
as a group or as part of a movement. Thinking of film noir as a movement enabled
Schrader to value classic Hollywood filmmaking without confining its meaning to the
oeuvres of a few brilliant creators. For this reason, Schrader theorises film noir as an
available style, in other words, a collective subversion of norms: “[Film noir] tried to make
America accept a moral vision of life based on style (…). Film noir attacked and
interpreted its sociological conditions, and, by the close of the noir period, created a new
artistic world which went beyond a simple sociological reflection, a nightmarish world of
American mannerism which was by far more a creation than a reflection” (Schrader
1972:16).
Film noir has thus to some extent assumed the position of cinematic modernism, as
an alternative form of production that surprisingly was adopted and nurtured within the
studio system. Noir productions are still commercial Hollywood films, and by
“surprisingly” I do not mean that film noir ought to be understood as counter-cinema,
arising unaccountably from within, like some body-snatching alien pod. One should not
ignore the fact for example that film noir is not exclusively an “indigenous American
form”, as some theorists might affirm. British cinema from the same period has possibly
the second most comprehensive body of noir films, with their own energy and
individuality. Future research could profitably focus on a comparative analysis of the two
sides of the Atlantic regarding film noir and study the extent to which it also constituted a
vehicle for the exploration of social and sexual matters under the surface of British life.
Finally, and in conclusion, in this argument, I wish to bring out that this dark form
of cinema supplies an alternative vision of American culture. Because that dark cinema
offered a different experience to its audience (film noir representing a critical area of
divergence within homogenizing Hollywood practice), it remains important to bear witness
to noir’s complex confluence of cinematic and literary influences, many of them foreign. It
is the role of criticism to establish the exact nature of this difference, even when it can
sometimes seem to be one of fine distinctions and of interpretative difficulty.
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