Klaustrofobični prostori i atmosfera fatalizma u Ubojicama Roberta Siodmaka

Abstract

Film noir is one of American cinema’s most renowned and well-studied phenomena. It is a cycle of films made during the 1940s and 1950s, mostly produced as B-movies, i.e., cheaper films presented as part of a double feature. This is one of the most important reasons why it took such a long time for American film scholars to address the importance of film noir. The first monograph on film noir, Panorama du film noir américain, was published in France in 1955, and this work by Borde and Chaumeton remains one of the most valuable studies covering this important cycle. Generally speaking, French film scholars are those most responsible for highlighting the value of American, and especially Hollywood, film while significant American contributions to the study of film noir only began in the 1970s. Like few American films that preceded it, The Killers presented a completely dark world filled with hapless protagonists, where the only location that evokes even a glimmer of happiness is a terrace on the edge of the city. All other locations are a vivid reflection of the state of mind of the film’s main characters, lost in the dark labyrinths of the metropolis, victims of the unfathable threads that fate uses to play with their lives. Utilizing a combination of extremely claustrophobic locations and flashbacks that further fragment an already very complex narrative, Siodmak created a work that is one of the most faithful evocations of fatalism in American film.