Ali Nosrati, Master of Art Research, Faculty of Art and Architecture, Islamic Azad University, Science and Research Branch
Abstract
Problem Statement: The iconological method, which privileges the semantic content of visual works over their formal dimensions, has long been associated with the study of the visual arts; its application to cinema, however, is methodologically defensible and analytically productive. Film noir — a genre defined by a stable repertoire of formal and thematic conventions and by a remarkably fixed representation of women — offers particularly fertile ground for such an approach. Scholarship on the genre has extensively documented its distinctive characteristics, yet the recurring female character has rarely been examined systematically through the three stages of iconological analysis.
Objective: To demonstrate the applicability of the iconological approach to cinema and to investigate the influence of masculine identity on the formation of the recurring female character in 1940s Hollywood film noirs.
Research Question: What factors produced the recurring female character in Hollywood film noirs, and what influence has patriarchal social identity had on its formation?
Method: Qualitative and descriptive-analytical, combining close visual and narrative analysis of five representative films with Panofsky’s three-stage iconological method and relevant historical scholarship.
Conclusion: The female icon in Hollywood film noirs is the product of the visual and narrative traditions of its period, and its formation constitutes a reaction on the part of the dominant masculine identity of the social milieu.
Keywords: Iconology; Panofsky; Film Noir; Cinema; Female Character.
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