ABSTRACT
In the discussion of Crossfire in Chapter 4, Colin McArthur was quoted as viewing the meanings of film noir as metaphysical rather than social, and as dealing with ‘angst and loneliness as essential elements of the human condition’. Certainly the emphasis on fate and despair as themes in the literature on film noir can be cited as further evidence that social interpretations of such films are generally misplaced. Place and Peterson, for example, in their article on the visual characteristics of film noir, see the typical moods of such films as ‘claustrophobia, paranoia, despair and nililism’. Richard Maltby has drawn attention to the contemporary attempts to view the series of tough post-war thrillers and melodramas as testimony to a general post-war malaise in America. But, as Maltby points out, the difficulties of viewing film noir as evidence of post-war national zeitgeist are many, and not least among them is the fact that such films represented only a small and unrepresentative sample of Hollywood’s output in this period. 1
