Power and Paranoia: History, Narrative, and the American Cinema, 1940–1950 9780231888448

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POWER AND PARANOIA

Power and Paranoia HISTORY, NARRATIVE, AND THE AMERICAN CINEMA, 1940-1950

Dana Polan

Columbia University Press New York

1986

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, through a special grant, has assisted the Press in publishing this volume. Columbia University Press New York Guildford, Surrey Copyright © 1986 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Polan, Dana, B., Power and paranoia. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Moving-pictures—Social aspects—United States— History. 2. Moving-picture plays—History and criticism. I. Title. PN1995.9.S6P65 1986 302.2'343'0973 86-4144 ISBN 0 - 2 3 1 - 0 6 2 8 4 - 2 This book is Smyth-sewn. Book design by J.S. Roberts

FOR ALICE DURIEU

Contents

Acknowledgments A Note on the Films Introduction

ix xiii 1

1. Writing the Space of the Forties

21

2. Wartime Unity: The Representation of Institutions and the Institutions of Representation

45

3. Narrative Limits: The Fiction of War and the W a r of Fictions

101

4. Knowledge and Human Interests: Science, Cinema, and the Secularization of Horror

159

5. Blind Insights and Dark Passages: The Problem of Placement

19 3

6. Beyond Narrative: The Space and Spectacle of the Forties

251

Notes

309

Name and Subject Index

327

Film Index

333

Acknowledgments

O n e o f t h e joys for any scholar working within film history and, more specifically, within the period of the American forties is the amazingly high degree to which he/she quickly discovers the presence of what is so often only a myth in the humanities: an intellectual community devoted to dialogue, interaction, and an open sharing of ideas, perspectives, and, perhaps best of all, criticisms. From beginning to end, this work has benefited from the material and intellectual assistance of a number of giving persons. First, I wish to thank those figures in American history w h o answered queries, provided references, offered copies of work in progress: Professors Susan M. Hartmann, Leila Rupp, Frank Fox, and, most especially, Paul Koistinen. Professor John Belton at Columbia was the first film scholar to read part of the manuscript and offer reactions; his perceptive early guidance suggested initial ways to sort out openings from dead-ends in investigations of postwar cinema. I also wish to thank the following professors w h o read parts of the

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Acknowledgments

manuscript and offered advice and encouragement: Christian Metz, Jacques Aumont, Jean Franco, William M. Todd III, Bill Nichols, Tim Lyons, Scott Nygren, Judith Mayne, Maureen Turim. Loren Shumway of Yale deserves special recognition for first suggesting to me the narrative importance of the concept of "conversion"—a concept central to my investigation of war narrative. My work is also in great debt to that specific community of scholars producing major work on American cinema in the forties. Each of these persons was wonderfully ready to share ideas and essays: Michael Renov, Diane Waldman, Mary Ann Doane, Deborah Linderman. Perhaps no community was as important as that of the critical theorists assembled in the English department at the University of Pittsburgh. At every moment, I rediscover the joy of having such colleagues as Lucy Fischer, Marcia Landy, Paul Bove, and James Knapp. A special thank you, also, to my chairperson, Mary Louise Briscoe, who always does more than would seem possible to build a space in which work that might not always seem to fit into the traditional goals of an English department can find a sustaining and driving support. My gratitude also goes to Phil Smith, who spent a summer taping films for me and answering queries about science fiction. This project was aided financially by grants from the Office of Research at the University of Pittsburgh. Several institutions helped me to discover the pleasures of archival research as they graciously opened up their doors and often dust-covered boxes to a scholar who wasn't always sure in advance of the exact sorts of things he wished to discover. In particular, I would acknowledge the openness to scholars of the film section of the Library of Congress; the Suitland, Maryland, branch of the National Archives; the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Missouri. No one worked harder in building the research material for this study than Sean Monagle, my research assistant in the summer of 1983, and Suzanne Crosby, interlibrary loan librarian at the University of Pittsburgh, always ready and able to scramble after one more obscure forties text.

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Acknowledgments

Fragments of this study were published as a short essay in the excellent journal The Velvet Light Trap. M y deep gratitude goes to the editorial staff for a demanding reading that always pushed me to interrogate the implications of my argument. The work, energy, and personality of four scholars have determined m y study of film from its beginnings to such a degree that a simple thank you can never be anything but inadequate. I o w e so m u c h to David Rodowick ( w h o constantly radiates the productive pleasures of scholarly endeavor in a contagious search for a m e t h o d — f o r ideas, essays, and rare book titles hidden a w a y in used bookshops); to Lea Jacobs (who was an energetic dialogic partner for inspiring discussions lasting late into the night on topics in history, ideology, textuality); to Tania Modleski for a friendship and intellectual interaction that is truly wondrous. Ed Lowry died suddenly and tragically while I w a s reviewing the copyedited manuscript. It was Ed w h o first introduced me to the pleasures and importance of sustained study of American film narrative and with w h o m each n e w conversation seemed wonderfully to start that introduction all over again. I shall miss him deeply. A special thank you to Don Fredericksen at Cornell for starting me on the road to film study. M y emotional and intellectual life is so interwined with Donie Durieu and her two sons, Raphael and Gerard Fremiot, that I see them in every word and idea of this study. Book acknowledgments always seem to have trouble verbalizing their appreciation to the person closest to the author. In trying to express my gratitude to Donie, I find myself feeling the same difficulty with mere words; here, I simply say "Thank y o u " knowing she will k n o w all that those words can only ever so slightly indicate.

A NOTE ON THE FILMS

Much of the research in the following pages comes from a study of approximately 700 feature films released between 1940 and 1950. The first time I mention a film, I provide the release date; thereafter, I give the release date only when it seems important to the immediate context.

POWER AND PARANOIA

Introduction Two contiguous pages

from Life magazine just at the end of the Second World War (August 13, 1945, pp. 34-5) can demonstrate many of the conflicts and confluences of representation in the cultural and ideological space of the American forties. On the left-hand page, a series of black-and-white photograph panels, proceeding from left to right and from top to bottom, chronicle the flame-thrower killing of a Japanese by an Australian, America's ally. A narrative, then—the pictures form a ministory of victory and death, the victory represented according to a dominant wartime ideology, represented for an audience back home so it can follow and situate itself in relation to the man's narrative. The narrative might seem to sum up the war, to show it as a kind of participatory drama even for those persons who can participate only through the pages of the magazine. Furthermore, this is a narrative controlled by a grounding caption that not merely describes but, also, gives the narrative a necessity, that of a grim pragmatism: "The flame-thrower is easily the most cruel, most terrifying weapon ever developed. If it does not suffocate the enemy in his hiding place, its quickly licking flames sear his body to a black crisp. But so long as the Jap refuses to come out of his hole and keeps killing, this is the only way." The simplicity ofthat last "is" also functions as a surety; the caption represents a war of necessity, a war without ambiguity.

Ä JAP BUHNS He refuses to leave Borneo hidii place so flamethrower kills hi

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