Film Noir as Point de Capiton: Retroactive Temporality and Symbolic Structure

Abstract

The second chapter starts with the idea of film noir as a retroactive critical category. I then introduce the psychoanalytic theory of retroactivity and Lacan’s point de capiton, which expresses a relation between past, present and future, the anticipation of meaning and its subsequent, retroactive determination. The main contention of this chapter is that the concept of film noir can be understood in terms of the point de capiton: as a signifier that intervenes after the fact to confer meaning upon a disparate group of films. I also argue that the retroactively structured narratives of The Maltese Falcon or Double Indemnity suggest a corollary between the shape of certain noir narratives and the category to which they belong. I explore Gilda and The Killers to investigate the progressive vector of the point de capiton: the unfolding of the chain of signifiers in the anticipated certainty of its completion at a later point.