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

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intensifies all her efforts, even sacrifices herself, so that Veda can get have everything she has always desired. This Cain novel is intriguing and well-structured with a twist at the end, and demands a particular reading of gender issues inherent in classic American film noir. Unusually for noir films, the main protagonist of Mildred Pierce is female, but classically she is nearly destroyed by a femme fatale – her own daughter. The film tries to re-establish masculine authority (one should not ignore that, when the film was released in 1945, the American troops were coming back home from the war) after a time when women were economically emancipated and running many of the businesses in the country. Many consider, as I do, that the novel manages to be more sinister (and more convoluted) than the film, and this is also made evident by the type of direct, tough-minded language Cain uses and the power of his writing. This is perhaps the reason why James M. Cain was nicknamed the leader of the “poets of tabloid murder” by critics, notably Edmund Wilson, who noted that “Cain himself is particularly ingenious in tracing from their first beginnings the tangles that gradually tighten around the necks of the people involved in those bizarre and brutal crimes that figure in the American papers” (Wilson 1962:21). Yet, Cain’s writing style shows a different attitude towards life when compared to the other hard-boiled writers. For one thing, Cain has always disagreed that such a school of writing existed and therefore did not consider himself a hard-boiled writer. Also, unlike Hammett, Chandler and Woolrich, Cain did not expand his crime writing style in the pulp magazines. The characters he created were not persistently tough, self-assured private detectives, such as Hammett’s Sam Spade or Chandler’s Philip Marlowe. He rather employed marginal characters that moved about in Los Angeles always in search of fame and fortune. The narrator of The Postman, Frank Chambers, starts the novel by saying that “They threw me off the hay truck about noon” so the reader immediately learns that he is a drifter who has been tossed off a vehicle, only to find out later that he has arrived at Twin Oaks Tavern, a roadside café, and is being served a huge breakfast he cannot pay for. So the self-assuredness found in the other hard-boiled writers is replaced by malevolence and a certain stupidity in Cain’s marginal characters. In short, both novels - Double Indemnity, and more specifically, The Postman Always Rings Twice – expose Cain’s penchant for tales of murderous attraction. His characters are often self- 54
destructive, or used by stronger women, as is the case in Mildred Pierce in which the film also uses an act of murder to frame and give form to a plot that is concerned with issues that lie outside the conventional noir territory, the proper expectations of the independent women. 1.1.4 Horace McCoy Horace McCoy (1897-1955) was another American mystery writer whose hardboiled novels took place in the time of the Great Depression. His best-known novel is They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, first published in 1935, which was made into a movie of the same name in 1969, directed by Sydney Pollack. Charlie Chaplin soon showed a specific interest for the novel and decided to acquire its film rights. In France, his work was praised as a breakthrough existentialist novel by Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Gloria (Jane Fonda, in the film version) appears to be the “existentialist hero” and her personal choices always bring a concluding touch: “It’s peculiar to me that everybody pays so much attention to living and so little to dying. Why are these high-powered scientists always screwing around trying to prolong life instead of finding pleasant ways to end it?”. The novel fits well into the roman noir tradition, although it is not about the world of criminality and private detectives. The mood has rich sociological and historical overtones, namely those related to the depths of the Great Depression. The marathon dance contest is the metaphor that McCoy employs, and the dancers, with a fatiguing and senseless expenditure of energy, capture human frailty as they are humiliated and exploited, becoming for a while a kind of freak show cheered on by a lifeless but well-heeled audience, analogous to the plight of the majority of the American labour force. Charles Musser concludes that: More than a symbolic comment upon the desperate socio-economic condition of the Western world in the thirties, McCoy’s marathon danse macabre is also a universally applicable parable of modern’s man existential predicament. (Musser 2004:237) 55
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Joaquim da Silva Universidade de Av
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To Antonio, who made this possible.
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Acknowledgements This long journey
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Finally, I owe a huge debt of grati
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keywords abstract Film Noir, genre,
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2 Social and Political Influences o
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2.4 Joseph H. Lewis................
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Figure 42. Force of Evil ..........
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I. Introduction: Paving the Way for
Page 19 and 20: term that the film industry itself
Page 21 and 22: about which films themselves consti
Page 23 and 24: also, in the films’ fundamental n
Page 25 and 26: American films after the Nazi occup
Page 27 and 28: we also find a disruption of the wo
Page 29 and 30: oth in these French productions of
Page 31 and 32: Hollywood feature films but it did
Page 33 and 34: throughout this work); and c) to di
Page 35 and 36: odies, or as killers and crooks, bu
Page 37 and 38: these films was to confer on them a
Page 39 and 40: writer, director, producer, and art
Page 41 and 42: cinema does not have the power of
Page 43 and 44: Before working on The Dark Mirror,
Page 45 and 46: y taking it “from the outside.”
Page 47 and 48: and many, if not most, films would
Page 49 and 50: 1.1.1 Dashiell Hammett In 1929, Das
Page 51 and 52: tough appearance, by their occupati
Page 53 and 54: Apart from “The Continental Op”
Page 55 and 56: unsettling when for example shootin
Page 57 and 58: 1.1.2 Raymond Chandler Raymond Chan
Page 59 and 60: Figure 4. The Big Sleep the chaotic
Page 61 and 62: eleased to the big screen by MGM wi
Page 63 and 64: most fastidious visions of London i
Page 65 and 66: hometowns and move into bigger citi
Page 67 and 68: Double Indemnity started the trend
Page 69: has happened, but, as if hypnotized
Page 73 and 74: Tomorrow Goodbye (1950) into a noir
Page 75 and 76: Home (1937) - were two living proof
Page 77 and 78: which collapses the distinction bet
Page 79 and 80: Figure 10. Deadline at Dawn Alex’
Page 81 and 82: 1.1.6 William Riley Burnett Another
Page 83 and 84: Figure 11. High Sierra The Asphalt
Page 85 and 86: 1.1.7 Conclusions What made the det
Page 87 and 88: fiction managed to provide for a de
Page 89 and 90: escalation in illegal drinking plac
Page 91 and 92: Ben Hecht story and despite being p
Page 93 and 94: Mercy! Is this the end of Rico?”
Page 95 and 96: The third originating gangster movi
Page 97 and 98: part of the recurrent patterns of v
Page 99 and 100: protagonist of Edgar Ulmer’s Deto
Page 101 and 102: exemplify in Part III (“Space and
Page 103 and 104: 1.3 The Gothic Romance 87 And trave
Page 105 and 106: titlecard when the film opens alert
Page 107 and 108: In Rebecca the beautiful, desirable
Page 109 and 110: forties. Thematically, the represen
Page 111 and 112: To complicate this matter further,
Page 113 and 114: trampled under by war and revolutio
Page 115 and 116: he says, when Expressionism ended,
Page 117 and 118: These early Expressionist films, wi
Page 119 and 120: student, Balduin (Paul Wegener hims
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(Tragedy of the Street, 1927, aka W
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plots with calculating precision. G
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perverted and neurotic sex murderer
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1.5 French Poetic Realism Poetic Re
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(Michèle Morgan), whose godfather
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strikingly atmospheric view of the
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Jean Paulhan, editor of La Nouvelle
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Julien Duvivier’s Pépé Le Moko
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the combination of lighting effects
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peculiar expressionistic lighting a
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Figure 28. Son of Frankenstein This
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Figure 29. Murders in the Rue Morgu
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alienation mixed with nuanced perfo
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2 Social and Political Influences o
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Liberal reforms soon became a spuri
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Polonsky, Jules Dassin, and Edward
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which are themselves historical eve
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Production Code Administration. Thi
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In this particular case, one can se
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Neff: Will you be here too? Phyllis
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against any possible theft of groce
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2.3 Postwar Readjustment If the moo
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In this group of films, the bleak a
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explain, these noir heroes of the f
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(Gilda, White Heat, Scarlet Street,
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seething excitations” and adds th
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Romanticism present at the very hea
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to persist and overcome difficultie
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III. Noir Thematics 1 Essential Ele
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its modernist sensibility, enabled
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Wyatt), cooks breakfast, domestic r
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structures of constituted authority
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1.2 Space and the Noir City Film no
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other people and developing a calcu
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I am the city. Hub and heart of Ame
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1.3 Trouble With Girls: The Femme F
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intelligent and powerful, if destru
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significant discussion of film noir
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Nevertheless, the message is quite
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Another example of the evolution of
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deceiving women. Like many of their
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Either as a femme fatale or an homm
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1.5 Dazed and Confused: The Voiceov
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an impersonal “you” giving the
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of war veterans who, unfolding thei
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1.6 Noir Atmospherics: Cinematograp
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John Alton’s highly stylised phot
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Figure 41. Stranger on the Third Fl
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indoctrination in the movie in the
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in the popular imagination. While t
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1.7 Sounds of the City: Jazz Soundt
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music, combines with images of patr
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Figure 45. Out of the Past Non-dieg
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ealm of near-explicit sexual metaph
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the two, affirming that “Jazz is
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City, Paramount’s Union Station a
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In my analysis of The Big Combo in
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Consequently, in the fifties, we st
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2 Noir and the Film Auteur 2.1 Aute
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noticeably the case, for example, w
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point out the fact that it is only
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elationship to the way a director t
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2.1.1 Billy Wilder Billy Wilder pla
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performance is full of understated
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Figure 54. Sunset Boulevard Wilder
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Figure 55. Ace in the Hole All of B
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2.1.2 Orson Welles He may have only
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For example, in the scene above (fi
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As Leo Braudy in The World in a Fra
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slanting compositions, and brillian
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2.1.3 Otto Preminger Austrian film
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plans, June still shows her love fo
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Figure 61. Where the Sidewalk Ends
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project my viewpoint on the audienc
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postulated as the “doctrine of si
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pouvait espérer sortir de la déno
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I am at the barber's, and a copy of
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certain community, our subjective r
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interpretant” (Stam 1992:6). Here
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The notion of “text” as a disco
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only agree that these disciplines s
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2 The Universe of Motifs and Symbol
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Andrew Sarris once wrote that “If
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exception to this rule, his movies
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independent production companies in
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Figure 66. Double Indemnity In the
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Figure 67. Scarlet Street The symbo
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contorted Expressionistic grimace,
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Figure 70. Metropolis The clock mot
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Figure 71. Strangers on a Train The
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“When I was young I wanted to be
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themselves in the projection of inn
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woman in the portrait throughout I
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scenes as the attachment is purely
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(namely The Spiral Staircase and Ou
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Chris meets by accident, is a hellc
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2.1.1.4 Conclusion All in all, ther
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Question: Scarlet Street had the sa
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an accepted and well-known screenwr
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Siodmak’s next two films for Univ
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money from Dundee. A more harrowing
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2.2.1 The Spiral Staircase (1946) a
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here increased by the unsteady blac
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Figure 83. The Spiral Staircase Thi
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Warren, making either of them the p
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2.2.1.2 The “Optical Unconscious
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camera is expressive, as it informs
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ordering” - appears to match this
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eyewitness, but at the same time, a
Page 339 and 340:
Figure 87. The Spiral Staircase Bas
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While Cross implicitly acknowledges
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Figure 89. Affair in Trinidad Other
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However, much of this iconography t
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long, wooden staircase while trying
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Figure 93. The Spiral Staircase Fig
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of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The B
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almost part of a game, emphasising
Page 355 and 356:
2.3 Jacques Tourneur Born in Paris
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a laughing audience), and broken la
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violent mishaps could have led to h
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writers like Dashiell Hammett (who,
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Chuck Tatum, a cynical, frustrated
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on, Ann, who represents his hope fo
Page 367 and 368:
This kind of temporal manipulation
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ought forward by the characters of
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found Kathie: “I was glad it was
Page 373 and 374:
Figure 102. Out of the Past In this
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Figure 104. The Lady from Shanghai
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Jeff: Give him time. Kathie: You ar
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Figure 106. Out of the Past The sce
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Gun Crazy, a barrage of police gunf
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2.4 Joseph H. Lewis Considered as a
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untold storied of ordinary men and
Page 387 and 388:
through windows, to provide the ind
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2.4.1 The Big Combo (1955) and the
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of most noir films including The Bi
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2.4.1.1 “First is First and Secon
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In The Big Combo the unconscious tr
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It is not only in terms of narrativ
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Although the idea is not to go into
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Figure 113. Scarlet Street Neff’s
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2.4.1.2 The Big Combo and Generic T
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and knowing they are both surrounde
Page 407 and 408:
As the noir movement entered the la
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V. Conclusions: 1 Genre Revisited T
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on social aspects through a dramati
Page 413 and 414:
Buscombe is right: if we take a gen
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constructions that make it difficul
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Such factors have been scrutinised
Page 419 and 420:
Thematically, noir films as a group
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While enforcement of the Production
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are “as often nihilistic, cynical
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which is normally not associated wi
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morality brought about by these noi
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It is within this cinematic and cri
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____________ (1994). The Semiotic C
Page 433 and 434:
____________ (1992b). Farewell, My
Page 435 and 436:
E Easthope, Antony (1993). Contempo
Page 437 and 438:
Greenberg, Joel & Higham, Charles (
Page 439 and 440:
James, David E. (2005). The Most Ty
Page 441 and 442:
Malkiewicz, Kris (1986). Film Light
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N Naremore, James (1978). The Magic
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Polan, Dana (1986). Power and Paran
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____________ (2006). Ava Gardner:
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Sullivan, Ellie (1986). Jacques Lac
Page 451 and 452:
Wilson, Edmund (1962). Classics and
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Appendix I: Annotated Filmography T
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Beware, My Lovely RKO 1952. Prod: C
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Christmas Holiday Univ 1944. Prod:
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Dark Corner, The Fox 1946. Prod: Fr
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Framed Col 1947. Prod: Jules Schern
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House on 92 nd Street, The Fox 1945
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Killing, The UA 1956. Prod: James B
Page 467 and 468:
Mildred Pierce WB 1945. Prod: Jerry
Page 469 and 470:
One Way Street Univ 1950. Prod: Leo
Page 471 and 472:
Repeat Performance EL 1947. Prod: A
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Stranger, The RKO 1946. Prod: S.P.
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Unsuspected, The WB 1947. Prod: Cha
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B) Other Relevant Filmography The f
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Last Laugh, The ScreenSound 1924. P
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Appendix II The Motion Picture P
Page 483 and 484:
VIII. Religion 1. No film or episod
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B. By reason of the mobility of fil
Page 487 and 488:
Reasons Underlying the Particular A
Page 489 and 490:
VIII. Religion The reason why minis
Page 491 and 492:
146, 152, 186, 192, 229, 250, 298,
Page 493 and 494:
high-contrast, 11, 46, 172 Highway
Page 495 and 496:
350, 352, 353, 354, 356, 357, 359,
Page 497:
Walsh, Raoul, 56, 57, 66, 73, 223,
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