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Los Angeles by night in the first sequence of Criss Cross (1948). |
During
the 1940s and 1950s major economical, political, social shifts
radically changed the ways
in which space was perceived, lived and produced in the U.S.A., and,
correspondingly, one of the country's principal cultural products,
film, echoed these changes and/or projected the ones to come. In this
period, modernity's
ways of thinking and acting were
reaching
its peak,
and, in parallel, seeds of very different paradigms were being
planted and nourished. “American dream” seemed to realize itself
to an extent never seen before, and series of new dreams were being
churned out tirelessly. At the same time, the overwhelming menace of
Cold War cast its shadows upon the society. In terms of spatiality,
the push towards massive centralisation of power, especially
political and financial, through infrastructural and technological
developments, was countered by decentralising vectors mediated by the
very same technologies and infrastructures. This applies to
telecommunications equally as to superhighways. Whereas the state
believed that in the new techno-industrial complex it has found the
key to its elevation on n-th degree, other management groups were
using and producing very similar technologies, and these groups
sometimes aligned themselves with governmental policies, and sometimes did
not. The scissor between public and private sector, public and
corporate, was widening and deepening. In the middle ground between
these vectors, the modern man was caught, be him white-collar or
blue-collar, but unconsciously, gently lulled by the showiness of the
prospering new economy. Upon this apparently mild but shaky ground,
film noir pushed this
man into unpredicted sets of circumstances which profoundly diverged
from the postcard picture of the America in progress, from the
proverbial projection of Californian sunshine ideology to which
Hollywood obviously contributed greatly.
Protagonists
of film noir
found themselves vis-à-vis
with conformations of power, which as one of their primary
operational tools employ space. This central struggle, thus, unravels
over a terrain, made of places and ambients which look familiar,
but, instead, are charged with peculiar intensities (nodes of
percepts and affects, concentrations of power) and extensities
(depths and superficialities, scales, connectivities). This special
elaboration of space is the fundamental trait of film noir
(and is followed by a similar treatment of time, which is warped,
folded, stretched, compressed in similar fashion). This
representational apparatus was elaborated film by film, author by
author, into a coherent yet fractalised universe of spaces, which I
will call the noir
spatiality. To be noted from the start is that this spatiality is
not an exclusive product of the American film noir,
it is a landscape created by a spread of antecedents and hosts of
descendents, and is still in way of formation and reshaping. Still,
its first comprehensive elaboration is to be found in the so-called
film noir, produced in
Hollywood in the 1940-1970 period. Lastly, noir spatiality
is by no means confined to cinematic experience, silver screen is here
an iridescent surface which commingles bits of real places with
fictional ones and then reflects these topographies onto our side of
the screen, where they already are, or are coming into being.
What
are the principal traits of the noir
spatiality? Where are them to be found? In the ill-lit boarding house
rooms where villains gather and conspire, and occasionally fist fight
the good guys; or blank police station interiors; or hazy bars with
counters against which patrons lean, enveloped in cigarette smoke; or
nightclubs glittering with shining gowns and translucent tuxedos; or
anonymous motel rooms permeated by horizontal stripes of light let
through Venetian blinds; or wooden shacks sitting alone deep in the
remote woods; or fishing huts isolated on ocean beaches; or the
luxurious hill-slopes mansions overlooking Buenos Aires or L.A.; or
the coldest of prison blocks in concrete and steel; or the abandoned
industrial yards in desertic stripes of land; or high-tech military
laboratories developing the most secret weapons for mass
extermination; or either packed-up with passengers or almost devoid
wagons of overground or underground urban railways; or the amusement
parks with pyschedelic plays of bright neon lights and puzzling
mirrors; and so on and so on. These are some places noir,
at the same time realistic and fantastic, familiar and odd, common
and exceptional. So, what is to them that bears distinctive noir
semblances? Is it the atmosphere they are imbued with, created by the
succession of events or maybe the lighting masteries of directors of
photography? This thread does not lead faraway, since the filmic
treatment of these lieus
refers to something we already know and perceive, so what is this
else that they add to this experience?
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