Spaces of the Cinematic Home by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Art & Architecture, Architecture, Interior Design, General Art, Art Technique, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science
ISBN: 9781317648819
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2015-07-24T04:00:00+00:00

9 Furnishing the Living Room in Film Noir

Disillusion and the Armchair

Hollie Price

Following the US declaration of war in 1941, icons of domestic comfort, including the hearth, the mantelpiece, and the armchair, had inalterably shifted from their familial compositions and meanings. Fathers and husbands vacated their traditional positions in fireside armchairs to participate in the conflict, while women relinquished their roles catering for the family and arranging domestic furnishings in order to replace the male workforce. However, a number of advertisements continued to feature living rooms, and particularly armchairs, as reassuringly recognizable symbols of comfortable dwelling and family stability. The home, these advertisements seemed to declare, could remain unchanged even in a changing world, and so could be readily reoccupied once the war was over.

By the mid-1940s, Hollywood film noir had begun to highlight a society which in reality was much more unstable, having failed to live up to the promises of wartime advertising. This chapter explores the mise-en-scène of the noir living room, with particular reference to the seemingly innocuous armchair in two archetypal examples of the “tough” noir thriller, Double Indemnity (Wilder, 1944) and The Big Sleep (Hawks, 1946). These settings, and the ways in which the characters have been constructed in relation to them, will be analyzed as indicative of post-war disillusion with previously advertised domestic ideals.

Now widely considered the first of the noir “tough” thrillers and, as such, a forerunner of Double Indemnity and The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon (Huston, 1941) follows Private Detective Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) through the streets of Los Angeles, back to his office and his home, and into the living rooms of his suspects.1 In one such scene, Spade visits his prime suspect, Brigid O’Shaughnessy (Mary Astor), in her modern apartment. Although Brigid repeatedly invites him to sit down, for a short time, Spade deliberately rejects the comfortable position on offer. Rather, he remains standing, with his hands on his hips, and grins broadly: the central focus on the empty armchair in the room in front of him is reinforced by its stark, bright illumination.

For a couple of seconds, one might envisage the shot as a still: his pose, the lighting, and the layout of the furniture resemble those of popular advertisements in the early 1940s. For example, in a promotion for Holmes and Edwards silverware, a number of images show “the house that Jack and Jill built,” which includes a photograph of a female model lounging in an armchair. She is smiling up at a man who is leaning casually over the chair’s back and also smiling at her. High-key lighting emphasizes their happy expressions, and the overall effect is to suggest that the advertised silverware contributes to a contented atmosphere in the home (Ladies’ Home Journal May 1942: 79). However, in the aforementioned The Maltese Falcon, Spade stands as if mocking the garish and untrustworthy nature of this setting, the world of consumerism it represents, and also the restful domestic environment that Brigid is offering. Although her living room

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