As Time Goes By: Film Noir and Nostalgic Reminiscence in Rubem Fonseca's Vastas emoções e pensamentos imperfeitos

Abstract

This article examines the notion of nostalgia in Brazilian Rubem Fonseca's postmodern noir novel, Vastas emoções e pensamentos imperfeitos (1988). Although nostalgia has always been a fixture of film noir and the hardboiled novel, with postmodern noir, such a theme passes through significant permutations. As the more contemporary neo-noir detective reminisces about the past, much of this nostalgia is for classic movies and film noir itself. The narrator-protagonist of Fonseca's novel, for example, makes constant allusions to Golden Age Hollywood motion pictures to make sense of existence. Such an enterprise, however, is problematic. If on one level the nostalgic narrator longs to recuperate the substance of artistic tradition in classic film, on another level, he becomes disoriented by the simulacra of cinematic imagery. Through this contradictory fascination with classic motion pictures, the novel is able to demonstrate the dialectical conflict of the modern Kantian subject—the protagonist is caught between his desire for a substantive understanding of himself and the disconsolate recognition that any notion of self is inevitably reduced to a mere appearance or simulacrum. This study alleges that the supposedly postmodern dilemmas of contemporary noir actually hearken back to certain philosophical impasses of the enlightenment. The narrator's existential malaise parallels that of the modern subject and, therefore, is able to rescue a sense of humanity.

Keywords:

• film noir
• Rubem Fonseca
• Kant
• nostalgia
• pastiche
• postmodernism
• romance policial

Notes

1. This is not limited to the present novel, but is also identifiable in Bufo & Spallanzani, which according to Ariovaldo José Vidal, “cria o movimento das imagens, a atmosfera de film noir” (125).

2. Sidney Greenstreet is, of course, the corpulent actor who plays Gutman, the jewel thief opposite Bogart's Sam Spade.

3. On a broader note, Deonísio Da Silva calls attention to the importance of the “estereótipo de vários personagens representados pelo ator Humphrey Bogart” (112), in reference to another of Fonseca's novels, A grande arte (1983).

4. It is worth mentioning that the phrase “Play it again, Sam” is also often coined as a famous tagline from Casablanca, though it is never uttered in the film. Nevertheless, the semantic exchange value of such a phrase still evokes the iconic scenes of the aforementioned motion picture and thus attests to its mythical status.

5. In Blackout: World War II and the Origins of Film Noir, Sheri Chinen Biesen describes the post-Pearl Harbor anxiety and paranoia of the United States (evident in the Los Angeles blackouts, the Japanese internment camps, and the 1940 Alien Registration Act) as one of the predominant social conditions giving birth to film noir (59–71). David Reid and Jayne L. Walker, on the other hand, rehearse a different position that claims that film noir responds more to the post-World War II “loss of wartime unity” (58). Notwithstanding the discrepancy in these claims, as we can see, the relationship between film noir and the social trauma of World War II has been well documented.