The Faulkner Journal

Dark Mirrors: Sanctuary’s Noir Vision Pool T wo men face each other at a spring. The hatless man carries a book, the hatted man a gun. As the hatless man drinks, he beholds his own “myriad reflection” in the water; the hatted man, his face resembling that of a “wax doll set too near a hot fire and forgotten,” observes him intently (Sanctuary 181-182). The men regard each other across the water for two solid hours. This opening setpiece ofWilliam Faulkner’s Sanctuary not only establishes the novel’s primary set ofdoubles, the lawyer Horace Benbow and the gangster Popeye, but it also introduces its central motifs of mirrored vision and fire.1 If the scene’s taut prose tells us we are reading a crime novel in the vein of Dashi­ ell Hammett, the mobile point ofview invokes the camera eye.2 Sanctuary’s doubles do not end with Benbow and Popeye, but encompass Benbow and the ingenue, Temple Drake; Temple and the bootlegger Lee Good­ win’s wife, Ruby Lamar; Ruby and Horaces sister, Narcissa. Such doubling is but one of many traits that Sanctuary shares with film noir.3 Sanctuary’s du­ plications multiply via the web of intertextual relations that surrounds it. Let us imagine the novel and its intertexts arranged like placards around Popeyes pool, our vantage point resting behind the published version of Sanctuary. Next to us, somewhat obscured by the published novel’s shadow, lies the earlier, unpublished version, with its stronger emphasis on Benbow. Stationed slightly to our right are Night Bird and The College Widow, two film treatments that Faulkner wrote in 1932, early in his tenure at MGM, which feature a character similar to Temple. Further along the bank lies Paramount’s 1933 film adapta­ ‘Numerous critics have noted that Benbow and Popeye are doubles or alter egos: see Noel Polk (23), Peter Lurie (30), Andrew J. Wilson (446), and John T. Irwin, who uses this scene to develop his reading of the novel via the Narcissus myth (545). 2Compare Faulkner’s description of Popeye to Hammetts introduction of Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon: “Samuel Spades Jaw was long and bony, his chin a Jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved to make another, smaller v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal” (391). David Seed, who reminds us that Faulkner had a copy of The Maltese Falcon in his library, analyzes the cinematic elements in Sanctuary’s opening scene (125, 113). •’Film noir’s many doubles range from self-divided protagonists such as Out ofthe Past’s JeffMarkham/ Bailey, who seeks to leave behind his life as an urban detective for bucolic Bridgeport, and look-alikes such as Hollow Triumph’s gangster John Muller and the psychiatrist Bartok, whom Muller murders and replaces, to Walter Neff’s impersonation of his murder victim in Double Indemnity. 11 12 Mark Osteen Dark Mirrors: Sanctuary’s Noir Vision tion, The Story of Temple Drake. Lining the opposite bank are the many films noir that share Sanctuary's themes and whose visual devices and characters may have sprung partly from its murky depths. On the left, as we circle back toward our spot, reposes Requiemfor a Nun, the sequel to Sanctuary that was apparently influenced by the very films Sanctuary inspired. Next to it is the 1961 film Sanctuary, which combines the two novels through flashbacks and awkward condensation. In what follows, I argue that these intertexts yield a set of reflecting and refracting surfaces that illuminate Faulkner’s novel which, in turn, adumbrates film noir’s themes and style.4 Scrutinizing Sanctuary, its progeny and siblings, via noir’s dark mirror enables us to evaluate the novel’s impact and perceive the prismatic light noir sheds on their shared themes: the infernal force of public opinion, the strangling grasp of gender roles, the reach and limitations oflegal and carceral institutions, and the power ofthe past over the present. Pane I define film noir as a large group of American crime films released between 1944 and 1959. Set mostly in contemporary cities, these movies often employ a shadowy mise-en-scene to dramatize a pessimistic...