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

Acknowledgements
This long journey of research will have proved invaluable all by itself
by virtue of the hundreds of films that I have watched (nearly two hundred and
some more than once), all of them listed alphabetically at the end in the
Filmography section. Some three years of watching films several times a
week, most of them from my home collection and dozens and dozens of
others seen at film festivals held across major American cities, mainly those of
San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle.
The questions that I was frequently asked when I told people about
this dissertation were how my interest in film noir appeared and what the term
actually means. To them, I often replied that for years I have been ensnared
by noir films and that I still recall the first time that I watched Scarlet Street
(1945), directed by one of the most notable directors, Fritz Lang, and casting
one of my favourite actors, Edward G. Robinson, in the role of Christopher
Cross. Little did I know at that time that I was watching a seminal noir film, let
alone that many years later I would be expressing my own point of view on
this historical film type.
Many people and institutions have contributed so much to bring this
project to fruition. I first offer my heartfelt thanks to my thesis advisor,
Professor Anthony David Barker, for his thorough perception, his serenity, his
interest, his sympathy and deep understanding of my work, and who patiently
read and reread the manuscripts at various stages in an effort to infuse the
whole with intellectual rigour. He has been accompanying my projects ever
since my earliest postgraduate studies, namely during my Master’s thesis,
which he also supervised, and has willingly agreed to guide me throughout
this present assignment.
The time that I lived in the United States (nearly three years) needed
to carry out this research meant crossing paths with countless other noir
aficionados. I am indebted to many people over the course of this sojourn
abroad. I would like to begin by thanking Dr. Kurt Stone who taught me that
this thesis “will become part of you: you eat with it, you sleep with it and you
live with it”. I attended some of his courses, specifically those that proved to
be very noteworthy for this work: “The Early Hitchcock Films” and “Film Noir:
Paint It Black”, and another one intituled “International Cinema: Out of Focus”,
all administered at the FIU (Florida International University) in Miami. I
benefited from lengthy and pleasurable conversations with him (which we still
have via email) discussing scripts and other film-related issues. I also would
like to express my thanks to the FIU for letting me use its library and other
facilities on its superb and well-kept campuses.
I am also very grateful to the people who accepted my application to
be part of the MIFF (Miami International Film Festival) for three consecutive
years (2007-09). Working as a “guest relations” official enabled me to liaise
the different film directors, actors and actresses and various producers who
attended the Festival. March 2008 constituted a milestone moment for the
MIFF as they celebrated their 25th anniversary. For a second time, they
offered me the possibility to experience and see screened some of the
distinguished directors’ work featured during the last quarter century of the
Festival’s existence. During this event, I also had the opportunity to interview
French director Luc Besson whose insight on film genre proved to be
particularly significant for my work.
Whilst attending the “Noir City 5 Film Noir Festival” in San Francisco in
January 2007 I truly had the chance to enter the immersive universe of film
noir. Held at the magnificent Castro Theatre, this Festival meant for me the
possibility of travelling down “those mean streets”, lit intermittently by flashing
neon lights, which soon gave way to the wonderful thought of meeting some of
the obsessive heroes and heroines of film noir portrayed by actors and
actresses like Edward G. Robinson, Richard Erdman, Evelyn Keyes and Joan
Crawford.
A personal note of appreciation goes to Eddie Muller, the founder and
president of the Film Noir Foundation (FNF) and author of various novels and
noir books. Thanks to him, I became a member of the FNF and I sometimes
write for the newspaper column, Noir City Sentinel. I had the chance there to
become informed about various other Festivals, which also allowed me to meet
in person Marsha Hunt (Raw Deal, 1948) and Richard Erdman (Cry Danger,
1951), and watch an array of hard-to-find noirs currently unavailable in any
format. Undoubtedly San Francisco’s rollercoaster topography and its eerie
Golden Gate Park fog make it one of my favourite locations to slip into the noir