Film Noir

Film Noir and the Imaginary
The Significance of the Telephone in Film Noir


Table of Contents

I. Introduction
II. Telephone-Conversations as Turning Points of the Story
III. The Significance of the Telephone in Sorry, Wrong Number
IV. Conclusion
Bibliography


I. Introduction

In the tangled networks of a great city, the telephone is the unseen link between a million lives. It is the servant of our common needs - the confidante of our inmost secrets. Life and happiness wait upon its ring - and horror - and loneliness - and death!1
Film Noir, with its claustrophobic, dark and estranged atmosphere, often explores the themes of secrecy and longing. Noir characters long for something they think they need, either to fill a gap in their lives or to break out of the normality of their everyday routine. The means to achieve this outbreak are usually found in money or, just as often, in wild romance and danger. The Noir hero is bored or unsatisfied with his existence and easily falls for the temptations of the femme fatale and for the potential easy (but dangerous) money in the Noir world. In trying to overcome the `normal′ life (thereby violating the morals of society), the Noir hero resorts to secrecy, eventually tripping over his own crimes and becoming the victim of his own greed. If he is `lucky′, he gets a new chance and is embraced back into society by a loving girl and/or forgiving friends (which, of course, could be seen as an even bigger punishment!). If he is not so lucky, he becomes entangled in an even larger web of lies and deception, doomed, if not to lose his life, then at least to experience real physical and emotional pain. Indeed, everyone in Noir is betrayed. Nobody in this dark and threatening atmosphere can be relied on, and yet the fate of the Noir hero in this world of secrecy is dependent upon his relationships to those people around him. These, the crucial but mostly dysfunctional relationships of Noir characters, are... [continues]

Read full essay