Universidade de Aveiro Departamento de Línguas e Culturas 2011 Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no Cinema Noir Americano Sources, Signification and Genre Stability in American Film Noir Universidade de Aveiro Departamento de Línguas e Culturas 2011 Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no Cinema Noir Americano Sources, Signification and Genre Stability in American Film Noir Tese apresentada à Universidade de Aveiro para cumprimento dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do grau de Doutor em Cultura, realizada sob a orientação científica do Prof. Dr. Anthony David Barker, Professor Associado do Departamento de Línguas e Culturas da Universidade de Aveiro To Antonio, who made this possible. O Júri Presidente Prof. Doutor Vítor José Babau Torres Professor Catedrático da Universidade de Aveiro Vogais Prof. Doutor Mário Carlos Fernandes Avelar Professor Catedrático da Universidade Aberta Prof. Doutor Abílio Hernandez Cardoso Professor Associado da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Coimbra Prof. Doutor Anthony David Barker Professor Associado da Universidade de Aveiro (orientador) Prof. Doutor Kenneth David Callahan Professor Associado da Universidade de Aveiro Prof. Doutora Margarida Isabel Esteves da Silva Pereira Professora Auxiliar do Instituto de Letras e Ciências Humanas da Universidade do Minho This long journey of research will have proved invaluable all by itself Acknowledgements 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 mood and certainly made me understand why the city appealed so much to noir filmmakers. Another noir festival that followed a couple of months later was the one held by the American Cinematheque, with other noir film greats showing at both the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood and the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica. Attending this event meant a threefold adventure: a) I would again have a passage through dark back alleys with a collection of some delectable L.A-based crime or detective dramas; b) I would get to have a key role in drawing up the promotional poster and website of the Festival: “Which city deserves the title ‘Film Noir Capital City of the World?’”; and c) I got the chance to be with many of the noir people I had met before, and have further conversations with them. Again, during these three weeks I spent in Los Angeles for the Festival, I got to meet many of the actors and actresses who had performed in the films we watched. On the opening night, the films were preceded by a reception and a book-signing that was hosted by the authors and editor of the new anthology book, Los Angeles Noir. As with the previous festival, most of the days would have a Q&A moment between film screenings, which gave the viewers an excellent possibility to get to know the film’s principals better and listen to their experiences concerning shooting their films, the roles they played and how they perceived films at that time. I was delighted to have had the opportunity to meet Kim Hamilton (who played Harry Belafonte’s wife in Odds against Tomorrow (1959), giving her impressions of co-stars Shelley Winters, Robert Ryan and Gloria Grahame); Susan Harrison (she was Burt Lancaster’s sister in Sweet Smell of Success, 1957); Lynne Carter from The Port of New York (1950), a rarely seen Eagle-Lyon film; Sherry Jackson (she was only eight years old when she played Garfield’s daughter in The Breaking Point (1949)); Tommy Cook from Cry of the City (1948); Ann Robinson in The Glass Wall (1953); Coleen Gray who co-starred in Kubrick’s The Killing (1956); Richard Anderson in The People against O’Hara (a 1951 MGM production); and the list goes on. July of that year I flew to Seattle to participate in another noir Festival (the first one to be held in this city), which went on for a full week. The McGraw Hall of the Seattle Centre was also the venue where I met many new people and talked to some familiar faces again. The screen lit up with some rare film gems, making it a delight for the film noir lovers present. The years that followed were also remarkably rich and valuable. I attended the Noir City Film Noir Festival, again at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco in January 2008, which gave me the pleasure of listening to noir actress Joan Leslie in-person, and watching some true noir masterpieces, many of them in brand newly restored 35mm prints, like The Prowler (1951). And, finally, in January 2010 I was able to participate in the last “Noir City 8 Film Noir Festival” in the same venue before submitting this thesis. This year not surprisingly saw another noteworthy event which showcased a full set of double-features and also included interviews and discussions. I look forward to supporting and actively participating in future Noir City events. I have benefited greatly from the collections in the major libraries of the USA, namely the ones in cities where the noir Festivals took place but also the ones in Miami, as I mentioned earlier, and the New York Research Libraries, especially the Performing Arts library at Lincoln Centre Plaza, where I would spend hours browsing through their catalogues, manuscripts and archives.