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

part of the recurrent patterns of visual imagery of the gangster films for they set them apart
visually from other types of film. In terms of casting, the actors playing the roles in these
films, with successive appearances in the genre, further established their protagonists on
the screen to the extent that actors seemed to gather within themselves the qualities of the
genre they appeared in and were easily recognised as such by the movie-going public.
Hollywood leading actors, such as Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney or Humphrey
Bogart and George Raft or Richard Widmark, governed the gangster films of the thirties
and early forties. In this sense, genres become definable as such by repetition of tropes
until reasonably fixed conventions are established, and this is evident in the variety of
characters in the gangster film with their precise physical features (strong-arm men,
racketeers with hoarse voices), specific roles (hoods with the necessary ruthlessness and
brutality), and a fixed attire (usually expressed by large hats and heavy coats). In short, the
viewer knows straight away what to expect of these characters from their physical
attributes, their outfits, and their postures.
These repeated patterns of visual imagery might be called the iconography of the
genre. In the case of the gangster film, the genre elements, namely those related to motifs,
themes and icons have remained unceasingly recognisable. By comparison, a spectator
might also recognise frequent features in film noir that may lead him / her to believe that
they are watching a noir production. Although icons and themes also contribute to the
identity of film noir, the noir movement changed throughout the forties and fifties, adding
a new thematic dimension (for example, the noir semi-documentaries, as I will suggest
later) and also a new moral emphasis. The noir characters are frequently caught in a bind
not of their making, falsely accused or otherwise entrapped, alienated from normal society,
not tough guys or thugs but rather ordinary people caught in unexpected circumstances.
Also, in film noir violence follows a certain ritual that renders it quite unique and
distinguishes it from the gangster films. Although violence seems to be more controlled in
noir films, it is paradoxically more brutal and wilder in others (I am thinking about films
like Jules Dassin’s Brute Force (1947) the violence in which functions as a clear metaphor
for an existential vision of the world translated into a hopeless living: “Nobody escapes,
nobody ever escapes” remarks the prison doctor; or Robert Parrish’s The Mob (1951), a
violent film inhabited with squalid characters and events which typify corruption and
brutality). Moreover, when it comes to lighting effects, the gangster film does not possess
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