Klaustrofobični prostori i atmosfera fatalizma u Ubojicama Roberta Siodmaka
CLAUSTROPHOBIC SPACES AND THE ATMOSPHERE OF FATALISM IN ROBERT SIODMAK’S THE KILLERS

Summary/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. Film noir, with very rare exceptions, is located in predominantly urban settings, presenting a variety of different urban locations ranging from coffee shops and restaurants to huge skyscrapers, shopping malls and dark streets. The plot is very often set in interiors, which exude a claustrophobic and oppressive atmosphere and are almost completely depersonalized, devoid of the personal stamp of the protagonists. In addition to the gloomy and oppressive city environment, another very important element is a prevailing nocturnal atmosphere. Scenes often take place at night, while the sun is seen very rarely, usually barely emerging through thick smog. However, although the depiction of locations and their influence when creating the typically depressing and claustrophobic atmospheres is one of the most important components of these films, papers that primarily focus on this iconographic element are relatively rare. The aim of this paper is to show the connection between the prevailing claustrophobic locations of film noir and the atmosphere of fatalism projected onto the film’s protagonists. These characters, with Ole Anderson in The Killers as one of the best examples, can be seen as a reflection of the existentialist poetics that pervade film noir. The emphatically frequent use of flashbacks is an additional element that enhances the atmosphere of fatalism in The Killers, which will serve as a case study for analysing the connection between the depressing, dark locations and the fatalistic influence of fate in film noir. Among the more important interpretations of the claustrophobic spaces of film noir and the metropolis and its locations, the works of Edward Dimendberg and Vivian Sobchack are preeminent, both contributing in their own way to the elaboration of the concepts and spatial coordinates that are key to understanding this cycle. The action of the greatest number of films noir usually takes place in the urban wasteland of a modern metropolis, and three cities are particularly predominant – Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco. The action of The Killers takes place in several less typical film noir locations – in the small town of Brentwood, New Jersey, and in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In Lounge Time: Postwar Crises and the Chronotope of Film Noir, Sobchack emphasizes that the cycle of film noir took place in an atmosphere of existential and epistemological uncertainty. Sobchack sets a clear dichotomy between the spaces presented in American films before the war, and a drastically changed and darkened post-war world dominated by feelings of depression, entrapment, fragmentation and depersonalization. The intimate spaces of home, which dominated the spaces of American cinema before the emergence of film noir, especially in its post-war phase, have been replaced by depictions of a claustrophobic environment in which increasing social disintegration is evident. The notion of home thus becomes a lost landscape in film noir and an unattainable locus of desire. The spaces mentioned by Sobchack are in accordance with the characteristics of those spaces that Dimendberg singled out as typical locations in the modern metropolis in the twentieth century. These are spaces in which a sense of privacy is lost and in which the radical desubjectivization and fragmentation of the lonely individual is made manifest. Film noir is populated by sad, lonely, depressed people who are searching for a way out of the claustrophobic urban jungle that surrounds them. However, they usually fail to do so, as the unpredictable threads of fate that play a key role in shaping their lives are insurmountable. Film noir is a world of existential angst, full of alienated people lost in the labyrinths of big cities and a modern world that is completely indifferent to their needs. The existentialist prism is one of the most suitable ways of describing the characters of film noir, and is directly related to the claustrophobic spaces in which the protagonists find themselves, as well as the all-pervading sense of fatalism that is dominant in these films. The Killers is a canonical film noir in which one can quite clearly recognize the integral connection between claustrophobic urban spaces, the desperate and resigned characters who live in them, and the fatalistic atmosphere in which fate always deals them the wrong cards. The Killers is an adaptation of a very short story (around 8 pages in length) by Ernest Hemingway. In addition to a very successful creation of tension and the deft and economical direction, the film is characterized by Siodmak’s excellent work with the actors, as well as the skillful evocation of a fatalistic and claustrophobic atmosphere, which is represented in a series of abstract locations that are typical of film noir. The events in the film are presented from a number of different perspectives and in as many as eleven flashbacks, in which eight different focalizers are represented. These elements are those on which this analysis is focused: the choice of locations, the typology of characters, and the number of different ways in which Siodmak evoked a fatalistic atmosphere in this film, from the psychological characterization of Ole and Kitty, archetypal characters of film noir, to the role of fate as a crucial structural element of film noir, and the abundant use of flashbacks, which by their very nature have a fatalistic connotation. The locations of the film are chosen in accordance with the bleak nature of the literary source, and have many similarities with the iconography of film noir as noted in Dimendberg’s and Sobchack’s work. The action primarily takes place in confined spaces that evoke a feeling of discomfort and anxiety, and only occasionally in neutrally intoned locations. Two locations in the film vividly evoke the claustrophobic and oppressive atmosphere in The Killers. The scene in which we first see Ole shows us a man lying in bed in almost complete darkness, and although there is a lamp on the bedside table, whose shadow is outlined on the wall next to it, the only light in the room comes from weak street lights from a nearby street. Although there is a lamp in the frame, which is a potential natural source of light, it is turned off, and we can barely discern the objects in the room. Despite the fact that the light is very scarce, it is clear that this is the room of a loner for whom it is serving only as a place to sleep, without any personal stamp (apart from the fact that next to Ole there is always a scarf that belonged to Kitty). It is by its nature a type of a completely desubjectivized environment reflecting the protagonist’s alienation and loneliness. Ole’s room is an explicit example of a substitute place, where the intimacy and comfort of a family home is completely lost, turned into (in Lefebvre’s terminology) a monofunctional space in which any feeling of warmth is impossible. Another location where depersonalization is equally evident, as well as a sense of utter coldness, is the Colfax family home. In contrast to the standard beginning of a typical Hollywood scene, where the location is presented with an establishing shot, Siodmak immediately places us inside the house by placing the camera at the top of the staircase, so we only see the lobby of the house from a high angle. Although the house is dimly lit, because the only light comes from the street lights, it is evident that we are in the home of a very rich family. The staircase is very tastefully designed, and the two decorative columns in the foreground provide the scene with a compositional balance and solidity. In the middle ground, above an equally tastefully chosen coffee table, there is a huge chandelier. In the background, in the deepest part of the frame, we see the ominous shadows of the policemen who are about to enter the house. During the entire scene, which lasts just over 4 minutes, the camera will focus exclusively on the stairs and the lobby in front of them. We will never see any private space, places that could be associated with family harmony or the intimate life of its inhabitants. In this sense, this house is essentially no different from most of the locations previously shown in the film. This representation of the house almost resembles a hotel or other facility where random passers-by meet, connected only by the desire for material things. It is a space from which any sense of intimacy is excluded, a stark indicator of how the security and integrity of the home have been lost in postwar America. As Sobchack notes, in the world of film noir, citing the examples of Double Indemnity and Mildred Pierce, “the house is almost never a home. Indeed, the loss of home becomes a structuring absence in film noir” (144). Most of the other locations in The Killers could be viewed through a similar prism, but these two locations have been chosen because we may expect a certain personal stamp that the protagonists inscribe in them. But instead of an intimate place to relax, Ole’s room is simply a place in which to sleep, filled with the most basic necessities, only slightly better equipped than the prison cell where he spent three years because of Kitty. The house of the Colfaxes is not a home, just an ordinary house, a place where, instead of the intimate bond of the characters, we can only sense the complete depersonalization and disintegration of that key private space. The fatalism in the film can be viewed on several different levels. The first is in the psychological characterization of Ole, who has come to terms with his fate and does not try at all to escape his killers; this is an element in which we can identify strong similarities with the ideas of existentialist philosophy, ranging from Nietzsche and Kierkegaard to the later contributions of Camus and Sartre, whose works were contemporary with the film noir cycle. Equally important is the character of the femme fatale Kitty, who in the last flashback admits to Ole that she is “poison to herself and everybody around her. ” Obsessed only with material values, she would rather choose a life with the hardened criminal Colfax than with the not-so-smart ex-boxer Ole, towards whom she probably only feels sexual attraction. The relationship between Ole and Kitty is a classic example of l’amour fou, a compulsive passion for the object of desire. The next element that enhances the fatalistic atmosphere is the role of fate, which appears as an irrational force that governs the lives of the characters. The chain of events is actually set in motion by a cash payment of $2,500, which is only 1% of the stolen amount. A robbery in which a quarter of a million dollars was stolen and in which four men took part, all of whom fled the scene unharmed, will eventually be exposed for a completely insignificant amount and details that ultimately mean nothing. 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 unfathomable 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

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