280 | nº 39, pp. 279-292 |July-December of 2024The gure of the journalist in early lm noir. Stranger on the Third Floor (1940, Boris Ingster)ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978doxa.comunicación1. Introduction 1.1. Film noir’s “origine mythique” and the gure of the journalistIn 2012, Jean-Pierre Esquenazi published a defence of the “origine mythique du lm noir” (2012, 337), or, more precisely, the enigmatic yet epic or legendary nature of the inception of lm noir as a genre. His reections addressed the complexities of identifying this North American genre that endured for a mere decade, from 1940 to 1950. In particular, Esquenazi cited the important contributions of his fellow countrymen, Nino Frank and Jean-Pierre Chartier, both critics, the former also a journalist. ese authors are responsible for two seminal texts on the topic, Frank’s (1946) celebrated article: “Un nouveau genre policier: l’aventure criminelle” published in August 1946 and Chartier’s (1946) work, “Les Américains aussi font des lms noirs” which appeared in November of the same year. As Esquenazi reminds us, neither Nino Frank nor Jean-Pierre Chartier could ever have imagined the impact their articles would have on world cinematographic history. eir brief texts –or critiques– are best described as specialist journalism, rather than as academic or historical analyses (Esquenazi, 2012: 340). However, at the same time, these short works achieved one important goal, specically, they oer, without doubt, the best explanation of the features distinguishing lm noir from the thrillers or crime lms of the past –or the future: eir originality derives, primarily, from how they classify the lms they deal with: Frank and Chartier “create” the category of lm noir: rstly, to distinguish these lms from ordinary thrillers; secondly to indicate their moral decadence in opposition to French lm noir (Esquenazi, 2012: 349)1.Although Frank (1946) and Chartier (1946) dier in their opinions on certain aspects of lm noir, above all, concerning questions of morality in this genre, together, their articles oer a successful classication of the genre. Essentially, to qualify as lm noir a work must be not only feature length and North American but also produced in Hollywood; it should have a crime-based plot; it should be subjective and have a prominent central character; and nally, its visual conventions should be highly expressionistic. e unquestionable merits of their authors’ ideas concerning lm noir’s “origine mythique” have, however, given these two brief articles an exaggerated authority. Indeed, until the nineteen eighties, e Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941) was taken to be the rst example of lm noir purely because it was the oldest lm cited in Nino Frank’s (1946) classic text. Nevertheless, while the contributions of these two journalist-critics are extremely relevant and unquestionably valuable, both Frank and Chartier completed their analysis without access to the full range of US lmography. ese two French writers based their work solely on their recollections of the lms released in France and did not consult –as might have been desirable– any Hollywood lm archives. us, these two articles cannot be used as the only sources of information to identify either the origins of lm noir or, indeed the seminal lm from which the genre grew –if, in fact, such a work exists. Anthony J. Steinbock (2023) claims that H. Bruce Humberstone’s I Wake Up Screaming (1941) initiated the lm noir genre, while other scholars such 1 Translated to English from the original French: Leur originalité réside évidemment dans leur façon de classer les lms dont ils parlent : Frank et Chartier “inventent” la catégorie de lm noir, le premier pour distinguer ces lms des lms policiers ordinaires, le second pour signaler leur décrépitude morale en les opposant au lm noir à la française (Esquenazi, 2012: 349). doxa.comunicación | nº 39, pp. 279-292 July-December of 2024Luis Deltell EscolarISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978| 281 as Eddie Robson (2005), Miklitsch (2014), and the authors of the present article, would suggest instead that Boris Ingster’s Stranger on the ird Floor (1940) is its inaugural work. In this article we propose two areas of discussion: rst, we intend to reassert the originality and foundational nature of Boris Ingster’s Stranger on the ird Floor in the cannon of classic US lm noir; and secondly, we shall demonstrate how the gure of the journalist and journalism itself constitute the two fundamental pillars of the lm’s narrative proposition. As we will explore, the journalist is a prominent gure in US lm noir from its inception, or “origine mythique”, and, alongside the detective, is one of the iconic characters, or archetypes, of the genre. Of course, as both Rick Altman (2000) and Alain Silver (2013) have discussed, identifying the rst lm noir feature –or indeed the rst of any genre– could be seen as an unproductive, even absurd, task: To answer in kind, “So what?” Did the rst audiences for e Great Train Robbery or Nosferatu congratulate themselves on attending the rst Western or the earliest adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula? e best answer to anyone’s assertion that lmmakers of the classic period never specically decided to make “a lm noir” is still cinematographer John Alton’s evocation of the noir milieu in his book Painting with Light: “e room is dark. A strong streak of light sneaks in from the hall under the door. e sound of steps is heard. e shadows of two feet divide the light streak. A brief silence follows. ere is suspense in the air” (Silver, 2013: s/p).Despite this, we think it could be potentially revelational to identify the lm that might properly be considered as a bridge between the crime lms of the nineteen thirties and lm noir. As we shall discuss, Stranger on the ird Floor could be such a lm and, as the lead role is played by a journalist rather than a detective this work also allows us to explore our second aim of demonstrating the narrative importance of journalism and the journalist within the framework of this lm and lm noir more generally.ere is ample literature analysing the gure of the journalist in various cinematographic eras and genres. With respect to Spanish cinema, this topic has been addressed in the work of, among others, María Cristina San José de la Rosa, Mercedes Miguel and Alicia Gil Torres (2020), concerning Argentine cinema we should cite work by Giacomelli (2020), while there is a huge breadth of work relating to the role of journalism in classic Hollywood lm noir (for a review of this area see, Spicer and Hanson, 2013). e present article discusses how the central character in Stranger on the ird Floor is dened and explained by his work as a reporter and how Boris Ingster gives journalism and journalists a key role in the search for truth. is quest is an essential ingredient in the classic thriller and, in Stranger on the ird Floor, there would be no narrative on the truth without the presence of the press in its plot and as part of its setting. 2. Method: a triple analysisAlthough academic debate concerning the existence or otherwise of lm noir as a specic genre has been settled for some time, there is still some divergence of opinion among researchers. Before we outline our own analysis, we would like to start with the words of Foster Hirsch: Noir deals with criminal activity, from a variety of perspectives, in a general mood of dislocation and bleakness which earned the style its name. Unied by a dominant tone and sensibility, the noir canon constitutes a distinct style of lm-making; but it also conforms to genre requirements since it operates within a set of narrative and visual conventions […] Noir tells its stories in a particular way, and 282 | nº 39, pp. 279-292 |July-December of 2024The gure of the journalist in early lm noir. Stranger on the Third Floor (1940, Boris Ingster)ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978doxa.comunicaciónin a particular visual style. e repeated use of narrative and visual structures … certainly qualies noir as a genre, one that is in fact as heavily coded as the western (Hirsch, 1981: 72).Interestingly, the aspects of the genre that Hirsch identies here coincide –although not identically– with several of the dening elements highlighted by Nino Frank and Jean-Pierre Chartier. ese can be synthesised, in the words of Conrad (2006b:10), as: “the tone of dark cynicism and alienation, the narrative conventions like the femme fatale and the ashback voice-overs, and the shadowy black-and-white look of the movie”.us, for the purposes of this research, we intend to search for evidence of these dening elements in Stranger on the ird Floor using three layers of analysis to cover each of the main factors inuencing cinematic genre: rst we examine the lm’s creation and reception system, that is, make a historical analysis of its production, distribution, showing, and impact; second, we analyse the lm’s plot; and third we explore the lm’s structure. For this triple analysis we propose the following objectives: First analysis: Production Objective 1. To give a historical context to the lm’s production.Objective 2. To explore the impact of the lm’s release and re-release in non-celluloid formats. Second analysis: PlotObjective 3. To describe the narrative elements of lm noir contained in the lm. Objective 4. To demonstrate the impact of journalists and journalism in the lm’s plotird analysis: StructureObjective 5. To demonstrate that the lm conforms to the visual conventions of the lm noir genre.rough these ve objectives we seek to justify the assertion that Stranger on the ird Floor (Boris Ingster, 1940) constitutes the rst example of the lm noir genre and demonstrate the prime importance of journalists and journalism in this US lm.2.1. Production analysis: historical context and impactAccording to the records of the lm’s production company, RKO, Stranger on the ird Floor, is a B-movie, or low-budget lm and while it was not totally unknown, when rst released in 1940 –rst to the US domestic market and later to the remainder of the English-speaking world– it reached only a small audience and had little impact (RKO Archive 1940-1941). At the time the lm was being made in RKO’s Hollywood studios, the second world war was raging, and naturally, this impeded the commercial success of the lm outside US borders, particularly in Europe and its colonies. RKO’s archives, held at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), in their Library Special Collections, include the working notes for Stranger on the ird Floor and provide details about the lm’s production (RKO Archive, 1940-1941). However, no information exists –or has been archived– concerning the lm’s release and distribution on the world stage. What is available are various newspaper articles about the lm’s reception in the United States, for instance one by Bosley Crowther (1940), which we shall return to later, another by Douglas Churchill (1940) for the New York Times, and Staf’s (1940) article for the Variety Review Database. In addition, despite the ongoing conict in Europe, the lm was released in London as recorded in an article that appeared in the Monthly Film Bulletin (Anonymous, 1940). doxa.comunicación | nº 39, pp. 279-292 July-December of 2024Luis Deltell EscolarISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978| 283 Before Stranger on the ird Floor, Boris Ingster was an emerging screenwriter and this lm, a small production as far as RKO was concerned, is his debut feature lm. e Yiddish-speaking Ingster, born in 1903 in Riga (at that time part of the Russian Empire), formed part of an important, and numerous, group of Jewish immigrants, largely of Ashkenazi descent, that came to be known for its contribution to the initial ourishing and consolidation of lm noir (Brook, 2009). Originally named Boris Mikhailovich Azarkh, Ingster had collaborated with his brother Alexei Mikhailovich Granovsky in Mosco in the 1920’s where he also met and worked with the celebrated director Serguéi Eisenstein (Ingster, 1951). Ingster emigrated to the United States in the 1930’s and came to Los Angeles where he wrote screenplays for romantic comedies such as Dancing Pirate (Lloyd Corrigan, 1936), in Ice (Sidney Laneld, 1937), I’ll Give a Million (Walter Lang, 1938) and Happy Landing (Roy del Ruth, 1938).At the time of its release, there is nothing to suggest that RKO considered Stranger on the ird Floor to be in any way important in their production schedule or commercial strategy. In the words of Palmer, the lm was: “A B production (only 64 minutes in running time) that was hardly intended by RKO executives to be groundbreaking in any sense,” (Palmer, 2013: 125). ere is, in fact, only one element in this small, low-budget project that stands out, an element that would be key to establishing lm noir in Hollywood: the presence of the popular actor, Peter Lorre. is artist, also a European Jew of Yiddish background, dedicated the last two days of his RKO contract to lming two scenes for Boris Ingster’s Stranger on the ird Floor. Despite his brief appearance, Lorre became the commercial face of the lm and was pictured in all the original publicity posters and press releases (RKO Archive, 1940-1941). As might be expected, his name also appears in the largest typeface in the lm’s initial credits. us, when Lorre signed with Twentieth Century Fox, the journalist Douglas W. Churchill, writing in the New York Times, recalls Lorre as the “star” of Stranger on the ird Floor (Churchill, 1940).In the context of the second world war, the low-budget nature of the lm meant that its distribution beyond the English-speaking world was very poor. In the Spanish-speaking world, Stranger on the ird Floor, like many classic titles, is subject to cataloguing errors due to the many dierent ways in which the title has been translated. In Spain alone, for instance, the lm’s title was translated as both El extraño del tercer piso and El desconocido del tercer piso. While in Mexico and Argentina, the lm was released as El misterio del tercer piso. is diversity of translations into Spanish arises because Boris Ingster’s lm was fully on commercial release in the early 1940’s and thus, the feature only became more widely known many decades later –in the 1980’s and ‘90’s– when copies became available in formats other than celluloid: VHS, DVD’s and Blue-ray, and could thus be seen outside of cinemas. Nevertheless, and despite its low prole throughout the 1940’s, from the end of the 20th and into the rst decade of the 21stcentury, signicance of Stranger on the ird Floor both in terms of its structure and as a seminal work of lm noir, began to be recognised. As Dixon notes, Stranger on the ird Floor “is often cited as one of the first unadulterated film noirs, and in its unrelentingly bleak and hallucinogenic structure” (Dixon, 2009: 9).Notwithstanding its low-budget, B-movie status, now, in the second decade of the 21st century, Stranger on the ird Floor is considered to be one of Boris Ingster’s masterworks. In fact, rather than a minor work by a great Hollywood studio, it is better described as an experimental lm that took advantage of all that a major studio could oer. Robert Miklitsch interprets the lm thus: 284 | nº 39, pp. 279-292 |July-December of 2024The gure of the journalist in early lm noir. Stranger on the Third Floor (1940, Boris Ingster)ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978doxa.comunicación… but it’s easy to appreciate […] the collective brilliance of the creative personnel surrounding him [Boris Ingster], including cinematography (Nicholas Musuraca), art direction (Van Nest Polglase), music (by Roy Webb), and, last but by no means least, sound recording (Bailey Fesler). Not only is RKO’s “house sound” distinctly audible in Stanger on the ird Floor (in, for example, the lm’s pervasive recourse to an echo chamber), but Michael Ward’s (John McGuire) interior monologue sets the precedent for one of the dening features of classic noir: rst-person voiceover narration (Miklitsch, 2014: 204).As a result, while RKO may have produced Stranger on the ird Floor as a B-movie, this is no reason to dismiss the lm as an irrelevance. Quite the reverse, the rst of Boris Ingster’s feature-length lms, it boasts not only a solid narrative structure and but also all the requisite elements of lm noir. e low-budget nature of this work meant that Ingster had to innovate and take risks with the lming. Most of the department heads involved in Stranger on the ird Floor, the use of narration, the visual conventions, and even the sound of this lm, however, seem to indicate stylistic choices on the part of its producer, symbols of an identity that the cinematographers involved would go on to impose on their own noir productions. Of course, at the same time RKO’s role is far from irrelevant –of all the large Hollywood production companies it gained by far the most artistic and commercial success with this particular genre. 2.2. Plot analysis: the journalist in actionWe begin this strand of our research by providing a brief summary of the lm’s plot, with particular attention to the ending. As the narrator tells us, this is the story of Michael Ward (John McGuire), a reporter, the ctitious New York Star2and his ancé, Jane (Margaret Tallichet), who intend to be married as soon as he gets the promotion he has been waiting for. We also learn that Ward has recently witnessed a murder and now needs to testify in court, events that are shown being reported in the press. e lm opens with a scene in a café in which Jane asks her ancé if he is sure he saw the accused, Joe Briggs (Elisha Cook Jr), commit the crime. For the rst time, Ward doubts himself and, later, in court, he testies only to having seen the accused touch the body explaining that he was not present when the murder itself took place. Ward mentions that, a few days before the crime, he saw, the accused, Joe arguing with the murder victim, Nick, who happens to own the diner where he was found dead. Ward also relates how he heard Joe vowing to kill Nick. Joe is convicted and condemned to death. In the solitude of his room, Ward reects on Jane’s words and realises that he may have been mistaken and, in fact, he himself has also publicly expressed a desire to kill someone: his neighbour (Charles Halton) whom he hates. Ward recalls several episodes with this man and fantasises about, how, if this neighbour were murdered, he himself might be accused of the crime. He imagines being vilied and hounded by the press as Joe was. At that moment, Ward notices that he hasn’t heard anything from his neighbour for a while and his apartment seems strangely silent. He goes out on the third-oor corridor and sees a stranger (Peter Lorre) leaving the neighbouring apartment. His neighbour really has been murdered and Ward, terried, considers eeing; but, in the end he calls the police. Just as he feared, the chief of police suspects the young journalist of this new murder. 2 ere was, in fact, a real-life New York Star in print between 1868 and 1891, and another paper of the same name between 1948 and 1949, however these are not related to the paper depicted in the lm. doxa.comunicación | nº 39, pp. 279-292 July-December of 2024Luis Deltell EscolarISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978| 285 To prove her ancé’s innocence, Jane begins her own investigation to nd the stranger. Alone, she scours the streets of New York until she nds the murderer in a bar. e man, realising he has been found out, tries to kill Jane but she manages to escape: the murderer pursues her down the street he gets hit by a truck before he can catch her. As the murder lies dying at the scene of the accident, he confesses his crimes to the crowd that has gathered. In the lm’s closing sequence, shot in the same café as the opening scene, Jane and Ward celebrate their happy ending. Ward has got his promotion at the newspaper and they can nally get married. At the very end, on the way to their wedding, the happy couple meet Joe who, absolved of the crime he did not commit, is now working as a taxicab driver. e rst and nal scenes of the lm demonstrate a circular construction centred on journalism (Figure 1); both take place on a New York street where, visible in the background, in large, capital letters is the word: NEWSPAPERS. Figure 1. Stills from the opening and nal scenes of Stranger on the ird Floor (1940)Source: Internet ArchiveIn the still from the beginning of the lm only the word NEWSPAPERS is visible, however, in the last scene we get a slightly wider view allowing us to see the name of the newspaper vending kiosk: Out of Town. Journalism is clearly an important theme in the lm. It is no coincidence that the lm’s opening and closing scenes are set on hustling streets where the presence of the print media is highlighted. ese scenes clearly intend to show the journalistic –the events that might make the news. Indeed, according to Palmer, the lm contains a certain semi-documentary element in its approach to journalism creating a self-reexivity that is almost in the mould of an audiovisual essay. Although this may seem to be taking things a little too far, we would agree with Palmer’s contention that: What may be most interesting about the lm, however, is that its story features a “dark passage,” a self-reexive turn toward a morally vexed interiority away from the dramatically oriented objectivism hitherto characteristic of the standard Hollywood product of the era, in which the narrative is advanced by exterior forms of representation, that is, by dialogue and action (Palmer, 2013: 126). e semi-documentary or self-reexive nature of the lm referred to by Palmer, is contained in the lead character’s profession as a reporter and the fact that he must himself testify to the things he has seen. us, the lm and its plot present an intriguing variation of the noir genre: in the cannon of lms where the hero is a detective –a retired police ocer or private detective, perhaps– it is the testimony of others that must be veried; however, in Stranger on the ird Floor, the reporter must verify his 286 | nº 39, pp. 279-292 |July-December of 2024The gure of the journalist in early lm noir. Stranger on the Third Floor (1940, Boris Ingster)ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978doxa.comunicaciónown testimony. It is he himself, thanks to Jane, who must deduce that his original interpretation of events –Joe standing over the body of the man he was known to hate must mean he was the murderer– followed a false logic and, as a result led to a false conclusion. at is, while Ward knew that Joe hated the victim and had seen him at the scene of the crime these facts alone did not make Joe the murderer. e premise of the whole lm revolves around the journalistic process; the hero is not only a reporter but he is also the news as the key witness in a murder trial (Figure 2). Furthermore, if Ward questions his own testimony, his dreams of being promoted at the (ctitious) New York Star might be dashed. Nevertheless, he cannot hope to become a good journalist, or, indeed, citizen, if he is unable to uncover the truth about the murder. Figure 2. Stills from Stranger on the ird Floor (1940)Source: Internet Archivee role of Ward’s ancée is also key to the lm’s plot. Jane’s character is a powerful contrast to the stereotypical femme fataleso beloved of lm noir. She is, in fact, its complete opposite in that not only does she commit no crime but also becomes the detective who saves the day –and the hero. Many scholars see Jane’s role as incontrovertible evidence that this lm should not be included in the lm noir cannon. However, there are several other lms of this genre featuring female characters who assist in the solving of crimes. Philippa Gates, for instance, cites at least twenty classic lm noir features in which a woman takes on a minor, or indeed more signicant role (2014: 21) as a detective or in unravelling a mystery. Indeed, Stranger on the ird Floor is among the titles mentioned by this author for its relevance in this regard. Of course, twenty lms is not a great many of the total lm noir output; however, it does challenge the idea that a lm should be excluded for use of this particular narrative device. e lm theorist, Miklitsch discussed the importance of the female sleuth (Miklitsch, 2014: 205) making a clear distinction between the female characters appearing in the rst two lms of the noir genre: Stranger on the ird Floor and e Maltese Falcon. us, far from devaluing Boris Ingster’s lm, Jane’s character is contextualised within the wider movement in which women do investigate and do collaborate in the solving of crimes. e most striking dierence between Stranger on the ird Floor and e Maltese Falcon, however, may well be the lms’ respective guration of femininity. Whereas Brigid O’Shaughnessy (Mary Astor) in e Maltese Falcon is a classic femme fatale (the rst, 1932 adaptation of Hammett’s novel was titled Dangerous Female ), so much so that whatever redemptive qualities accrue in the end to doxa.comunicación | nº 39, pp. 279-292 July-December of 2024Luis Deltell EscolarISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978| 287 Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) derive almost entirely from his knight like renunciation of her, Jane (Margaret Tallichet) in Stranger on the ird Floor anticipates the female sleuths in Phantom Lady (1944), Black Angel (1946), e Dark Corner (1946), and I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes (1948), intrepid women who actively assume the private-investigative mantle in order to come to the rescue of their distressed male partners (Miklitsch, 2014: 205)Other critics have expressed reservations about the lm’s noir credentials due to its optimistic ending. For these authors, this kind of ‘happily ever after’ is in direct opposition to the very essence of lm noir and, indeed, distinguishes it from the journalist-centred lms of the previous decade. Nevertheless, exactly as with the objection to the concept of a woman detective and the absence of a femme fatale, here again there are a signicant number of noir lms that also have happy endings. To name but a few examples from the 1940’s, consider Laura (1944) and Fallen Angel (1945), both by Otto Preminger, e Big Sleep by Howard Hawks (1946), Gilda by Charles Vidor (1946) and Dark Passage by Delmer Daves (1947). In this way, Jane’s role in Stranger on the ird Floor, while unusual within the lm noir genre, is not the only case nor indeed that unusual. Furthermore, her sleuthing in combination with the lm’s happy ending serve to reinforce the gure of the journalist, in this case, a man who is prepared to admit an error despite the risk of losing his promotion at the New York Star and, worse, getting accused of murder himself. 2.3. Structural analysis: representations of journalismWithout doubt, Boris Ingster’s most successful gamble as a debut director lies in the structure of Stranger on the ird Floor. Since the appearance of Nino Frank’s and Jean-Pierre Chartier’s articles in the French press, lm noir has been associated with photographic expressionism and, in this respect, Ingster’s rst lm is one of the best examples. e rst true, perhaps the greatest, noir cinematographer, according to Quim Casas (2021) was the Italian, Nicholas Musuraca, known for his “narrative of shadows”. Working together on Stranger on the ird Floor, Musuraca and Ingster make masterful use of shadow and light keeping large sections of the set in darkness while others are starkly lit to create startling visual contrasts. e result is a deeply sinister atmosphere. Lighting eects are especially exaggerated in certain scenes, specically, those where journalism comes to the fore. One such scene is the rst time we see the press oce. First, we see a close-up of a plaque indicating that this room is a place reserved for journalists, then, through this door, we enter a crowded room and encounter a highly charged, hypermasculine atmosphere (Figure 3). e camera then shows us a panoramic view of the room illuminated, brightly and directly, by light ltering through the slats of a venetian blind. 288 | nº 39, pp. 279-292 |July-December of 2024The gure of the journalist in early lm noir. Stranger on the Third Floor (1940, Boris Ingster)ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978doxa.comunicaciónFigure 3. Stills from the rst scene showing the press oce in Stranger on the ird Floor (1940)