During the latter half of the 1940s, the sardonic tones of the music were a device that intended to jar the nerves of the moviegoer, whilst the shadows cut their jagged path into the visual space. The viewer found himself on dangerous ground, an ironic phrase that would serve as a symptomatic tile of a future film noir by Nicholas Ray.
Seduced by the deadly sexuality of the femme fatale, lured into the shadows by the methodical cinematography of John Alton, Nicholas Musuraca and John F. Seitz, haunted by the dire sounding voice-over narrations, the theater audiences of the Forties could be forgiven a certain paranoia as the thrillers became darker.
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| OK Ma, I got everybody cooperating , what next, what do I do now? |
Two crime films, both dating from 1949, Raoul Walsh's White Heat and Gun Crazy (Joseph H. Lewis) make for quite the interesting comparison. In the first, James Cagney portrays a sociopath gangster, Cody Jarrett. Jarrett is clearly defined as a self-sabotaging criminal with a clinical history and Oedipal complex. The protagonists of Gun Crazy. albeit are a free-wheeling Bonnie and Clyde style couple who take to the world of crime for no other reason than the fact it is seductive Lewis lends no reasoning or excuses for the couple's criminality, he merely lets it unfold on the screen. Most protagonists of film noir are never 'explained' either by the films' narrative or through the performances themselves. Explanations are of little value in a world of shifting moralities and crumbling certainties.