Screen Interiors: From Country Houses to Cosmic Heterotopias 9781350150584, 9781350150614, 9781350150607

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SCREEN INTERIORS

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SCREEN INTERIORS FROM COUNTRY HOUSES TO COSMIC HETEROTOPIAS

Edited by Pat Kirkham and Sarah A. Lichtman

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BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2021 © Editorial content and introduction, Pat Kirkham and Sarah A. Lichtman, 2021 © Individual chapters, their authors, 2021 Pat Kirkham and Sarah A. Lichtman have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. xii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design by Louise Dugdale Cover image: The Servant (1963), Studiocanal Films Ltd/Mary Evans. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. The editors and publisher gratefully acknowledge the permission granted to reproduce the copyright material in this book. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders of images and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions in copyright acknowledgement and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The editors and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kirkham, Pat, editor. | Lichtman, Sarah A., editor. Title: Screen interiors : from country houses to cosmic heterotopias / edited by Pat Kirkham and Sarah A Lichtman. Description: London ; New York : Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020054509 (print) | LCCN 2020054510 (ebook) | ISBN 9781350150584 (hardback) | ISBN 9781350150591 (epub) | ISBN 9781350150607 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Motion pictures–Art direction. | Motion pictures–Setting and scenery. Classification: LCC PN1995.9.A74 S37 2021 (print) | LCC PN1995.9.A74 (ebook) | DDC 791.4302/5—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020054509 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020054510 ISBN:

HB: ePDF: ePub:

978-1-3501-5058-4 978-1-3501-5060-7 978-1-3501-5059-1

Typeset by: RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters

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In memoriam: Marjan Groot (1959–2019) Andy Hoogenboom (1941–2015) Arthur Lichtman (1932–2003)

For my daughters, grandchildren, colleagues, students, and everyone who watches and discusses films and television with me – Pat Kirkham For Rachel, Noah, Isaac, and my mother Celia, for their love and support. And to my colleagues and students – Sarah A. Lichtman

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CONTENTS

List of Figures Acknowledgments Introducing Screen Interiors: From Country Houses to Cosmic Heterotopias Pat Kirkham and Sarah A. Lichtman

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Part 1 House and Home: Comfort, Class, Gender, and Generation 1

Comfort and the Domestic Interior in Soviet Fiction Cinema of the 1920s Eleanor Rees

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2

Furnishing I Love Lucy (1951–7) Marilyn Cohen

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3

From the Country House Film to the House in the Country Film: Space, Class, and Generation Christine Geraghty

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Space, Interiors, and 1980s Hollywood Teen Films Patrick O’Neill

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4

Part 2 5 6 7

The Curated Home

Mobilizing Material Culture: Collecting and Interiority in Luchino Visconti’s Conversation Piece (1974) Shax Riegler

107

From Sex to Narcissism: Understanding Minimalist Interiors in New York Films of the 1970s Timothy M. Rohan

125

“Home furnishing takes a cue from Paris, too”: The Fashion Professional at Work and Home in Postwar Hollywood Films, c. 1957–61 Rebecca C. Tuite

143

Part 3 Framing Interiors and Interiorities 8 9

Framing Interiorities: Interiors, Objects, and Hidden Desires in Billy Wilder’s The Apartment (1960) Imma Forino

169

Frames, Veils, and Windows: Modern Cinematic Set Design in Early Russian Films by Evgenii Bauer Maria Korolkova

187

Part 4 Screening Queerness: Class, Ambiguity, and Power 10 Interiors, Class, Perversity, and Ambiguity in The Servant (1963) Barry Curtis

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Contents

11 In Plain View: London Commercial Interiors as Queer Spaces in Three 1960s British Films: Victim (1961), The Leather Boys (1964), and The Killing of Sister George (1968) Andrew Stephenson

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12 Queer Interiors: Derek Jarman’s Caravaggio (1986) and Edward II (1992) Adam Vaughan

241

Part 5 Horror and Homicide 13 The Horror of the Homicidal Floor: Destabilized Elements of Interior Architecture Alexandra Brown and Kirsty Volz

259

14 Designed to Destroy: Action Film Interiors and the Construction of Killscapes Lennart Soberon

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Part 6

Living in Outer Space: Sci-Fi Interiors

15 Visions of Home: Nostalgia and Mobility, Past, Present, and Future, in Serenity’s Domestic Spaceship Interior Sorcha O’Brien

299

16 Cosmic Heterotopia: Banality and Disjunction in the Interiors of Passengers (2016) Ersi Ioannidou

319

Notes on Contributors Index

335 339

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FIGURES

0.1 1.1 1.2 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 3.1 4.1 5.1 5.2 5.3 6.1

6.2

6.3

7.1

A Tricky Treat, directed by Patricia Chica. Liuda and Kolia’s apartment, Bed and Sofa (Tret’ia Meshchanskaia), directed by Abram Room. Natasha and her grandfather’s provincial home, The Girl with a Hatbox (Devushka s korobkoi), directed by Boris Barnet. Pilot for I Love Lucy, filmed March 2, 1951; aired April 30, 1990 on CBS. “Drafted,” Season 1, Episode 11, aired December 24, 1951, I Love Lucy (1951–7). “Lucy Goes to the Hospital,” Season 2, Episode 16, aired January 19, 1953, I Love Lucy (1951–7). “Lucy Wants New Furniture,” Season 2, Episode 28, aired June 1, 1953, I Love Lucy (1951–7). “Lucy Cries Wolf,” Season 4, Episode 3, aired October 18, 1954, I Love Lucy (1951–7). “Job Switching,” Season 2, Episode 1, aired September 15, 1952, I Love Lucy (1951–7). Edward and Rose try to talk across the divide, Archipelago, directed by Joanna Hogg. The mansion and parental home in Risky Business represents wealth and success in the 1980s. Risky Business, directed by Paul Brickman. A view of the Professor’s drawing room-cum-study in Luchino Visconti’s Conversation Piece (Gruppo di famiglia in un interno). A view of the newly renovated upstairs apartment in Luchino Visconti’s Conversation Piece (Gruppo di famiglia in un interno). Sergio de Francisco, Mario Praz in His Study at the Palazzo Ricci, 1965. Ward Bennett sits before a shelf that displayed a changing array of objects from his art collection in his Minimalist Dakota Apartment (1963). Mary (Mia Farrow) learns about John (Dustin Hoffman) from the objects displayed on the shelf in his apartment in John and Mary (1969, directed by Peter Yates). Sandy Bates (Woody Allen) discusses his problems before a photomural of Eddie Adams’s General Nguyễn Ngo.c Loan Executing Nguyễn Văn Lém in Saigon, 1 February 1968 in Stardust Memories (1980, directed by Woody Allen). Designing Woman, directed by Vincente Minnelli.

19 34 38 51 52 54 55 56 57 84 91 108 110 116

129

131

137 149

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Figures

7.2 7.3 8.1

8.2 8.3

9.1 9.2 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 11.1 11.2 13.1

13.2 13.3

14.1 14.2 14.3 15.1

15.2

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Funny Face, directed by Stanley Donen. Funny Face, directed by Stanley Donen. Baxter’s triumphant walk in the Corporation’s open office: he brings his Rolodex card file with him. The Apartment, directed by Billy Wilder. Fran’s compact mirror and Baxter’s dismayed expression split in two. The Apartment, directed by Billy Wilder. In the apartment’s kitchen, Baxter demonstrates his culinary talent, draining spaghetti onto a tennis racquet before serving it with meatballs. Fran is on the threshold of the kitchen. The Apartment, directed by Billy Wilder. Vera alone in her bedroom, Twilight of a Woman’s Soul (Sumerki zhenskoi dushi), directed by Evgenii Bauer. Maksim enters Vera’s bedroom, Twilight of a Woman’s Soul (Ditia bol’shogo goroda), directed by Evgenii Bauer. The Servant, directed by Joseph Losey. The Servant, directed by Joseph Losey. The Servant, directed by Joseph Losey. The Servant, directed by Joseph Losey. The Servant, directed by Joseph Losey. The Leather Boys, directed by Sidney J. Furie. The Killing of Sister George, directed by Robert Aldrich. mother/Lawrence works closely with the surfaces of the house wall, breathing life into the old house. mother!, directed by Darren Arronofsky. mother/Lawrence interacts with the bleeding floor. mother!, directed by Darren Arronofsky. One victim of the unnamed woman/Johansson as he sinks into the liquid surface of the cottage floor. Under the Skin, directed by Jonathon Glazer. Machete’s object of attention. Machete, directed by Robert Rodriguez. MI: Fallout’s isolated arenas. Mission Impossible: Fallout, directed by Christopher McQuarrie. Close-quarters combat in Atomic Blonde, directed by David Leitch. The kitchen and lounge areas of the Serenity spaceship, showing the yellow interior with decorative paintwork, metal infrastructure, and aircraft galley storage unit. It also shows the Chinese dragons and Native American dreamcatcher in the lounge area, and the initial configuration of chairs around the kitchen table in the pilot episode. The downstairs common area in the film Serenity (2005), furnished with yellow modern furniture and rya rugs. Serenity, directed by Joss Whedon.

151 152

175 178

179 191 193 211 212 215 218 220 231 235

268 269

271 289 291 292

304

305

Figures

15.3 The lounge area off the kitchen is being used by the characters for a card game, with a set of mismatched armchairs, including two brown Barcelona chairs, from the episode “Ariel.” 16.1 The Grand Concourse, Passengers, directed by Mortem Tyldum. 16.2 The Bar, Passengers, directed by Mortem Tyldum. 16.3 The Vienna Suite, Passengers, directed by Mortem Tyldum.

306 321 323 324

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As editors, we would like to offer our sincere thanks to Rebecca Barden at Bloomsbury for supporting this project and for her patience and professionalism. We would also like to extend our thanks to those colleagues and students who have joined us in our various cross-disciplinary explorations of design, film, and television. We are grateful for the collegiality and professionalism of our contributors, who patiently worked with us on this volume, including during the onset of a global pandemic, and our peer reviewers and colleagues, who offered invaluable insights and suggestions. Kingston University London and Parsons School of Design at The New School in New York hosted a series of symposia from which this project grew; we thank both and Parsons in particular for supporting the production costs related to preparing the manuscript. Last but not least, we are grateful to Rachel H. R. Hunnicutt for her outstanding work as a production assistant and to the Bloomsbury editorial assistants Claire Constable and Olivia Davies for their help and support.

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INTRODUCING SCREEN INTERIORS: FROM COUNTRY HOUSES TO COSMIC HETEROTOPIAS Pat Kirkham and Sarah A. Lichtman

Screen Interiors: From Country Houses to Cosmic Heterotopias is a cross-disciplinary anthology of sixteen chapters, each of which focuses in one way or another on interiors in film and/or television. The productions discussed herein range from pre-sound films of the 1910s to several films and television programs of the 2010s. The chapters cover a variety of genres, theoretical, and analytical approaches, plots, production values, filmmakers, and other matters—including the ways in which sets, locations, designs, and objects provide insights into, and a greater understanding of, characters, the complexities of negotiating identities, and the overall look of a film or television program. The genres and subgenres, some of which overlap, range from melodrama, thriller, biopic, and period drama to comedy, science fiction, and horror—both sci-fi horror and psychological horror—along with action movies, gritty “kitchen sink” dramas, and other “social comment” films. Some of the productions are set on Earth, others in galaxies far, far away. Some are set in the past, some in the present, and some in the future, while several deal with issues of past, present, and future. The science-fiction productions feature cinematic presents set in the future of the viewer, albeit often futures with strong references to the past—some of which are more readily recognizable than others—and/or to futuristic imaginings current at the time the productions were made. The authors range from senior scholars to younger emerging scholars and mostly work within the academic fields of Film and Media Studies, on the one hand, and Design History and/or Cultural Studies on the other, while some teach and write across these fields as they and others do here. The upswing of interest in design in relation to film and other screen media over the last two decades has alerted many in these fields to a greater awareness of the other fields, and this anthology is both a product of, as well as a contribution to, this particular type of cross-disciplinary pollination. This anthology developed out of a 2015 initiative at Kingston University, London, to foster greater collaboration across the research, teaching, curating, and publishing of historians of design and historians of film and media, as well as practitioners and theorists across other disciplines. Staff at the university’s Modern Interiors Research Centre (MIRC, founded in 2005 to encourage more scholarly interrogations of interiors) grasped the opportunity to foreground screen interiors as worthy of study in and of themselves and help redress the imbalance within many publications on film and design that, if they feature interiors at all, do so mainly in relation to architecture and urban 1

Screen Interiors

spaces. Discussions with colleagues at Parsons School of Design at The New School in New York, especially the School of Art and Design History and Theory, and Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, led to three co-convened international symposia: the first in New York, the others in Kingston; and to two publications, of which this is the larger and latest one.1 With many notable exceptions, Film and Media Studies scholars have not placed as high a priority on design as on many other areas of their fields and, similarly, film and other screen media have been marginalized within Design History. The latter point was made in the Journal of Design History in 1995, while as late as 2017, film historian Lucy Fischer, whose own work has greatly helped raise the status of design-related scholarship within Film and Media Studies, commented that “design and cinema” had received “little attention” until the last few years.2 This mutual marginalization noted, we want to emphasize that all scholarship builds upon the work of others, and many of those who have contributed to our better understanding of the multifaceted relationships between film and design over the years are acknowledged in the chapter bibliographies and notes, as well as in a discrete section below. Before that section, however, a few comments on the often shifting and unstable terms used in English-language writing on film and design that were used in the US film industry and later for television productions too.

Set design, art direction, production design: terminology and screen credits In the early days of filmmaking, the person with responsibility for the design of sets and backdrops was known by various terms, including technical director, artistic director, set director, set builder, interior decorator, and architect, and similar terms were used in several European countries.3 The terms architect and interior decorator were used increasingly in the interwar years when growing numbers of people trained in those areas took up jobs in film-studio art departments.4 Art direction came into more common usage in the 1920s, but when the first Academy Award was presented in 1929 for the category that would later be known as art direction (and even later as production design), the term used was “Interior Decoration.”5 The term was widely used in the US industry, and in 1937 the Society of Motion Picture Interior Decorators (SMPID) was founded when a group of members of the studiobacked union IATSE decided to form their own union (membership numbers vary from 59 to 77). That it was known within the industry as the “Set Decorators Union” demonstrates the fluidity of these two terms.6 None of the terms were set in stone. Set designer, for example, has been used to refer not only to those who conceive designs for sets and either sketch or illustrate them themselves or use sketch artists or illustrators to do so, but also to those who fabricate the set designs conceived and sketched out by others. Furthermore, it is sometimes used for those, often from architectural backgrounds, who produce from design sketches the many detailed blueprints from which sets are constructed. Within the US studio system, this latter type of work was often done by architects, such as Preston Ames, for example, 2

Introducing Screen Interiors

who joined the drafting room at MGM during the Depression and later went on to art direction.7 Set dresser refers to those who “dress” the sets, but the degrees of leeway given them varies considerably depending on the person to whom they report in the occupational hierarchy. From the 1940s through the rest of the twentieth century, art director and production designer were the two main titles given to the person responsible for the overall look of a film, and there was some interchangeability between them. Still today such a person works in close collaboration with the director while overseeing a wide variety of activities related to the vision for the film, ranging from location selection and color palette to artists’ sketches, set design, set dressing, models, props, backdrops, matte paintings, and special effects, as well as working closely with the cinematographer and lighting specialists and liaising with costume designers, make-up artists, hair-stylists, and any relevant consultants. The production design credit was introduced in the late 1930s as a means of recognizing William Cameron Menzies’s enormous contribution to visualizing and making material the overall look of Gone With the Wind (1939), a contribution that went beyond, and was different from, that of the art director.8 Menzies’s role began with reading the script and included creating a multitude of sketches and about 200 larger watercolor paintings and sets.9 Besides coordinating with the art director, costume designer, special effects people, cinematographer, camera operators, and consultants (including an expert on the Civil War South and a technicolor expert), and overseeing construction of the set, Menzies also worked with the second unit and directed a few key scenes, including the famous burning of the city of Atlanta carried out on the Selznick lot in Los Angeles.10 After a draft press release implied that Menzies’s role in Gone With the Wind was akin in drafting, producer and studio head David O. Selznick pointed out that “in motion picture language,” drafting referred simply to “a draftsman working under an art director”; he insisted on fair credit for Menzies, whose task he described as “monumental” because “what he is doing is ‘designing’ the picture and ‘designing’ it in color.”11 After it was agreed that Menzies’s credit for Gone With the Wind would be “this production was designed by,” Selznick suggested it be used also for the smaller-scale film Young in Heart (1938, Richard Wallace) which ended up being finished first.12 Thus, the first Menzies production design credit came in 1938, as opposed to 1939 as usually claimed. Lyle Wheeler was credited as art director on both Young in Heart and Gone With the Wind and won an Oscar for the latter, which garnered a total of eight Academy Awards. Unfortunately there was no Academy Award category for Menzies’s contribution and he had to make do with a special one-off award created by the Academy for “outstanding achievement in the use of color for the enhancement of dramatic mood” for what was, in fact, a far greater role.13 The term production design gradually came into favor thereafter and was often used interchangeably with art direction, especially after World War Two. By the third quarter of the twentieth century, production designer predominated, and when there was, and is, both a production designer and an art director working on a particular film or television production, the latter reports to the former.14 3

Screen Interiors

The use of designers as consultants also raised issues of credit and demarcation. In order to illustrate this underexplored area, we consider consultancies undertaken by two well-known designers from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, a period that saw a rise in the number of consultants working on large productions. On The Spirit of St. Louis (1957), Charles Eames, whose design and photographic talents were greatly admired by the film’s director, Billy Wilder, served from 1955 as what Warner Brothers’ memoranda referred to alternately as “production consultant” and “photographic consultant.” As part of the location shooting team, Eames traveled to several countries around the world. He also headed the second unit, undertook some aerial photography, and created two stunning montages within the film, the latter in collaboration with his wife and professional partner, Ray Eames.15 She recalled that union objections over credits meant that Charles was not credited as a consultant or for his second unit work, despite Wilder recalling that he contributed “so very much to that movie.”16 Those most likely to have been anxious about Charles Eames’s credits would have been other members of the second unit, assistant director Charles Coleman, and art director Art Loel. As it was, his only screen credit was for “montage.” The other example is designer and film title maker Saul Bass, who between 1960 and 1966 undertook consultancies related to visual matters on five films—Psycho (1960), Spartacus (1960), West Side Story (1961), Grand Prix (1966), and Not With My Wife You Don’t (1966)—and was credited as “pictorial consultant” and “design consultant,” respectively, for the first two, and visual consultant thereafter.17 In the case of Spartacus, producer Kirk Douglas brought Bass in as a consultant, but production designer Alexander Golitzen was anxious that Bass’s remit—which included scouting locations for the Nubian salt mines, designing and storyboarding battle scenes, and conceptualizing and preparing initial sketches for the gladiator school—touched upon his own area of activity. Ultimately Bass’s work on the gladiator school was handed over to Golitzen for development and realization, and on screen Bass was credited as “visual consultant” and Golitzen as having been responsible for “production design.”18 Similar anxieties arose over Bass’s visual consultancy for West Side Story. Bass’s contributions included directing the aerial photography over Manhattan for the sequence following the lengthy lyrical opening that he designed in collaboration with his assistant (later wife), Elaine Makatura. They also collaborated on conceptualizing the opening dance scenes between the rival gangs and shooting extensive live tests in Los Angeles that were later filmed in New York City by director Jerome Robbins.19 When the film was released, the beauty of the Bass–Makatura opening sequence and the witty extended end-credits expressed through graffiti and road signs received a great deal of attention, and production designer Boris Leven was anxious that when viewers saw Saul Bass credited as visual consultant, as well as for “titles,” they would not grasp how much he himself had contributed.20 Leven’s anxiety was understandable, but he told a journalist that Bass had nothing to do with any of the sets or backgrounds, or “with the visual aspect of the film”—yet a remarkable collection of surviving artwork, storyboards, and research photographs clearly indicates that Bass, in collaboration with Makatura, played a significant role in mapping out the visual look of the film.21 4

Introducing Screen Interiors

Leven need not have worried about long-term credit, however, not least because some historians have written about the visual look of particular films on the largely correct assumption that the production designer is the person responsible for it, without checking the part a consultant might play. We suspect that most of us who write and teach across design and screen media have been guilty of this at some point, and the examples we cite here are included not only to explain our point but also as a collegial alert call. In 1994, Robert S. Sennett, whose Setting the Scene: The Great Hollywood Art Directors is packed with useful information and pertinent perceptions, wrote about Leven’s “constant reminders” in West Side Story that the gangs’“playground is also their prison,” and that “the chain-link fence that towers over all of them and inhibits their freedom and escape uncannily resembles the fence of a cellblock.”22 This is true, but all of this imagery, together with the street graffiti to which Sennett also refers, is in the Bass–Makaura designs and storyboards made at the very beginning of the production.23 In such a long, complex, and lavishly produced film such as this, to give credit to Bass does not diminish the contribution of Leven or vice versa, but the example serves as a reminder of the need to use primary sources whenever possible, and not to make assumptions about who designed what.

Writings related to set design, art direction, and production design on screen In this section we discuss a selection of publications related to set design, art direction, and production design, including interiors where possible, while marking shifts in scholarly interests and raising issues such as marginalization and bias. An excellent short introduction to the history of such publications comes, oddly enough, in an appendix, “Histories of Set Design,” in Charles Affron and Mirella Jona Affron’s Sets in Motion: Art Direction and Film Narrative (1995). Their review of what they refer to as the “history of film décor” in relation to histories of film concluded that set design and art direction/ production design were either ignored or marginalized in most scholarly publications, whereas there was greater coverage in more textbook-like introductions and in surveys by practitioners.24 The design of sets, including interiors, was a feature of filmmaking from the early days of motion pictures in the mid-1890s, when filming took place outdoors in daylight. Some early sets for interiors were represented wholly, furniture and all, on flat, painted backdrops, whereas others used real furniture and props in front of the backdrop, thus adding depth to the shots and greater “realism.”25 By 1897 the French Méliès company had built a high-walled studio with a huge glass roof and space that allowed for grander sets. As Ian Christie argues when discussing sets in pre-sound films in the United States and Europe, including Russia, from about 1908 to 1914, design “helped bring vast new audiences to the cinema, attracted by a new ‘educational’ authenticity in recreating the past, and by the sheer scale of spectacle on offer.”26 As the status of film grew, so too did claims that it was an art form. The idea found more followers in Europe where, from the mid- to late 1910s through the 1920s, a range 5

Screen Interiors

of films influenced by avant-garde art, design, and architectural movements—from Constructivism and Expressionism to De Stijl and Modernism—were offered as evidence of this. In Film as Kunst (1932, translated into English as Film as Art in 1933), Rudolph Arnheim, a German film and art theorist specializing in visual perception, sought to refute claims that film could not be an art form—allegedly because “it does nothing but reproduce reality mechanically”—by positing that the very tools of mechanical representation provided the means for film to be art.27 For him, film art was at its purest in the “silent” black-and-white films of the 1920s by directors such as F. W. Murnau, Sergei Eisenstein, René Clair, and Carl Meyer, who used cameras, lighting, editing, and montage to design what appeared on screen. Arnheim presents these directors as “auteurs,” and even when discussing a special shot in Entr’acte (1924, René Clair)—of a ballerina dancing on a sheet of glass under which the camera was placed—did not mention the skilled cinematographer Jimmy Berliet, who worked on the film.28 This notwithstanding, Arnheim focused on light, framing, camera angles, and the camera’s ability to move close up as well as out of frame and disturb time–space continuities, which remain important factors when considering set design and art direction. Writing during World War Two, British critic and educator Roger Manvell, who also considered the “art” of film to be created through camerawork, lighting, and editing, stated that while film is a cooperative art, “as in all creative work, a single mind with a single purpose must dominate the whole” (emphasis added), and that the “single mind” was the director’s.29 Indeed, even in an introduction he wrote for Edward Carrick’s 1948 book about British art directors and their work, Manvell focused solely on the director, “within whose control the whole conception of the film lies,” and neglected to mention either art directors in general or those featured in the book.30 A decade later, British cultural theorist and critic Raymond Williams also envisaged a single person overseeing the original conception of a film throughout the production. Like others, he saw the camera as the most effective means of achieving “total expression” and considered design as one of the four elements central to the integration of expression and performance, the others being movement, music, and speech.31 His statement that “the control of the pen over the total conception ought to become, directly, the control of the camera” brought him close to the notion of scriptwriters directing their own scripts, and to the “camera-pen” proposed by French critic and director Alexandre Astruc in his 1948 article regarded as ushering in the French “New Wave” (La nouvelle vague) movement. That movement validated the director as author (auteur) and had a huge impact on the overall look of films concerned with contemporary life in the late 1950s and 1960s, including “realist” interiors as well as the advertising used to promote them.32 The director-writer par excellence is Jean-Luc Godard, and while cinematographer Raoul Coutard is credited in Godard films such as À bout de souffle (Breathless, 1960), Alphaville (1965), and Weekend (1967), the lack of official production design credits suggests that Godard had the main say in the often cramped interiors filmed with portable cameras. Carrick’s Art and Design in the British Film: A Pictorial Directory of British Art Directors and Their Work (1948), which grew out of an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, showcasing art directors working in the postwar British film 6

Introducing Screen Interiors

industry, belongs to two related categories of publications concerned with set design, art direction, and production design.33 The first category relates to practitioners writing about their own work or that of their colleagues, a strand that goes back to the earliest commentaries by practitioners in trade journals and design magazines; the second relates to exhibitions. The vast bulk of Carrick’s text consists of illustrated work “biographies,” an approach that has continued, but his introduction flags the transnational work patterns of several of the art directors featured. The transnational approach cuts across the telling of individual work histories and of developments in set design within the narrow confines of national film industries. This approach has gained greater traction since the increasing attention paid to transnational studies generally, and Tim Bergfelder, Sue Harris, and Sarah Street’s Film Architecture and the Transnational Imagination: Set Design in 1930s European Cinema (2007) in particular.34 The latter features the links among leading art directors, such as Alfred Junge and Vincent Korda, who worked across the German, French, and British film industries during the late 1920s and 1930s. The postwar years not only saw huge efforts to regenerate and re-energize national film industries, but also more serious approaches to studying film. According to the Affrons, “the first extensive history of set design” was the historical section in Baldo Bandini and Glauco Viazzi’s Ragionamenti sulla scenografia (Reflections on Scenography) that was published in Italy in 1945.35 The format of a well-illustrated text with a short section on the pre-sound era followed by selective case studies of national film industries established a broad framework for future surveys, most notably French art director Léon Barsacq’s Décor de Film (Film Décor, 1970).36 Barsacq covers various moments in set design and the work of art directors across Europe (France, Italy, Sweden, Germany, Russia/USSR, Britain) and in the United States from 1895 to the post-World War Two period, ending with the French New Wave. The impact of the survey expanded enormously with the 1976 English-language version that, edited and revised by Elliott Stein—who added fifty pages of biographies and filmographies of over 240 individual art director/production designers—was published as Caligari’s Cabinet and Other Grand Illusions: A History of Film Design.37 By contrast, art historian Juan Antonio Ramírez’s 1986 survey, La arquitectura en el cine: Hollywood, la Edad de Oro (published in English in 2004 as Architecture for the Screen: A Critical Study of Set Design in Hollywood’s Golden Age), focuses on Hollywood sets. He argues against the narrow pro-modern design bias evident in so much of what was previously written and, we would add, all too often continues. He divides his text according to the categories of art director, design, construction, destruction, reuse, set dressing, and styles of architecture and design. Devoting five out of eleven chapters to the latter category, he treats each style in an equally serious fashion, be it historicist or otherwise. However, although the book technically covers the period between 1915 and 1955, his focus is narrow; almost half the sets discussed are from the 1930s, with about another 20 percent from the 1920s and 1940s.38 In the 1970s and 1980s most scholars and curators interested in art direction focused not only on Hollywood but also the period circa 1920 to 1940, and on designs that drew upon modern art and design movements, particularly Expressionism, Constructivism, 7

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“Art Deco,” and the European Modern Movement. Historicist and “traditional” designs were marginalized (as they continue to be), and, apart from brief genuflections, much of the first two decades of filmmaking was too. Exceptions to the lack of interest in early cinema include Kevin Brownlow’s studies The Parade’s Gone By. . . (1968) and Hollywood: The Pioneers (1979), both of which have chapters on early art directors.39 For those interested in sets, the images from the John Kobal Collection featured in Hollywood: The Pioneers provide fascinating visual evidence of early sets, including interiors, as does William K. Everson’s American Silent Film (1978).40 While the growing international retrieval and conservation of “silent” films, many previously considered “lost,” and events such as the annual Pordenone Silent Film Festival (Le Giornate del Cinema Muto) held in Italy from 1982 raised interest in pre-sound cinema, the “turn” to early cinema was not reflected within the academy on any significant scale until the later 1980s and early 1990s. We count ourselves fortunate to have two chapters on the pre-sound era in this anthology. The fascination with the lavish sets of expensive high-production-value Hollywood feature films was reflected in two exhibitions on Hollywood art direction at high-profile museums in the late 1970s: Designed for Film: The Hollywood Art Director (1978) at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and The Art of Hollywood: Fifty Years of Art Direction (1979) at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum in association with Thames Television, the company that produced Hollywood, a thirteen-hour television documentary series. The exhibitions, and the publications associated with them, sought to make visible the most anonymous and invisible of the design areas within filmmaking.41 The fascination with Hollywood sets and the focus on the period from 1920 to 1940 came together with the widespread revival of interest in “Art Deco” in Howard Mandelbaum and Eric Myers’s Screen Deco: A Celebration of High Style in Hollywood Film (1985), which features a wide range of sets—from bathrooms and bedrooms to nightclubs and ocean liners—through both text and an array of stunning film stills, the vast majority of them interiors.42 Published the following year, Donald Albrecht’s Designing Dreams: Modern Architecture in the Movies also covers “Art Deco,” but only as one part of a wider study of the influence of various movements in modern architecture and design, including Expressionism and the European Modern Movement, on Hollywood sets of the 1920s and 1930s.43 More than many with a training in architecture who write about set design, Albrecht moves easily from exteriors to interiors, as befitting his position as Curator of Production Design at the American Museum of the Moving Image at the time the book was published. The rate of publications on design and film increased considerably in the 1990s, a decade when design grew in status and the disciplines of Design History and Film and Media Studies flourished in the academy. Both art directors and production designers as well as Hollywood proved popular topics, as, for example, in Robert S. Sennett’s Setting the Scene: The Great Hollywood Art Directors (1994) and Beverly Heisner’s Hollywood Art: Art Direction in the Days of The Great Studios (1990), followed by her Production Design in the Contemporary Film: A Critical Study of 23 Movies and Their Designers (1997), which covered recently released productions and a broader range of genres.44 The voices and experiences of those involved with production designers feature in books of 8

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interviews, such as Vincent LoBrutto’s By Design: Interviews with Film Production Designers (1991), as well as surveys such as Charles Tashiro’s in Pretty Pictures: Production Design and the History Film (1998).45 A filmmaker as well as a scholar, Tashiro argues that to fully understand “the total cinematic experience” we need to know the particular circumstances of each production as well as of all the people involved in creating that experience.46 Meanwhile, from the early 1990s, Sight and Sound editor Philip Dodd had been encouraging such a development by bringing scholars together with production designers, costume designers, cinematographers, make-up artists, and directors working on films about to be or recently released.47 The attention paid to architecture and film sets by Albrecht and others continued in the 1990s but with less focus on interiors. Film Architecture: Set Designs from Metropolis to Blade Runner (1996), edited by Dietrich Neumann, a trained architect and scholar with an interest in modern architecture and Urban Studies, boosted and broadened the growing academic interest in the relationship between architecture and film.48 The publication is a curious mix of reprints of writings by progressive architects and designers in interwar Germany and five more expansive introductory essays, including Neumann’s “Before and After Metropolis: Film and Architecture in Search of the Modern City,” which explores architectural debates about urban living, skyscrapers, and how we might live in the future, as does Anthony Vidler’s “The Explosion of Space: Architecture and the Filmic Imaginary.” The strong focus within the book on canonical films, from the German Expressionist The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920, Ribert Wiene) to Metropolis (1927, Fritz Lang), and to The Fountainhead (1949, King Vidor), and beyond to the futuristic or “visionary” sets in Blade Runner (1982, Ridley Scott), did little to address the challenges posed by postmodernists and historicists alike to the continuing concentration on Modernist architecture and design, or by the increasing concern to expand the canon within Film and Media Studies. Four years later, Architecture and Film (2000), an anthology edited by architecture scholar and critic Mark Lamster, took a broader, more cross-disciplinary view of the topic, drawing upon approaches in both areas, as well as Cultural Studies and Material Culture Studies.49 It considers how architecture and architects are represented on screen and how those representations, and the ideas they were rooted in, fed back into and shaped how we think about the term architecture as well as the built environment. The selection of films is wider ranging: “Beatles films” and more recent ones such as Jungle Fever (1991, Spike Lee) feature along with films such as The Fountainhead that had already achieved canonical status among those writing on architecture and film. While several contributions focus on urban buildings and spaces, others refer to suburban or rural ones, and Lamster draws attention to anti-urbanism in the Star Wars trilogy. In terms of interiors, Joseph Rosa’s discussion of how modern domestic architecture and interiors in films such as L.A. Confidential (1997, Curtis Hanson) and The Big Lebowski (1998, Coen Brothers) become synonymous with the unstable inhabitants living inside them is particularly pertinent. Lamster also included the voices of practitioners, including a production designer, an editor, a location manager, and a graphic designer specializing in title sequences. 9

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The Cinematic City (1997), an anthology edited by David B. Clarke, sought to redress the neglect of the city and cinema within Urban Studies by bringing together scholars from both Urban Studies and Film Studies.50 The contributions range from early cinema to more recent films, and from modern to postmodern cities; they are underpinned by various theoretical approaches from the above fields and elsewhere that Clarke sets out clearly in his introduction. A spate of publications on cinema and the city and/or urban spaces followed, including Mark Shiel and Tony Fitzmaurice (eds.), Cinema and the City: Film and Urban Societies in a Global Context (2001); Stephen Barber, Projected Cities: Cinema and Urban Space (2002); Barbara Mennel, Cities and Cinema (2008); Richard Koeck and Les Roberts (eds.), The City and the Moving Image: Urban Projections (2010); François Penz and Andong Lu (eds.), Urban Cinematics: Understanding Urban Phenomena through the Moving Image (2011); and Geraldine Pratt, Film and Urban Space: Critical Possibilities (2014).51 For the most part, however, these and other publications that were part of a mini-boom of interest in such topics reveal a continued bias towards Modernism at the expense of other styles and of ways of thinking about architecture and urban space, to say nothing of the neglect of interiors. 52 Screen interiors continued to receive exposure in the 2010s in survey books devoted to art direction and/or production design, including the large and beautifully illustrated Design on Film: A Century of Hollywood Art Direction (2010) by Cathy Whitlock. Published in association with the Art Director’s Guild (ADG), this collaboration facilitated access to members of the ADG and the Set Decorators Society of America, as well as a range of documentation. The clarity and detail revealed in the more than 360 high-resolution images, ranging from sketches and set designs to fully built sets, production stills, and photographs of practitioners at work, serve as a useful source for historians.53 By contrast, Art Direction and Production Design (2015) is a short introductory survey of roughly the same period of art direction and production design in the US film industry edited by Lucy Fischer and written in chronological sections by her (1895–1927) and other scholars: Mark Shiel (1928–46), Merrill Schleier (1947–67), Charles Tashiro (1968–80), J. D. Connor (1981–99), and Stephen Prince (2000–present).54 Books that foreground practitioners also continue to broaden awareness of set design, art direction, and production design, past and present. Fionnuala Harrigan’s Filmcraft: Production Design (2013) features interviews with sixteen leading production designers, including Ken Adam, Dean Tavoularis, Stuart Craig, Dante Ferretti, Sarah Greenwood, Eve Stewart, and Antxón Gómez.55 Studies of individual production designers include Howard Gutner’s MGM Style: Cedric Gibbons and the Art of the Golden Age of Hollywood (2019), which covers the career of Gibbons, while Ken Adam’s work is discussed in two publications by Christopher Frayling: Ken Adam and the Art of Production Design (2005) and Ken Adam Designs the Movies: James Bond and Beyond (2008).56 Designing Movies: Portrait of a Hollywood Artist (2006), an account of production designer Richard Sylbert’s rich legacy told by Sylvia Townsend with Sharmagne Sylbert (the designer’s widow), is based on his memoirs, together with surviving artwork and other documentation, and augmented by commentaries from people who worked with him.57 Many of the ever 10

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increasing number of “how-to” books also bring greater visibility to the rich history of production design while providing instruction for student practitioners, as for example, those by Jane Barnwell, who worked as a production designer before becoming an academic. She too draws upon interviews with designers as well as on her own experience in Production Design: Architects of the Screen (2004) and Design for Screen: Visual Storytelling in Film and Television (2017).58 We round off this section with four publications, each of which either touches upon and/or suggests ways of thinking about interiors in relation to screen media. The topics range from a particular building type (the skyscraper) or a particular type of home (the apartment) to the private house and particular room types. We begin with Skyscraper Cinema: Architecture and Gender in American Film (2009) by Merrill Schleier, who specializes in the histories of architecture, art, and film. Situating this study in the explosion of scholarship related to architecture and film since the 1980s, and the study of cinema and the city in particular, Schleier states that her aim is to explore how extraarchitectural discourses are inscribed in skyscraper cinema.59 While the book features many tall buildings soaring upwards, Schleier also embraces the discussion of interiors such as offices within the skyscrapers and does so in the same rich contextual manner. The interdisciplinary The Apartment Plot: Urban Living in American Film and Popular Culture, 1945 to 1975 (2010) by Pamela Robertson Wojcik is also a richly contextualized study. She places it at the intersection of Film Studies, Cultural Studies, and Urban Studies, and her interest in the influence of popular culture is evident in the wide range of popular films and television programs discussed. Indeed, so wide is the scope that she claims the “apartment plot” as a genre of its own, one that “reflects and refracts a philosophy of urbanism” that she likens to an ongoing conversation of multiple iterations, revisions, and reframings sensitive to issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality.60 She posits “apartment” narratives as part of mid-century urban discourse that present a notion of home as mobile, impermanent, and porous, rather than as a private place for stable family living. We would add that the interiors seen in about 70 percent of the illustrations, but rarely fully interrogated in the text, place apartments within contemporary discourse on living in modern ways, no matter where the apartment might be.61 John David Rhodes also brings together film and architecture, and to a lesser degree interiors and living spaces, in Spectacle of Property: The House in American Film (2017), a politically engaged study of the private home.62 Thinking about property in film as well as in the political economy, he selects three categories—the bungalow, Modernist houses, and Shingle-style houses—as his case studies. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Rhodes produced a coda, “From Porch to Attic: Condemned to Property in New Orleans,” that raises questions about providing future living spaces of decent quality that must surely include new types of buildings, and, additionally, new types of living spaces. The well-trodden trope of house as home is reconsidered in the anthology Spaces of the Cinematic Home: Behind the Screen Door (2016). Edited by Eleanor Andrews, Stella Hockenhull, and Fran Pheasant-Kelly, it focuses on aspects of domestic architecture and internal architecture.63 The study is rooted in Film and Media Studies and more particularly in the editors’ interests in different types and aspects of space: Andrews in place, settings, 11

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and perspective (she writes about the staircase); Hockenhull in film landscapes (she writes about the garden); and Pheasant-Kelly on abject space (she writes about the attic). Indeed, eleven out of the fourteen essays deal with a room type, from basement to attic, and in terms of subject matter those essays dovetail with some in this anthology.

Groupings, themes, and issues We have grouped the chapters into six thematic parts in the hope that this will help readers draw out more easily some of the themes and issues that link them. The parts are: 1. House and Home: Comfort, Class, Gender, and Generation; 2. The Curated Home; 3. Framing Interiors and Interiorities; 4. Screening Queerness: Class, Ambiguity, and Power; 5. Horror and Homicide; and 6. Living in Outer Space: Sci-Fi Interiors. Deciding how to group them was not an easy job because several chapters, or large parts of them, could have sat well within parts other than those we finally settled upon. Issues and topics raised within and across the chapters include class; social stratification; generational differences and conflicts; gender; sexual orientation; queerness; alienation and displacement; interiority; violence, violation, and killing; private, public, domestic, and commercial spaces; communal living (freely chosen or otherwise); and the “modern” and the “traditional.” Some chapters pay attention to particular directors or art directors/production designers, but overall the sets on screen play a larger role. Domestic interiors feature in several chapters, usually in the form of building types familiar to most viewers, namely apartments and houses. Notions of domesticity and “home,” including a place/space of one’s own (real and imagined), are discussed across a variety of interiors, along with particular objects within them. Commercial spaces— ranging from pubs, bars, clubs, and nightclubs to shopping malls—expand the types of buildings and interiors covered. Attention is paid to individual elements of interior architecture, including staircases, corridors, windows, floors, doors, basements, and balconies, some of which conventionally define boundaries between inside and out, as well as problematizing them. Elements associated with death and loss range from the death and destruction facilitated by action-movie “killscapes” to interiors that facilitate, or serve as metaphors for, containing, repressing, and even killing desires and identities. Some authors consider productions that feature interiors with very few objects inside them, while others discuss spaces packed with items, but the focus in each instance is to better understand the roles those interiors play within each film. In some film and television sets, objects are arranged so as to suggest they have been selected with great care, while in others the set designers and dressers flag indifference to both the objects and the space itself. Items within sets selected for particular mention include a variety of conventional types, from furniture to paintings, sculptures, precious antiques, books, and bookshelves, with some of them used in unconventional ways. Several chapters draw attention to the ways in which members of different generations and classes negotiate living in close proximity to one another. In some of the productions discussed the characters are mostly enclosed within a particular indoor space whereas others feature 12

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more interplay between indoors and out. The commentaries on each of the themed parts that follow are not abstracts of the chapters as such but rather summaries that cover our reasons for grouping particular chapters together. House and Home: Comfort, Class, Gender, and Generation This part brings together a variety of films and television programs that deal in one way or another with the appropriateness, or otherwise, of certain types of interiors and objects to particular groups of people or individuals. The chapters show how factors such as age, gender, generation, comfort, and class relate to the ways in which interiors are occupied and controlled or disrupted. The range of interiors is wide: from small living spaces in Soviet Russia in the 1920s to the small New York apartment featured in the 1950s television sitcom I Love Lucy, and from interiors in 1980s Hollywood “teen movies” to three screen texts made in 1961, 1981, and 2010, respectively, that are set in the UK and feature a house in the country. Eleanor Rees’s “Comfort and the Domestic Interior in Soviet Fiction Cinema of the 1920s” examines interiors in three pre-sound films, namely Tret´ia Meshchanskaia (Bed and Sofa, 1927, Abram Room), Devushka s korobkoi (The Girl with a Hatbox, 1927, Boris Barnet), and Oblomok imperii (Fragment of an Empire, 1929, Fridrikh Ermler), with special reference to contemporary discourses on domestic living deemed appropriate for a self-proclaimed workers’ state, albeit one in flux and with an economy on its knees. Rees locates the contexts for her three case studies as the later phase of the New Economic Policy (NEP, 1921–7), with its more market-based private sector, and the early years of the de-bourgeoisification associated with the Cultural Revolution (1928–32). She investigates the ways in which ideological debates about interiors informed the three films, especially in relation to comfort, coziness, “clutter,” multiple occupancy, gendered roles, and the (often uneasy) co-existence of old and new objects and modes of living. By contrast, Marilyn Cohen’s “Furnishing I Love Lucy (1951–7)” addresses the interior sets used in this popular 1950s US television sitcom featuring Lucy and Ricky Ricardo played by comedienne Lucille Ball and bandleader Desi Arnaz, who were married in real life. The Ricardos’ small apartment is decidedly more spacious and comfortable than those discussed by Rees, but it too raises issues about living in small spaces. Cohen considers the class and age appropriateness of the furnishings and the extent to which they reflect Cuban-born Ricky’s Latin American cultural heritage, the melding of old and new ways of living, and the continuation and disruption of gender-normative roles. The series began only six years after the end of World War Two, and Lucy’s desire for new goods for the home reflects the increasing promotion and availability of such goods as the US economy grew by leaps and bounds during the decade the show was on air. In comparison with the Rees chapter, the issue around household goods in I Love Lucy is less about whether particular decorative ornaments and items of household furniture are bourgeois per se but rather Lucy’s desire for them. Cohen’s examination of the sets shows how comedy is created from desire for material goods, but Lucy’s desire is never seriously challenged. As Cohen illustrates, Ball and the producers went to great pains to represent 13

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the sets and characters as “average.” This comedy series reveled in the middle-classness of its sets and the “American”-ness of them, too, while extending the definition of what it was to be “American,” that is, a citizen of the United States, to include the upwardly mobile Cuban-American Ricky Ricardo. The third chapter in this part, Christine Geraghty’s “From the Country House Film to the House in the Country Film: Space, Class, and Generation,” takes us from apartments to houses and from the city to the countryside. It considers houses of different sizes and types set in different types of country locations in three productions, namely, The Innocents (1961), a film made in the UK for the Hollywood studio 20th Century-Fox, Country (1981), a play written by Trevor Griffiths for BBC Television, and the British art film Archipelago (2010). Geraghty assesses the “heritage” model used for analyzing films about country houses that gained popularity in the 1980s and has produced some illuminating commentaries. She shows how aspects of these three films challenge and/or subvert the model of “visual plenitude” and the strong “historical resonances” that are considered central to the “heritage” country house model. Through detailed analyses of the look of each of these three dramas—achieved through the design of sets and choices of locations, props, lighting, and cinematography—she draws attention to the ways in which particular types of rooms and particular elements within the houses work against the generic “heritage look” found in most country house films. She also shows how the organization of spaces and the visual fracturing of locations, architectural elements, and furnishings parallel and/or highlight aspects of the internal lives of the characters as well as the fracturing of class, gender, and generational relations. Generational relations, along with issues of gender and class, also feature in Patrick O’Neill’s “Space, Interiors, and 1980s Hollywood Teen Films.” Selecting eight “classic” teen movies released between 1981 and 1986 that offer a variety of representations of teenagers, O’Neill considers the ways in which teenagers interact with the main generic spaces, interiors, and objects in narratives associated with “coming of age,” rebelliousness, and generational conflict. He considers the films within the context of the political and social agenda of the administration of Republican President Ronald Reagan (1981–9) that was accompanied by a resurgence of individualism, rampant materialism, and conspicuous consumption. Most of the fictional teenage characters belong to wealthy families and live in lavishly furnished mansions, and O’Neill shows how wealth, privilege, parental values, and conspicuous consumption also intersect with peer pressure and teenage rebelliousness. He considers key generic sites of the teen film—the family home, the teenage bedroom, the high school, and the shopping mall—all in terms of the gendered nature of the interior decoration, furnishing, and use as well as class and gender. The Curated Home This part brings together a group of films featuring sets of interiors designed so as to appear to be self-consciously curated down to the last object by key characters. These sets and objects highlight narrative points, add to viewers’ understanding of the “curator” 14

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characters, and touch upon a range of issues, from education, generation, and gender, to class, politics, and taste. The films sometimes also present “uncurated” interiors to help elucidate points of contrast. Binary oppositions are often brought into play in such situations, with one interior and character representing everything the other interior and character is not, and thus inviting comparisons. Curation implies cultural capital, and the first two chapters feature male “curators” and high-culture values while the third cuts across the notion of the curator as a member (often male) of the educated elite by considering a group of screen interiors created by three fictional women working professionally in the fashion business, an area of production then considered by many to be trivial and frivolous. Shax Riegler’s “Mobilizing Material Culture: Collecting and Interiority in Luchino Visconti’s Conversation Piece (1974)” focuses on a character firmly in the mold of the male connoisseur/curator and argues that “the Professor” was based, in part at least, on the Italian academic and connoisseur Mario Praz. An authority on, and collector of, the eighteenth-century conversation piece paintings from which the film takes its title, the Professor lives in antique-filled interiors in his Roman palazzo. His life is disrupted when he reluctantly allows a group of young people to rent an apartment within it. They transform the space into a open-plan all-white interior furnished with Pop Art fabrics and paintings. He finds it vulgar and distasteful, like their loud music and left-wing politics, and for Visconti, a great visual storyteller, the interiors stand in for the widening gap he was witnessing in Italy between generations and lifestyles. Timothy M. Rohan’s “From Sex to Narcissism: Understanding Minimalist Interiors in New York Films of the 1970s” shows that certain US filmmakers located urban alienation and anxieties in the city’s more upmarket interiors. After providing contextual material on neo-liberalism, the Minimalist art movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and Yuppies, Rohan considers the ways in which the filmmakers employed carefully curated Minimalist interiors and the objects within them in John and Mary (1969, Peter Yates) and Stardust Memories (1980, Woody Allen) in order to advance narratives about sexuality and narcissism. John’s living space in John and Mary was inspired by furniture designer Ward Bennett’s acclaimed all-white Minimalist apartment. By the late 1970s such interiors were beginning to be considered hackneyed, and Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories parodied such interiors and Yuppie aspirations alike, while introducing selfparody through a central character who is a filmmaker. The exaggeratedly garish wallpaper in his sister’s suburban house further raises the issue of what is and is not “good taste.” Rebecca C. Tuite’s “ ‘Home furnishing takes a cue from Paris, too’: The Fashion Professional at Work and Home in Postwar Hollywood Films, c. 1957–61” focuses on fashion designers in Designing Woman (1957, Vincente Minnelli) and Back Street (1961, Robert Stevenson), and an editor of a fashion magazine in Funny Face (1957, Stanley Donen). Tuite shows how skills learned in the fashion business are seen to spill over into the creation of fashionable cinematic interiors that either serve as backdrops to the characters’ clothing and other personal adornments or meld with them in a Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art). She examines the ways in which the films portray 15

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these women of “style” as having the necessary flair to bring their “chic” and “glamour” to interior design, and how their cultural capital and cosmopolitanism is necessary to introduce modern art into their interiors, along with an increasingly popular type of interior decoration that involves curating groupings of diverse objects from around the world. Sets are also considered in terms of individual characters and the spaces they occupy, gendered understandings of the “language” of fashion and the ways in which it is conveyed to viewers, and how aspects of both “modern” and revived “traditional” designs are melded to create up-to-the-minute fashionable interiors. Framing Interiors and Interiorities This part pairs two chapters that address framing and interiors. Imma Forino’s “Framing Interiorities: Interiors, Objects, and Hidden Desires in Billy Wilder’s The Apartment (1960)” contextualizes the film within changes in postwar business culture in the United States and offers a psychological reading of this cynical and at times touching romantic comedy drama. Building upon the notion expressed in many places throughout this book that film interiors help reveal the inner lives of protagonists through the design of the sets and objects within them, Forino considers a series of everyday objects in various interiors within the film as Lacanian objets petits a(utres) that represent the bodily fetishes of desire, illusion, and disappointment. Arguing that the relationships between these objects and individual characters are highlighted by the different types of interiors that become so many “frames” of their interiorities, she lays out her chapter in six frames. Each relates to an interior—an objet petit a(utre)—and a protagonist, and she reads the inner life of the latter from the former. The first frame relates to the seemingly endless open-plan office populated by clerks; the objects are a telephone and a Rolodex file card system. The others relate to the apartment that gives the film its name (record player and television); the office elevator (a flower); a bathroom and a cubicle (two mirrors); the personnel manager’s office (keys); and the kitchen of the apartment in which actor Jack Lemmon, playing the flawed but sympathetic resident of said apartment, famously strains spaghetti through a tennis racquet. Maria Korolkova’s “Frames, Veils, and Windows: Modern Cinematic Set Design in Early Russian Films by Evgenii Bauer” considers, among other things, Bauer’s use of framing and veiling with gauze-like fabrics to suggest inner states of mind and blur and/ or disguise boundaries between inside and out. It focuses on two melodramas directed by Bauer, Sumerki zhenskoi dushi (Twilight of a Woman’s Soul, 1913) and Ditia bol’shogo goroda (Child of the Big City, 1914), who was also responsible for the look of them. Now considered the leading auteur of early Russian cinema, Bauer not only had a strong artistic background but also technical knowledge of photography and lighting. Korolkova argues that, despite film sets of interiors being “an important metaphorical locus of early cinematic innovation,” they have been neglected as signifiers of modernity. To counteract the emphasis placed on stability and comfort within the modern interior by Walter Benjamin and his followers, she calls for greater attention to be paid to unstable and uncomfortable interiors as markers of modernity. Using close readings of the films, 16

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Korolkova explores how Bauer’s mood-establishing aesthetics, detailed attention to framing, design, and composition of each shot, and use of deeper sets, expressive lighting, and more mobile cinematography contributed to a pictorial approach to filmmaking that helped convey inner thoughts in pre-sound films with no audible dialogue. Korolkova’s chapter helps further the shift towards a greater appreciation of both mood creation and set design in Film and Media Studies and Design History. Screening Queerness: Class, Ambiguity, and Power This part raises issues related to queerness and film, especially as it intersects with class, gender, sexual orientation, same-sex desire, taboos, ambiguity, authority, and power. Two of the three chapters focus on the 1960s, a key decade in the history of gay male and lesbian rights. Indeed, the first three films discussed were made in England and set in London before 1967, the date at which male homosexuality was de-criminalized in England and Wales. The association of London with a liberalizing of attitudes to gay male sex between adult consenting partners in private led a US production released in 1968 to choose London as the setting for a plot featuring a lesbian couple. Today, the four films discussed in these two chapters are seen as key markers in the fight for gay and lesbian rights, while the third chapter considers two notable milestones in queer cinema from the mid-1980s and early 1990s. Barry Curtis’s “Interiors, Class, Perversity, and Ambiguity in The Servant (1963)” addresses cinematic tensions created through ambiguities, including those about sexual desire, within the relationship between the two main male characters: an upper-class young man and his working-class manservant. The film is largely set in the former’s newly purchased London home, and Curtis contextualizes the film within increasing gentrification and the continuation of privilege alongside shifts in structures of power and notions of respectability. As the servant undermines his employer’s authority, and that of his girlfriend, the film raises the question of who is “master” and who is “servant,” and Curtis shows how these power struggles play out through interior sets and objects in scenes charged with homoeroticism. Andrew Stephenson’s “In Plain View: London Commercial Interiors as Queer Spaces in Three 1960s British Films: Victim (1961), The Leather Boys (1964), and The Killing of Sister George (1968)” considers films that address homosexuality (male and female) more directly than The Servant. Stephenson argues that these films are notable for scenes shot on location in queer spaces of public sociality that offer glimpses into gay and lesbian life in pre-1967 London. Victim (Basil Dearden), a rallying cry for decriminalizing homosexuality, addresses the widespread blackmailing of gay men while poignantly conveying the agonies of closeted same-sex desire experienced by a middle-class lawyer. The Leather Boys (Sidney J. Furie), by contrast, introduces a working-class gay man into a gritty “kitchen sink” drama set in London’s East End that centers on a young heterosexual working-class mechanic and his wife. Wearing cool leathers, a stranger joins the husband’s biker club and befriends him. Allusions to the newcomer’s sexual orientation grow along with the men’s friendship, and someone refers to them as “queers.” It is not until the scene shot on location in a gay 17

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bar by the docks, however, that the mechanic, fully realizing that his friend is gay, breaks off contact. Stephenson then considers The Killing of Sister George (Robert Aldrich), an X-rated dark comedy about the disintegration of both the career of “George,” an outrageously behaved lesbian actor, and her relationship with a younger woman. Adam Vaughan’s “Queer Interiors: Derek Jarman’s Caravaggio (1986) and Edward II (1992)” takes us to not only a different period but also to the aims and aesthetic of this British filmmaker, artist, and gay rights activist, concerned, among other things, with issues around HIV and AIDS, and who reconfigured the telling of historical biographies. Jarman brought a thrilling sense of the pictorial, the theatrical, and the homoerotic to sets that convey compelling representations of gay characters, identities, and histories. Vaughan considers changing views on sexual orientation in the 1980s and early 1990s, Jarman’s blurring of past and present, and near exclusive use of interior sets, as well as his views on living both “inside” and “out” of heteronormative society, discourses of space in relation to LGBTQ+ experiences, and the connections between interior identity and its exterior traces in the films themselves. Horror and Homicide “Horror and Homicide” covers horror, action, and homicide in relation to buildings, interiors, and elements of interiors. Influential buildings and interiors in “classic” horror movies, such as Psycho (1960, Alfred Hitchcock), The Haunting (1963, Robert Wise), and The Shining (1980, Stanley Kubrick), offer some precedents for the discussions in the two chapters, both of which focus on films of the 2010s. The floor takes center stage in Alexandra Brown and Kirsty Volz’s “The Horror of the Homicidal Floor: Destabilized Elements of Interior Architecture.” The homicidal potential of floors, together with the psychological horror created by thoughts of floors giving way under one’s feet and the fear associated with structural failure, are examined through the science-fiction horror film Under the Skin (2013, Jonathan Glazer) and the psychological horror film mother! (2017, Darren Aronofsky). The authors also consider the relationships between the genres of horror and art-horror (a term increasingly used to describe films that filter traditional horror tropes through the styles and ambiguities of European or world cinema) as well as between architectural theory and architecture, interiors, and elements within them, while suggesting why the destabilization of a floor is particularly unsettling. In “Designed to Destroy: Action Film Interiors and the Construction of Killscapes,” Lennart Soberon considers the US action movie genre and within that, the particular sets and locations in which killings take place. Developing the concept of a “killscape,” he explores the role of interiors in relation to action, space, spectacle, and death through close readings of sets in the action thriller Machete (2010, Robert Rodriguez), the mystery thriller The Equalizer (2014, Antoine Fuqua), the crime mystery John Wick (2014, Chad Stahelski), and, last but not least, the James Bond action movie Spectre (2015, Sam Mendes). A sad absence from this part is a chapter on “Scream Queen” films that was in development by Marjan Groot (1959–2019), a Dutch feminist design historian with a 18

Introducing Screen Interiors

Figure 0.1 A Tricky Treat, directed by Patricia Chica. © Flirt Films/Ethos Pictures LLC/Byron A. Martin Productions Inc. 2015. All rights reserved.

background in cultural anthropology and art history. She was unable to fully research and complete her project before her untimely death in the summer of 2019. Her topic was “Homes, Dwelling, and Horror” at the 2015 Scream Queen Filmfest Tokyo (SQFFT), a trans-cultural film festival established in 2013 to support underrepresented women filmmakers working in the horror genre, and her focus was the design of interior spaces as they intersected with gender in the program of horror films by women directors screened at that particular festival. The films ranged from five to fifty-three minutes in length, and she was considering how the design of particular interiors and objects within them both supports and subverts narratives of death and destruction, including headsevering in a domestic kitchen (see Figure 0.1). We hope that others will build upon Groot’s research and interests across this and other fields in which she worked. Living in Outer Space: Sci-Fi Interiors Both chapters in this part use interiors to raise issues about the relationship between the past and the present, and often the future, too, through the genre of science fiction that adapts well to filmmakers’ desires to project contemporary human anxieties in ways both familiar and unfamiliar and, like horror, can do so in decidedly unsettling ways. Each chapter deals with the interiors and furnishings of a spaceship traveling through outer space and each of the productions discussed was created in the early twentieth century: 2002–3 (a television series) and 2005 (film) in the case of Sorcha O’Brien’s “Visions of Home: Nostalgia and Mobility, Past, Present, and Future, in Serenity’s Domestic Spaceship Interior,” and more recently in the case of Ersi Ioannidou’s “Cosmic Heterotopia: Banality and Disjunction in the Interiors of Passengers (2016).” The two featured spaceships serve 19

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as characters, but the interiors draw upon two different science-fiction aesthetics readily recognizable to fans of the genre, namely, the glossy interiors featured in the seminal 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Stanley Kubrick) on the one hand, and the more “lived-in” interiors of the spaceships in the equally seminal Star Wars film series. Nonetheless, both authors show that the designers of the two vehicles sought to create an environment and spaces within them that are familiar to viewers through visual references to terrestrial interiors, furniture, and furnishings, especially those related to the “American Dream.” O’Brien shows how mid-twentieth-century references brought a certain familiarity to the future as represented through the ramshackle Serenity, while Ioannidou shows how early twenty-first-century references to luxury cruise liners and recent architecture and design helped create settings of some considerable familiarity for viewers. In Passengers, the starship Avalon, which was built for interstellar travel, is transporting 5,000 colonists from Earth in hibernation pods to the planet Homestead II, a journey of some 120 years. The very name Homestead II suggests a “homecoming” while also referencing the homesteads settled on the so-called “American frontier” yet without referencing the destruction of the homes and homelands of indigenous Americans. Drawing upon Svetlana Boym’s notion of nostalgia as a longing for a home that no longer exists or never existed, O’Brien considers the layering of past and present in domesticized spaces within the Serenity in two “space Westerns” created by writerdirector Joss Whedon: the television series Firefly (2002–3) and the sequel film Serenity (2005), which follows on from the cataclysmic events of the television series finale. She examines the ways in which the main communal living spaces on the spaceship refer back to older models of domesticity, including those associated with the “American West,” mid-century modern design, and mobile homes of the post-World War Two era. O’Brien argues that they express a nostalgic longing for an idyllic past in a post-9/11 dystopian future. By contrast, Ioannidou focuses on the influences on the production designer and showing how “the barren technologically sustained capsular urban-scale interiors of the cruise ship” are transplanted from gigantic earthly luxury liners that offer holidays to large numbers of people to a spacecraft in the science-fiction romance film Passengers (2016). Starring Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt, the film was released in the same year the highly polluting cruise ship Harmony of the Seas, with the capacity to carry over 5,000 passengers (a number close to the number of “passengers” in the film) was launched, and at what was then the high point of human fears about the future of Planet Earth. Citing Michel Foucault’s definition of “heterotopia” as a “placeless place” at once mythic and real, and considering the ship as an excellent example of such a place, Ioannidou examines in detail the ways in which production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas was influenced by modern luxury cruise liners and contemporary architecture and design when creating the Avalon starship and its interiors. This discussion of science fiction not only concludes our overview of the various parts and the chapters within them but also the anthology itself. Originally we had planned a different sequence, but this particular arrangement now seems even more appropriate given new perceptions of luxury cruise ships as floating spaces of contagion 20

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and, indeed, the new ways in which we are using and thinking about interiors. As noted at the beginning of this introduction, there are many genres and topics covered in the pages that follow, but when the chapters are viewed overall, despite a few notable and welcome exceptions, there is a pronounced absence of light-hearted, “feel good” productions. This is perhaps a not unexpected outcome of academic interests over the last few years, a period of high anxiety about the future of our planet, and continuing and increasing national and global inequalities. To those we can now add a global pandemic. As we write this introduction in May 2020, the COVID-19 virus rages globally; lives, hopes, and dreams disrupted and killed, as in a horror movie. Keep safe.

Notes 1. The first is “Interiors: Screen and Stage,” eds. Pat Kirkham and Sarah A. Lichtman, special issue, Interiors: Design•Architecture•Culture 10, nos. 1–2 (March–July 2019). The relevant articles are Laura McGuire, “Frederick Kiesler and virtual reality on the modernist stage and screen” (39–62); Tag Gronberg, “Tilly Losch: tracing histories through interiors and film” (63–84); Alice T. Friedman, “ ‘I noticed that his attention was fixed upon my clock’: masculinity and the queer film interior” (85–102); Pat Kirkham, “Living in a modern way in The Moon is Blue (1953, Otto Preminger): mid-century modern architecture, interiors, and furniture” (103–22). 2. Pat Kirkham, “Dress, Dance, Dreams, and Desire: Fashion and Fantasy in Dance Hall,” Journal of Design History 8, no. 3 (1995): 195; Lucy Fischer, Cinema by Design: Art Nouveau, Modernism, and Film History (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), 3. 3. For occupations and terms, see Charles Affron and Mirella Jona Affron, Sets in Motion: Art Direction and Film Narrative (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995), 11–12; Jane Barnwell, Production Design for Screen: Visual Storytelling in Film and Television, (New York: Bloomsbury, 2017), 10–14; James Curtis, William Cameron Menzies: The Shape of Films to Come (New York, Pantheon, 2015), 21. For European countries, see Affron and Affron, Sets in Motion, 12. For Russia, see Eleanor Rees, “ ‘Kino-dekorator’ to the ‘Kino-arkhitektor’: Set Design, Medium Specificity, and Technology in Russian Cinema of the Silent Era,” forthcoming article in the Journal of Design History. 4. For interior decorators, see Henry W. Grace, “The Interior Design Influence in the Motion Picture Industry,” Interior Design and Decoration 17 (January 1942): 22–8, 44–9, 56. In the late 1930s the president of the society stated that the job was not for women, “men being best suited to the mental strain and physical demands exacted by the work.” Grace, “The Interior Design Influence,” 45, cited in Deborah Nadoolman Landis and Pat Kirkham, “Designing Hollywood: Women Costume and Production Designers,” in Pat Kirkham (ed.), Women Designers in the USA 1900–2000: Diversity and Difference, 81 (New Haven: Yale University Press and the Bard Graduate Center, 2000). For architects, see Sanford D. Barnes, “The Cinema Architect,” American Architect 123 (1923): 169–72; “The Architecture of Motion Picture Settings,” American Architect 118 (1920): 1–5; Edward Carrick, “Moving Picture Sets: A Medium for the Architect,” Architectural Record 67 (1930): 440–4; A. B. Laing, “Designing Motion Picture Sets,” Architectural Record 74 (1933): 59–64; James Hood MacFarland, “Architectural Problems in Motion Picture Production,” American Architect 118 (1920): 65–70; Carl A. Ziegler, “Architecture and the Motion Picture,” American Architect 119 (1921): 543–9. 5. Affron and Affron, Sets in Motion, 12. NB: It took until 1948 before an Oscar category was created for costume design.

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Screen Interiors 6. The SMPID’s involvement in strikes over union recognition in 1937 and 1945, as well as the 1946 lockout, ensured that it was well known to those involved in the labor movement. See Marsha Hunt, interview by Glen Lovell, in Patrick McGilligan and Paul Buhle (eds.), Tender Comrades: A Backstory of The Hollywood Blacklist, 313 (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1997); Gerald Horne, Class Struggle in Hollywood, 1930–1950: Moguls, Mobsters, Stars, Reds, and Trade Unionists (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001); Wikipedia, s.v. “List of Hollywood Strikes,” https://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hollywood_strikes—the list includes the six-month Set Decorators’ Hollywood Black Friday strike of 1945; see also Wikipedia, s.v. “Hollywood Black Friday,” https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_Black_Friday. A caption to a 1937 Los Angeles Herald Examiner press photograph notes 75 SMPID members. Los Angeles Herald Examiner Collection, Los Angeles Public Library, Los Angeles, CA, USA. Fischer, in Art Direction, mentions 59 members at the inaugural meeting but gives no source (p. 4); neither does the website of the Set Decorators Society of America (SDCA) that mentions 77 members leaving IATSE in 1937, “About SDSA,” SDSA, October 22, 2020, https://www.setdecorators.org/?art=about-us. 7. “Art Director: Preston Ames,” in Mike Steen, Hollywood Speaks: An Oral History (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1974), 225–39. 8. Curtis, William Cameron Menzies, 184–96. 9. Robert S. Sennett, Setting the Scene: The Great Hollywood Art Directors (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994), 199. 10. For experts, see Curtis, William Cameron Menzies, 184–5; for Atlanta, see Curtis, 1–18; Sennett, Setting the Scene, 198–9; Gavin Lambert, “The Making of Gone With The Wind, Part II,” Atlantic Monthly 265, no. 6 (March 1973): 56–72. 11. David O. Selznick to Russell Birdwell, cc. George Cukor, Inter-Office Communication, Selznick International Pictures, February 14, 1938, cited in Curtis, William Cameron Menzies, 190. 12. David O. Selznick to Russell Birdwell, cc. George Cukor, Inter-Office Communication, Selznick International Pictures, February 14, 1938, cited in Curtis, William Cameron Menzies, 190–1. 13. Curtis, William Cameron Menzies, xiii–xiv, 183–218. 14. Cathy Whitlock, Designs on Film: A Century of Hollywood Art Direction (New York: It Books, 2010), 31. For women, see Deborah Nadoolman Landis and Pat Kirkham, “Designing Hollywood: Women Costume and Production Designers,” in Pat Kirkham (ed.), Women Designers in the USA, 1900–2000: Diversity and Difference, 258 (New Haven: Yale University Press and the Bard Graduate Center, 2000). NB: The Academy Award Art Direction category was not changed to Production Design until 2012 after the Art Directors branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences changed its name to the Production Design branch. 15. For Eames and The Spirit of St. Louis, see John Neuhart, Marilyn Neuhart, and Ray Eames, Eames Design: The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1989), 210; Pat Kirkham, Charles and Ray Eames: Designers of the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995), 132; Pat Kirkham, Charles and Ray Eames and Hollywood: Design, Film and Friendships (forthcoming, Yale University Press). 16. For Ray Eames, see Neuhart, Neuhart, and Eames, Eames Design, 210; Billy Wilder to Saul Bass and Pat Kirkham, in conversation, Los Angeles, CA, 1994. 17. Jennifer Bass and Pat Kirkham, Saul Bass: A Life in Film and Design (London: Laurence King Publishing, 2011), 183–7, 192–7, 199–203, 221–7, 397. The directors are as follows: Psycho: Alfred Hitchcock; Spartacus: Anthony Mann, Stanley Kubrick; West Side Story: Jerome Robbins, Robert Wise; Grand Prix: John Frankenheimer; Not With My Wife You Don’t: Norman Panama. 18. For Golitzen, see Bass and Kirkham, Saul Bass, 397, n. 9, citing a conversation between Saul Bass and Joe Morgenstern.

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Introducing Screen Interiors 19. See Bass and Kirkham, Saul Bass, 199–201. Makatura’s (later Bass) contributions to film titles and short films are raised throughout. For a fuller discussion of their collaboration (1960–96), see Pat Kirkham, “Saul Bass: A Life in Design and Film; Saul and Elaine Bass: A Collaboration In Film and Life,” in Jeremy Aynsley and Harriet Atkinson (eds.), The Banham Lectures: Essays On Designing The Future, 143–55 (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2009). 20. Victor Gangelin was credited for “Set Decoration.” Boris Leven to journalist Arthur Knight, October 13, 1961. Leven Collection, file UF.72, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), Special Collections, Beverly Hills, CA, USA; Bass and Kirkham, Saul Bass, 199–201, 397. 21. For Leven’s claim, see Boris Leven to journalist Arthur Knight, October 13, 1961. Leven Collection, file UF.72, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), Special Collections; for artwork, storyboards, and research photographs related to the Bass and Bass– Makatura contributions, see Bass Collection, AMPAS Special Collections; Bass and Kirkham, Saul Bass, 199–201, 397. When a doubtless frustrated Leven told Knight that Bass had nothing to do with any of the sets or backgrounds, he could possibly have just been referring to the fact that the sets as constructed and the backgrounds were done under his control, but the surviving Bass–Makatura work and what appears on screen indicates a need to question that position. It could be that when the role of director passed from Jerome Robbins to Robert Wise, Leven did not realize that any concept work he saw was by Bass or Bass and Makatura. The fact remains, however, that Bass worked with both directors, admittedly more with Wise, on the titles, epilogue, and aerial sequence. 22. Sennett, Setting the Scene, 85. 23. Bass and Kirkham, Saul Bass, 200–1. 24. Affron and Affron, “Histories of Set Design,” appendix in Sets in Motion. 25. See Joel W. Finler, Silent Cinema: World Cinema Before the Coming of Sound (London: B.T. Batsford, 1997), 15, 21, 23, 28, 33. 26. Ian Christie, “Set Design,” in Richard Abel (ed.), Encyclopedia of Early Cinema, 585 (London: Routledge, 2005). 27. Rudolph Arnheim, Film as Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957), 8. 28. Arnheim, Film as Art, 39. 29. Roger Manvell, Film (London: Penguin Books, 1944), 39–40; see Part 1, “The Film As A New Art Form,” 16–111. 30. Roger Manvell, introduction to Edward Carrick (ed.), Art and Design in the British Film: A Pictorial Directory of British Art Directors and Their Work, 10 (London: Dennis Dobson Ltd., 1948). 31. Michael Orrom and Raymond Williams, Preface to Film (London: Film Drama Limited, 1954), 50–4. 32. See Orrom and Williams, Preface to Film, 51. For Astruc, see “Du Stylo à la caméra et de la caméra au stylo,” L’Écran française, March 30, 1948, reprinted in Peter Graham with Ginette Vincindeau (eds.), The French New Wave: Critical Landmarks (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and online as “The Birth Of A New Avant-Garde: Le Caméra-Stylo,” NewWaveFilm.com, http://www.newwavefilm.com/about/camera-stylo-astruc.shtml. For advertising, see Tony Nourmand (ed.), French New Wave: A Revolution in Design (London: Reel Art Press, 2019). 33. Edward Carrick (ed.), Art and Design in the British Film: A Pictorial Directory of British Art Directors and Their Work (London: Dennis Dobson Ltd., 1948). Many of the art directors involved were members of the Society of British Film Art Directors and Designers; the 23

Screen Interiors establishment of the Society in 1946 indicated a desire for professional status. The use of “art and design” in the book title is an example of “art” being used along with design even when the publication is about design alone. 34. Tim Bergfelder, Sue Harris, and Sarah Street, Film Architecture and the Transnational Imagination: Set Design in 1930s European Cinema (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2007). 35. Baldo Bandini and Glauco Viazzi, Ragionamenti sulla scenografia (Milan: Poligono Publishing Company, 1945); Affron and Affron, Sets in Motion, 199. 36. Léon Barsacq, Décor de Film (Paris: Éditions Seghers, 1970). 37. Léon Barsacq, Caligari’s Cabinet and Other Grand Illusions: A History of Film Design, rev. and ed. Elliot Stein (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1976). 38. Juan Antonio Ramírez, La arquitectura en el cine: Hollywood, la Edad de Oro (Madrid: H. Blume, 1986). 39. Kevin Brownlow, The Parade’s Gone By. . . (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968); Kevin Brownlow, Hollywood: The Pioneers (London: Book Club Associates/Thames Television, 1979). 40. William K. Everson, American Silent Film (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978). 41. For anonymity and invisibility, see MoMA Press Release no. 36, 1978: “Museum Exhibition Spotlights Art Directors,” MoMA archive online, https://www.moma.org/momaorg/shared/ pdfs/docs/press_archives/5604/releases/MOMA_1978_0040_36.pdf. See Mary Corliss and Carlos Clarens, “Designed for Film: The Hollywood Art Director,” Film Comment 14, no. 3 (May–June 1978): 25–60; this article grew out of research undertaken for the MoMA exhibition. Patrick Downing and John Hambley, The Art of Hollywood: Fifty Years of Art Direction (London: Thames Television Ltd., 1979), which included a catalogue for the London exhibition, followed Carrick’s format of well-illustrated case studies, in this case of nine of the leading art directors of their day. 42. Howard Mandelbaum and Eric Myers, Screen Deco: A Celebration of High Style in Hollywood Film (Bromley: Columbus Books, 1985). 43. Donald Albrecht, Designing Dreams: Modern Architecture in the Movies (New York: Harper & Row and the Museum of Modern Art, 1986). 44. Sennett, Setting the Scene; Beverly Heisner, Hollywood Art: Art Direction in the Days of the Great Studios (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1990); Beverly Heisner, Production Design in the Contemporary Film: A Critical Study of 23 Movies and Their Designers (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1997). 45. Vincent LoBrutto, By Design: Interviews with Film Production Designers (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1991). 46. C. S. Tashiro, Pretty Pictures: Production Design and the History Film (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998). 47. For example, see Pat Kirkham and Michael O’Shaughnessy, “Desiring Desire,” Sight and Sound 2, no. 1 (May 1992): 13–15; and “Set Designer Tim Harvey talks to Pat Kirkham,” in Mark Kermode and Pat Kirkham, “Making Frankenstein and the Monster,” Sight and Sound 4, no. 11 (November 1994): 6–9. 48. Dietrich Neumann (ed.), Film Architecture: Set Designs from Metropolis to Blade Runner (Munich: Prestel Verlag, 1999). 49. Mark Lamster (ed.), Architecture and Film (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2000). 50. David B. Clarke (ed.), The Cinematic City (London: Routledge: 1997).

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Introducing Screen Interiors 51. Mark Shiel and Tony Fitzmaurice (eds.), Cinema and the City: Film and Urban Societies in a Global Context (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001); Stephen Barber, Projected Cities: Cinema and Urban Space (London: Reaktion Books, 2002); Richard Koeck and Les Roberts (eds.), The City and the Moving Image: Urban Projections (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Barbara Mennel, Cities and Cinema (London and New York: Routledge, 2008); François Penz and Andong Lu (eds.), Urban Cinematics: Understanding Urban Phenomena through the Moving Image (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2011); Geraldine Pratt, Film and Urban Space: Critical Possibilities (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014). 52. See Maria Korolkova’s “Frames, Veils, and Windows: Modern Cinematic Set Design in Early Russian Films by Evgenii Bauer” in this anthology for a study of interiors, film, modernity, and the city. 53. Cathy Whitlock, Designs on Film: A Century of Hollywood Art Direction (New York: It Books, 2010). 54. Lucy Fischer (ed.), Art Direction and Production Design (London: Bloomsbury, 2015). 55. Fionnuala Harrigan, Filmcraft: Production Design (Burlington, MA: Focal Press, 2013). 56. Howard Gutner, MGM Style: Cedric Gibbons and the Art of the Golden Age of Hollywood (Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2019); Christopher Frayling, Ken Adam and the Art of Production Design (London: Faber and Faber, 2005); and Ken Adam Designs the Movies: James Bond and Beyond (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2008). 57. Richard Sylbert and Sylvia Townshend, Designing Movies: Portrait of a Hollywood Artist (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006). 58. Jane Barnwell, Production Design: Architects of the Screen (London: Wallflower Press, 2004); Jane Barnwell, Production Design for Screen: Visual Storytelling in Film and Television (London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2017). 59. Merrill Schleier, Skyscraper Cinema: Architecture and Gender in American Film (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009). 60. Pamela Robertson Wojcik, The Apartment Plot: Urban Living in American Film and Popular Culture, 1945 to 1975 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010). 61. For example, see Kirkham, “Living in a modern way in The Moon is Blue, 103–22. 62. John David Rhodes, Spectacle of Property: The House in American Film (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017). 63. Eleanor Andrews, Stella Hockenhull, and Frances Pheasant-Kelly, Spaces of the Cinematic Home: Behind the Screen Door (London: Routledge, 2016).

Bibliography Abel, Richard (ed.). Encyclopedia of Early Cinema. London: Routledge, 2005. Affron, Charles and Mirella Jona Affron. Sets in Motion: Art Direction and Film Narrative. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995. Albrecht, Donald. Designing Dreams: Modern Architecture in the Movies. New York: Harper & Row and the Museum of Modern Art, 1986. Andrews, Eleanor, Stella Hockenhull, and Frances Pheasant-Kelly. Spaces of the Cinematic Home: Behind the Screen Door. London: Routledge, 2016. Arnheim, Rudolph. Film as Art. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1957.

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Screen Interiors Aynsley, Jeremy and Charlotte Grant. Imagined Interiors: Representing the Domestic Interior Since the Renaissance. London: V&A Publishing, 2006. Beckett, Jane, Helena Blaker, Pamela Church Gibson, and Lynne Walker. Art & Design, A Source Book: Art, Fashion, Architecture, Design. London: British Film Institute, 2004. Bandini, Baldo and Glauco Viazzi. Ragionamenti sulla scenografia. Milan: Poligono Publishing Company, 1945. Barber, Stephen. Projected Cities: Cinema and Urban Space. London: Reaktion Books, 2002. Barnwell, Jane. Production Design for Screen: Visual Storytelling in Film and Television. New York: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2017. Barsacq, Léon. Le Décor de Film. Paris: Éditions Seghers: 1970. Barsacq, Léon. Caligari’s Cabinet and Other Grand Illusions: A History of Film Design. Revised and Edited by Elliott Stein. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1976. Baschiera, Stefano and Miriam De Rosa (eds.). Film and Domestic Space: Architectures, Representations, Dispositif. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020. Bass, Jennifer and Pat Kirkham. Saul Bass: A Life in Film and Design. London: Laurence King Publishing, 2011. Bergfelder, Tim, Sue Harris, and Sarah Street. Film Architecture and the Transnational Imagination: Set design in 1930s European Cinema. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2007. Bronfen, Elisabeth. Home in Hollywood: The Imaginary Geography of Cinema. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Brownlow, Kevin. The Parade’s Gone By. . . Berkeley : University of California Press, 1968. Brownlow, Kevin. Hollywood: The Pioneers. London: Book Club Associates/Thames Television, 1979. Bruno, Giulana. Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture and Film. London: Verso, 2002. Carrick, Edward (ed.). Art and Design in the British Film: A Pictorial Dictionary of British Art Directors and Their Work. London: Dennis Dobson Ltd., 1948. Christie, Ian. “Set Design.” In Richard Abel (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Early Cinema. London: Routledge, 2005. Clarens, Carlos and Mary Corliss. “Designed for Film: Hollywood Art Director.” Film Comment 14, no. 3 (May–June 1978): 25–60. Clarke, David B. (ed.). The Cinematic City. London and New York: Routledge, 1997. Colomina, Beatrice (ed.). Sexuality and Space. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1992. Curtis, James. William Cameron Menzies: The Shape of Films to Come. New York: Pantheon, 2015. Downing, Patrick and John Hambley. The Art of Hollywood: Fifty Years of Art Direction. London: Thames Television Ltd., 1979. Ede, Laurie N. British Film Design: A History. London: I.B. Tauris, 2010. Finler, Joel W. Silent Cinema: World Cinema Before the Coming of Sound. London: B.T. Batsford, 1997. Fischer, Lucy. Designing Women: Cinema, Art Deco and the Female Form. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. Fischer, Lucy. Cinema By Design: Art Nouveau, Modernism, and Film History. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017. Frayling, Christopher. Ken Adam and the Art of Production Design. London: Faber and Faber, 2005. Frayling, Christopher. Ken Adam Designs the Movies: James Bond and Beyond. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2008. Friedman, Alice T. “ ‘I noticed that his attention was fixed upon my clock’: masculinity and the queer film interior.” In Pat Kirkham and Sarah A. Lichtman (eds.), “Interiors: Screen and Stage.” Special Issue, Interiors: Design•Architecture•Culture 10, nos. 1–2 (March–July 2019): 85–105. 26

Introducing Screen Interiors Froehlich, Dietmar E. The Chameleon Effect: Architecture’s Role in Film. Berlin: DeGruyter GmbH, 2018. Grace, Henry W. “The Interior Design Influence in the Motion Picture Industry.” Interior Design and Decoration 17 (January 1942): 22–8, 44–9. Gronberg, Tag. “Tilly Losch: tracing histories through interiors and film.” In Pat Kirkham and Sarah A. Lichtman (eds.), “Interiors: Screen and Stage.” Special issue, Interiors: Design•Architecture•Culture 10, nos. 1–2 (March–July 2019): 63–84. Gutner, Howard. MGM Style: Cedric Gibbons and the Art of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2019. Hambley, John and Patrick Downing. The Art of Hollywood: 50 Years of Art Direction. London: Thames Television, 1979. Harrigan, Fionnuala. Filmcraft: Production Design. Burlington, MA: Focal Press, 2013. Heisner, Beverly. Hollywood Art: Art Direction in the Days of the Great Studios. Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland and Company Inc., 1990. Heisner, Beverly. Production Design in Contemporary American Film: A Critical Study of 23 Movies and Their Designers. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company Inc., 1997. Kermode, Mark and Pat Kirkham. “Making Frankenstein and the Monster.” Sight and Sound 4, no. 11 (November 1994): 6–9. Kirkham, Pat. “Vertigo: The Jeweller’s Eye.” Sight and Sound 7, no. 4 (April 1997): 18–19. Kirkham, Pat. “Living in a modern way in The Moon is Blue (1953, Otto Preminger): mid-century modern architecture, interiors, and furniture.” In Pat Kirkham and Sarah A. Lichtman (eds.), “Interiors: Screen and Stage.” Special issue, Interiors: Design•Architecture•Culture 10, nos. 1–2 (March–July 2019): 103–22. Kirkham, Pat and Michael O’Shaughnessy. “Desiring Desire.” Sight and Sound 2, no. 1 (May 1992): 13–15. Koeck, Richard and Les Roberts (eds.). The City and the Moving Image: Urban Projections. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Lamster, Mark (ed.). Architecture and Film. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2000. Landis Nadoolman, Deborah and Pat Kirkham. “Designing Hollywood: Women Costume and Production Designers.” In Pat Kirkham (ed.), Women Designers in the USA, 1900–2000: Diversity and Difference, 247–67. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press and Bard Graduate Center, 2000. LoBrutto, Vincent. By Design: Interviews with Film Production Designers. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1992. LoBrutto, Vincent. The Filmmaker’s Guide to Production Design. New York: Allworth Press, 2004. Mandelbaum, Howard and Eric Myers. Screen Deco: A Celebration of High Style in Hollywood Film. Bromley : Columbus Books, 1985. Manvell, Roger. Film. London: Penguin Books, 1944. Manvell, Roger. Introduction to Carrick, Edward, Art and Design in the British Film: A Pictorial Dictionary of British Art Directors and Their Work. London: Dennis Dobson Ltd., 1948. McGuire, Laura. “Frederick Kiesler and virtual reality on the modernist stage and screen.” In Pat Kirkham and Sarah A. Lichtman (eds.), “Interiors: Screen and Stage.” Special Issue, Interiors: Design•Architecture•Culture 10, nos. 1–2 (March–July 2019): 39–61. Mennel, Barbara. Cities and Cinema. London and New York: Routledge, 2008. Neumann, Dietrich (ed.). Film Architecture: Set Designs from Metropolis to Blade Runner. Munich: Prestel Verlag, 1999. Orrom, Michael and Raymond Williams. Preface to Film. London: Film Drama Limited, 1954. Pallasmaa, Juhani. The Architecture of Image: Existential Space in Cinema. Translated by Michael Wynne-Ellis. Helsinki: Rakennustieto Oy, 2001. Penz, François and Andong Lu (eds.). Urban Cinematics: Understanding Urban Phenomena Through the Moving Image. Bristol: Intellect Books, 2011. 27

Screen Interiors Pheasant-Kelly, Frances. Abject Spaces in American Cinema: Institutions, Identity and Psychoanalysis in Film. London: I.B. Tauris, 2013. Pratt, Geraldine. Film and Urban Space: Critical Possibilities. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014. Ramírez, Juan Antonio. La arquitectura en el cine: Hollywood, la Edad de Oro. Madrid: H. Blume, 1986. Ramírez, Juan Antonio. Architecture for the Screen: A Critical Study of Set Design in Hollywood’s Golden Age. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company Inc., 2004. Rhodes, John David. Spectacle of Property: The House in American Film. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017. Schleier, Merrill. Skyscraper Cinema: Architecture and Gender in American Film. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009. Sennett, Robert S. Setting the Scene: The Great Hollywood Art Directors. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994. Shiel, Mark and Tony Fitzmaurice (eds.). Cinema and the City: Film and Urban Societies in a Global Context. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001. Shonfield, Katherine. Walls Have Feelings: Architecture, Film and the City. London: Routledge, 2000. Spain, Daphne. Gendered Spaces. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992. Spigel, Lynn. Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Spigel, Lynn. TV by Design: Modern Art and the Rise of Network Television. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2008. Steen, Mark. “Art Director: Preston Ames.” In Hollywood Speaks: An Oral History. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1974. Stephens, Michael L. Art Directors in Cinema: A Worldwide Dictionary. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company Inc., 1998. Sylbert, Richard and Sylvia Townshend. Designing Movies: Portrait of a Hollywood Artist. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006. Tashiro, Charles Shiro. Pretty Pictures: Production Design and the History Film. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998. Tobe, Renée. Film Architecture and Spatial Imagination. Abingdon: Routledge, 2017. Whitehead, Jean. Creating Interior Atmosphere: Mise-en-scène and Interior Design. London: Bloomsbury Visual, 2017. Whitlock, Cathy. Designs on Film: A Century of Hollywood Art Direction. New York: It Books, 2010. Wojcik, Pamela Robertson. The Apartment Plot: Urban Living in American Film and Popular Culture, 1945 to 1975. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2010.

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PART 1 HOUSE AND HOME: COMFORT, CLASS, GENDER, AND GENERATION

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CHAPTER 1 COMFORT AND THE DOMESTIC INTERIOR IN SOVIET FICTION CINEMA OF THE 1920s Eleanor Rees

This chapter examines how discourses about home comfort were represented in Soviet fiction films of the 1920s.1 During this period, a severe shortage in urban housing forced many city dwellers to live in cramped, single-room apartments or in subleased corners of rooms alongside strangers. This chapter explores how films showed that, despite a lack of private living space, individuals endeavored to create a sense of comfort at home through the practices of reordering, refurbishing, and decorating. Many social and artistic discourses of the period seemed to denounce the ornamental in favor of strippeddown interiors furnished according to the principles of maximum functionality and simplicity. This chapter also considers what form of comfort was deemed appropriate amid this context. The emphasis on comfort in this chapter sheds light on a less researched aspect of Soviet design practices and discourses, which are typically discussed in relation to Constructivist models of rationalization. In the June 1926 issue of the monthly lifestyle magazine Women’s Journal (Zhenskii zhurnal), the title of the opening article posed the question, “How is domestic comfort created?”2 “We live, as everyone knows well, in close quarters,” wrote the article’s author V. Ostrovskii. “Housing is let out at what we call the ‘stingy rate,’ with only the most necessary furniture; there is no room to turn in our flats, but we still clutter them up with all kinds of unneeded things, naively believing that we are creating comfort and beauty.” Although Ostrovskii stressed the need for a rational approach to furnishing domestic space, he also recognized that comfort is essential, arguing that its creation at home is both a natural human impulse and a social imperative, as “a lack of comfort will drive the tenant’s feet to other cozy settings such as the tavern or the beer hall.” Ostrovskii’s article formed part of a heated debate about the configuration of interiors and the improvement of living standards that emerged in Soviet Russia during the New Economic Policy (NEP) era, from 1921 to 1927, and reached a climax during the Cultural Revolution, from 1928 to 1932. This debate was a direct response to the urban housing crisis of the period, in which a shortage of available living space forced many city dwellers to lodge in cramped, single-room apartments or in subleased corners of rooms alongside strangers.3 It was also linked to a widespread aesthetic campaign against the entrenchment of bourgeois values, which, for many leftist critics, the permission of limited market capitalism under the NEP had exacerbated. Scholarship on Soviet artistic discourses of the 1920s has tended to focus on how avant-garde artists, in particular those associated with Constructivism, engaged with the debate about living conditions through both their dismissal of the decorative and their 31

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advocacy of interiors furnished according to the principles of maximum functionality and simplicity. However, as Karen Kettering and Emma Widdis show, a desire to create cozy interiors was prevalent during the period, and the divide as well as the overlap between the decorative and the functional was complex.4 Moreover, Victor Buchli demonstrates the ambiguities surrounding the notion of comfort at the time and argues that, over the course of the 1920s, ideas about comfort underwent substantial change.5 This chapter explores how Soviet fiction cinema engaged with evolving discourses about domestic comfort during the transition from the NEP era to the Cultural Revolution. It discusses three fiction films in which domestic interiors feature prominently: Abram Room’s Bed and Sofa (Tret´ia Meshchanskaia, 1927), Boris Barnet’s The Girl with a Hatbox (Devushka s korobkoi, 1927), and Fridrikh Ermler’s Fragment of an Empire (Oblomok imperii, 1929). The films all explicitly address the problems of living conditions and the persistence of bourgeois conventions in contemporary Soviet Russia. Each film, however, approaches these issues in a distinct way, reflecting different understandings of comfort as an approach to decorating living space, a mode of inhabitation, a form of sociability, and a psychological attachment to familiar ways of life. Moreover, each film considered in this chapter was made by a different filmmaking team and demonstrates a distinct approach to representing the domestic environment. The chapter therefore also explores how filmmakers grappled with the task of representing interior space and how they used elements of interior architecture and design to exploit cinema’s expressive capacity.

Material excess: Bed and Sofa In a statement outlining his intentions for his proposed film Bed and Sofa, Abram Room wrote that, among other issues, he attempted to address the pressing contemporary concerns of the bourgeoisie’s obsession with material things and their social apathy.6 He claimed that while these issues had been discussed in the press, in public debates, and even on the theatrical stage, they had not yet been touched upon in Soviet cinema. Indeed, Bed and Sofa was one of the first of a number of films made in the mid- to late 1920s to tackle the Soviet housing problem and the entrenchment of bourgeois values under the NEP.7 The film’s scenario, which Room co-wrote with the formalist theorist Viktor Shklovskii, was based on an anecdote that Shklovskii had read in the Young Communist League newspaper Komsomol´skaia pravda.8 It tells the story of a young print worker, Volodia, who travels to Moscow in search of employment. With nowhere to live, he accepts an offer to stay on the sofa in the one-room apartment of an old army friend, Kolia, and his wife, Liuda. While Kolia is on a business trip, Liuda and Volodia begin an affair. On Kolia’s return, the three characters settle into a ménage à trois, with Volodia moving into the bed and Kolia onto the sofa. The living situation proves increasingly problematic. Liuda falls pregnant and both men decide on an abortion. Waiting in the abortion clinic, Liuda, however, resolves to keep the child and to leave both men and her bourgeois lifestyle. 32

Comfort and the Domestic Interior in Soviet Fiction Cinema of the 1920s

In addition to basing the scenario on contemporary reality, Bed and Sofa was the first Soviet fiction film to incorporate extensively unstaged footage of contemporary Moscow.9 Although studio scenery is used for the interior scenes, the film is set in a real location— Tret´ia Meshchanskaia, a Moscow street synonymous with petit-bourgeois mercantile activity.10 The principle of realism also informed the configuration of the sets. In his memoirs, the film’s set designer Sergei Iutkevich recalls how he built an interior with walls on four sides.11 Room and the camera operator Grigorii Giber immediately rejected the set, however, for restricting the placement of lighting and camera equipment.12 The interior was equipped with real facilities, including a water supply, a toilet, and a Primus stove, which the actors used to prepare food.13 Room’s memoirs state that he encouraged the actors to sleep there so that they would become comfortable in the space and each develop a greater understanding of their character’s relationship to it.14 Bed and Sofa was the second film on which Room and Iutkevich collaborated. Their previous film, the historical revolutionary drama The Traitor (Predatel´, 1926), was criticized in the contemporary cinema press for its elaborate scenery.15 In his memoirs, Iutkevich recalled that in The Traitor he attempted to show off all that he could do to create “a calling card.”16 With the help of Vasilii Rakhal´s, the head set designer of the Goskino studio (who also worked on Bed and Sofa), Iutkevich designed thirty specially constructed sets, a remarkable number for a film of the time. For Bed and Sofa, by contrast, Room writes that they adopted a principle of aesthetic economy.17 The film’s action takes place primarily in a single interior: the one-room, semi-basement flat of Kolia and Liuda. Nonetheless, despite the filmmakers’ intentions, reviewers deemed the fictional apartment’s sets too elaborate.18 The apartment of Kolia and Liuda presents a parody of the bourgeois obsession with material excess: clothes are strewn across the floor; Liuda’s dressing table is cluttered with knick-knacks; cushions are stacked high on the bed; and wall-hangings and pictures are tacked on to walls covered in densely patterned wallpaper. The idea that comfort could be achieved through a superfluity of material goods was closely associated with bourgeois consciousness. While late-Imperial domestic advice stressed that the well-regulated household required a proliferation of objects, 1920s household guidebooks waged a campaign for a new Soviet interior under the slogan “nothing excessive.”19 Indeed, many of the fictional apartment’s furnishings, such as pot plants, wall hangings, and porcelain figurines, are those that Soviet domestic guidebooks singled out as problematic or official popular culture condemned as characteristic of bourgeois coziness.20 Superficially tacked onto this bourgeois environment, however, are the trappings of a new Soviet lifestyle. Portraits of Stalin and Marshal Budennyi are hung precariously against the patterned wallpaper and a picture of the new Soviet woman on a cover of the cinema journal Soviet Screen (Sovetskii ekran) is pinned above Liuda’s dressing table. The collision of bourgeois and new Soviet artifacts reveals the inhabitants’ struggle to relinquish old ways of life for a new revolutionary lifestyle. In several articles, Room wrote of the importance that things acquire in films: “In the cinema, on the screen, a thing grows to gigantic proportions and acts with the same force (if not a greater force) as man himself ”; “Together they all live, breathe, interfere in people’s lives and keep them in close captivity” (see Figure 1.1).21 33

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Figure 1.1 Liuda and Kolia’s apartment, Bed and Sofa (Tret’ia Meshchanskaia), directed by Abram Room. © Mosfilm 1927. All rights reserved.

In addition to their cultural and ideological connotations, the apartment’s objects reveal the inhabitants’ personal desires, aspirations, and lifestyle choices. Above Liuda’s dressing table hangs a portrait of herself with her modern haircut, and on its top rests a cat figurine, the base of which is inscribed with a personal message. The walls are covered with Kolia’s architectural drawings and on top of a cabinet stands a miniature replica of a statue of Apollo on horseback from the Bol´shoi Theatre, where Kolia works reconstructing the facade. Moreover, Volodia embellishes the space above the sofa with a landscape painting, a pair of radio headphones, and a portrait of Liuda, alluding respectively to his provincial origins, his work producing mass propaganda, and his romantic intentions. The superabundance of the inhabitants’ personal traces closely corresponds to Walter Benjamin’s descriptions of bourgeois dwelling practices in his writings of the 1920s and 1930s on interiors, which were informed, in part at least, by his experience living in Moscow during the winter of 1926–7. Benjamin argues that the bourgeoisie fill their households with a profusion of soft furnishings and ornaments, creating a personal imprint that compensates for the anonymity of modern, urban existence.22 He likened this personal fabric to a shell or a cocoon that provides the dweller with enclosure and security from the external world. The fictional apartment’s spatial configurations also seem to suggest an enclosed, hermetic sphere. In a number of scenes, chairs are positioned in the foreground with their backs perpendicular to the frame, as if to exclude the viewer from the space. Additionally, the underside of a staircase juts into the interior, taking up much-needed

34

Comfort and the Domestic Interior in Soviet Fiction Cinema of the 1920s

room and denying exit to a space beyond. In many of the scenes set in the apartment, its small window is placed on the opposite side of the frame to the viewer. Sunken beneath ground level, the window looks up onto the pavement’s concrete embankment. These details evoke a sense of the inhabitants’ oppressive confinement within the interior. As Philip Cavendish argues, the feeling of enclosed, claustrophobic interior space is heightened through its juxtaposition with expansive exteriors.23 In the cramped and cluttered apartment, the inhabitants struggle to find intimacy and contentment. This is represented spatially through their positions within the interior. Liuda is repeatedly marginalized in the kitchen, which is separated from the main living space by a curtain, or by sitting next to the window with her back to the apartment.24 Her dressing table is also marginalized in a corner of the room, behind the bed and beneath the staircase. Julian Graffy observes that even one of the advertising posters for the film shows Liuda’s face partially hidden behind a lace curtain.25 It is not only the female protagonist who experiences spatial discomfort, however. In several scenes, Volodia lies on the sofa with his back to the room. Even when he moves into Liuda’s bed, his pose remains awkward: he rests on top of the covers and his feet, with shoes still on, hang over the bed frame. Moreover, the inhabitants appear alienated from their prescribed social roles. Liuda is disinterested in housework: when Volodia brings a magazine to the apartment, she quickly abandons her chores to read it curled up in bed. Although Volodia works at the print factory making mass propaganda, he listens to his radio through personal headphones at home, using it as a means to distance himself from the increasing tensions of his current living situation. As Graffy argues, Kolia’s social apathy is demonstrated in an early sequence in which he declines to attend a work committee meeting, choosing instead to return home for his dinner.26 Similarly, for Benjamin, the cocoon-like habitat of the bourgeois dwelling provides inhabitants with a buffer to the external world and leads to social alienation.27 He argues that an abundance of personal possessions fosters a sense of the self as a private individual. For Benjamin, the bourgeois interior is thus a sphere of egocentric individualism that promotes secrecy as intimacy and indifference as coziness. However, despite the inhabitants’ social alienation, the real world continues to intrude into their lives. As Cavendish argues, the apartment’s borders are permeable and offer the characters little protection from the external world.28 Cavendish observes how this is demonstrated through lighting and cinematography: natural light penetrates the interior through its window and multiple camera viewpoints show the apartment from various angles, creating a feeling of shifting and destabilized interior space.29 This feeling of instability is also expressed through the interior scenery. In Iutkevich’s set design sketches, in comparison to the straight and rigid walls of the abortion clinic, the apartment’s walls seem to bulge—creating a sense of instability. Moreover, the apartment is filled with fragile screens. A flimsy fabric curtain demarcates the kitchen from the living space. Its fragility is highlighted through its position between two sturdy wood cupboards. Kolia rests his head on top of the curtain and peers at Liuda as she dresses. A diaphanous curtain partially covers the window permitting the shadows of passers-by to remain visible. Through the ajar window, gusts of wind ruffle the curtains and blow papers across 35

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the room. In Iutkevich’s sketches, there is a noticeable crack in one of the panes, highlighting the lack of protection the window gives from the outside world. This is expressed in the film through a sequence in which Kolia enters the apartment through the window. In another sequence, the cat jumps from the windowsill and scampers down a carpet runner, visually referencing the shots of a train speeding along railway tracks that open the film. Moreover, a sense of flux is represented through the constant movement of objects within the interior. The inhabitants repeatedly engage in minute acts of redecoration. In addition to Volodia’s gradual embellishment of the space above the sofa, Liuda’s figurines and pictures are repeatedly moved from the area around her dressing table. As well as the transfer of Liuda’s portrait to the space above the sofa, her elephant figurine appears in various positions in different frames: on a side table behind Liuda as she sews; on the dresser when Kolia discovers Liuda and Volodia’s affair; and on the windowsill next to Liuda as she gazes outside. Objects are also introduced to and removed from the apartment. While Volodia gifts a radio and a magazine to the household, Kolia brings a crate of cherries for Liuda to make jam. When she leaves the apartment for the last time, Liuda takes her portrait but abandons its frame, leaving it for the men to fill. This state of flux undermines the bourgeois idea of the home as a site of stability and security. Rather, it relates to an understanding that dwelling in the modern era is a transitive process. Benjamin argued that dwelling is a continual interaction between interior and inhabitants in which they mold and remold to one another.30 For Benjamin, in the modern era this process is accelerated, resulting in a new model of inhabitation based upon openness and flexibility that offers liberation from the constraining bourgeois lifestyle. In his impressions of Moscow in 1926–7, Benjamin notes how people rearrange furniture on a weekly basis in order to annihilate bourgeois notions of coziness.31 A number of contemporary artists also saw the interior as a transitory space: the Russian artist El Lissitzky envisioned the interior of the future as “the best kind of travelling suitcase,” echoing the Modernist architect Le Corbusier, who in his treatise The Decorative Art of Today (L’art décoratif d’aujord’hui, 1925) identified the suitcase as the ultimate symbol of modernity for expressing a mobile form of dwelling.32 The apartment and its inhabitants in Bed and Sofa thus appear caught amid a struggle for change. While bourgeois conventions of comfort threaten to suck the inhabitants into a state of apathetic torpor, the apartment’s sense of fluidity, as Cavendish argues, “broaches the possibility of emancipation.”33 These two different fates are played out in the film’s ending. As Kolia and Volodia lounge on the bed and the sofa respectively and contemplate making tea, Liuda leans out of the window of a speeding train, leaving Moscow behind.

Material intelligence: The Girl with a Hatbox The idea of the transitory interior, susceptible to change, is notably explored in the film The Girl with a Hatbox, which takes homelessness and homemaking in contemporary Moscow as key themes. In the film, Natasha works as a milliner for Madame Irène, whose 36

Comfort and the Domestic Interior in Soviet Fiction Cinema of the 1920s

ownership of a Moscow boutique identifies her as a member of the bourgeoisie who profits from the NEP. Although Natasha lives with her grandfather in a cottage outside Moscow, Madame Irène keeps a room in her apartment in Natasha’s name, which allows her and her husband, Nikolai, to hold onto extra living space for themselves. The issue of lodging rights was acute at the time. In the same year that the film was produced, the state introduced the policy of “self-compression” (samouplotnenie), which required that surplus living space be offered to lodgers.34 One day, while traveling to Moscow by train, Natasha meets the student Il´ia. Eventually taking pity on Il´ia’s homeless condition, she proposes that they marry so that he gains the right to live in “her” room at Madame Irène’s. In the original screenplay, Il´ia initially seeks a room in student dormitories, but the conditions there are so bad that he chooses instead to wander homeless among Moscow’s streets.35 At the end of the film, Natasha gives her state lottery winnings to improve the student dormitories. The subplot about the student dormitories was axed from the final version of the film, presumably for portraying a form of communal living in a negative light.36 The Girl with a Hatbox was the first of a number of films, which include The House on Trubnaia (Dom na Trubnoi, 1928) and Outskirts (Okraina, 1933), on which the director Barnet collaborated with the set designer Sergei Kozlovskii. Widdis identifies Barnet and Kozlovskii’s films as notable examples of the Soviet “everyday style.”37 Indeed, Kozlovskii was a major proponent of an economic approach to set design. During the 1920s he wrote a number of articles that promoted the rationalization of set aesthetics and technology.38 In comparison with Bed and Sofa and the material excess of Kolia and Liuda’s apartment, The Girl with a Hatbox is notable for its spartan interiors. In several scenes, Natasha’s room in Madame Irène’s apartment appears bare except for a light switch and a crystal chandelier, which allude to how Madame Irène and Nikolai subvert the state campaign to bring electricity to the masses for personal gain. Even Madame Irène’s bourgeois apartment is relatively sparsely decorated. The living room is furnished with a grand sofa with an ornate wood frame and a few decorative vases. In the manual he co-authored on set design, Kozlovskii argues that films convey a character’s identity or the atmosphere of a place to the viewer more expediently with a few carefully-selected objects than with an accumulation of detail.39 The focus on individual details was an aesthetic approach that gained widespread appeal in a number of artistic circles at the time. Notably among the Soviet avant-garde, Osip Brik in his 1927 manifesto of factography, “The Fixation of the Fact” (“Fiksatsiia fakta”), campaigned for an approach to film and literature based on individual details.40 In his article “The Set Designer and the Material Environment in Fiction Film,” (“Khudozhnik i material´naia sreda v igrovom fil´me”), also published in 1927, the Russian avant-garde artist Aleksandr Rodchenko declared that, “In cinema it is important to get rid of things without a function. Cinema cannot stand realism as it is in life. In life there are so many useless things . . . Cinema cannot put up with shots in which there are eleven bottles when the actor only drinks from two.”41 Likewise, as Alina Payne argues, the individual element became a focus of much Modernist artistic discourse.42 In his article “Actualités” (1928), the French avant-garde artist Fernand Léger declared that 37

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fragments when isolated take on a life of their own; and in The Decorative Art of Today, Le Corbusier argued that in bare interiors objects exert a great rhetorical force.43 The rejection of excess ornament in set design also related to the attack on cluttered interiors. In 1928, Komsomol´skaia pravda initiated the campaign “Down with Domestic Trash,” which encouraged readers to rid their homes of surplus bric-a-brac.44 Despite widespread support for the cleansing of overabundance from domestic space, vacant interiors also held negative connotations. Buchli notes how one of the first Soviet domestic guidebooks, Advice for the Proletariat Housewife (Sovety proletarskoi khoziaike, 1924), emphasized that “decorative elements should not be displayed with museum-like or monastery-like austerity but gaily, lively, dynamically and with variety.”45 Although Benjamin saw the removal of superfluous ornament as emancipatory, he also argued that empty interiors impeded the formation of habits, which were essential to a dweller’s sense of belonging.46 Thus, as Widdis argues, many could not reject decoration wholesale (see Figure 1.2).47 This ambiguous attitude towards the decorative is evident in The Girl with a Hatbox. As Widdis observes, the film displays several different interiors: Natasha and her grandfather’s provincial home; the bourgeois room of the station clerk Fogelev; Madame Irène’s Moscow apartment; and Natasha’s unfurnished room in which Il´ia eventually lives.48 Alongside the stark interiors of Madame Irène’s apartment and Natasha’s room, there also exist heavily ornamented interiors. Fogelev’s room is decorated with floral patterned wallpaper, and an array of knick-knacks adorn the walls. Similarly, Natasha and her grandfather’s home displays many of the trappings of the cozy bourgeois interior: a patterned wool rug lines the walls and heavy wood furniture and plump armchairs

Figure 1.2 Natasha and her grandfather’s provincial home, The Girl with a Hatbox (Devushka s korobkoi), directed by Boris Barnet. © Mezhrabpom-rus´ 1927. All rights reserved.

38

Comfort and the Domestic Interior in Soviet Fiction Cinema of the 1920s

spatially dominate the room. The scenes set here are mainly framed in medium close-up, highlighting the soft texture of the rug and the snug tufting of the grandfather’s armchair. Moreover, Widdis demonstrates how the complex attitude towards decoration is reflected in the film’s production process: archival records state that Il´ia’s room cannot be entirely vacant, but must be furnished with a table and chairs, a cupboard, a commode, and a bed.49 The film thus refuses to make a clear ideological distinction between different lifestyles based on aesthetics alone. Cluttered interiors and starkly furnished interiors appear to be both positively and negatively coded. In his influential text “Everyday Life and the Culture of the Thing” (“Byt i kul´tura veshchi,” 1925), the Soviet cultural theorist Boris Arvatov denounced both “richly appointed” and “sparsely decorated” interiors as part of the same bourgeois worldview that sees things in terms of material display.50 Arvatov argues that, in contrast to this attitude, the new Soviet collective is defined by its relationship with things.51 For Arvatov, the notion of comfort relates to a relationship between people and things in which the thing becomes “connected like a co-worker with human practice.”52 He demonstrates how the distinction between the bourgeoisie’s and the new Soviet collective’s relationship with things is evident in living practices: while the bourgeois individual merely rearranges furnishings, as the protagonists do in Bed and Sofa, changing their distribution in space and not their form, the new Soviet person engages in the act of making, transforming the thing into an instrument.53 Similarly, the Soviet theorist Sergei Tret´iakov differentiates between the bourgeois’s and the new Soviet person’s relationship to things in terms of “acquirers” (priobreteli) and “inventors” (izobreteli).54 This corresponds to Buchli’s observation that during the late 1920s, as the NEP era drew to a close and the state embarked upon the Cultural Revolution, there was a widespread resistance to denotative understandings of material culture, in which objects represented unambiguously a particular set of values.55 Buchli argues that this was replaced by a contextual understanding, in which it was a person’s relationship to their surrounding material environment that mattered.56 An interest in material relations is also evident among contemporary filmmakers. In an article published the same year that The Girl with a Hatbox was released, the scenarist of Bed and Sofa, Viktor Shklovskii, announced that cinema was entering “a second phase” in which it would become “a factory of the relationship with things.”57 Correspondingly, in The Girl with a Hatbox it is a character’s relationship with their surrounding material environment that indicates his or her social and moral qualities. In the way that they use their possessions for multiple functions, Natasha and Il´ia are shown to be resourceful. While homeless in Moscow’s icy streets, Il´ia uses his books as a stool to perch on and as a screen to block a draught coming through the fence railings. Similarly, when he moves into Natasha’s unfurnished room, he constructs a makeshift bed from his books and traditional valenki felt boots. The patches on Il´ia’s valenki thus indicate not only his impoverished condition, but also his resourcefulness. When Natasha is forced to stay the night together with Il´ia in her Moscow room after missing the train, she uses Il´ia’s books and her hatbox as a screen to partition a sleeping space for herself separate from where Il´ia rests. In Bed and Sofa, Kolia too uses objects for multiple purposes: he showers under a samovar and, on discovering Liuda and Volodia’s affair, initially sleeps on his 39

Screen Interiors

office desk. In contrast to Il´ia and Natasha, however, who adapt their things, increasing their suitability, Kolia simply requisitions objects for a new use. Accordingly, while Il´ia appears cozy in his meager makeshift bed, Kolia experiences considerable discomfort as stationery pokes into his body and his feet dangle over the desk. Moreover, Natasha is repeatedly engaged in the act of making. The original screenplay states that in the film’s first act Natasha and her grandfather make hats together at the kitchen table and details how Natasha assists her grandfather with sewing, passing him material to feed through the sewing machine.58 Although these scenes are not included in the final version of the film, Natasha and her grandfather’s home remains a space of creation: the kitchen table serves as a workspace for making hats, and a sewing machine with a ribbon strewn across it rests by the window. This contrasts with Madame Irène’s boutique, which with its large glass windows and cashier desk display appears exclusively as a space of commerce. In the original screenplay, Natasha is again shown as a maker at the end of the film when she uses her state lottery winnings to refurbish the student dormitories.59 For Arvatov, while the new Soviet collective would become motivated into action through its creative engagement with things, the bourgeoisie’s passive relationship with things hinders activities, constrains the body, and leads to social isolation.60 Similarly, in The Girl with a Hatbox Natasha and Il´ia’s intelligent use of objects contrasts with the clumsiness of other characters. In one sequence, while Natasha successfully stays on her feet as a rug is pulled out from underneath her, Nikolai is tripped up and breaks one of Madame Irène’s figurines. Additionally, Natasha confidently crosses the narrow bridge that connects her house to the train station, but Fogelev slips on its icy planks. In another sequence, Madame Irène becomes entangled in laundry, contrasting with an earlier sequence in which Il´ia adeptly weaves his way through a maze of clothing lines to find a sink for washing. Moreover, Il´ia is shown vigorously exercising in Natasha’s room. Using his books as weights, he extends his body across the width of the frame. Nikolai watches Il´ia through a keyhole and mimics his movements; however, the cramped bedroom means that he accidentally hits Madame Irène. Nikolai is repeatedly shown as withdrawn from social life. In a sequence that recalls Volodia’s use of his personal radio in Bed and Sofa, Nikolai slumps on a sofa, detached from reality, absorbed in listening to his radio through headphones. Thus, while the domestic interior impels Il´ia to action, it acts as a buffer for Nikolai from real life.

Material and memory: Fragment of an Empire The extent to which living space could empower individuals or reinforce old habits of everyday life is also addressed in Ermler’s Fragment of an Empire. In comparison to The Girl with a Hatbox, however, the film demonstrates a greater concern for characters’ emotional attachment to particular lifestyles. This reflects the growing calls following the first All-Union Party Conference on Cinema in 1928 for Soviet films to focus on the psychology of individuals. Indeed, the critic Mikhail Bleiman identified Fragment of an 40

Comfort and the Domestic Interior in Soviet Fiction Cinema of the 1920s

Empire as one of the first films to capture characters’ psychological states.61 The film tells the story of the non-commissioned officer Ivan Filimonov, who suffers amnesia as a result of an injury sustained during the Civil War. He regains his memory to find himself in 1928. Determined to track down his wife, Filimonov returns to St. Petersburg (then Leningrad), where he had previously lived, only to discover that the city has changed dramatically. His former employer has been replaced by a factory committee and his wife is remarried to a cultural worker. Initially Filimonov is disorientated and alienated in revolutionary Leningrad, but gradually he learns to appreciate the new way of life. He eventually locates his wife, who lives with an oppressive husband according to prerevolutionary conventions. The same actress who plays the oppressed wife was cast as Liuda in Bed and Sofa.62 However, whereas in Bed and Sofa Liuda seeks liberation from her retrograde lifestyle, Filimonov’s wife is unable to transcend the psychological comfort of her familiar life. Fragment of an Empire was the third film that Ermler and the set designer Evgenii Enei collaborated on after Katka’s Reinette Apples (Kat´ka-bumazhnyi ranet, 1926) and The House in the Snowdrifts (Dom v sugrobakh, 1928). These films also addressed the theme of social alienation in revolutionary society. During the 1920s, Enei typically worked with the Factory of the Eccentric Actor (FEKS) directors Grigorii Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg, and developed a distinct approach to set design that exploited the play of light and shadow for psychological effect. In Fragment of an Empire, this approach became key in revealing the psychological states of characters and expressing the conflict between retrograde and revolutionary lifestyles and their respective associations with ignorance and oppression and enlightenment and empowerment. Several interiors are represented as dark and confined spaces, cut off from the outside world. Pierced only by a narrow ray of sunlight from its sole window, Filimonov’s room in the provincial railway station, where he works as a stationmaster, is shrouded in darkness. Objects appear as indistinct, shadowy masses, reflecting Filimonov’s confused mind. The rough-textured walls and wood floorboards, which are highlighted by directed lighting, make the space appear cave-like and recall the war shelter in which Filimonov is introduced to the viewer. Similarly, in the domestic interior of the former factory owner, the forms of dark wood furniture seem to coalesce amid the shadows. As in Bed and Sofa, the feeling of enclosed interior space is heightened through its contrast with expansive exteriors. In the Leningrad scenes, the plain, white facades of the Constructiviststyle offices and housing units gleam in brilliant sunlight. The office block is shot at a diagonal angle from a low viewpoint to emphasize the structure’s soaring height and angular form. Likewise, the communal dining room and the recreational spaces of the workers’ club, with their large glass windows and doors, lack of ornament and simple furniture, are bright and spacious. Enei’s darkened domestic interiors function as enclaves in which their inhabitants harbor pre-revolutionary ways of life. In the interiors of both Filimonov’s wife and his former employer, space is divided according to bourgeois conventions of room usage. In many of the interior sequences, the kitchen table dominates the frame visually, suggesting that the household continues to revolve around traditional domestic practices. Indeed, Filimonov’s wife is largely confined to her role as 41

Screen Interiors

a housewife. The one time that the viewer sees her outside the domestic sphere she is crouched in the corner of a train carriage; her husband’s coat separates her from the window, acting as a buffer against the exterior world. Similarly, the former factory owner’s wife barricades herself in a corner of the living room behind a screen. Refusing to apprehend the world around her directly, she views her surroundings exclusively through a mirror and buries her face deep into the bedcovers as her husband informs Filimonov about current circumstances. Likewise, the former factory owner, dressed in pajamas and clutching a German newspaper, appears detached from present-day Soviet life. In contrast to these characters’ rootedness to the domestic sphere and their social isolation, Filimonov is able to transcend the home, and in so doing becomes empowered. As in the apartment in Bed and Sofa, in the domestic interior of Filimonov’s wife and the cultural worker, material traces of a bourgeois lifestyle stand alongside objects with revolutionary connotations. While a collection of Lenin’s works lines the living-room bookshelf, knick-knacks and religious ornaments clutter the top of the bedroom dressing table. On the coat stand hang both a trilby hat and a worker’s cap. Although the cultural worker addresses workers in a communal dining room, he eats with his wife at home, just as Kolia does in Bed and Sofa. The wife makes simple cabbage soup in a utilitarian pot, but serves it in traditional chinaware. And on the kitchen table a booklet on revolutionary culture rests among crystal glassware. In his writings of the 1920s, Tret´iakov argued that the battle against bourgeois comfort and taste was psychological.63 He claimed that the bourgeoisie transfer fetishisms and memories onto their surrounding material environment; this emotional attachment leads to the entrenchment of habits to the extent that they become automatic. For Tret´iakov, ingrained habits could be broken down through “defamiliarization.” In a 1929 article entitled “The Thing in Cinema” (“Veshch´ v kino”), the critic V. Kolomarov argued that in Fragment of an Empire unexpected juxtapositions of objects disrupt conventional modes of perception and force the viewer to see the material environment in new, unfamiliar ways.64 According to Kolomarov, this induces greater aesthetic appreciation and increased social awareness among viewers. In Fragment of an Empire, the technique of defamiliarization is used not only to heighten the viewer’s awareness, but also to aid the reconstitution of Filimonov’s memory. In one sequence before Filimonov regains his memory, he stumbles upon a paper boat. Unable to comprehend what the object is, Filimonov presses his head down to the floorboards to peer at it from a different vantage point. While the paper boat yields no further meaning, a cigarette packet thrown from a train window serves as a memory trigger for Filimonov. As he handles the object, his mind forms connections based on perceived formal and aural associations. This initiates a process in which Filimonov’s interaction with various objects in his room causes memories of his former life to resurface. Turning the wheel of the sewing machine sets in motion the movement of the metal needle against the metal plate, which, for Filimonov, recalls the clanking machinery at the factory where he formerly worked. Similarly, the spool of the sewing machine running across the floorboards triggers a flashback consisting of various images of St. Petersburg and his wife in her wedding dress. 42

Comfort and the Domestic Interior in Soviet Fiction Cinema of the 1920s

It is notable that the process through which Filimonov’s memory is reconstructed is triggered by objects related to sewing. On one level, sewing is associated with the joining of fragments into a seamless whole. However, as Rachel Morley notes, sewing was a popular trope in nineteenth-century Russian culture, and was associated with a protagonist’s moral redemption.65 In the context of the Soviet 1920s, Widdis argues that, in contrast to the indolence of bourgeois consumption, sewing and other forms of handcraft expressed “the validation of labour” that was central to Soviet ideology.66 Similarly, in Fragment of an Empire, making is redemptive: Filimonov’s interaction with the sewing machine prefigures his engagement in factory work that leads to his empowerment. Like Natasha and Il´ia in The Girl with a Hatbox, Filimonov—through his identification with making—is shown as a productive member of Soviet society.

Conclusion Both Room and Ermler referred respectively to Bed and Sofa and Fragment of an Empire as “problem films” that posed questions rather than provided answers.67 Equally, The Girl with a Hatbox refrained from offering a clear solution to the issue of Soviet living space. Indeed, very few films in the 1920s showed new socialist interiors or offered positive guidelines about new ways of inhabiting domestic space.68 In a 1929 article entitled “Life as it Ought to Be” (“Zhizn´ kak ona dolzhna byt´”), the critic Nikolai Lukhmanov lamented that up to that point Soviet cinema had only presented a critique of contemporary life and had failed to offer models for its improvement.69 The lack of resolve over a new form of Soviet interior reflected the transitional nature of the era, as well as the complexity of the issues and attitudes surrounding notions such as comfort and its appropriateness in Soviet society. It also, however, reflected an understanding among filmmakers that cinema’s function was not merely to critique contemporary life, but also to mobilize viewers to work towards solving the problems of Soviet reality. As Room remarked, “Can we demand that a film of daily life . . . should provide a full and clear resolution of the problem? After all it’s only lazy schoolboys, who don’t like doing sums, who start by looking at the answers in the back of the textbook.”70

Notes 1. With sincere thanks to the Wolfson Foundation and the Design History Society, which supported the research for this chapter. I am also very grateful to Rachel Morley for her helpful comments during the writing of this chapter. 2. Emma Widdis, “Sew Yourself Soviet: The Pleasures of Textile in the Machine Age,” in Marina Balina and Evgeny Dobrenko (eds.), Petrified Utopia: Happiness Soviet Style, 120–1 (London and New York: Anthem Press, 2009). 3. For discussion of the NEP housing crisis, see Lynne Attwood, “The New Economic Policy,” in Gender and Housing in Soviet Russia: Private Life in a Public Space, 40–60 (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2010). 43

Screen Interiors 4. Karen Kettering, “ ‘Ever More Cosy and Comfortable’: Stalinism and the Soviet Domestic Interior, 1928–1938,” Journal of Design History 10, no. 2 (1997): 119–35; Widdis, “Sew Yourself Soviet.” 5. Victor Buchli, An Archaeology of Socialism (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 1999), 41–62. 6. Abram Room, “ ‘Tret´ia Meshchanskaia.’ (Beseda s rezhisserom A. M. Roomom)” [“ ‘Tret´ia Meshchanskaia.’ (A Conversation with the Director A. M. Room)”], Kino [Cinema], September 14, 1926, 1–2. 7. Other films include Ermler’s Katka’s Reinette Apples (Kat´ka-bumazhnyi ranet, 1926), Mark Donskoi’s In the Big City (V bol´shom gorode, 1927), and Barnet’s The House on Trubnaia (Dom na Trubnoi, 1928). 8. Julian Graffy, Bed and Sofa: The Film Companion (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2001), 14–15. Graffy’s book provides a detailed study of the film. 9. Graffy, Bed and Sofa, 15. 10. Graffy, Bed and Sofa, 20. 11. Sergei Iutkevich, Chelovek na ekrane: Chetyre besedy o kinoiskusstve: Dnevnik rezhissera [Man on the Screen: Four Conversations about Cinema Art: The Diary of a Director] (Moscow: Goskinoizdat, 1947), 322. 12. Iutkevich, Chelovek na ekrane, 322. 13. Graffy, Bed and Sofa, 15. 14. Graffy, Bed and Sofa, 16. 15. For discussion of the film’s sets, see Emma Widdis, “Faktura: Depth and Surface in Early Soviet Set Design,” Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema 3, no. 1 (2009): 14–24. 16. Iutkevich, Chelovek na ekrane, 135. 17. Room, “ ‘Tret´ia Meshchanskaia,’ ” 1–2. 18. Khrisanf Khersonskii, “Bor´ba faktov, vzgliadov, idei i sposobov vozdeistviia” [“The Struggle of Facts, Visions, Ideas and Leverage”], Kino-front [Cinema-front] 9–10 (1926): 21–6; K. Denisov, “Meshchanstvo v kino” [“Meshchanstvo in Cinema”], Sovetskii ekran [Soviet Screen] 5 (1927): 3. 19. Catriona Kelly, Refining Russia: Advice Literature, Popular Culture and Gender from Catherine to Yeltsin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 160–1; Buchli, Archaeology of Socialism, 58. 20. For detailed discussion of the negative connotations of the apartment’s objects, see Graffy, Bed and Sofa, 26–8. 21. Abram Room, “Moi kinoubezhdeniia” [“My Cinema Convictions”], Sovetskii ekran [Soviet Screen] 8 (1926): 5; Room, “ ‘Tret´ia Meshchanskaia,’ ” 2. 22. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA, and London: Belknap Press, 2002), 216. 23. Philip Cavendish, Soviet Mainstream Cinematography: The Silent Era (London: UCL Arts & Humanities Publications, 2007), 71. 24. Graffy, Bed and Sofa, 34. 25. Graffy, Bed and Sofa, 34. 26. Graffy, Bed and Sofa, 31. 27. Benjamin, Arcades, 200. 28. Cavendish, Soviet Mainstream Cinematography, 79.

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Comfort and the Domestic Interior in Soviet Fiction Cinema of the 1920s 29. Cavendish, Soviet Mainstream Cinematography, 79–80. 30. Benjamin, Arcades, 220–1. 31. Walter Benjamin, “Moscow Diary” [1927], October 35 (Winter 1985): 4. 32. Graffy, Bed and Sofa, 28; Le Corbusier, L’art décoratif d’aujord’hui [The Decorative Art of Today] (Paris: Editions Crès, 1925; Paris: Arthaud, 1980), 91. Citations refer to the Arthaud edition. 33. Cavendish, Soviet Mainstream Cinematography, 84. 34. Attwood, “The New Economic Policy,” 47. 35. Devushka s korobkoi (The Girl with a Hatbox) papers, 1.2.1.288. Screenplay for film (1927), 13–42, Gosfil´mofond State Film Archive of the Russian Federation, Belye stolby, Moscow, Russia. 36. Devushka s korobkoi (The Girl with a Hatbox) papers, 1.2.1.288. Screenplay for film (1927), 92, Gosfil´mofond State Film Archive of the Russian Federation, Belye stolby, Moscow, Russia. 37. Emma Widdis, “Cinema and the Art of Being: Towards a History of Early Soviet Set Design,” in Birgit Beumers (ed.), A Companion to Russian Cinema, 315 (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016). 38. Sergei Kozlovskii, “Prava i obiazannosti kino-khudozhnika” [“The Rights and Responsibilities of the Set Designer”], Kino-zhurnal ARK [Cinema Journal ARK] 11–12 (1925): 16–17; Sergei Kozlovskii, “Tekhnika kinoatel´e” [“Film Studio Technology”], Kino i kul´tura [Cinema and Culture] 5 (1925): 57–9. 39. Nikolai Kolin and Sergei Kozlovskii, “Khudozhnik-arkhitektor v kino” [“The Artist-Architect in Cinema”] (1930), reprinted in Kinovedcheskie zapiski [Film Scholars’ Notes] 99 (2009): 389–92. 40. Osip Brik, “Fiksatsiia fakta” [“The Fixation of the Fact”], Novyi lef [New Lef] 11–12 (1927): 44–50. 41. Aleksandr Rodchenko, “Khudozhnik i material´naia sreda v igrovom fil´me” [“The Artist and the Material Environment in Fiction Film”], Sovetskoe kino [Soviet Cinema] 5–6 (1927): 14. 42. Alina Payne, From Ornament to Object: Genealogies of Architectural Modernism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 197. 43. Payne, From Ornament to Object, 243, 257. 44. Svetlana Boym, Common Places: Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 35. 45. Buchli, Archaeology of Socialism, 44. 46. For example, see Benjamin’s notion of “destructive dwelling,” in Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, The Complete Correspondence, 1928–1940, ed. Henri Lonitz, trans. Nicholas Walker (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), 104. 47. Emma Widdis, Socialist Senses: Film, Feeling, and the Soviet Subject, 1917–1940 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), 108–10. 48. Widdis, “Cinema and the Art of Being,” 235. 49. Widdis, “Cinema and the Art of Being,” 238. 50. Boris Arvatov, “Byt i kul´tura veshchi” [“Everyday Life and the Culture of the Thing”] (1925), trans. Christina Kiaer, October 81 (Summer 1997): 123. 51. Arvatov, “Byt i kul´tura veshchi,” 125. 52. Arvatov, “Byt i kul´tura veshchi,” 126. 53. Arvatov, “Byt i kul´tura veshchi,” 127. 54. Boym, Common Places, 64.

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Screen Interiors 55. Buchli, Archaeology of Socialism, 56–7. 56. Buchli, Archaeology of Socialism, 56–7. 57. Viktor Shklovskii, “Pogranichnaia liniia,” [1927], reprinted in Viktor Shklovskii, Za 60 let. Raboty o kino [Through 60 Years. Works on Cinema] (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1985), 110–13. 58. Devushka s korobkoi (The Girl with a Hatbox) papers, 1.2.1.288. Screenplay for film (1927), 13–14, Gosfil´mofond State Film Archive of the Russian Federation, Belye stolby, Moscow, Russia. 59. Devushka s korobkoi (The Girl with a Hatbox) papers, 1.2.1.288. Screenplay for film (1927), 13, Gosfil´mofond State Film Archive of the Russian Federation, Belye stolby, Moscow, Russia. 60. Arvatov, “Byt i kul´tura veshchi,” 119–28. 61. Mikhail Bleiman, “Chelovek v sovetskom fil´me” [“The Person in Soviet Film”], Sovetskoe kino [Soviet Cinema] 8 (1933): 57–9. 62. Cavendish, Soviet Mainstream Cinematography, 71. 63. Sergei Tret´iakov, “Otkuda i kuda?—Perspektivy futurizma” [Origin and Destination— Perspectives on Futurism] (1923), in Nikolai Brodskii (ed.), Literaturnye manifesty, Ot simbolizma k Oktiabriu [Literary Manifestos, from Symbolism to the October Group], 238–45 (The Hague: Vaduz, 1969); Sergei Tret´iakov, “The Biography of the Object,” in “Soviet Factography,” special issue, October 118 (Fall 2006): 57–62. 64. V. Kolomarov, “Veshch´ v kino” [“The Thing in Cinema”], Kino i kul´tura [Cinema and Culture] 9–10 (1929): 29–37. 65. Rachel Morley, Performing Femininity: Woman as Performer in Early Russian Cinema (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2017), 123. 66. Widdis, “Sew Yourself Soviet,” 117. 67. Denise Youngblood, Movies for the Masses: Popular Cinema and Soviet Society in the 1920s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 92. 68. Widdis, Socialist Senses, 205. 69. Nikolai Lukhmanov, “Zhizn´ kak ona dolzhna byt´” [“Life as it Ought to Be”], Kino i kul´tura [Cinema and Culture] 1 (1929), 1: 29–37. 70. Graffy, Bed and Sofa, 100.

Bibliography Adorno, Theodor and Walter Benjamin. The Complete Correspondence, 1928–1940. Edited by Henri Lonitz. Translated by Nicholas Walker. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999. Arvatov, Boris and Christina Kiaer. “Byt i kul´tura veshchi.” [“Everyday Life and the Culture of the Thing.”] October 81 (Summer 1997): 119–28. Attwood, Lynne. “The New Economic Policy.” In Gender and Housing in Soviet Russia: Private Life in a Public Space, 40–60. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2010. Benjamin, Walter. “Moscow Diary.” Reprinted in October 35 ([1927] 1985): 9–135. Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Edited by Rolf Tiedemann. Translated by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge and London: Belknap Press, 2002. Bleiman, Mikhail. “Chelovek v sovetskom fil´me.” [The Person in Soviet Film.] Sovetskoe kino [Soviet Cinema] 8 (1933): 51–60. Boym, Svetlana. Common Places: Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994.

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Comfort and the Domestic Interior in Soviet Fiction Cinema of the 1920s Brik, Osip. “Fiksatsiia fakta.” [The Fixation of the Fact.] Novyi lef [New Lef] 11–12 (1927): 44–50. Buchli, Victor. An Archaeology of Socialism. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 1999. Cavendish, Philip. Soviet Mainstream Cinematography: The Silent Era. London: UCL Arts & Humanities Publications, 2007. Denisov, K. “Meshchanstvo v kino.” [Meshchanstvo in Cinema.] Sovetskii ekran [Soviet Screen] 5 (1927): 3. Gosfil´mofond State Film Archive of the Russian Federation, Screenplay for Devushka s korobkoi (The Girl with a Hatbox), 1927, 1.2.1.288,13–92, Belye stolby, Moscow, Russia. Graffy, Julian. Bed and Sofa: The Film Companion. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2001. Iutkevich, Sergei. Chelovek na ekrane: Chetyre besedy o kinoiskusstve: Dnevnik rezhissera. [Man on the Screen: Four Conversations about Cinema Art: The Diary of a Director.] Moscow: Goskinoizdat, 1947. Iutkevich, Sergei. Sobranie sochinenii v trekh tomakh. [Collected Works in 3 vols.] Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1990. Kelly, Catriona. Refining Russia: Advice Literature, Popular Culture and Gender from Catherine to Yeltsin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Kettering, Karen. “ ‘Ever More Cosy and Comfortable’: Stalinism and the Soviet Domestic Interior, 1928–1938.” Journal of Design History 10, no.2 (1997): 119–35. Khersonskii, Khrisanf. “Bor´ba faktov, vzgliadov, idei i sposobov vozdeistviia.” [“The Struggle of Facts, Visions, Ideas and Leverage.”] Kino-front [Cinema-front] 9–10 (1926): 21–6. Kolin, Nikolai and Sergei Kozlovskii. “Khudozhnik-arkhitektor v kino.” [The Artist-Architect in Cinema.] Reprinted in Kinovedchekie zapiski [Film Scholars’ Notes] 99 (2009): 378–422. Kolomarov, V. “Veshch´ v kino.” [The Thing in Cinema.] Kino i kul´tura [Cinema and Culture] 9–10 (1929): 29–37. Kozlovskii, Sergei. “Prava i obiazannosti kino-khudozhnika.” [The Rights and Responsibilities of the Set Designer.] Kino-zhurnal ARK [Cinema Journal ARK] 11–12 (1925): 16–17. Kozlovskii, Sergei. “Tekhnika kinoatel´e.” [Film Studio Technology.] Kino i kul´tura [Cinema and Culture] 5 (1925): 57–9. Le Corbusier. L’art décoratif d’aujord’hui. [The Decorative Art of Today.] Paris: Editions Crès, 1925; Paris: Arthaud, 1980, 91. (Citations refer to the Arthaud edition.) Lukhmanov, Nikolai. “Zhizn´ kak ona dolzhna byt´.” [Life as it Ought to Be.] Kino i kul´tura [Cinema and Culture] 1 (1929): 29–37. Morley, Rachel. Performing Femininity: Woman as Performer in Early Russian Cinema. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2017. Payne, Alina. From Ornament to Object: Genealogies of Architectural Modernism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012. Rodchenko, Aleksandr. “Khudozhnik i material´naia sreda v igrovom fil´me.” [The Artist and the Material Environment in Fiction Film.] Sovetskoe kino [Soviet Cinema] 5–6 (1927): 14–15. Room, Abram. “Moi kinoubezhdeniia.” [“My Cinema Convictions.”] Sovetskii ekran [Soviet Screen] 8 (1926): 5. Room, Abram. “ ‘Tret´ia Meshchanskaia.’ (Beseda s rezhisserom A. M. Roomom).” [“ ‘Tret´ia Meshchanskaia.’ (A Conversation with the Director A. M. Room).”] Kino [Cinema] 14 (September 1926): 1–2. Shklovskii, Viktor. “Pogranichnaia liniia.” Za 60 let. Raboty o kino [Through 60 Years. Works on Cinema], 110–13. Moscow : Iskusstvo. 1985. Tret´iakov, Sergei. “Otkuda i kuda?—Perspektivy futurizma.” [Origin and Destination— Perspectives on Futurism.] In Nikolai Brodskii (ed.), Literaturnye manifesty, Ot simbolizma k Oktiabriu [Literary Manifestos, from Symbolism to the October Group], 238–45. The Hague: Vaduz, 1969. Tret´iakov, Sergei. “The Biography of the Object.” Special Issue, October 118 (Fall 2006): 57–62.

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Screen Interiors Widdis, Emma. “Sew Yourself Soviet: The Pleasures of Textile in the Machine Age.” In Marina Balina and Evgeny Dobrenko (eds.), Petrified Utopia: Happiness Soviet Style, 115–32. London and New York: Anthem Press, 2009. Widdis, Emma. “Faktura: Depth and Surface in Early Soviet Set Design.” Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema 3, no.1 (January 2014): 5–32. Widdis, Emma. “Cinema and the Art of Being: Towards a History of Early Soviet Set Design.” In Birgit Beumers (ed.), A Companion to Russian Cinema, 314–36. London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016. Widdis, Emma. Socialist Senses: Film, Feeling, and The Soviet Subject, 1917–1940. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017. Youngblood, Denise. Movies for the Masses: Popular Cinema and Soviet Society in the 1920s. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

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CHAPTER 2 FURNISHING I LOVE LUCY 19517 Marilyn Cohen

The US television sitcoms of the 1950s were memorable not just because of their characters but also because of their settings. Programs such as I Love Lucy (1951–7), The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show (1950–8), and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952–66) were all domestic comedies enhanced by the fact that the couples were married in real life: Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, George Burns and Gracie Allen, and Ozzie and Harriet Nelson.1 The domestic reality of these shows, however, also depended on the familiarity of the interior settings no matter how schematic they may have been. Scholars use a variety of methodologies to analyze postwar television sitcoms, some of which focus on wider economic and social factors and others on content analysis or genre.2 Less well investigated is how the material culture of the production operates within the narrative. This chapter focuses on the interior decoration of the sets of I Love Lucy, one of the earliest and most popular US television sitcoms of the 1950s. It seeks to integrate its interiors into cultural analyses based on class and ethnicity given the Cuban and American identity of the central couple, and to suggest that furniture types and styles and the ways they are arranged, used, and marketed in the sitcom illuminate the changing mores of middle-class married life lived in the smaller US homes of the postwar era.3 Home furnishings are embedded in larger meanings and the same can be said of sitcom furnishings, even if they are more theatrically driven.4 I Love Lucy debuted on the US television network CBS on October 15, 1951, and by April 7, 1952 it was the first program to reach 10 million homes at the same time.5 The top-rated program on US television for four of its six seasons, I Love Lucy never ranked lower than third.6 Indeed, Gerald Jones speculates that I Love Lucy “coincided with, and probably sped, television’s growth into a universal American experience.”7 Based on the married life of the fictional Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, the comic antics of the comedienne Lucille Ball and her real-life husband Desi Arnaz, a Cuban-born bandleader and musician, were combined within the domestic format of the sitcom. The basic premise is that Lucy Ricardo wanted to be a performer while Ricky Ricardo wanted her to be a housewife: to stay at home to cook and clean, bring him his pipe and slippers, and “be a mama to my children.”8 This view of marriage was openly stated in the pilot’s dialogue when Ricky forbids Lucy to audition for a nightclub act where he works, or anywhere else for that matter. The fact that Lucille Ball was the star of the program operated as a not so subtle challenge to that narrative.9 That in real life as well as on the program Ricky/Arnaz was Cuban-born made the marriage unusual for the period. It was so unusual that the CBS network, which had offered Ball her own television program based on the success of her radio show My 49

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Favorite Husband, at first rejected the idea, assuming the public would not accept her being married to a Cuban American despite their real-life union. CBS’s vice president and program director, Hubbell Robinson, stated, “We don’t think viewers will accept Desi, a Latin with a thick Cuban accent, as the husband of a typical, red-headed American girl like Lucille Ball.”10 In order to bolster their case, Ball and Arnaz toured the country in their own vaudeville act in 1950 and its success persuaded CBS to finance a pilot with Arnaz playing Ball’s husband. The couple formed Desilu Productions in part to produce the pilot episode. Filmed in March 1951 at CBS studios in Hollywood, the pilot script was written by producer/director Jess Oppenheimer and writers Madelyn Pugh, and Bob Carroll, Jr., all of whom worked on Ball’s radio series.11 The pilot went to the Martin Biow Advertising Agency in New York for marketing, and the Philip Morris Company agreed to finance the program on CBS provided that another couple was added to the plotline. Thought lost for many years, a copy of the pilot for I Love Lucy was unearthed almost forty years after it was made.12 A comparison of the pilot’s setting to that of the televised program reveals the significantly different choices in set design that prompted this analysis. The pilot begins with a narration introducing the Ricardos as living in midtown Manhattan on the seventh floor of a high-rise building close to the “nightclub and theater world” where Ricky works.13 The “tiny but glamorous” apartment features an obviously painted city view outside the window and is furnished with a distinctly “modern” flavor, with references to Modernist, Art Moderne, and “Mid-Century Modern” design (see Figure 2.1).14 There are sleek blond wood cabinets, for example, and a molded plywood chair either designed by Charles and Ray Eames and shown at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1946, or similar. An unadorned and unframed circular mirror helps transform a cabinet into a modern vanity, and a glass pitcher on the top of another cabinet near the apartment door recalls the interwar “moderne” houseware designs of Russel Wright. Two large Chinese scroll prints on the wall and a bamboo window shade indicate that the couple was open to the cross-cultural design influences popular at the time. The set designer was architect Chris Choate, who had worked briefly in MGM’s art department and by 1950 was becoming known for the modern “Ranch” houses he was designing with Cliff May.15 The Chinese scroll prints were owned by Choate himself, and when he gave them as a wedding gift to his architect son and daughter-in-law he remarked that art would make their apartment “more chic.”16 When the show debuted on CBS, however, the Ricardo apartment was quite different than the one in the pilot—from the kinds of furnishings to the apartment’s New York City location.17 The apartment was no longer in midtown Manhattan or close to the theater world where Ricky worked but rather at 623 East 68th Street, a row house in a residential neighborhood on Manhattan’s Upper East Side (whose fictional address in reality would place the building in the city’s East River!). The new neighborhood was likely meant to secure Ricky’s stated desire to have a calm traditional home life removed from the midtown theatrical world and forestall any attempt by Lucy to be part of it. The furnishings of the apartment bore little resemblance to anything as cosmopolitan as the Chinese scroll prints or molded plywood chair in the pilot. Instead, the Ricardo living room was a mélange of furnishings that forged a homey, comfortable environment for a newly 50

Furnishing I Love Lucy (1951–7)

Figure 2.1 Pilot for I Love Lucy, filmed March 2, 1951; aired April 30, 1990 on CBS. Photo from Laughs, Luck . . . and Lucy by Jess Oppenheimer with Gregg Oppenheimer, Syracuse University Press, 1996, www.lucynet.com. married middle-class couple reminiscent of how in 1941 Lucille Ball described her own home interior as a mix of “Early Victorian and Bastard American” (see Figure 2.2).18 An “older” couple, former vaudevillians Fred and Ethel Mertz (played by William Frawley and Vivian Vance, respectively), owned the row house where the Ricardos lived and were introduced as landlords, neighbors, and friends to them. The building, in a middle-class neighborhood, was construed as the Mertzes’ single asset (and likely bought with debt). The presence of the Mertzes enabled the writers to create episodes around the two couples’ different ages, economic status, and marital styles as well as the adversarial “battle of the sexes” between the men and the women. Such episodes capitalized on common tensions related to postwar companionate marriage, roles exaggerated by Ricky’s “Cuban-ness” and his statement in the episode “Equal Rights” (Season 3, Episode 4, aired October 23, 1953), “We’re going to run this home like we do in Cuba where the man is the master and the woman does what she is told.”19 Although set in New York City, I Love Lucy was filmed in Hollywood in front of a studio audience—heard but not seen in order to maintain the highly prized “liveness” of television—because neither Ball nor Arnaz wanted to leave their California home.20 As a

51

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Figure 2.2 “Drafted,” Season 1, Episode 11, aired December 24, 1951, I Love Lucy (1951–7). © CBS Worldwide Inc. 2002.

result, the producers were able to rent a permanent site for production at General Service Studios’ Stage 2 (formerly a movie sound stage) and to build sets that would remain stationary, something that was unusual for that time. Al Simon, an associate producer of the show observed: I was intrigued by the fact that perhaps we could build three or four permanent sets, side by side. In live television, the sets were always flimsy-looking because they had to be “struck” quickly after the show was over to make way for the next program. I figured if I could rent this stage on a full-time basis, we could simply leave up the sets we built. And those sets could be very realistic. I felt we could also use the stage to rehearse on.21 [Emphasis added.] Simon’s statement underscores how the sets for I Love Lucy were designed to represent a credible home interior. Except for extended “trips” that ostensibly took the Ricardos and Mertzes to Beverly Hills, Paris, Italy, and, in the final season, a move into a suburban Connecticut house, the Ricardos lived consecutively in two apartments, 4A and then 3B, in the Mertzes’ building. In both apartments, the living room was always in the middle of the set, with a bedroom off to the left side and kitchen at the right. According to the gendered coding 52

Furnishing I Love Lucy (1951–7)

of the interior decoration of rooms in place since the mid-nineteenth century, the bedroom was a distinctly “feminine” space and decorated to be slightly “over the top.”22 The quilted headboard, shiny, satiny fabrics, skirted vanity/dressing table, and ruffled curtains had certain associations with the glamorous bedrooms seen in Hollywood movies of the 1930s and 1940s.23 Such Hollywood references notwithstanding, the Ricardos were presented as living within a budget, with several plots related to Lucy’s desire to redecorate and Ricky’s reluctance, as the breadwinner, to incur the expense. Over the course of the series there were four main living room sets seen, albeit with several other sofas and chairs occasionally used or replaced according to plot needs. In the very first living room seen on air, “The Girls Want to Go to a Nightclub” (Season 1, Episode 1, aired Oct. 15, 1951), the couch is a skirted, comfortable-looking stuffed loveseat, with a dip in the back frame and individual seat cushions. Its printed and glazed cotton fabric reads as a Colonial Revival print, and its smallness—requiring the couple to sit close together—testifies to their still being lovebirds (see Figure 2.2).24 In front of the loveseat, the coffee table, a furniture type that gained great popularity in the postwar period, refers back to an eighteenth-century European-American past through its loosely Rococo Revival “Chippendale”- style cabriole legs, while a Colonial Revival-style ladder-back chair by a desk references the era of the colonial settlers. There is an ornate Rococo Revival marble fireplace and cast brass fire screen but these are set against a brick wall, a feature often seen in many New York houses of the era. Other items adding a traditional feel to the apartment include a US-made toleware (painted tin) clock hanging above the fireplace and, symmetrically placed below to each side of it, small oval-framed prints of Victorianera women. A piano at the back of the room and the antique-looking porcelains on it are indicative of an aspiration to mark the space with a certain gentility, as is a large framed copy of the French artist Maurice Utrillo’s painting Restaurant au Mont Cenis, 1922, a Parisian street scene that was well known in the 1950s.25 On occasion the viewer spies a lithographic print in the hallway of the French painter Georges Braque’s 1950 Cubist Still Life with Jug and Lemons (“New Neighbors,” Season 1, Episode 21, aired March 3, 1952), while views of the hallway to the bedroom reveal a glimpse of a reproduction of Degas’s 1878 painting, The Star (Dancer on Stage). A drop-leaf table sits against a wall in the back left of the living room with a lamp and some upright books on it between owl-shaped bookends. The kitchen has “feminine” touches from ceramic plates with floral or leaf patterns to stenciled decorations and ruffled curtains.26 When Lucy manages to get new living room furniture for apartment 4A in the second season (“Redecorating,” Season 2, Episode 8, aired Nov. 24, 1952), by winning it from a quiz show program, the changed furnishings parallel reality insofar as continuous filming over the first year had taken its toll and the set needed freshening up. Ball is quoted as saying, “I just got tired of it.”27 The new items include a change of sofa and easy chair (see Figure 2.3). While the cabriole-legged coffee table remains the same, the new couch has up-to-date solid twill upholstery, a tailored skirt, and buttons on the back. The easy chair, now to the left and set back from the couch, is also in a solid color but uses a textured fabric. The picture arrangement, above the desk at the back where the piano had 53

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Figure 2.3 “Lucy Goes to the Hospital,” Season 2, Episode 16, aired January 19, 1953, I Love Lucy (1951–7). © CBS Worldwide Inc. 2002.

been, is reduced to three works, with the “Utrillo” replaced by a lithographic print of a scenic watercolor landscape by US artist Frank Serratoni (1908–60).28 There are two smaller framed landscapes on either side of it. The one to the right is identifiable as a landscape by Margo Alexander (1894–1965), an artist known for her paintings of farm landscapes and the “American West.” Chinese-style figurines, ubiquitous in the 1950s, sit on the mantelpiece on either side of a plant. In 1952, Ball’s real-life pregnancy was incorporated into the program’s narrative when Lucy Ricardo also becomes pregnant (Season 2, Episodes 45–51, aired Dec. 8, 1952 through Jan. 19, 1953). The Ricardos, needing more space, move into the larger apartment 3B (“The Ricardos Change Apartments,” Season 2, Episode 26, aired May 18, 1953).29 At first the living room has the same furniture as in 4A, but then Lucy redecorates (“Lucy Wants New Furniture,” Season 2, Episode 28, aired June 1, 1953). The fashionable living room couch is a modern sectional comprised of two seats and a third one set at a right angle to it while an adjustable drop-leaf table serves as a coffee table (see Figure 2.4). The Chinese-style figurines from 4A sit on the mantelpiece.30 In this larger apartment, however, the fireplace is modern and rectilinear with a recessed rectangular alcove above it. Two US folk-art prints by E. Melvin Bolstad hang above it on either side of the Serratoni painting.31 The more tailored living room is much less a mix of furnishings than in the first season, but ruffled window curtains (known as “Priscillas”) add a contrasting touch of fussiness and “femininity” that speaks to the mid-century negotiation 54

Furnishing I Love Lucy (1951–7)

Figure 2.4 “Lucy Wants New Furniture,” Season 2, Episode 28, aired June 1, 1953, I Love Lucy (1951–7). © CBS Worldwide Inc. 2002.

of the living room as a less gendered and more equitable space.32 The piano reappears with the same antique-effect lusters placed upon it as in the first season. In the third season, the sectional couch and chair in the 3B living room are replaced by a longer, streamlined, and asymmetrical chaise-longue-style couch in a solid color (“Redecorating the Mertzes’ Apartment,” Season 3, Episode 8, aired Nov. 23, 1953). The adjustable drop-leaf table remains as a coffee table, along with the same desk seen since the first season (see Figure 2.5). The drop-leaf table flags the popularity of space-saving and adjustable furniture in the smaller postwar home, and the one in the Ricardo apartment features a recently patented contemporary hinge device for height adjustment which meant that the table could be used for such various activities as eating or playing cards.33 The living room window in 3B signals the Ricardos as somewhat more prosperous and additionally facilitated comic moments such as the famous Superman episode, “Lucy and Superman” (Season 6, Episode 13, aired Jan. 14, 1957), wherein Lucy promises Little Ricky that television’s Superman will show up at his birthday party. When it appears that he will not, Lucy climbs out of a window onto the building ledge dressed in an ersatz Superman costume. She is unable to get back inside until the real TV Superman George Reeves (a surprise arranged by Ricky) arrives and rescues her. 55

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Figure 2.5 “Lucy Cries Wolf,” Season 4, Episode 3, aired October 18, 1954, I Love Lucy (1951–7). © CBS Worldwide Inc. 2002. These various incarnations of the Ricardos’ living room (see Figures 2.2–5), their changing furniture styles and fabrics, reflect the upwardly mobile path for the couple consistent with the general prosperity of the postwar United States.34 While this is commonly recognized in scholarship on the program, less noted is the “American” (i.e. US) character of the furnishings themselves.35 US folk-art prints and watercolors have replaced the Utrillo, with Degas and Braque reproductions only occasionally seen in the hallway.36 When, in the final season of the program, the couple moves to a house in Connecticut (“Lucy Wants to Move to the Country,” Season 6, Episode 15, aired January 28, 1957) and Ricky owns his own nightclub in New York, the Ricardos have a grander living room more fully appointed in the Colonial Revival style then still popular with many among the middle classes. One wonders if this choice of décor was intended as a subtle reaffirmation of Ball’s “American-ness,” having been accused in 1953 of being a communist.37 The prints of women from the Victorian era remain to cohere with the early loveseat’s allusions to tropes of nineteenth-century domesticity wherein women preside and remain at home.38 But they also serve as a humorous counterpoint, indeed the very opposite image to Lucy/Ball’s uncontained behavior as a woman in the domestic space (see Figure 2.6). Unlike the bedroom and kitchen in the Ricardo apartments, the Ricardo living room can be read as a complex space that speaks less to gender difference and more to class, national identity, and sociality. 56

Furnishing I Love Lucy (1951–7)

Figure 2.6 “Job Switching,” Season 2, Episode 1, aired September 15, 1952, I Love Lucy (1951–7). © CBS Worldwide Inc. 2002. In fact, one finds many items similar to the furnishings of the Ricardo apartments in Sears, Roebuck catalogs of the 1950s, whether it be a sofa, drop-leaf table, clock, curtains, or cruet set.39 The availability of such common fixtures through a national mail-order catalog such as Sears, Roebuck (items also available in their many stores) assured that viewers across the United States would be familiar with many, if not all, of the object types to which they belonged. Indeed, it is clear that the aim of the décor was to eschew Ball and Arnaz as the wealthy Hollywood couple they were and instead present them in the sitcom as middle class. Ball wrote that “Desi and I okayed each pillow, picture, pot, and pan that went into the Ricardos’ apartment, to make sure it was authentically middleincome.”40 And Jess Oppenheimer, producer of I Love Lucy, stated that the writers of the program “took pains to humanize the character of Ricky Ricardo by bringing him down in earning power so the average person could identify with his problems”; he remarked that the “Tropicana” nightclub where Ricky worked was deliberately presented as “a kind of a middle-class tourist trap patronized mostly by out-of-towners and conventioneers,” differentiating it from high-class nightclubs such as the Tropicana where Desi Arnaz performed.41 Ball herself maintained that Lucy Ricardo was developed in contrast to her own screen image: “I didn’t want my character to be glamorous. I didn’t want her to have beautiful clothes.”42 This “bourgeoisification”43 of Lucy can be expanded to include the choice of home furnishings for the Ricardo apartment. 57

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Perhaps, more significantly, the obviously North American furnishings in the living room sets operated to counterbalance Ricky’s Cuban heritage. The conflicts between Lucy and Desi and Ethel and Fred arise not only from a competition between men and women, but also, in the case of Lucy and Ricky, from conflicts of national heritage and culture or what Lucy humorously called “the battle of accents,” typified by the episode “Lucy Hires an English Tutor” (Season 2, Episode 13, Dec. 29, 1952),44 in which Lucy worries that Ricky’s accent will hinder Little Ricky’s ability to speak English perfectly. The amalgam of objects in the first living room, described by one writer as “department-store ‘traditional,’ ” placed the couple squarely in a North American middle-class household (see Figure 2.2).45 As Lori Landay writes, “Arnaz’s status as ‘Other’ because of his ethnicity is one of the undercurrents of Lucy TV.”46 The conventional furnishings seen in the Ricardo apartment affirmed that the couple, although of mixed ethnicity, was a relatively typical one and adds to the believability of the comedy arising from their negotiations of middle-class companionate marriage. The apartment interior bespeaks a home with heteronormative values as to who governs it and a gendered division of labor within it consonant with Oppenheimer’s description of the program’s narrative. This is not to say that Ricky’s Cuban-ness, at the heart of his professional musical career and supremely evident in his accent and frequent use of Spanish, is overlooked in the program, but only to observe that it is decidedly less present in the apartment interior. Indeed, in the second episode of the first season, “Be a Pal” (Season 1, Episode 2, aired Oct. 22, 1951), Lucy wants to remind Ricky of his Cuban heritage by restaging the apartment with Cuban things— decorative objects that comically exemplify how otherwise little evident it is in the interior. Those “Cuban” features, however, reveal a mix of sources derived from disparate Hispanic cultures.47 Lucy, for example, wears a supposedly Cuban costume while “singing” “Mama Yo Quiero”—she is mouthing the words while Ethel, unseen in the kitchen, plays a record of it. The song is a 1937 Brazilian song sung in Spanish and popularized in the US by the Portuguese Carmen Miranda, and Lucy looks more like the Portuguese Miranda than a Cuban. Spanish or Latin American objects such as a mannequin wearing a Mexican serape and sombrero function as theatrical props rather than as realistic furnishings in the redecorated space and serve comically to disrupt the conventional American middle-class interior. In fact, Lucy uses bananas, palm trees, and a chicken coop to transform the living room, revealing that “Cuban-ness” is more about island life out of doors than it is about middle-class interior furnishings. Indeed, while Ricky was a professional musician who played drums and guitar, the major instrument on display in the apartment is a piano. When Ricky appears to play the piano, it is likely being played out of sight of the camera by his childhood friend and fellow Cuban Marco Rizo Ayala, whom Arnaz hired as the pianist and orchestrator for the Desi Arnaz Orchestra that played on the program. The piano, as the largest and costliest object in the home, was probably meant to conjure up associations with late nineteenth-century bourgeois gentility. The parlor piano was a marker of tradition and middle-class respectability and suggested “feminine accomplishment and the family’s appreciation of music.”48 By 1957, an article in Good Housekeeping—“Are 58

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they still giving Piano Lessons?”—reported that sales of pianos increased 20 percent over the preceding year and that teachers throughout the country were being swamped with pupils; in 1952, Good Housekeeping touted the piano as an especially stable financial investment.49 The piano in the Ricardo home, like the presence of Sears, Roebuck-type objects, communicated to viewers that the Ricardos’ values were middle class, familiar, and safely mainstream. The piano may also have served as an antidote to the conga drum identified with Arnaz, who described himself as “a Latin bandleader with a ‘Cuban Pete’ conga drum ‘Babalu’ image,” and whose commercial breakthrough in the United States was popularly associated with the conga craze that began in 1937.50 The conga drum and dance were far “sexier” than the piano and connected Ricky both to the US imaginary of Cuba as “a pleasure island” or “an Eden for the sensually deprived,” and to the “type” of Latin bandleader already familiar to 1950s television viewers from movies of the 1930s and 1940s as an exotic blend of “sexual knowledge and virility.”51 The piano, therefore, like the loveseat in the first Ricardo living room, was a metaphor for middle-class stability and conjugal harmony.52 It was the material opposite to the dynamic, portable, and, perhaps, more threatening “Latin” sexuality of the conga drum. Although Sears, Roebuck sold pianos, guitars, and saxophones through its catalog, it did not market conga drums; furthermore it illustrated the piano for sale with a young girl playing while her parents watch to reinforce that instrument’s potential for family togetherness.53 In short, Ricky’s Cuban-ness was better left to the nightclub where he worked away from the marital home and which Pérez Firmat describes as the “portable Cuba.”54 (This notion of Cuba as mobile can be related back to how Lucy chose to remind Ricky of his Cuban boyhood in “Be a Pal” by “importing” island flora and fauna into the apartment.) By setting the Ricardo home in the Mertz-owned row house, in contrast to the pilot apartment’s location in a high-rise building in the midst of Manhattan’s nightclub and theater world, not only was Lucy more easily kept at home but Ricky and his Cuban-ness were also more readily contained.55 This was solidified by the presence of the Mertzes whose “togetherness” with the Ricardos is also enacted using the apartment set and furnishings. There are notably few family photographs on display in the Ricardo apartment; instead, the ease with which the Mertzes enter and use the Ricardo home exemplifies their quasi-familial relationship as neighbors. The Mertzes often enter the Ricardo apartment without knocking, and/or the front door is left invitingly open so that they can be instantly welcomed (see Figure 2.5). The Ricardo apartment is a shared emotional and dynamic space for both couples (see Figures 2.3–5);56 the fact that they live in a New York row house underscores this.57 The Mertzes’s easy use of the Ricardo furniture further embodies their bond. They sit on the arms of couches or crowd in next to each other on the small living room sofa, freely putting their feet up on the coffee table. Chairs and tables here become actors or agents with which the Ricardos and Mertzes demonstrate closeness. In “Redecorating the Mertzes’ Apartment” (Season 3, Episode 7, aired November 23, 1953), the Ricardos even give their furniture to the Mertzes, a gift that, within the codes of postwar US capitalism, reifies their economic and emotional discourse. 59

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The couples’ relaxed postures signify comfort and intimacy between them while also speaking to changing manners and mores given the mutable postwar US home. Unquestionably, the homes built were less spacious than before. “The space that most of us live in has shrunk,” wrote Charlotte Montgomery in Redbook in June 1952.58 The smaller living room became the social sphere of the family, with furnishings less hierarchically determined or gender specific so as to constitute a more equitable distribution of domestic space in keeping with the ideals of the companionate marriage. There were no higher chairs with arms for the patriarch.59 Instead, the presence of a collapsible bridge table or adjustable drop-leaf table in the Ricardo apartment reminded the audience how easily and quickly the function of the room could change to accommodate a game of cards or an hour of ironing as, for example, in the respective episodes “The Benefit” (Season 1, Episode 13, aired January 7, 1952) and “Job Switching” (Season 2, Episode 1, aired September 15, 1952). They also tell viewers that the middleclass Ricardos and Mertzes live life without servants, making lightweight and movable or multi-functional furniture more desirable. Indeed, while the cabriole-leg or drop-leaf coffee table in the Ricardo apartment display “eighteenth-century” styling (as such furnishings were described in Sears, Roebuck catalogs), they play a “modern” role in the interior.60 Like shelter magazines or furniture catalogs of the decade, the arrangement of couch, chair, and coffee table in I Love Lucy demonstrates what was considered appropriate postwar seating for sociality in the 1950s. Such an arrangement could be “modern” in positioning rather than in specific furniture choices.61 In I Love Lucy, the couch, chair, and coffee table are pre-eminent and promote this area of the set/room as a flexible space for visiting and conversation, making sociability central to the room’s function. From the beginning of its televised production, the couch, chair, and coffee table were arranged and placed frontally in I Love Lucy, as was common in theater, such that the actors always face the audience or align before it. As a result, the audience participates in this openness; they become the guest in the interior, or, alternatively, the Ricardos entered the homes of television viewers. Viewers feel they share the space with the characters, and the recorded response of the studio audience added to this.62 As Landay writes, “the camera movement and editing allowed the point of view to move into particular places in the domestic space of the Ricardo apartment, preserving the continuity of space” with the viewer.63 Television intensified the immediacy of the proscenium-style set by being able to focus in on the facial and body movements of the actors.64 Just as Lucy’s facial expressions seen in close-up became familiar, so too did the layout and furnishings of the apartment visited weekly by viewers.65 In March 1953, the television critic Jack Gould astutely observed, “The distinction of ‘I Love Lucy’ lies in its skillful presentation of the basic element of familiarity.”66 The camera also made furnishings and their materiality vividly recognizable67 and a vociferous part of a slapstick-style of comedy that placed characters in comic battle with them. When the pregnant Lucy finds it practically impossible to get up from the living room chair, she “performs” her physical condition, observes Landay, in a way it could not be conveyed using the word “pregnancy” (“Ricky has Labor Pains,” Season 2, Episode 14, 60

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aired January 5, 1953).68 Modern furnishings, such as Lucy’s sectional sofa, are mocked when she and Ethel lift up the new couch at each end only to have the two pieces fall down because they have forgotten that a sectional sofa is two unconnected parts (see Figure 2.4). And in the episode where Ricky, Ethel, and Fred practice getting Lucy to the hospital for the birth of the baby, Ricky, completely unnerved and unsteady when Lucy announces it is really time to go to the hospital, repeatedly topples into the couch, unable to get by it and out of the door (see Figure 2.3). Middle-class possessions are here incorporated to express both emotional states and social relationships.69 These interactions with objects also call attention to the artifice and consumerism implicit to the representation of 1950s heteronormative marriage by making the living room into a performance space.70 The “trashing of possessions” in the home is part of this performance. In “Redecorating” (Season 2, Episode 8, aired November 24, 1952), Lucy and Ethel destroy the Ricardo bedroom and living room rug while trying to wallpaper a room, humorously implying that the middle-class lifestyle they represent is “ultimately oppressive and easily demolished.”71 These constraints are nowhere more evident than in “The Handcuffs” (Season 2, Episode 4, aired Oct. 6, 1952), when Lucy and Ricky wind up handcuffed together in their own living room—making marriage quite literally into an inescapable situation. Finally, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz augmented the reality of the program for viewers by the marketing of merchandise related to their televisual home. Desilu Productions struck multiple licensing agreements with manufacturers for products such as flooring, bedroom furniture, and layette sets, which were endorsed by Lucy/Ball and Ricky/Arnaz and advertised in such common contemporary magazines as Look, Family Circle, Good Housekeeping, McCall’s, and TV Guide.72 In an advertisement for Minuet bedspreads by Morgan Jones, Inc., the text has Lucille Ball exclaim, “In our TV studio bedroom, too, we have Minuet bedspreads. They make me feel really at home.”73 She claims that she lives in her own home with the same accoutrements used in the televised one. Some photographs of Ball and Arnaz’s more palatial home evince a similar taste to the program’s decorative design choices.74 This commodification of the Ricardo lifestyle offered viewers a tangible way to make the program’s reality their own, to live like Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, and, by extension, like Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.75 Today, internet blogs alert fans as to where and when objects seen in I Love Lucy still can be found and purchased, and blueprints of the Ricardo apartment interior sell to baby boomers nostalgic for the “interiors” of their youth.76 All of this testifies to the successful work performed by the program’s material culture—proving how fixed these “fixtures” are in the minds of I Love Lucy fans.77 The objects embedded into the sets of I Love Lucy, however, did more than fix the Ricardos in time and space. They helped to negotiate potential obstacles to the public’s acceptance of Lucy/Ball and Ricky/Arnaz as a married couple of different ethnicities. The apartment’s location and its furnishings actively situated them not only as middle-class marrieds but also as wholesomely “American.” The redecoration of the living room allowed them to enact upward mobility and to play out the roles of husband and wife in ways less dependent on overtly gendered spaces. The bedroom and kitchen may have been “feminine,” but the living room was about class, ethnicity, and identity. Additionally, the 61

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arrangement and use of furnishings in the living room communicated ideas related to living less formally in domestic space in the postwar years alongside neighbors who might function as family used to. As a result, the portrayal of middle-class domesticity in I Love Lucy does not simply reside within the sitcom’s plots, but also in the interior decoration of sets that emotionally support and simultaneously subvert the illusion of real life. Producer Jess Oppenheimer said, “The best reason I Love Lucy clicked” was that it was “tailored to get the greatest identification,” adding, “If the audience can accept the beginning of our show, and know it’s real, then they will go along no matter how extreme the show gets.”78 Audience identification depended on a commonly shared and nationally accessible material culture. We remember sitcom interiors like those of I Love Lucy as inhabited as much by objects as people because they are simultaneously public and private spaces on display. The furnishings of I Love Lucy are the furnishings of cultural memory.

Notes 1. For the importance of the sitcom in fortifying the new medium of television in the postwar US, see Lynn Spigel, Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 2. Recent books on American sitcoms include Mary M. Dalton and Laura R. Linder (eds.), The Sitcom Reader Second Edition: American Re-Viewed, Still Skewed (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2016); Steven Peacock and Jason Jacobs (eds.), Television Aesthetics and Style (New York and London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013); and Jeremy G. Butler, Television Style (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2010). For set design in television, see Jeremy G. Butler, Television: Critical Methods and Applications, 2nd edn. (New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2012). 3. In addition to Spigel’s Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America, the significance of television as a constitutive force in popular culture in the 1950s is referenced by Dianne Harris, Little White Houses: How the Postwar Constructed Race in America (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013) and Anna G. Creadick, Perfectly Average: The Pursuit of Normality in Postwar America (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010). See also Karal Ann Marling, As Seen on TV: The Visual Culture of Everyday Life in the 1950s (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994). 4. Harvey Molotch, Where Stuff Comes From: How Toasters, Toilets, Cars, Computers and Many Other Things Come to Be As They Are (New York and London: Routledge, 2003), 8. 5. Gerald Jones, Honey, I’m Home! Sitcoms: Selling the American Dream (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1992), 73; Library of Congress press release for the exhibition I Love Lucy: An American Legend, https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/i-love-lucy/the-cast-crew-and-set.html. 6. Lori Landay, I Love Lucy (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2010), 2. 7. Jones, Honey, I’m Home!, 73. 8. I Love Lucy, pilot, “The Very First Show,” directed by Ralph Levy, aired April 30, 1990, on CBS. On March 2, 1951, Jess Oppenheimer registered his idea for the concept of I Love Lucy with the Library of Congress. See “The Cast, Crew, and Set,” https://www.loc.gov/ exhibits/i-love-lucy/the-cast-crew-and-set.html. Oppenheimer stated that the basic conflict between the Ricardos was Ricky’s desire for a “normal” life despite his show business career, and Lucy’s desire to move into show business as a means to escape the humdrum of the well-to-do middle-western, mercantile family life on which she was raised. Jess Oppenheimer 62

Furnishing I Love Lucy (1951–7) (with Gregg Oppenheimer), Laughs, Luck . . . and Lucy: How I Came to Create the Most Popular Sitcom of All Time (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1996), 139. 9. “The Audition” (Season 1, Episode, 6, aired November 19, 1951) closely followed the pilot script. I Love Lucy did more to subvert than to affirm the consensus ideology. See Nick Silvato, “Big Glove: Televisual Dissociation, and Embodied Performance,” Criticism 57, no. 1 (Winter 2015): 91–107. See also Christopher Anderson’s entry on I Love Lucy in Horace Newcomb (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Television, 816 (Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997). For feminist scholarship on Lucy’s position in the home and in the sitcom, see Patricia Mellencamp, “Situation Comedy, Feminism, and Freud: Discourses of Gracie and Lucy,” in Tania Modleski (ed.), Studies in Entertainment: Critical Approaches to Mass Culture (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1986), as well as Patricia Mellencamp, High Anxiety: Catastrophe, Scandal, Age and Comedy (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992); Lori Landay, “The Mirror of Performance: Kinaesthetics, Subjectivity, and the Body in Film, Television, and Virtual Worlds,” Cinema Journal 51, no. 3 (Spring 2012): 129–36; Lori Landay, Madcaps, Screwballs, and Con Women: The Female Trickster in American Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998). 10. The Hubbell quotation comes from Susan M. Carini, “Love’s Labors Almost Lost: Managing Crisis during the Reign of ‘I Love Lucy,’ ” Cinema Journal 43, no. 1 (Autumn 2003): 47. 11. Oppenheimer, Laughs, Luck . . . and Lucy, 136. Writers Madeline Pugh Davis and Bob Carroll, Jr. state that they wrote the pilot based on a nightclub act which they had also written for Ball and Arnaz. See interviews with Madelyn Pugh Davis and Bob Carroll, Jr., https://interviews. televisionacademy.com/interviews/madelyn-pugh-davis. Desi Arnaz’s account does not fully agree with theirs. See Desi Arnaz, A Book (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1976), 200. 12. A copy of the pilot was found in December 1989 by Joanne Perez, wife of the performer who played Pepito the clown in it. See “The ‘I Love Lucy’ Pilot, Papermoon Loves Lucy Tumblr, November 6, 2015, https://papermoonloveslucy.tumblr.com/post/132659161528/the-i-lovelucy-pilot. See also Tom Shales, “Love that ‘Lost’ Lucy,” Washington Post, April 30, 1990, https:// www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1990/04/30/love-that-lost-lucy/9cd57b41-05204a6d-8d86-0a8a296e4d23/. 13. Opening narration, I Love Lucy pilot The Very First Show (screened CBS April 30, 1990). 14. Anonymous, Variety, May 9, 1990. 15. Chris Choate worked in set design at a time when it was difficult for trained architects to find work. Choate and designer Cliff May (who was not a licensed architect) together created a modern prefabricated building system. They designed and decorated a development of Ranch houses in Cupertino, California featured in an October 1952 article in House + Home (October 1952), 90–6. 16. I am grateful to architect Courtney Choate Moritz for this information. Email and telephone call, January 15 and 16, 2020, respectively. When the pilot was screened, her mother recognized the scroll prints as those given to her and her husband by his father as a wedding gift. 17. In the credits for Season 1 episodes of I Love Lucy, the Art Director listed is Larry Cuneo. Ralph Berger became the Art Director from 1952 to 1957. Berger was Art Director for all Desilu Productions until his death in 1960. By the third season of the show (1953–4), Ted Offenbacker had become the set decorator and/or dresser. 18. Lucille Ball (with Betty Hannah Hoffman), Love, Lucy (New York: Boulevard Books, 1996), 113. 19. Gustavo Pérez Firmat, The Havana Habit (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 129. On the introduction of the Mertzes, see Coyne Steven Sanders and Tom Gilbert, Desilu: The 63

Screen Interiors Story of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz (New York: Quill William Morrow, 1993), 40–1; Oppenheimer, Laughs, Luck . . . and Lucy, 141. For companionate marriage, see Paul R. Amato, “Institutional, Companionate, and Individualistic Marriage: A Social Psychological Perspective on Marital Change,” in H. Elizabeth Peters and Claire M. Kamp Dush (eds.), Marriage and Family: Perspectives and Complexities, 78 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009); Christina Simmons, Making Marriage Modern: Women’s Sexuality from the Progressive Era to World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). The backstory on the Mertzes’ ownership of the row house comes from a telephone conversation I was fortunate to have with Gregg Oppenheimer, the son of Jess Oppenheimer, on August 29, 2020 in which he confirmed the intentional economic as well as other disparities between the two couples. See also Sanders and Gilbert, Desilu, 41. 20. Most television at the time was made in New York City. It was important to film the episodes rather than make kinescopes as the latter, which are films taken off a closed-circuit TV tube, were of generally poor quality. Oppenheimer, Laughs, Luck . . . and Lucy, 136. The three camera system had been used on quiz programs, but I Love Lucy was the first sitcom to be filmed this way. 21. Bart Andrews, The “I Love Lucy” Book (New York: Doubleday, 1976, 1985), 51. See also Arnaz, A Book, 210. 22. For gendering of rooms, see Juliet Kinchin, “Interiors: nineteenth-century essays on the ‘masculine’ and the ‘feminine’ room,” in Pat Kirkham (ed.), The Gendered Object (Manchester, UK, and New York: Manchester University Press, 1996). 23. See the bedroom décor in such films as Dinner at Eight (1933, George Cukor), Rebecca (1940, Alfred Hitchcock), and Gone with the Wind (1939, Victor Fleming). 24. The numbering of I Love Lucy episodes indicates the order in which they were filmed but not necessarily aired. For changes in the furnishings of the set that may be due to plot needs, see Geoffrey Mark Fidelman, The Lucy Book: A Complete Guide to Her Five Decades on Television (Los Angeles: Renaissance Books, 1999), 33. NB: In the first episode filmed, the upholstery of the loveseat (or Early American settee) and the chair do not match but by the sixth episode, “The Audition” (Season 1, Episode 6, aired November 19, 1951), the chair is reupholstered to match the loveseat. 25. Utrillo was a still-living and internationally known artist in 1951. By 1953 a book of prints of his works, Maurice Utrillo (with text by Alfred Werner) was published by Harry Abrams in New York. This use of “French” art can be connected to the general cache for things “French” in the postwar US. See Pat Kirkham and Marilyn Cohen, “Contexts, Contradictions, Couture, and Clothing: Fashion in An American in Paris, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and That Touch of Mink,” in Eugenia Paulicelli, Drake Stutesman, and Louise Wallenberg (eds.), Film Fashion and the 1960s, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017), 112–32. 26. The pattern of Lucy’s tableware has been identified as “Franciscan Ivy” by the Californiabased pottery company Gladding McBean & Co. It was introduced on the market in 1948. Patricia, “Lucy Ricardo’s Ivy Dishes,” 50sLucy.com, July 28, 2014, https://www.50slucy.com/ lucy-ricardos-ivy-dishes.html. 27. Fidelman, The Lucy Book, 54; Bart Andrews, Lucy & Ricky & Fred & Ethel (New York: Dutton, 1976), 205. 28. Patricia, “Profiles in History, December 11th Auction Lists Original Art Print from the Set of I Love Lucy,” 50sLucy.com, November 26, 2018, https://www.50slucy.com/profiles-in-historydecember-11th-auction-lists-original-art-print-from-the-set-of-i-love-lucy.html. 29. Having opted to incorporate Ball’s pregnancy into the I Love Lucy plotline, Jess Oppenheimer brought in a priest, minister, and rabbi to approve all episodes related to the topic. For the 64

Furnishing I Love Lucy (1951–7) controversy over the topic of pregnancy in a television program, see “Lucy Is ‘Enceinte’ ” in Oppenheimer, Laughs, Luck . . . and Lucy, 198–200. 30. Many of these figurines were made in Japan, but those on the Ricardos’ mantelpiece were produced by the Stewart McCullough Company of California, https://www.50slucy.com /category/california-pottery. 31. Patricia, “I Love Lucy’s Folk Art Prints,” 50sLucy.com, August 31, 2014, https://www.50slucy. com/i-love-lucys-folk-art-prints.html. 32. Kristina Wilson discusses the negotiation of living room décor for the companionate couple in the interwar period in Livable Modernism: Interior Decorating and Design during the Great Depression (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press in Association with Yale University Art Gallery, 2005), 40–3. See also note 19 for sources on the companionate marriage. 33. Mersman tables were known in the 1950s for their Colonial Revival style. 34. The general economic trend in the 1950s was toward a growing middle class. At the beginning of the Depression in the early 1930s, 5.5 million American families, or about one-eighth of the national total, were classified as having “middle-class” incomes; by 1953 that total had climbed to almost 18 million or over a third of the total. Jones, Honey, I’m Home, 88. 35. For a description of the period as a “regime of domiculture,” see Mellencamp, High Anxiety, 323. See also Lynn Spigel (ed.), Welcome to the Dreamhouse (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2001), 32–4; and Lori Landay, “Millions ‘Love Lucy’: Commodification and the Lucy Phenomenon.” NWSA Journal 11, no. 2 (Summer 1999): 25–47. 36. Paris became part of the I Love Lucy narrative in “Paris at Last” (Season 5, Episode 18, aired February 27, 1956) when the Ricardos and Mertzes travel there. Its “chic-ness” is parodied in “Lucy Gets a Paris Gown” (Season 5, Episode 20, aired March 19, 1956). 37. At the start of Season 3 (Fall 1953) of I Love Lucy, Lucille Ball was accused of being a communist, having registered as one in 1936 at the behest of her grandfather. See Carini, “Love’s Labors Almost Lost,” 44–62. The American-ness of the furnishings may also bespeak Arnaz’s sense of himself as “American,” which he viewed as quite distinct from his Cuban identity. Arnaz served in the US Army during World War Two. 38. Joyce Henri Robinson, “ ‘Hi Honey, I’m Home’: Weary (Neurasthenic) Businessmen and the Formulation of a Serenely Modern Aesthetic,” in Christopher Reed (ed.), Not at Home: The Suppression of Domesticity in Modern Art and Architecture (London: Thames and Hudson, Ltd., 1989), 102–10. Such an interior also serves as a foil to the havoc Lucy can make for Ricky when he arrives home. 39. See Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalogue for Fall and Winter 1951 for such items as Priscilla curtains, p. 630; Drop leaf tables, p. 721; Living Room furniture, pp. 724–8; see Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalogue for Fall and Winter 1955 for cruet set, p. 955; tole electric wall clock, p. 619. By 1931, however, Sears had built more than twenty stores in the United States so these furnishings would have been familiar to urban and suburban people shopping in their stores as well as from the catalog. In the postwar period Sears built even more stores; ironically, their first store outside the US was in Cuba. See http://www.searsarchives.com/history/history1940s. htm. For a detailed description of how Sears used architecture to enhance their image and sales, see Richard Longstreth, “Sears, Roebuck and the Remaking of the Department Store, 1924–42,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 65, no. 2 (2006): 238–79. 40. Ball, Love, Lucy, 173. 41. Oppenheimer, Laughs, Luck . . . and Lucy, 183. Arnaz wrote that the first script submitted to them for the pilot had them as characters closer to their real-life selves and that he rejected it, preferring them to be a couple more comfortable for Americans to identify with. Arnaz, A

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Screen Interiors Book, 199–200. There was a clear decision to make the Ricardos middle class and the Mertzes not quite as well off; see Oppenheimer, Laughs, Luck . . . and Lucy, 141. 42. Alexander Doty, “The Cabinet of Lucy Ricardo: Lucille Ball’s Star Image,” Cinema Journal 29, no. 4 (1990): 3–22. 43. Doty, “The Cabinet of Lucy Ricardo,” 17–18 (note 14). 44. Pérez Firmat, The Havana Habit, 125–7. For Ricky Ricardo/Desi Arnaz and Cuban-ness, see Christina D. Abreu, Rhythms of Race: Cuban Musicians and the Making of Latino New York City and Miami, 1940–1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 141–56; Mary Desjardins, “Lucy and Desi: Sexuality, Ethnicity, and TV’s First Family,” in Mary Beth Haralovich and Lauren Rabinovitz (eds.), Television History and American Culture: Feminist Critical Essays (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 1999). 45. Frances McCue, “Lucy Ricardo, Decorator,” Nest, Spring 1999, 134–43. See also note 41. 46. Landay, I Love Lucy, 77. Ricky’s ethnicity has been an ongoing concern in critical consideration of the program. See Mellencamp, High Anxiety, 331; Caren Kaplan, “The ‘Good Neighbor’ Policy Meets the ‘Feminine Mystique’: The Geopolitics of the Domestic Sitcom,” paper presented at Console-ing Passions: Feminism, Television, and Video, conference, Los Angeles, April 1993. 47. For how Ricky’s “Cuban-ness” becomes a confusion of different Latin cultures in various episodes by using Portuguese, Mexican, and other variants of Hispanic culture, see Vanessa de los Reyes, “I Love Ricky: How Desi Arnaz Challenged American Popular Culture” (Master’s thesis, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, 2008), https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accessio n=miami1209136075&disposition=inline, 7–8. For more recent analysis of the battle over nationality in I Love Lucy—and a positive view of it—see the chapter “Cuba in Apt. 3-B” in Pérez Firmat, The Havana Habit, 120–38. See also Gustavo Pérez Firmat, Life on the Hyphen: The Cuban-American Way (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), 78–9, 85. 48. The piano regained significance in the 1930s as a symbol of traditional family life. See Gary Cross, An All-Consuming Century: Why Commercialism Won in Modern America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 47–8; Katherine Grier, Culture and Comfort: Parlor Making and Middle-Class Identity, 1850–1930 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 1988, 2010), 97. 49. Good Housekeeping, August 1957, 56–7; George Marek, “The Financial Value of a Piano,” Good Housekeeping, July 1952, 123 and 141. 50. Whether Arnaz introduced the conga to the US or not is disputed, but he was popularly associated with it. Abreu, Rhythms of Race, 149. See also Isabelle Leymarie, Cuban Fire: The Story of Salsa and Latin Jazz (New York: Continuum, 2002), 92; Marysol Asencio (ed.), Latina/o Sexualities: Probing Power, Passions, Practices and Policies (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010); Louis A. Perez, On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality, and Culture (New York: Harper Perennial, 2001), and books by Pérez Firmat, Abreu, and Leymarie mentioned in other notes. NB: The conga drum and dance also had African roots, and Arnaz’s father, when mayor in Santiago, Cuba, had banned it from parades as too loud and aggressive. For Spanish dances such as the rumba considered lacking in proper “decorum” in the United States, see Abreu, Rhythms of Race, 149–51. 51. Pérez Firmat, The Havana Habit, 11. 52. I am grateful to Jason Petty for suggesting the piano as a symbol of conjugal harmony and to Meg Steward for pointing out how the piano was used in the US sitcom All in the Family (1971-9) as a rare moment of marital accord. 53. Sears, Roebuck & Co. Catalogue, Fall and Winter 1951, 812–13. The term “togetherness” was coined by McCall’s magazine in 1954. For postwar ideology related to domestic leisure and an

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Furnishing I Love Lucy (1951–7) obsession with family fun, see Spigel, Make Room for TV, 34, 45. This emphasis on “togetherness” might also have been intended to shore up the Ricardo/Arnaz marriage which was troubled by gossip about Arnaz’s philandering with other women. In an October 6, 2010 Public Radio Online episode of “Studio 360,” Mary Desjardins speaks about a published account on Desi Arnaz and another woman in Confidential magazine in 1955: https://www. pri.org/stories/2010-10-06/i-love-lucy-notes-scandal. 54. Pérez Firmat, The Havana Habit, 130. 55. For the possibility that Arnaz’s sexuality was acceptably domesticated through the comic format of I Love Lucy, see Deborah R. Vargas, “Representations of Latino/a Sexuality in Popular Culture,” in Marysol Asencio (ed.), Latina/o Sexualities, 125. The notion of “containment” within the home is discussed by Elaine Tyler May in Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988). 56. The age difference between the two couples increased the viewer’s perception of them as a family unit, as did the Mertzes becoming godparents to Little Ricky. Many sitcoms follow I Love Lucy in comic portrayals of the close neighborly relationship manifest by free entry or easy access to the other’s apartment. One can compare such shows as The Honeymooners (1955–6) and Seinfeld (1990–8), wherein neighbors enter apartments with total abandon. 57. James Sanders, Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), 210. 58. Charlotte Montgomery, Redbook 99, no. 2 (June 1952): 52–3. 59. Thomas J. Schlereth, Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life, 1876–1915 (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991), 122. 60. “Drop Leaf ” tables with “Graceful 18th Century styling and beauty” are illustrated in the Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalogue for Fall and Winter 1951, p. 712. 61. Judith Attfield, “Design as a Practice of Modernity: A Case for the Study of the Coffee Table in the Mid-century Domestic Interior,” Journal of Material Culture 2, no. 3 (November 1997): 267–89. 62. For the proscenium arrangement allowing spectators to feel they are in the same space with those they are watching, see Design for Television (Boston and London: Focal Press, 1993), 8–21. For the laugh track popularized by I Love Lucy, see Jacob Smith, Vocal Trends: Performance and Social Media (University of California Press, 2008), 37. 63. Landay, I Love Lucy, 30. 64. See also Peacock and Jacobs, Television Aesthetics and Style, 105. 65. For the immediacy of the new medium broadcast into the home and viewer identification, see Landay, “The Mirror of Performance,” 152. 66. For attribution of familiarity to the state of marriage in the 1950s, see Jack Gould, “Why Millions Love Lucy,” New York Times, March 1, 1953, https://archive.nytimes.com/www. nytimes.com/specials/seinfeld/lucy53.html. 67. Television was perceived as being a tactile medium as well as a visual one, with viewers aware of the materiality of furnishings and their relationships to objects by watching. In a discussion of the relationship between objects, space, and people in the medium of television as viewed in three exhibitions on the topic in 2012, Maeve Connolly returns to Marshall McLuhan’s analysis of television as a tactile and prosthetic extension of space. Maeve Connolly, “Televisual Objects: Props, Relics and Prosthetics,” Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry 33 (2013): 66–77. 68. Landay, “The Mirror of Performance,” 131.

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Screen Interiors 69. Connolly, “Televisual Objects,” 70. Connolly draws on Bruno Latour’s theorizing that objects often remain invisible as mediators of social relationships but are significant in creating them. 70. Spigel utilizes Karen Halttunen’s research on parlor theatricals to analyze the 1950s domestic sitcom. See Spigel, Make Room for TV, 161–3. 71. Susan Horowitz, Queens of Comedy: Lucille Ball, Phyllis Diller, Carol Burnett, Joan Rivers, and the New Generation of Funny Women (Amsterdam: Overseas Publishers, 1997), 36. In a sense, the Ricardos modeled middle-class normality and trashed it at the same time. 72. The first episode of the series aired on October 15, 1951 and began with an announcer standing in the Ricardo living room saying, “Good evening and welcome. In a moment we’ll look in on Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz,” blurring the identity of the real and fictional couple. Landay, “Millions ‘Love Lucy,’ ” 39. See also Spigel, Welcome to the Dreamhouse, 32–4, and Mellencamp, High Anxiety, 323, on the marketing phenomenon. After the Ricardo and Ball-Arnaz baby were born almost simultaneously, the event spawned merchandising tie-ins that exceeded $50 million. 73. The advertisement is found in the article “What Was I Love Lucy’s Bedspread Color” by Patricia at 50sLucy.com and dates to the 1950s. The bedspread also falls into the category of Americana that I have discussed: https://www.50slucy.com/category/morgan-jones-bedspread. 74. This is not so surprising considering Lucille Ball’s involvement with the décor of the set. 75. Another example of the marketing of products using I Love Lucy is “Take a Flooring Tip from the I Love Lucy Living Room,” Advertisement: Sloane-Delaware, Better Homes and Gardens 11 (1953): 50, https://login.libproxy.newschool.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com. libproxy.newschool.edu/docview/1715436738?accountid=12261. 76. The two most useful blogs for my purposes have been https://papermoonloveslucy.tumblr. com and https://www.50slucy.com. Also noteworthy is the work on the coloration of I Love Lucy done by Rick Carl, with whom I was fortunately able to speak on Tuesday, January 28, 2020. Rick shared images of objects he owns related to those used on the set of I Love Lucy. He has worked from color photos and gathered images of I Love Lucy from varied sources to determine the actual coloration of the program’s décor. 77. This statement is based on the author’s personal experience as well as myriad others with whom she has discussed this topic. It is affirmed by Landay, “Millions ‘Love Lucy,’ ” 25–47. 78. Michael McClay, I Love Lucy: The Complete Picture History of the Most Popular TV Show Ever (New York: Warner Books, A Time Warner Company, 1995), 58. See also Oppenheimer, Laughs, Luck . . . and Lucy, 186.

Bibliography Abreu, Christina D. Rhythms of Race: Cuban Musicians and the Making of Latino New York City and Miami, 1940–1960. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015. Amato, Paul R. “Institutional, Companionate, and Individualistic Marriage: A Social Psychological Perspective on Marital Change.” In H. Elizabeth Peters and Claire M. Kamp Dush (eds.), Marriage and Family: Perspectives and Complexities, 75–90. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. Andrews, Bart. “I Love Lucy.” New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1976. Andrews, Bart. Lucy & Ricky & Fred & Ethel: The Story of “I Love Lucy.” New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1976. Arnaz, Desi. A Book. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1976.

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Furnishing I Love Lucy (1951–7) Asencio, Marysol (ed.). Latina/o Sexualities: Probing Power, Passions, Practices and Policies. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010. Attfield, Judy. “Design as a practice of modernity: a case for the study of the coffee table in the mid-century domestic interior.” Journal of Material Culture 2, no. 3 (November 1997): 267–89. Ball, Lucille (with Betty Hannah Hoffman). Love, Lucy. New York: Boulevard Books, 1996. Bennett, Mark. TV Sets: Fantasy Blueprints of Classic TV Homes. New York: TV Books, Inc., 1996. Butler, Jeremy G. Television: Critical Methods and Applications. 2nd edition. New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2012. Butler, Jeremy G. Television Style. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2012. Byrne, Terry. Production Design for Television. Boston and London: Focal Press, 1993. Carini, Susan M. “Love’s Labors Almost Lost: Managing Crisis during the Reign of ‘I Love Lucy.’ ” Cinema Journal 43, no. 1 (Autumn 2003): 44–62. Castleman, Harry and Walter J. Podrazik. Watching TV: Four Decades of American Television. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1982. Connolly, Maeve. “Televisual Objects: Props, Relics and Prosthetics.” Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry 33 (2013): 66–77. Creadick, Anna G. Perfectly Average: The Pursuit of Normality in Postwar America. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010. Cross, Gary. An All-Consuming Century: Why Commercialism Won in Modern America. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. Czikzentmihaly, Mihaly and Eugene Rochberg-Halton. The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Dalton, Mary M. and Laura R. Linder (eds.). The Sitcom Reader Second Edition: American Re-Viewed, Still Skewed. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2016. de los Reyes, Vanessa. “I Love Ricky: How Desi Arnaz Challenged American Popular Culture.” Masters thesis, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, 2008. Doty, Alexander. “The Cabinet of Lucy Ricardo: Lucille Ball’s Star Image.” Cinema Journal 29, no. 4 (1990): 3–22. Fidelman, Geoffrey Mark. The Lucy Book: A Complete Guide to Her Five Decades on Television. Los Angeles: Renaissance Books, 1999. Friedman, Diana. Sitcom Style: Inside America’s Favorite TV Homes. New York: Clarkson Potter Publishers, 2005. Geraghty, Christine and David Lusted. The Television Studies Book. London: Edward Arnold, 1998. Grier, Katherine. Culture and Comfort: Parlor Making and Middle-Class Identity, 1850–1930. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 1988. Haralovich, Mary Beth and Lauren Rabinovitz (eds.). Television, History, and American Culture: Feminist Critical Essays. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 1999. Harris, Dianne. Little White Houses: How the Postwar Constructed Race in America. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013. Harris, Warren G. Lucy & Desi: The Legendary Love Story of Television’s Most Famous Couple. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991. Hilmes, Michele (ed.). The Television History Book. London: BFI Publishing, 2003. Horowitz, Susan. Queens of Comedy: Lucille Ball, Phyllis Diller, Carol Burnett, Joan Rivers, And the New Generation of Funny Women. Amsterdam: Overseas Publishers, 1997. Jones, Gerard. Honey, I’m Home! Sitcoms: Selling the American Dream. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1992. Kinchin, Juliet. “Interiors: nineteenth-century essays on the ‘masculine’ and the ‘feminine’ room.” In Pat Kirkham (ed.), The Gendered Object, 12–29. Manchester, UK, and New York: Manchester University Press, 1996. 69

Screen Interiors Landay, Lori. Madcaps, Screwballs, and Con Women: The Female Trickster in American Culture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998. Landay, Lori. “Millions ‘Love Lucy’: Commodification and the Lucy Phenomenon.” NWSA Journal 11, no. 2 (Summer 1999): 25–47. Landay, Lori. I Love Lucy. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2010. Landay, Lori. “The Mirror of Performance: Kinaesthetics, Subjectivity, and the Body in Film, Television, and Virtual Worlds.” Cinema Journal 51, no. 3 (Spring 2012): 129–36. Lemaire, Isabelle. Cuban Fire: The Story of Salsa and Latin Jazz. New York: Continuum, 2002. Marc, David. Comic Visions: Television Comedy and American Culture. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989. Marc, David. Demographic Vistas: Television in American Culture. Revised edition. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996. Marling, Karal Ann. As Seen on TV: The Visual Culture of Everyday Life in the 1950s. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1994. May, Elaine Tyler. Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era. New York: Basic Books, 1988. McClay, Michael. I Love Lucy: The Complete Picture History of the Most Popular TV Show Ever. New York: Warner Books, 1995. Mellencamp, Patricia. “Situation Comedy, Feminism, and Freud: Discourses of Gracie and Lucy.” In Tania Modleski (ed.), Studies in Entertainment: Critical Approaches to Mass Culture, 80–95. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1986. Mellencamp, Patricia. High Anxiety: Catastrophe, Scandal, Age and Comedy. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992. Molotch, Harvey. Where Stuff Comes From: How Toasters, Toilets, Cars, Computers and Many Other Things Come to Be As They Are. New York and London: Routledge, 2003. Oppenheimer, Jess (with Gregg Oppenheimer). Laughs, Luck . . . and Lucy: How I Came to Create the Most Popular Sitcom of All Time. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1996. Peacock, Steven and Jason Jacobs (eds.)., Television Aesthetics and Style. New York and London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. Pérez Firmat, Gustavo. Life on the Hyphen: The Cuban-American Way. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994. Pérez Firmat, Gustavo. The Havana Habit. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010. Robinson, Joyce Henri. “ ‘Hi Honey, I’m Home’: Weary (Neurasthenic) Businessmen and the Formulation of a Serenely Modern Aesthetic.” In Christopher Reed (ed.), Not at Home: The Suppression of Domesticity in Modern Art and Architecture, 102–10. London: Thames and Hudson, Ltd., 1981. Sanders, Coyne Steven and Tom Gilbert. Desilu: The Story of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. New York: Quill/William Morris, 1993. Schlereth, Thomas J. Cultural History and Material Culture: Everyday Life, Landscapes, Museums. Charlottesville, VA, and London: University Press of Virginia, 1992. Silvato, Nick. “Big Glove: Televisual Dissociation and Embodied Performance.” Criticism 57, no. 1 (Winter 2015): 91–107. Simmons, Christina. Making Marriage Modern: Women’s Sexuality from the Progressive Era to World War II. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Smith, Jacob. Vocal Trends: Performance and Social Media. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2008. Spigel, Lynn. Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Spigel, Lynn. Welcome to the Dreamhouse. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2001. 70

Furnishing I Love Lucy (1951–7) Spigel, Lynn and Denise Mann (eds.). Private Screenings: Television and the Female Consumer. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992. Wilson, Kristina. Livable Modernism: Interior Decorating and Design during the Great Depression. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press in Association with Yale University Art Gallery, 2005.

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CHAPTER 3 FROM THE COUNTRY HOUSE FILM TO THE HOUSE IN THE COUNTRY FILM: SPACE, CLASS, AND GENERATION Christine Geraghty

This chapter is concerned with the organization of space in three contrasting British films which use a house in the country as a setting. It looks in particular at how the interiors of these very different houses are organized into public and private spaces that accommodate the domestic arrangements of the household. It comments on the boundaries between interior spaces and the external landscapes in which the houses sit, and it observes the way in which these interiors reflect and shape the relationships between the people who, sometimes rather temporarily, live there. Looking at the organization of space opens up analyses of how camera movements, framing, and editing shape the viewer’s understanding of what the house signifies and helps us to see how different characters are positioned in its spaces. Rooms tend to have fixed functions and private and public spaces serve distinct functions for particular people. Stairways and corridors are important for the way they link different spaces, while doorways and windows mark boundary points, indicating that entry may be a matter of negotiation rather than right. Class, age, and gender emerge as key factors in terms of how the interior spaces of these country houses can be occupied, controlled, or disrupted. The country house is a familiar setting in British cinema and television, now of course well known through the international popularity of Downton Abbey (2010–15). But the trope goes back to the era of silent cinema and is associated, as Andrew Higson observes, with a particular vision of the English countryside as “populated and cultivated, not wild and sublime.”1 Films like Comin’ thro’ the Rye (1916, Cecil Hepworth) were “replete with stately homes and other ancient buildings.”2 Their visual perspective emphasized “decoration and display” and seemed “designed . . . to display the wealth and taste of the Victorian gentry.”3 Space was organized through an “exhibitionist use of the frame” to display “objects, dresses, buildings” to an “observational, but also an admiring and confirming gaze.”4 This strand of British cinema reached an apogee in the 1980s and 1990s with the heritage film genre of that period in which the country house is set in an ordered landscape and filmed in such a way as to display décor, furniture, and costume. Higson, an influential early critic of the development of the genre in the 1980s, suggested that “camerawork generally is fluid, artful and pictorialist, editing slow and undramatic. The use of long takes and deep focus, and long and medium shots rather than close-ups, produces a restrained aesthetic of display.”5 In her thoughtful reflection on the genre, Belen Vidal defines the heritage film through its “period settings . . . the authenticity of 73

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period detail . . . and an opulent if static mise-en-scène exhibiting elaborate period costumes, artefacts, properties and heritage sites.”6 In terms of narrative, John Hill argues that the visual style is driven more by spectacle than storytelling and that the plots arise from the interactions of a group rather than an individual hero.7 The country house, in which a wealthy family lives alongside and is supported by a complementary group of servants, provides a setting for such groups and, although differences are carefully marked out by the signifiers of class, the underlying motif of the country house narrative is that the upstairs and downstairs families share a common humanity and a longstanding loyalty towards each other. The dominance of the heritage genre in British cinema and television has been controversial; there have been extensive debates about the pleasures offered to different audiences and the way in which the heritage genre has changed and evolved. While there are many who would still agree with John Caughie that the heritage film is “one of the more dubious British contributions to world cinema,” others would argue that later films of the 1990s and 2000s, with their flamboyant visual style, their self-consciousness about historical representations, and their contemporary readings of gender and sexuality, deserve a different kind of assessment.8 Nonetheless, I would suggest that the 1980s heritage-film image of the country house still persists. The National Trust, for instance, regularly tells its members about its houses which have been used for location shooting. In an interview in 2014, Senior Director Simon Murray used the example of Downton Abbey, the television series which has been exported with huge success and which offers domestic and international audiences a particular version of English history and culture. He argued that such programs had helped to create an “appreciation of history and particularly a love of country houses and the glamorous lives associated with them, [which] has become part of our national culture.”9 And, indeed, in Downton Abbey the house itself stands as a compelling image of how tradition and change are intertwined in this family saga; “the underlying narrative . . . is the effect of the historical process of social change in the institution of the English country house.”10 Bearing this dominant tradition in mind, in this chapter I want to take a different approach to the representation of the country house by looking at films that for a variety of reasons stand in opposition to this classic heritage model. I am not arguing that they are part of some kind of alternative tradition of heritage texts, but rather that they operate as outcrops that are interesting in themselves but that also challenge the heritage film’s organization of space, narrative, and spectacle. My three examples are The Innocents—a 1961 Anglo-American production which predates the “heritage” texts of the 1980s; Country—a 1981 television play which specifically stands in opposition to the early examples of the 1980s heritage genre; and Archipelago—a 2010 British film which provides an art-house take on the conventions of the country house film. The three texts all involved filming on location in and around a house in the country but come out of very different production backgrounds. The Innocents is a black-and-white cinemascope film made in England and directed by Jack Clayton for 20th Century-Fox as an adaptation of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw (1898). Country, written for television by Trevor 74

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Griffiths and directed by Richard Eyre, was screened in the BBC’s long-standing Play for Today slot that, although under pressure in the early 1980s, still had a reputation for engaging mass audiences with challenging social drama. Archipelago was the second feature film to be written and directed by Joanna Hogg, who had previously spent ten years working in television on popular drama, including Casualty (1986–present) and EastEnders (1985–present). All three examples give an outsider’s view of the country house, a view that is critical rather than admiring, and adopt a visual style that resists the pictorialist urge to show off the beauty of the interiors as discussed by Higson and Vidal. These three oppositional narratives offer different accounts of how the interior spaces of the country house—the rooms, staircases, corridors, and doorways—are organized in terms of class and gender.

The Innocents The Innocents is a celebrated film, but critical accounts tend to focus on the process of adaptation and the success (or otherwise) of the film in rendering the ambiguities of James’s original ghost story. According to Dennis Tredy, “between 1955 and 2001, there were three feature film adaptations and seven teleplay versions of the ‘The Turn of the Screw’ for US and UK television viewers”11 and so comparisons are frequently made not only with James’s novella but also between different versions. Christopher Frayling’s fine book in the BFI Film Classic series in 2013 paid attention to the script and, in particular, to the contribution of Truman Capote in turning a 1950s play, based on the novel, into a film script.12 Almost the entire story takes place in one setting, the country house, but, of course, this film was made well before the heritage version of the country house was firmly established. The film tells the tale of a governess, Miss Giddens, who takes up the post of looking after two young children, Flora and Miles. They have been sent away to live in the country house, Bly, which belongs to their uncle who is also their guardian. Miss Giddens comes to believe that the children are under threat from the ghosts of previous servants at the house and she takes on the ultimately doomed task of saving them. Early in the film, the children ask the governess about the difference between her home and theirs: Miles Your house, where you used to live, was that a big house too? . . . Miss Giddens No it was very small. Miles Too small for you to have secrets? Miss Giddens Secrets require a privacy which our little house did not provide. Flora Did you play games in your house? This dialogue identifies Bly as a “big house,” a description that rather more than “the country house” places the house within a class structure. It is a term that might be used by servants, villagers, and tenants who are aware not just of the size of the country house 75

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but the way it dominates its surroundings and organizes the local economy. The Innocents does not in fact explore that point, but this dialogue, while it prefigures the secrets and games that are the subject of the film, also underlines the different social status of Miles and Flora and their governess. And this reflects the film as a whole: while its main focus is on the possible sexualization of the children and/or the governess, the story is made possible by the social relationships which are underpinned or indeed enforced by the big house. In his preparatory notes on the film, Clayton recorded that when the governess arrives at the house, “it should all look very lush” and he used the image of an “overbloomed” rose to describe it.13 This evocatively suggests how Clayton saw the house as something created rather than found, and the film continually offers us images of the house and garden that draw attention to their fabrication. The film was made on location at Sheffield Park House, Sussex, an English country house remodeled in the 1760s (now owned by the National Trust), and at Shepperton Studios. The creation of the house in the film involved elaborate and detailed work on location as well as in the studio that blurred the distinctions between location and studio, garden and house, exteriors and interiors. Exterior scenes—on the terrace, for instance—were shot at the studio and, when visiting Shepperton, film journalist Penelope Houston reported on the recreation of the natural world in the studio with thousands of paper leaves being attached to an artificial willow tree.14 Conversely, Clayton was quite happy to amend Sheffield Park’s famous landscape gardens, laid out in the eighteenth century to plans designed by Capability Brown and Humphrey Repton, by adding an elaborate folly to stand by the lake. This blurring of inside and outside pervades the film. The lush white roses bloom in the beds outside and, in large bouquets, decorate the interior. The outside terrace operates like another room, with characters moving easily between the terrace and the main drawing room, while the interior conservatory is full of plants with huge leaves and trailing fronds. Statues give the garden a formal, occupied air, while, in the schoolroom, a glass cabinet contains a small bush on which perch stuffed birds. All of this work on the setting demonstrates that for Clayton and his team, this country house and park are malleable. It lacks the fixity, the sense of history and tradition that is so strong in the heritage model of the country house. The long shots and close-ups are not showing us dress, statues, or furniture because they represent the rich life of those living in the house, and many of the interesting or beautiful objects—the piano, the stuffed birds, the tapestry on the stairs—are displayed only when a character moves in front of them. This house is the director’s creation, not a gracious building full of beautiful objects, like the Merchant Ivory adaptations, nor a stately home secure in its own reputation like Castle Howard in Brideshead Revisited (the 1981 television serial produced by Granada Television).15 This big house offers spaces for action which are beyond those of the average house since the usability of such spaces depends on size. The huge hall and staircase feature in scenes in which the dramatic effect depends on their décor and design. The open living rooms are elaborately arranged, while other rooms such as the schoolroom and kitchen have clearly designated functions. But there are also unused spaces which belong to no one: the attic is full of bric-a-brac and the locked doors signify empty rooms. One of the 76

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first things Mrs. Grose, the housekeeper, tells the newly-arrived governess is that “half the rooms are empty, locked. All the same, it’s too big.” And it is notable that there are no public displays of the house through dinners, parties, or even communal meals. So this is a big house whose public functions are in abeyance. More seriously, it is not clear who is in charge of the house and its inmates. The children’s uncle tells Miss Giddens that he wants nothing more to do with them and that she is in complete charge of them and the house. So this appears to be a country house in which the patriarchal family has gone awry, with the father absent and a woman in a position of power. In addition, the traditional upstairs/downstairs story of the family and their servants is not offered here. At Bly, there are only servants and children; but class affects this rearranged family, ensuring that Miss Giddens, who has been given the power over the house and those in it, does not have the authority to take control of it. Because of the lack of paternal authority, the children have become preternaturally adult, acting out their gendered and class roles in a precocious way. One critic comments that Miles’s upbringing has given him an “unnaturally adult attitude, language and composure.”16 When he arrives back from school he is dressed in a smart suit and brings a posy of flowers to present to his new governess. His hobbies—horse riding, tending the pigeons—relate to his class and to a version of it in which he can establish his domination. This can be seen in the relish with which he seeks to control his pony and his concealment of the dead pigeon with its broken neck under his pillow. The focus of Miss Giddens and of the film is on the flirtatious, over-sexualized behavior of Miles and to a lesser extent of Flora. But this behavior also relates to the fact that the household has no legitimate head. Both children patronize their governess, addressing her as “My dear” or “Dear” even while they present innocent faces to her. The governess thinks she is battling with the ghosts for the children’s innocence, but the film shows that the children are also engaged in a power struggle and that they will not lightly surrender their upper-class authority to their governess. The children’s control is most clearly demonstrated by the ease with which they live in the big house. On his return from school, Miles rushes into the huge hall and claims with relief that it is “All just the same.” Lying in bed, he knows when the governess has paused at his closed bedroom door and invites her in; when she asks how he knew she was there he says that “This is a very old house” and he recognizes its creaks. Flora, in turn, boasts that Bly is “the biggest house in England, the whole world” and explains to Miss Giddens, without signs of fear, that the “big rooms get bigger at night.” Miss Giddens herself becomes increasingly fearful of the huge spaces and darkened corridors; she often relies on the children to lead her through them. There are a number of shots of Flora as she leads and pulls the governess through doors and along corridors, and Miles is shown leading Miss Giddens up the darkened staircase while looking back to encourage her. It is the children who understand the house and its idiosyncrasies. Given the importance of the size of the big house and the internal struggle over control, it is no accident that it is a tableau on the great staircase which shows that the values of this family have been turned upside down. Frayling comments on the Southern Gothic elements which Truman Capote brought to the script in terms of decay and 77

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decadence. But it is also the case that the setting of the English country house can similarly presage class disorder and fatal confusion. In this scene, the housekeeper and the governess converse on the stairs, with Miss Giddens standing above Mrs. Grose in an attempt to assert her authority. The sound of laughter and a camera movement upwards capture the children standing right at the top of the stairs. And the final shot in the scene shows all four figures, exemplifying their class positions, with Mrs. Grose at the bottom standing on the floor, Miss Giddens on the stairs above her, in the middle of the group, and the two children at the top, looking down on the adults who are supposed to be in charge of them and the house. It’s an excellent example of the use of size and space to communicate the distorted relationships at play inside this version of the country house.

Country Country, too, is concerned with the failure of patriarchy within the country house but in an entirely different and much more overtly political context. The television play is set in July 1945. Over the weekend, a party is gathering to celebrate the birthday of Lady Carlion, wife of Sir Frederic Carlion, the domineering head of the family and the business that supports it. This is a period of external crisis referenced on the soundtrack by the results of the general election which are being announced on the radio throughout the weekend; at least some of those listening to the news of Conservative defeats believe that a Labour government would bring about a socialist revolution. And internally, too, a crisis festers since it is not clear who is going to take over the family and business from Sir Frederic since his eldest son had been killed in World War Two a few months earlier. The dynamics of the narrative spring from the waning of the ailing father’s control over the house and fears about patriarchal succession. The play ends with the eviction of squatters who had taken over the barns on the estate and the agreement that Philip Carlion, previously the rebellious son but now revealed as a hard-line modernizer, will take over the business. The screening of Country as a single play in October 1981 coincided with the second week of the hugely successful Granada production, Brideshead Revisited, which was establishing its heritage credentials on ITV. Trevor Griffiths is probably the most leftwing playwright ever to be commissioned by the BBC and he had strong views about the tradition of the country house play in the theater: “the country house play is a lie,” he said in a Radio Times interview that publicized Country’s screening, “It’s a piece of propaganda.”17 The play’s subject is literally the question of inheritance and it has some of the key elements of the heritage film. It was made on film and in color and is remembered for “Richard Eyre’s beautiful direction [that] places it squarely in the tradition of ‘quality’ period drama, with lingering shots of the family mansion and grounds, perfect period costume, and familiar ‘name’ actors such as Leo McKern and Jill Bennett.”18 It was filmed entirely on location at Linton in Kent and is largely set inside the house, which Poole and Wyver describe as “dominating the characters and developing a ‘life’ and a history just as important as them.”19 78

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But there are key differences which turn the play against the country house formula that it initially appears to be following. Firstly, the Carlion family is in the position of power in the house but their titles and sources of income are exposed, rather than hidden, by the sheen of heritage. The Carlions have made their money from brewing, and brewing is still at the heart of their power; they are not landed gentry and we learn that the brewery came into the family through an ancestor’s win at gambling. Indeed, the play hints that this racketeering lies behind all English aristocratic families. Certainly, the Carlion manners lack an aristocratic subtlety and Sir Frederic has a rough and ready approach, bullying members of his family as well as his servants and workers. In interviews about Country, it is significant that Griffiths consistently refers to the central family and the board members as the ruling classes, not using the less loaded designations of the upper classes or the aristocracy. It is also notable that this is not an upstairs/ downstairs country house story in which we follow the fate of the servants as well as that of the family upstairs. Instead of accepted and well-defined class differences, the play shows us class antagonism between the ruling class family in the country house and the East End workers and hop pickers who are squatting outside in the Carlion stables. The second difference is the contemporary edge which the story gains as the play goes on. One of the arguments raging around the heritage text is the extent to which it invites nostalgia on the part of the watching audience. I am inclined to agree with John Hill that even when we are not invited to be nostalgic, “there is an implied superiority on the part of the spectator towards those characters who remain trapped within social conventions and who only belatedly come to recognize what the audience already knows.”20 Country works differently. Griffiths began writing it in 1979 after the success of the Conservative Party led by Margaret Thatcher in the general election of May that year. As the play unfolds, it becomes clear that what we are seeing is not the defeat of the ruling classes in 1945, despite the Labour Party’s overwhelming majority that propels them into government by the end of the play. Instead, Philip Carlion finally agrees to take over from his father and ruthlessly asserts his control over the family and the board; he will make changes that will transform the family firm. What the play presents is not an account of the past but an analogy with the present. The socialist threat/promise represented by the Labour Party is “couched in terms that allude unmistakably to the radical aspirations of Tony Benn and the resurgent Labour Left in the early 1980s” and “the viewer is being warned never to underestimate the resilience of the new pragmatic Toryism.”21 The rise of Phillip Carlion is comparable to the rise of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s; it represents a new brand of Conservative politics and a new kind of toughness. In a publicity interview, Griffiths suggests that his play asks us not to be fooled by the notion, so prevalent in country house drama, that “the aristocratic rich are just the same as us, with the same problems, the same pleasures,” concluding with the trenchant comment: “Well, they’re not.”22 In order to make the political shift work, Griffiths and Eyre have to resist the spectacular seductiveness of the heritage setting, and so the third difference from the heritage genre lies in Country’s visual style and its use of the spaces of the country house. The play appears to provide the glamor of a country house weekend with clothes, dinner 79

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parties, and dances alongside traditional scenes of green landscapes and old churches. Its settings include public spaces within the house—the dining room, the terrace, the hall and stairs—and private spaces such as the bedrooms and Sir Frederic’s study. Country thus retains key elements of the country house’s spatial organization but as the play unfolds it becomes evident that the settings are not being displayed in the heritage manner. Griffiths has described the camera as having “a very detached inquiring eye . . . always a stranger, always detached.”23 Within the play, this distancing technique is embodied in Virginia, the estranged daughter of the Carlion house, who has come to write a magazine article about “the country” and who observes the house from a distance through a camera lens before she joins the party. Country’s commitment to distancing the viewer rather than drawing us in is evident from the first view of the house, which offers a traditional image of the country house with its owner in the foreground, in this case Sir Frederic with his shotgun. But this image is followed by a series of shots that, rather than drawing us in, takes the viewer further and further away from the house as the credits come up. When the play moves inside the house, the lighting and camerawork do not provide a clear view of how it represents the wealth and taste of the owner. The shot organization and visual framing of the interiors give a sense of the house’s complex spatial and social organization, but little time is spent dwelling on objects, furniture, and décor. The interior begins to look less than grand; the crowd of guests fills a rather cramped corridor as they make their way to lunch and, when Phillip greets his old nanny on the stairs, a sideways shot means that the staircase lacks the grandeur of the staircase in The Innocents. The lighting of internal shots frequently obscures the detail of furniture, wallpaper, and decoration, as in the gloomy darkness of Sir Frederic’s study or when too much light floods a corridor when Philip walks away from the camera to find his room. Stanton Garner comments that Country “is a dark, occasionally dreamlike production, much of it filmed in hallways and studies in a kind of visual eavesdropping.”24 This eavesdropping camera means that the emphasis is on medium shots and close-ups rather than the long shot, which can provide a more spectacular view. One striking example of this approach occurs in a lengthy tracking sequence which shows members of the family and guests grouped together on the terrace as they gather for drinks. Although the shot seems to take the viewer into the gathering, the moving, observing camera does not allow us to take in fully what’s going on in the group. Instead it allows the spectator only a series of sideways shots of half-heard conversations and half-glimpsed alliances. Similarly, the filming of the formal dance, the kind of set piece often used to great effect to show off heritage settings, is fragmented across a number of rooms linked by corridors. Guests and family members move in long shot down or across the narrow passageways or are framed in doorways on the edge of the party activities. On the dance floor, medium shots and close-ups ensure that the focus is on the characters (Lady Carlion looking anxious, Phillip talking with a woman he is sizing up for marriage) rather than the spectacle of the dance. The visual style is not uniform, however, and the differences between the more private spaces in the house are marked by differences in lighting and décor. Upstairs, in the clear 80

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light of the old nursery, long-forgotten toys remind Philip and Virginia of the childhood they shared. Looking out of separate windows, they share a similar but not the same view of the grounds and a very different approach to the future. Other private spaces are atmospherically gendered through lighting and décor. Philip knocks on the door of his sister-in-law’s bedroom and finds himself in a light room with bed linens and curtains patterned with flowers, white paint on the walls and woodwork, and sunlight through the window. By contrast, Sir Frederic’s study is dim and gloomy, paneled in dark wood; the low light from the window throws shadows of dark crosses onto the faces of father and son as they talk. The gloom is such that at one point Sir Frederic can literally hide in the dark to overhear Philip’s telephone conversation with his male lover in London. The atmosphere of the study exemplifies Sir Frederic’s failing powers and his anxiety about his estate. In its darkness, he literally hands over the shotgun he had previously carried to the son who will now be his heir. But Philip’s full assertion of his new male authority occurs at the formal dinner party for Lady Carlion and this setting shows how the darkness associated with patriarchal power can be imposed on a public space. Initially, the dressing of the table and the placement of the guests is overseen by Lady Carlion and we are given a well-lit, unimpeded view of the spectacle of a beautifully laid out table before the guests are seated. It is transformed, however, into a masculine space when at the end of the meal the women leave the table to the men who turn a birthday celebration into a business meeting at which Philip claims his father’s role. Darkness dominates now, with cigarette smoke blurring shadowed faces and blackness filling the empty spaces beyond the light of the candles. The men have the power to create boundaries in what had been a shared space and Virginia, who had sought to challenge this male takeover, is forced to leave; with the confidence of their class, the men rise politely to observe her expulsion. Thus, in the early 1980s Country critiqued the dominant conventions of representing the country house in British film and television. Its organization of the spaces of the country house was integral to the representation of the class politics of its inhabitants. It is a remarkable film for television and sadly has been rather forgotten while the contemporary adaptation of Brideshead Revisited has still been readily available. The recent appearance of Country on YouTube might help to remedy this.

Archipelago My third example, Archipelago, is very different and it may seem odd to discuss it in this context. But looking at the way this film handles the setting of a house in the country is illuminating and indeed opens up preoccupations that have marked Hogg’s work; the story of her first film, Unrelated (2007), took place on a family holiday in a villa in Tuscany while her third film, Exhibition (2013), involves a couple who are selling the Modernist London house they have lived in for over twenty years. Hogg uses houses in such interesting ways that examining Archipelago through the prism of the country house seems appropriate, and it offers an interesting commentary on a group—the upper 81

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middle class—who do not fit the upstairs/downstairs world of much heritage film and television. Archipelago is an art film, shot on location on the Scilly Isles, in which there is very little actual story. An upper-middle-class family returns to a holiday home as a way of taking time to say goodbye to the son, Edward, who is taking a voluntary job in Africa. Like Country and The Innocents, Archipelago works with the trope of the failing patriarch. The mother and children are waiting for Will, the father, to arrive to complete the family but, despite a series of painful phone calls, he fails to turn up. The film gradually shows the long-standing rifts and lack of communication between the mother, sister, brother, and absent father, but nothing is really resolved. The film, which is often very funny, painfully maps the characters’ “emotional evasions” in a “concise picture of intimate desolation.”25 The actors actually lived in the house during the filming, bringing what Hogg called “a level of intensity to everyday life . . . not just filming.”26 The main set in Archipelago is the house in the country, the place where middle-class families go for holidays. In this case, the house is not a second home—the family rent it rather than own it—but it is a familiar place and a country retreat. They have stayed there often, and for the brother and sister, Edward and Cynthia, it is associated with the family holidays of their childhood. They are here to say goodbye to Edward precisely with the intention of invoking those memories of family which the house engenders and though the attempt is somewhat disastrous, that nostalgic spirit remains. The last line of the film has Edward saying “Bye house” as the family leaves and the cleaners come in. The film shows the family living a life of some comfort in which their needs are met and they enjoy the countryside around them. This is the country house life on a more limited scale. For instance, they employ a servant for their stay, Rose the cook, who lives in the house and prepares and serves their food; they are provided with locally captured delicacies in the manner of a country estate—lobsters, pheasants—and the family go on picnics that the cook prepares. They take walks in the countryside and draw and paint the landscape under the guidance of a local artist, Christopher. Neither the house nor the surrounding land is theirs but they can make full use of them. Nevertheless, there is an air of parody about the adoption of this lifestyle. One small example is how, at the beginning, there is a debate about who should take which bedroom, but it’s clear that in this small house there is not the same selection as in the corridors of Country, let alone Brideshead; Edward ends up in the attic and bangs his head as he goes in. Another example occurs on a picnic. Nice, caring Edward uses parody to try to fill his missing father’s place. He puts on his father’s hat and pretends to shoot: “I’ll bally go and shoot pheasants,” he jokes while his sister Cynthia responds that her father is a “bloody good shot.” There is also a faint air of pastiche about Edward’s attraction to Rose, as if an upstairs/downstairs story about master and servant is being hinted at. But Rose is too sensible (she is of course a nice middle-class girl) and Edward is too nice to carry this off and, under the disapproving gaze of Cynthia, the two drift away from the possibilities of this relationship As with Country, and even more strongly, the film’s visual organization refuses the seductive qualities of the country house. The camera is distanced and still; the objects 82

From the Country House Film to the House in the Country Film

and furniture in the house can be seen but are not specifically focused on. The film was made on location in a house let out to visitors, and sometimes the exterior shots give us a sense of that reality. For most of the time, however, the house operates as a set, filmed in natural light, with carefully color-washed walls—in green, blue, and grey tones—and gradations of light and dark. But the key thing about this house is its size; it is a small house being asked to provide the setting for a country house lifestyle. The viewer comes to know its organization: the large living room, leading through an arch into the kitchen; the kitchen itself where Rose cooks; the dining room that also has access to the kitchen through a glass-paned door; and the two main bedrooms off the staircase that, higher up, leads to two attic rooms. We become used to certain angles, certain shots: a series of shots, at key points in the film, shows Patricia on the phone to her husband; less overtly, another shot series shows the hall where the staircase comes down to the ground floor, so as people come and go we can see how cramped it is. The house has the accoutrements of the country house—the attics, the staircase, the hall—but it is all on such a small scale that the bodies of the people in it feel too big for the house. The film uses space within the house to reflect on the relationship within and beyond the family. A series of shots of meals at the dining table gives us different permutations in terms of who sits where; there is an empty chair for the absent father, and Edward and Cynthia change seating positions when their mother is missing because she is once again on the phone to him. But in some ways the most crucial thing about these scenes is the way in which Rose can be seen moving in and out of shot in the kitchen at the back. Indeed, the smallness of the house makes the question of boundaries problematic and in particular demonstrates the family’s ambivalence about Rose’s status. Throughout the film, the camera observes what is happening in the kitchen largely from the outside, with the kitchen space being framed by the arch. Cynthia and her mother speak to Rose from the living room through the arch to the kitchen and Rose brings things for them, such as water for a painting session. But Edward wants to treat Rose more like a member of the family, as if he doesn’t like the fact that she is there to provide a service. He is very awkward with the notion that she should get his breakfast, for instance, but Cynthia and Rose both dispute his attempt to take on this task; Cynthia contemptuously tells him, “you don’t have to make friends with the cook,” and Rose pragmatically states, “It’s my job.” But Edward is the one member of the family to be found in the kitchen, and he even tries to bridge the boundary between kitchen and living area by talking to Rose from the living room so that she has to respond by positioning herself rather awkwardly in the arch between the two spaces (see Figure 3.1). Cynthia is consistently scornful about Ed’s attempts to breach the line which separates the cook from the family. Rather than denying the boundary, at one point she gives instructions to Rose from the outside terrace, speaking to her through the window but with her back turned as if to try and reassert authority through literally keeping her distance. The small size of the house not only blurs separate spaces and hence makes family– servant relationships awkward, but it also means that, unlike both Country and The 83

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Figure 3.1 Edward and Rose try to talk across the divide, Archipelago, directed by Joanna Hogg. © Wild Horses Film Company 2010. All rights reserved.

Innocents, this is not a house that can contain secrets. There are no empty rooms, no forgotten nurseries, not even any private rooms. As the film goes on, it becomes clear that no one person can avoid hearing the arguments or disagreements of others, however much they wish to. Thus, in two parallel shots of their attic bedrooms, both Edward, with his head under the pillow, and Rose, with her hands to her ears, try not to overhear mother and daughter arguing. The house in the country, in the end, cannot be the country house. This journey from the big house to the country house to the house in the country has been informative in what it tells us about how the classic heritage model of the country house can be resisted and opposed. Each of the films discussed here subverts, in different ways, the visual plenitude of the heritage film and undermines the historical resonances of the country house when used as a location. The Innocents manipulates the house, never allowing us to see it except through the governess’s eyes, forcing it to conform to the symbolic logic of the story. Country keeps the viewer at a distance from the setting, refusing us the pleasure of detail and specificity in a house in which the darkness associated with masculine power finally dominates. Archipelago treats the house almost like an abstract art piece, a Rachel Whiteread house; it is not a place to live in but rather a space in which walls, doors, arches, and staircase create a physical artifact related to the internal lives of the characters. In each of these films, the patriarchal authority, implicit in the country house narrative, is ailing or absent and class is rearticulated so that it sets barriers between those who are brought together inside the house. Relationships based on class, age, and gender are fractured, and it is this fracturing that is made visible through the different ways in which interior space is organized and revealed on screen. 84

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Notes 1. Andrew Higson, Waving the Flag: Constructing a National Cinema in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 43. 2. Higson, Waving the Flag, 42. 3. Higson, Waving the Flag, 46. 4. Higson, Waving the Flag, 94. 5. Andrew Higson, “The Heritage film and British cinema,” in Andrew Higson (ed.), Dissolving Views: Key Writings on British Cinema, 233–4 (London: Cassell, 1996). 6. Belén Vidal, Heritage Film: Nation, Genre, and Representation (New York: Wallflower Press, 2012), 8. 7. John Hill, British Cinema in the 1980s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 80–1. 8. John Caughie, “Great Britain,” in Ginette Vincendeau (ed.), Encyclopaedia of European Cinema, 187 (London: Cassell/BFI, 1995). See James Leggott’s Contemporary British Cinema from Heritage to Horror (London: Wallflower Press, 2008) for an account of the evolution of the heritage film. 9. Simon Murray, “Why and What We Save,” National Trust Magazine (Summer 2014): 42. 10. James Chapman, “Downton Abbey: Reinventing the British Costume Drama,” in Jonathan Bignell and Stephen Lacey (eds.), British Television Drama: Past, Present and Future, 140 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). 11. Dennis Tredy, “Shadows of Shadows: Techniques of Ambiguity in Three Film Adaptations of ‘The Turn of the Screw’: Jack Clayton’s The Innocents (1961), Dan Curtis’s The Turn of the Screw (1974), and Antonio Aloy’s Presence of Mind (1999),” Poetry and Autobiography 5, no 1. (2007): n.p., https://journals.openedition.org/erea/196. 12. Christpher Frayling, The Innocents (London: British Film Institute, 2013). 13. Cited in Frayling, The Innocents, 39. 14. Penelope Houston, “The Innocents,” Sight and Sound 30, no. 3 (Summer 1961): 114–15. 15. When I visited in 2014, there was no reference to the film for the visitor to Sheffield Park Gardens even though they now are owned by the National Trust. 16. Val Wilson, “Black and White and Shades of Grey: Ambiguity in The Innocents,” in John R. Bradley (ed.), Henry James on Stage and Screen, 110 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000). 17. Griffiths quoted in Edward Braun, “Introduction,” in Trevor Griffiths (ed.), Collected Plays for Television, 26 (London: Faber & Faber, 1988). For a concise account of Trevor Griffiths’s career in theater and on screen, see John Williams, “Trevor Griffiths,” Screen Online, http://www. screenonline.org.uk/people/id/539442/index.html. 18. John Williams, “Country (1981),” Screen Online, http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/ id/1044432/index.html. 19. Mike Poole and John Wyver, Power-plays: Trevor Griffiths in Television (London: BFI, 1984), 162. 20. Hill, British Cinema in the 1980s, 84. 21. Braun, “Introduction,” 25. 22. Griffiths interviewed in Radio Times, quoted in Braun, “Introduction,” 26. 23. Griffiths interviewed by Nicole Boireau of Coup de Théâtre, May 1985, quoted in Braun, “Introduction,” 23.

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Screen Interiors 24. Stanton B. Garner Jr., Trevor Griffiths: Politics, Drama, History (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 166. 25. Jonathan Romney, “Archipelago,” Sight and Sound 21, no. 3 (March 2011): 48–9. 26. Rob Carnevale, “Archipelago—Joanna Hogg interview,” indieLONDON, http://www. indielondon.co.uk/Film-Review/archipelago-joanna-hogg-interview.

Bibliography Braun, Edward. “Introduction.” In Trevor Griffiths (ed.), Collected Plays for Television, 1–33. London: Faber & Faber, 1988. Carnevale, Rob. “Archipelago – Joanna Hogg interview.” indieLONDON, http://www. indielondon.co.uk/Film-Review/archipelago-joanna-hogg-interview. Caughie, John. “Great Britain.” In Ginette Vincendeau (ed.), Encyclopaedia of European Cinema, 184–8. London: Cassell/BFI, 1995. Chapman, James. “Downton Abbey: Reinventing the British Costume Drama.” In Jonathan Bignell and Stephen Lacey (eds.), British Television Drama: Past, Present and Future, 131–42. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Frayling, Christopher. The Innocents. London: BFI Film Classics, 2013. Garner Jr., Stanton B. Trevor Griffiths: Politics, Drama, History. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999. Higson, Andrew. Waving The Flag: Constructing a National Cinema in Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Higson, Andrew. “The heritage film and British cinema.” In Andrew Higson (ed.), Dissolving Views: Key Writings on British Cinema, 232–48. London: Cassell, 1996. Hill, John. British Cinema in the 1980s. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Leggott, James. Contemporary British Cinema from Heritage to Horror. London: Wallflower Press, 2008. Houston, Penelope. “The Innocents.” Sight and Sound 30, no. 3 (1961): 114–15. Murray, Simon. “Why and What We Save.” National Trust Magazine (Summer 2014): 42. Poole, Mike and John Wyver. Power-plays: Trevor Griffiths in Television. London: BFI, 1984. Romney, Jonathan. “Archipelago.” Sight and Sound 21, no. 3 (2011): 48–9. Tredy, Dennis. “Shadows of Shadows: Techniques of Ambiguity in Three Film Adaptations of ‘The Turn of the Screw’: Jack Clayton’s The Innocents (1961), Dan Curtis’s The Turn of the Screw (1974), and Antonio Aloy’s Presence of Mind (1999).” Poetry and Autobiography 5, no. 1 (2007), https://journals.openedition.org/erea/196. Vidal, Belén. Heritage Film: Nation, Genre and Representation. New York: Wallflower Press, 2012. Williams, John. “Country (1981).” Screen Online, http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/1044432/ index.html. Williams, John. “Trevor Griffiths.” Screen Online, http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/ id/539442/index.html. Wilson, Val. “Black and White and Shades of Grey: Ambiguity in The Innocents.” In John R. Bradley (ed.), Henry James on Stage and Screen, 103–18. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000.

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CHAPTER 4 SPACE, INTERIORS, AND 1980s HOLLYWOOD TEEN FILMS Patrick O’Neill

The 1980s teen films produced within the Hollywood studio system may not be the most obvious cycle of films to investigate in terms of the symbolic nature of space and interiors, given the lack of attention paid to the genre in academic literature, but a closer analysis conveys some revealing insights in relation to both socio-political and adolescent issues. Jonathan Bernstein dubs this period, which featured teenage protagonists with narratives told from their point of view, “The Golden Age” of popular teen cinema.1 These were films marketed at teenagers and people in their twenties, the demographic which by this time was buying more cinema tickets that any other age group; as Richard Maltby points out, “by 1979 at the start of the 80s teen genre, every other ticket was bought by someone aged between 12 and 20, and another 30% of ticket sales were to people in their twenties.”2 The commercial success of the pre-1980s teen comedy Animal House (1978, John Landis) alerted the Hollywood studios that the economically solvent youth demographic wanted to see films which reflected their life experiences, leading to the huge output of youth movies in the 1980s. The focus here is on the key generic sites of the teen film—the family home, the teenage bedroom, the high school, and the shopping mall—and the interiors and props within them, as well as the teenage characters who inhabit them. This chapter argues that when the young protagonists featured in these films occupy one or other of these spaces, that space does more than just function in the context of its generic characteristics and iconography. It also becomes, as Barry Keith Grant states when writing about the potential of space in cinema, “symbolically-charged.”3 Such spaces overturn, or at least make ambivalent, traditional notions of space being empty. The teen films discussed herein include Porky’s (1981, Bob Clarke); Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982, Amy Heckerling); Sixteen Candles (1984, John Hughes); Risky Business (1983, Paul Brickman); Valley Girl (1983, Martha Coolidge); The Breakfast Club (1984, John Hughes); Pretty in Pink (1986, Howard Deutch); and River’s Edge (1986, Tim Hunter). These films were all made in the United States during the Reagan era (1981–9), a period marked by the Republican administration’s right-wing, neo-liberal agenda and moral conservatism. It was characterized as the “greed is good”4 decade, which foregrounded social mobility, individual aspiration, and wealth; rampant materialism and conspicuous consumption were applauded and success was judged in terms of financial assets and goods owned and displayed.5

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The home, the bedroom, the high school, and the mall Many of the teenagers in the films discussed here are shown as coming from wealthy families who live in huge mansions and enjoy all the trappings of wealth. Scenes in which various characters from these families interact within the family home offer a social commentary on affluence and privilege, not least by foregrounding the rebellious aspect of youth culture in the face of parental control and doing so through well-established generic features, especially the teenage ritual of the out-of-control party held within the parental home, but in the absence of parents. Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories in relation to the carnivalesque will be linked to the space of the family home as depicted in the films cited above and discussed in terms of conflict between youth and adults; power and lack of power; freedom and restrictions; and control and rebellion. I also argue that these family homes can be read within the broader contexts of the Reagan era. The portrayal of the teenage bedroom in these films highlights the culture of consumption which middle- and upper-class teenagers experienced during this period, and the furnishings and accessories within them help ensure that the interiors are coded in gender normative fashion as clearly defined “feminine” and “masculine” spaces. Linked to this are issues of sexuality and peer relationships. Also under discussion here is when 1980s teen films depict working-class protagonists in their bedrooms, as in All the Rights Moves (1983, Michael Chapman). The props and interiors in this film relate more to the individual personal development in terms of education and learning. The high school is another readily recognizable site in the 1980s teen genre; a space where large numbers of teenagers of both sexes congregate—a fact that some filmmakers used to highlight a range of differences as well as similarities among the students who are depicted as a heterogeneous group. Although the setting is an educational institution, education and learning are generally not the main focus of attention, but rather, teenage angst, sexual desire, clothing, and vulgar sexualized humor are the most noticeable themes. An examination of the space of the shopping mall extends the themes in terms of wealthy teens and the culture of consumption and positions them as having jobs in the mall, thus linking a teenager’s identity to employment, the coming-of-age process, and progression into adulthood. The opening scenes of Fast Times at Ridgemont High (referred to as Fast Times hereafter) and Valley Girl are examples where the mall space is used to illustrate these issues.

The parental home One of the ways in which the parental home provides space for critical discussion is through the context of the teenage characters’ relationships with their parents. When parents are present within the home, the filmmakers create an adult–teen opposition that highlights the tensions between the parents’ desires to exercise authority and teenagers seeking a degree of autonomy, despite their subordinate position. Inevitably, the films 88

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show the teenagers rebelling when given the opportunity. These, and other tensions evident in the films referred to here, reflect what the eminent social psychologist G. Stanley Hall wrote about in terms of youth and their psychological phases in 1904.6 One of the first scholars to write about adolescence and psychology, Hall outlined the “storm and stress”7 phase which defines certain aspects of teenage behavior: “conflict with parents” (one form of rebellion), “risk-taking,” and “mood disruptions”—all themes that resonate with scenes in the films discussed here. The conflict with parents and risktaking phases are played out during the out-of-control party. A teen generic ritual which offers a commentary on how in such a situation, the teenagers who depend upon wealthy parents to provide spending money and luxury items, operate with impunity and are never punished for their transgressions. Indeed, for teenage viewers, this provides one of the pleasures of such episodes. The trashing of the family home when parents are away features in Pretty in Pink, which is set in the Chicago suburbs. The parents of Jake (played by Michael Schoeffling), who throws the party, are representatives of the success stories in the materialistic and consumer culture of the Reagan era. The objects of desire within their huge airconditioned mansion with its resplendent interiors reflect their super-rich status and are a central feature of the mise-en-scène:8 the huge garage with a Rolls Royce and Jake’s own Porsche, a wine cellar, a large kitchen full of expensive accessories, a stereo system with tape deck and turntable, a mini gym with a set of weights, an exercise bike, and a grand piano. Many of these props get damaged or destroyed during the drunken party and although the action is portrayed comically, a more critical reading reveals a problematic outcome in terms of class and privilege. The male adolescents convey their sense of freedom from parental control and rebellion by indulging in gross-out humor and destruction of property. There are no consequences for their risk-taking actions and the film does not raise any questions about respecting property or money; the characters remain indifferent and apathetic about what has transpired. On the other hand, the film becomes more ambivalent the more the scene associates destruction with teenage liberation, or, at least, liberation from parental control. The film links liberation and the freedom of rich white adolescents with the destruction of the very items that epitomize the achievements of their parents who have done well financially during the Reagan era. In this sense, the anti-parental rebellion, as expressed through the teenage attack on an interior and the expensive goods within it, might seem to be a turn against the very materialism that the parents embraced—against the system that allows such accumulation of wealth. But the generational aspect of the rebellion is foregrounded by the filmmakers, rather than any anti-materialistic rebellion.9 The objects destroyed belong to the parents; the destruction and thereby the rejection of these luxury interiors and objects of desire by Jake and his friends can be read as a symbolic rejection of parental values along with parental control. The physical destruction or symbolic rejection of their own spaces and objects by these adolescent boys could have been a different matter, but the filmmakers do not go that far. The anti-parent teenage antics are fun to watch but beneath the surface lurks the realization that, if these adolescents do not reflect upon their own behavior and continue to live a life of privilege unchecked by any form of conscience, then they will 89

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probably end up as Reaganite replicas of their fathers. Rebellion in this instance becomes contradictory as they destroy the very items which they (and their parents) desire. In Pretty in Pink, the immoral and conceited Steff (James Spader) shows a similar indifference to the trappings of parental wealth and throws a party at his parents’ house and parts of the interior get damaged. His equally rich friend, Blane (Andrew McCarthy), raises a moral issue when he asks Steff what his parents would think of his act of rebellion and adolescent risk-taking, to which he replies, “Would I treat my parents’ house like this if money was any kind of issue?” In this scene, Steff wears an expensive bright white suit, an item of clothing that the wearer can afford to have professionally cleaned if dirtied, or simply wear it only once or twice. Furthermore, the color white can connote pureness and innocence but here it implies something menacing and malevolent; it isolates him within the crowded space as the white clashes against the darker hues of the interiors and the other students’ clothes. This ironic use of color symbolism is the initial signifier of Steff ’s vindictiveness as during the course of the film he becomes the antagonist who threatens and opposes the relationship of Blane and the working-class Andie (Molly Ringwald). She is the poor girl who lives in the downtrodden area of town with her unemployed father (Harry Dean Stanton). Her home stands in stark contrast to that of the rich teenagers. This makes visual the results of class differences and offers space for at least some working-class teenage viewers to identify with Andie’s embarrassment about her home during her relationship with the well-off Blane. Having left the party together in his car, she spells this out, “I don’t want you to take me home . . . I don’t want you to see where I live.” The two homes here become emblematic in terms of the rich– poor class divide in the United States, and the conflict is extended to their relationship as Blane’s rich friends do not accept the working-class Andie. This scene would possibly make uncomfortable viewing for many working-class viewers, some of whom may have also been insulted or angered by it. In Risky Business, Tom Cruise plays Joel Goodson, the son of wealthy parents who lives in a large mansion on the outskirts of Chicago (see Figure 4.1). Order and discipline—two approaches to living that loomed large in the United States during the Reagan era—are evident within the family home when his parents are present. One way in which this is represented is through the sets: the furniture, furnishings, and other household objects are all neatly and symmetrically positioned. Before the parents go away for the weekend, his father leaves Joel a list of strict instructions about the home and his behavior within it, most notably about what not to do, including not drinking the alcohol and not playing music too loud on the expensive stereo system, itself a marker of wealth and status at the time. The traditional authority inscribed in parental culture is invoked through the father’s statement to his son: “My house, my rules.” Within the genre, this statement in itself and the categorical forbidding of activities at the heart of teenage culture serve as a sign that some act of defiance will take place. Left alone for the weekend, Joel experiences a transformation, from a genial but dissatisfied youth who is still a virgin to a rebel who is about to experience sexual liberation. He is freed from the authoritarian control of his parents, who are absent, yet very present in the minds of viewers who understand the degree to which they will be 90

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Figure 4.1 The mansion and parental home in Risky Business represents wealth and success in the 1980s. Risky Business, directed by Paul Brickman. © Warner Bros. 1983. All rights reserved. Courtesy Tony Reeves / Movie-Locations.com.

annoyed if Joel does not obey the rules—yet another example which resonates with G. Stanley Hall’s “risk-taking” teenage behavior (updated by J. J. Arnett).10 As per generic convention, the adolescent disobeys his father’s orders, drinks his whiskey, and listens to forbidden rock ‘n’ roll music on the stereo—at full blast. The stereo is the prop that enables his act of rebellion as it plays Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock ‘n’ Roll.” Joel, in his underwear, dances energetically in the house, diving on sofas and using various household ornaments as a substitute microphone. His presence dominates the space and disturbs the pristine order of the home, and his rebellion around music and alcohol propels him into a state of sexual delight. In the film’s denouement, Joel’s rebellion takes a more extreme, if comic, turn as he is forced to transform the parental home into a house of ill repute. The home is now a space completely liberated from bourgeois respectability and hierarchical parental control; it is a site where decadence and debauchery replace order and discipline. Mikhail Bakhtin’s writings on the carnivalesque suggest that these acts of youthful transgressions within the family home both destabilize and liberate the parent–son relationship through humor and chaos: “Carnival celebrated temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and from the established order; it marked the suspension of all hierarchical rank, privileges, norms and prohibitions.”11 The word “temporary” is important here, because when Joel’s parents return, order is restored; his transgressive acts are never discovered and thus he is not punished for them. Many male teenage viewers must have considered this the perfect way of inhabiting the world. 91

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A contrasting image of teenagers in the family home is conveyed by characters who are not from wealthy backgrounds. In River’s Edge, the family home is depicted as chaotic and volatile. Teenage transgressions are not portrayed comically, but are far more malevolent; indeed, the motiveless murder of one of the characters by her boyfriend sets the dramatic tone of the film. The home in question is where Matt (Keanu Reeves) lives with his stressed-out single mother and her abusive partner who threatens Matt and his siblings. Whereas rebellion is represented by wild parties in the homes of the wealthy in the teen comedies linked to the notion of Bakhtin’s carnivalesque with youth experiencing liberation from parental control, in the more serious and dramatic River’s Edge, tales involving transgressive youth take place in homes which lack suitable parental role models.

The teenage bedroom The post-World War Two period in North America and parts of Europe was dubbed by some as “the age of the teenager,” and during the 1950s the United States witnessed the wide-scale creation of spaces within the family home created or adapted especially to afford teenagers greater privacy. The great fear on the part of adults was that young people who strayed beyond the confines of the home and parental control would end up transgressing and becoming “juvenile delinquents.”12 The “teenage bedroom” was an attempt to transform an existing space into one that afforded the teenager and their friends some privacy in the hope that they might not stray outside the home and was a response to one of the major perceived social problems of the day.13 So how were these semi-private, sometimes near-private, teenage domains within the family home represented in the 1980s films under consideration here? Rich in symbolism, this most private of spaces was one wherein the adolescent characters are seen experiencing emotions in relation to coming-of-age narratives, including those related to sexual and hormonal issues, here in the manner of adolescent angst. Teenage bedrooms also served as a more semi-public space where teenagers could socialize with their friends and where adolescence expresses itself through the teen clique and peer pressure. Teenage bedroom interiors in the films under consideration were gendered along conventional notions of what “feminine” and “masculine” interiors should look like, including the appropriate use of colors and props. The observations of William Odom et al. about the teenage bedroom are relevant to these films: Most teens feel the sense of place attachment to their bedrooms. Here they live with their things, make sense of their lives, and work to understand the complex changes and challenges of growing up. The bedroom provides moments for solitude and reflection, a social space to engage peers, and a canvas to experiment with an evolving sense of self.14 In Valley Girl, the female teenage bedroom offers images of and commentary upon teenage girls’ consumption, which both helped to define and reflected youth, gender, and 92

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cultural/economic identities of the 1980s. It is associated with a group of white middleclass teenagers who are referred to by a particular label and/or stereotypical image within the cultural language. The “Valley girl” refers to teenagers who live in the San Fernando Valley of the Los Angeles metropolitan area (where the film is set). It is a variation of the “popular girl,” “princess,” or “prom queen,” all female character types which permeate the 1980s teen genre: well-off, attractive, popular, slim, white, and heterosexual.15 The character of Julie (Deborah Foreman) and her friends are the “Valley girls” who congregate in her bedroom, which is free from the judgmental glare of adult/ parental surveillance. They dance, sing, and talk about boys and fashion. But something of broader cultural significance is happening in terms of gender identification in this scene of what Angela McRobbie and Jenny Garber term “girl subcultures.” For them, as a space, the teenage bedroom enables “alternative strategies to that of the boys’ subcultures [and a] distinctive culture of their own.”16 In the bedroom, the girls are free from the active ridicule of the male characters; indeed, the room becomes a “kind of defensive retreat away from the possibility of being sexually labelled.”17 Extending the gender theme, what McRobbie and Garber refer to as “Teenybopper” culture is replicated in a scene set in Julie’s bedroom wherein the girl–pop idol relationship is made visible through pop records and their covers, record player, posters of teenage idols (including pop bands), and magazines—all items of teenage consumption. Furthermore, the abundance of pink in the bedroom reinforces the notion of this as a “feminine” space. The “all girls together” atmosphere of this scene quickly changes as Julie’s friends start to question her relationship with her boyfriend, Randy (Nicholas Cage), whom they regard as an outsider. A rebellious punk, he does not conform to what her friends think is a suitable match for her. The scene becomes tense and claustrophobic and this is conveyed in visual terms. Julie is framed in close-up from a high angle, which emphasizes her isolation as the tightly-knit clique of girls now dominates the scene; the props and interiors are shot out of focus, making them strange while also diminishing their significance. The teenage trope of the clique opens up the topic of peer pressure as her friends continue to express their indignation over why she is in a relationship with someone like Randy. She looks in the mirror, a key object in the material culture of teenhood, and realizes that she is conflicted as her friends continue to admonish her. Moreover, the pink, feminized interior of Julie’s bedroom clashes with the dark masculinized shades of the nightclub in the city, a place which Randy inhabits, thus offering a good example of how color and degrees of lightness and darkness within the mise-en-scène mirrors and draws attention to cultural and class differences. The teenage bedroom in John Hughes’s Sixteen Candles, another teen film set in the affluent suburbs of Chicago, shares similarities with that in Valley Girl in terms of objects and decoration. The pink interiors, furnishings, and pictures of pop idols on the wall signal that it is a “feminized” space; the telephone and stereo represent teenage consumption. But it is more of a private space for the individual concerned, as opposed to a space that she shares with her peers. The character of Sam (Molly Ringwald) has just turned sixteen and she is first seen waking up and looking in the mirror, a common prop in teen movies as already mentioned in relation to Valley Girl. The act of looking at 93

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herself in the mirror highlights her adolescent angst. Moody, introspective, and unhappy about her sexual and physical development, she says, “Chronologically, I’m sixteen today; physically, I’m still fifteen.” Here, Sam’s face is shot in extreme close-up and the bedroom interiors are out of focus, highlighting this particular form of teenage angst, while at the same time invoking the “mood disruption” phase of adolescence.18 The male bedroom in the 1980s teen films offers different views of adolescent identities. In the comedy Losin’ It (1983, Curtis Hanson), Dave (Jackie Earle Haley) does not appear to be suffering from teen angst, unlike Sam in Sixteen Candles. When looking into his mirror, Dave narcissistically celebrates his masculinity and supposed sexual charisma and physical maturity as he flexes his muscles. This scene highlights a gender division through his actions and, using props such as mirrors, presents males in a seemingly more positive and confident light in terms of negotiating adolescent concerns relating to sexuality and relationships. In Losin’ It, however, this early example of an adolescent celebrating male sexual prowess within the privacy of the bedroom is problematized when the male characters inhabit other spaces in the film and the predatory nature of their sexual behavior is exposed. Unlike male adolescents who are not punished for drinking to excess and throwing wild parties in the parental home, these teenagers are punished for their transgressions. This happens when the white middle-class teens travel from their Los Angeles home to Tijuana, Mexico, in search of casual sex and to generally misbehave. This angers the inhabitants who are portrayed through crude stereotypes—the Latin temptress, the corrupt police chief, and the sleazy locals—that contrast with their Waspish, white American counterparts. When one of the American teens tries to seduce a local girl by spiking her drink with a “Spanish Fly” (an aphrodisiac), he is apprehended and suspended from a crane. They are treated with hostility by the police, ripped off by a taxi driver, and one of them is sent to jail and physically attacked. In all of the films under discussion, interiors and props contribute to notions of appropriate and inappropriate “feminine” and “masculine” spaces in binary terms. These gender oppositions are starkest when class oppositions are also invoked. Whereas in Valley Girl, Sixteen Candles, and Pretty in Pink the feminized space of girls’ bedrooms are brightly colored, adorned with the pop idol posters, teenybopper memorabilia, dressing tables, and mirrors, the interior and props of the male bedroom belonging to Stef (Tom Cruise) in the teenage blue-collar drama All the Right Moves (1983, Michael Chapman) are more concerned with education and point to an individual trying to succeed, against the odds, in Reagan’s USA. Cruise’s Stef is a working-class teenager who is hoping for a sporting scholarship to college to study engineering, something which the rich kids in the teen genre do not have to think about. He is seen in his bedroom studying alone; a desk, shelves full of textbooks, and technical drawings on the wall are all prominent props within the frame. Instead of the feminized images of pop idols, in Stef ’s room, sporting memorabilia and trophies relating to his achievements playing American football are on show. Here, the mise-en-scène conveys more of a traditional “masculine” space. Furthermore, the room is darkly lit, which sharply contrasts with the bright colors and vibrancy seen in the girls’ bedrooms, portraying a bleaker and grimmer-looking 94

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teenage space. This somber mood is reinforced when Stef looks out of his bedroom window and sees the rain-swept, smoked-filled industrial landscape, dominated by steel mills which, as we come to learn, are under threat of closure. This location—set in an unnamed town in Pennsylvania—is far removed from the middle-/upper-class suburban locations of other films discussed so far, where displays of affluence in the form of huge mansions and expensive cars are central features of the mise-en-scène. Across these films, girls within their bedrooms are represented as less studious and ambitious than the Stef character in All the Right Moves, but as more willing and able to discuss adolescent issues relating to sexuality and relationships, whereas in this instance, the adolescent male is presented as more serious about his studies and is seen as benefiting from education and study. In the Chicago-set comedy Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986, John Hughes), however, the computer in the bedroom, a prop that might signal serious scholarly intent, is not used as an educational tool but rather as the means for Ferris (Matthew Broderick) to hack into the school’s attendance records so that he can play truant. This said, the very hacking is a key example of male competence, a major marker of gender normative adult masculinity, especially as shown on screen.19 This film also offers yet another example within the teenage movie genre of a rich adolescent male misbehaving and getting away with it: an important new and desirable object within teenage consumer culture is shown to enable him to commit illegal acts. Viewing these rich white kids in 1980s teen films transgressing and getting away with it, it could be argued that these examples are a metaphor for wider moral issues relating to male culture, if not the broader culture at large within the Reagan era and, by extension, Trumpite America.

The high school There is not much in the way of education and learning going on in US high schools depicted in 1980s teenage movies. Instead, adolescent and socio-political issues are played out within the iconography of a range of interiors: classrooms, headmaster’s offices, locker rooms, shower blocks, and canteens. In The Breakfast Club, for example, five disparate teens spend a Saturday in the school library in detention. The five teenagers represent each of the high school stereotypes that permeate the teen movie genre, from the popular girl, Claire (Molly Ringwald) and the jock, Andy (Emilio Estevez), to the nerd, Brian (Anthony Michael Hall), the delinquent Bender (Judd Nelson), and the rebel, Allison (Ally Sheedy). In this space of detention and punishment, rows of books and desks dominate the frame, and the design of the huge two-story library space with its high ceilings and wide balconies initially appears to overwhelm the protagonists. However, unlike Stef ’s teenage bedroom in All the Right Moves, the characters do not participate in any of the expected additional reading and/or learning associated with this type of punishment. The film is more concerned with how the students negotiate their status within the hierarchical nature of the high school system, and their relationships with their parents. Indeed, the 95

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library space is often shot out of focus (similar to the bedrooms in Valley Girl and Sixteen Candles), with the result that the viewer’s attention is drawn to the students who are supposed to be undergoing punishment. In contrast, they are shot in close-up and sharp focus. As William H. Phillips explains, “How filmmakers position people and objects in the background and how they situate them in the foreground are options that influence what the images communicate.”20 With this in mind, the teenagers’ indifference and lack of focus towards learning and education is mirrored by the blurring out of the carefully designed aspects of the interior, which suggests a blurring out of school and its benefits in general, as befits a weekend day. It also removes the characters and their actions from their communal social space and, by implication, their social contexts.21 Given that the wider space they inhabit is made indistinct, the intense focus on the students and the costuming of each character takes on even greater significance in helping viewers understand the truthfulness of those characters within the diegesis of the film. Costume, as David Bordwell and Kristen Thompson point out, “plays important motivic and casual roles in narratives.”22 In The Breakfast Club it offers viewers insights into each character’s position within the high school pecking order. Bender, the delinquent, with his shoulder-length hair, dresses differently from the two other male characters—the jock and the nerd. His alternative garb is comprised of a long coat, black combat boots, and dark shades that make him stand out as different within this small group. This befits the image of what the sociologist Murray Milner describes as “alternative characters” who are connoted by their “bizarre dress and hairstyles” and reject both “adult authority and the cultural dominance and superior status of the popular crowd.”23 Andy, the pumped-up but tense jock, wears a wrestling jacket and trainers, thus conveying an aura of more assured masculinity through the trappings of sporting competence and as a member of a social group at the top of the pecking order. Brian, whose nerd status places him at the lower end, wears plain, drab clothes, conveying a lack of fashion sense, a key attribute in the high-stakes world of teenage popularity and attractiveness. Alison, the rebel, who is also low in the pecking order, dresses down and wears all black clothes, evoking a goth-like image, which, in a similar vein to Bender’s costume, reinforces her rebellious nature. Claire, the popular girl, like the “Valley Girls,” is pretty and pristine. Her more conventional femininity is highlighted by her pink blouse and red lipstick, in opposition to Alison’s more transgressive attire. In a classroom scene in Pretty in Pink, students again do not engage in learning, and social status and the hierarchical divisions within high school culture are some of the key themes of the film. The teacher is discussing the class topic but this seems irrelevant as the focus is on Andie, the poor girl, who is being insulted by two popular rich girls, one of them the platinum blonde, Benny (Kate Vernon), who is the partner of the equally cruel and vindictive aforementioned Steff, and like him they are both deceptively wearing white. Benny asks Andie, who recycles and makes her own clothes, if she bought her outfit from the “five and dime store.” The classroom is designed like a mini-lecture theater, small and intimate, but there is not much friendliness between the characters as the camera soon frames them in close-up and the interiors become blurred out as if to emphasize the cruelty inflicted on Andie by the other two girls. This framing also 96

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highlights Andie’s muted-pink appearance, which reveals that she is trying to fit into the gender normative style of femininity but does not do so easily. She is not only working class, which isolates her within her peer group, but also more eccentric and individualistic than the other girls in the popular crowd, as well as more romantic and sensitive. The faded color palette of her clothes is echoed in her bedroom, that hallowed interior space that respects teenage privacy. Thus both the interiors and costume work symbolize this feature and distance her somewhat from the conformism of those around her. In the romantic teen drama Reckless (1984, James Foley), set in West Virginia, the trashing of property takes place within the high school, as opposed to a family home, and it means something different, too. As in Valley Girl, the film concerns a Romeo and Juliet romance between Johnny (Aiden Quinn), the poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks, and Tracey (Daryl Hannah), the rich popular girl. They break into their school at night and run amok, destroying property in a classroom and the gym. The scene is similar to house trashing scenes in other teenage movies but because of the space wherein it takes place it is more closely associated with rebellion and risk-taking behavior. It is not, however, related to a critique of the wealthy youth of the Reagan era, with rich kids suffering no consequences for their actions. Here, the school interior, which houses adolescents from across a broad spectrum of social and cultural groups, serves as a backdrop to explore the repressed drive to rebel of a middle-class girl. Her working-class boyfriend acts as a conduit for this. Kim Wilde’s hit tune “Kids in America” plays over the action, and the song’s lyrics—“Got to get a brand new experience”—add to the liberating effect which the young couple are feeling in this scene, something many viewers could identify with. Florida high school students indulge in transgressive behavior in the school shower block scene in Porky’s, a bland and seemingly more inconsequential interior compared to the others discussed thus far—just some white tiles and shower heads—transformed from a private space into a public one in this infamous scene. The shower block becomes a space in which male teenagers indulge in vulgar sexual humor, a generic trait of teenage sex comedies made during this period. Three of the boys look through peepholes in the shower wall and ogle at the naked bodies of girls taking their showers; one of them inserts his penis into the hole, suggestive of the sexual act itself. But the girls realize they are being watched and instead of being made to look passive and/or objectified, they take the initiative and become sexually active, posing suggestively for the voyeuristic boys and joining in with the sexualized banter. The communally designed shower block, typical of a school setting, facilitates both the male and female teens’ behavior by offering ample space for their transgressions. Consequently, the scene could be construed in different ways, making it somewhat ambivalent: are the girls expressing confidence in their own sexuality and bodies by taking control of the situation, or are they just trying to please the boys? Or is it a combination of the two? In Fast Times, by contrast, the Los Angeles high school canteen provides a space for young women to indulge in some vulgar comedy. One of the girls, Linda (Phoebe Cates), is showing her friend, the innocent Stacy (Jennifer Jason Leigh), how to perform fellatio with the use of a carrot. However, a group of boys look on and clap and applaud at the 97

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end of this scene, suggesting that it is the male perspective which is dominant and female desire is contained. Nevertheless, the scene seems to suggest that Linda is sexually active and experienced, but this is brought into question in the film’s final act where she occupies a different space—the shopping mall—an issue discussed in the section below. Once again, the background of the interiors is shot out of focus so as to better highlight the girl’s transgressive behavior. One outcome of the teenagers interacting in the spaces of the shower block and canteen in Porky’s and Fast Times, respectively, is that it offers viewers a greater foregrounding of young women and therefore a greater—though still far from equal— balance in terms of gender representation in a genre where teen masculinity is generally foregrounded. Moreover, this is done in scenes where young women’s claims to equality are expressed through sexual awareness, on the one hand, and vulgar humor, on the other.

The shopping mall The shopping mall is the final site to be considered in this chapter. The mall is a place for teens to meet friends, interact, shop, and work, and once again proves to be an ambivalent space within the 1980s teen genre. The mall, as Michael Montgomery points out, has “provided social commentators with one of their most enduring metaphors for American society in the 1980s,”24 metaphors that are no more keenly represented than in the films examined here. The malls depicted in the teen movies considered here tend to back up George H. Lewis’s rather negative claim that behind “the colourful neon store logos and displays,” the mall was “anonymous, uniform, predictable and plain.”25 The establishing night-time shot which frames the exterior of the mall in Fast Times supports this description—its harsh design dominates the screen: a large steel and glass trilateral edifice which stands between two huge concrete structures. This rather bleak view is also represented in the opening title sequence of Valley Girl, wherein the cinematography frames the interiors, from retail outlets to cafes, bars, and a gym, as lacking bright colors and vibrancy. The girls, out on a shopping spree, belie this portrayal of their environment, however, and seem to furnish the space like bright objects. Within this space made special for teenagers precisely because it was neither school nor the parental home, they are seen to be enjoying themselves, free from the surveillance of adult figures like parents and teachers. Montage editing is deployed in this scene, which adds an urgency to the action and “becomes an active and obvious source of ‘meaning’ in the assembled sequence.”26 The meaning is again linked to teenage consumption in the Reagan era. Here, the props include key objects of teenage desire, namely fashionable items of clothing. These are shown along with price tags, cash registers, and (their parents’) credit cards. The juxtaposed images are framed in close-up, honing in on the girls’ acts of conspicuous consumption. In a broader social context, they represent what became known as the “me generation” of the 1980s—a generation who were obsessed with image, status, and 98

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popularity—and the mall was an ideal space for this public display of narcissism. The song “They Got a Name for Girls Like Me” by Bonnie Hays and the Wild Combo plays during the scene and reinforces the representation of these girls as having more freedom and independence than ever before, with the lyrics to the song—“I’m going to jump, I’m going to shout, I’m going to making with the bad boys girls, Shake with bad boys”— reflecting this. After the shopping spree, the girls sit in the mall’s café and, like the scene in the bedroom, discuss more personal topics like romance and the boys in their lives. The interior background, consisting of the retail outlets, is again shot out of focus as the attention is centered away from those spaces and onto the girls who are framed in close-up as they discuss the adolescent issues that engage them. Having positioned teenagers within what appear to be neutral spaces of the high school and the shopping mall, these films then distance the characters from these spaces, thus reproducing the feelings of not belonging that many teenagers grapple with. An alternative view (similar to George H. Lewis’s referred to above) to that of the mall as a consumer paradise is offered by Michael Montgomery. He argues that the mall symbolizes a pessimistic space in Reagan’s USA, one which has a “lulling effect . . . enclosed . . . protected . . . controlled by its own consumerist practices,”27 with teenagers being particularly susceptible to the temptations of such spaces. Montgomery describes them as “imprisoned” by the mall environment and “programmed to consume, be easily bored, and shallowly obsessed with clothing.”28 For Montgomery, there is no agency, selfexpression, or even pleasure in such shopping. Although teenagers have, and always will, experience certain freedoms in the mall, Jon Goss argues that this has its limits. Writing from a sociological perspective, he focuses on how architects and designers exploit the mall space and its contents in order to maximize retail profits and to manipulate shoppers’ behavior, concluding that malls are designed to segregate and control teenagers in terms of gender and that this “deliberated tactic by the mall management, was designed purposefully to keep them on the periphery.”29 In Fast Times, “masculine” and “feminine” spaces for teenagers within the mall are shown in the opening scene: the boys congregate in a room filled with video games; the girls are seen shopping. The mall, a contrasting environment to the family home and the high school in terms of spaces in which teenage characters might or might not have legitimate authority, responsibility, and independence, is central to Fast Times. The film is somewhat different from the others discussed because it portrays the coming-of-age process, the transition into adulthood, through work as well as consumption. The teenagers who work parttime in pizza parlors and the cinema represent a more positive and optimistic outlook in terms of teenage identity. The mall also serves as a narrative framing device in Fast Times. It is the location which introduces the story and the characters, and it is also the site of the final scene wherein the action ends and the conflicts and questions the film has raised are resolved. It is revealed that Stacey, after a couple of failed relationships, ends up with a suitable partner. Linda’s demonstration of her sexual experience which was witnessed in the canteen scene described above and continued throughout the film by 99

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her references to her older fiancé (who is never seen) is exposed as a probable lie. She reads out a letter to Stacey which she claims to have written to him complaining of his non-attendance at her graduation; the camera frames Stacey’s sardonic smile in close-up, suggesting that her partner is imaginary and thus exposing Linda’s insecurity—a state of mind experienced by many teenagers. Male teenagers in Fast Times are seen not only as “behaving themselves” in the eyes of the adult world by having jobs but also as “misbehaving” and showing little or no regard for others, which challenges the idea of them being controlled in a consumer space: fooling around on an escalator, they almost knock down an elderly, distressed woman. This resonates with what Mike Presdee describes as a “youth invasion” when discussing teens and mall culture. He writes that the mall “belongs to them, they have possessed it,” and argues that it is not a site of consumption and spending but rather that it is based “around the possession of space, or to be more precise the possession of consumer space where their very presence challenges, offends and resists.”30 Teenage transgressive behavior in the mall is an extension of the wrecking of the family home and the vulgar sexualized humor depicted in the high school. In addition, this reflects John Fiske’s description of teenagers’ behavior in the mall, which becomes an “oppositional cultural practice with youths consuming images and space instead of commodities, a kind of sensuous consumption that did not create profits.”31 The rapid montage editing in Fast Times offers the viewers images of other teenagers spending money in shops, cafes, and cinemas, and also as working. On the one hand, they are active consumers and workers; on the other, they are more passive and antisocial, and the spaces they inhabit are utilized in diverse ways. Moreover, taken together, it is clear that the makers of this film created a more ambivalent teenage space than those described by the “authorities” cited above.

Conclusion Drawing on a broad range of sources and scholars, this chapter has revealed that some of the teen movies made in Hollywood in the 1980s offered a rich, eclectic, and sometimes ambiguous variety of representations of teenagers and their interactions within the key spaces and interiors of the genre. Where teenagers find spaces in these films in which to interact and congregate, the filmmakers managed to create a synthesis between the adolescents on screen and wider socio-political issues, echoing John Gibbs’s assertion, commenting on symbolism and space in cinema, that where “things happen [space becomes] endowed with meaning beyond the literal.”32 The genre’s different generic sites have been shown to provide a space for teenage expression in relation to the coming-ofage process, especially adolescent risk-taking, rebellion, and opposition to parental/adult culture (for example, trashing the parental home). The analysis offered here of teen consumption, wealth, and privilege in the 1980s Reagan era, and their relation to the teenage characters acting within a variety of spaces, positions the issues within a specific time, place, and broad political ideology, as well as issues of gender and family. By 100

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contrast, the brothel scene in the family home in Risky Business and the shower/peephole scene in the high school in Porky’s demonstrate how spaces can be used to act out what is considered transgressive sexual behavior as well as teenage rebelliousness, both of which challenged the morally conservative society which Reagan tried to promote during his tenure as president. The female teenage bedroom can be seen as a space which is more private and intimate than the male equivalent, in part because, as shown above, it is a place in which teenage angst and emotion are conveyed. Characters stare at themselves in the mirror and express some of the more introspective feelings associated with adolescence. Peer pressure is witnessed in Valley Girl, which features the female teenage bedroom as a more oppressive space than the male equivalent. In the male bedroom, a macho posturing teenager is seen admiring his body in the mirror—a prop which links both the male and female bedrooms in this group of films. In the public space of the mall, however, both male and female teenagers are seen working in restaurants and shops, making this one of the more gender-inclusive moments in these films. The mall is also a public space where well-off teens can put themselves on display. By investigating these films through their spatial qualities and character interactions as opposed to, for example, a more narrative and storytelling perspective, the chapter has offered critical insights into how films can provoke thought and create meaning in visual terms through the design of spaces and the symbolism of the mise-en-scène.

Notes 1. Jonathan Bernstein, Pretty in Pink: The Golden Age of Teenage Movies (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997). 2. Richard Maltby, Hollywood Cinema (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 24. 3. Barry Keith Grant, Film Genre: From Iconography to Ideology (Brighton: Wallflower Press, 2007), 11. 4. The term “greed is good” is uttered by the ruthless stockbroker, Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas), in the Oliver Stone film, Wall Street (1987). 5. Cheryl Hudson and Gareth Davies, “Introduction: Reagan and the 1980s,” in Cheryl Hudson and Gareth Davies (eds.), Ronald Reagan and the 1980s: Perceptions, Policies, Legacies, 1–15 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). 6. G. Stanley Hall, Adolescence: Its Psychology and its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion and Education (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1904). 7. “Storm and Stress” is the English version of “Sturm und Drang,” a German expression meaning a person’s intense displays of emotion in the face of what is believed to be rational thought. 8. Mise-en-scène, from the French “putting on stage,” refers to everything within a film frame: set design, the arrangement of objects, props, actors, costumes, lighting, and position of the actors. 9. See Leerom Medovoi, Rebels: Youth and the Cold War Origins of Identity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005). 10. Jeffrey Jenson Arnett, “Adolescent Storm and Stress, Reconsidered,” American Psychologist 54, no. 5 (1999): 319. 11. Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 10. 101

Screen Interiors 12. For further reading, see James Gilbert, Cycle of Outrage: Americans’ Reaction to the Juvenile Delinquent in the 1950s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). 13. For further reading on the teenage bedroom in the postwar years, see Sarah A. Lichtman, “ ‘Teenagers Have Taken Over the House’: Print Marketing, Teenage Girls, and the Representation, Decoration, and Design of the Postwar Home, ca. 1945–1965” (Ph.D. diss., Bard Graduate Center, 2003). 14. William Odom et al., “Investigating the Presence, Form and Behaviour of Virtual Possessions in the Context of a Teen Bedroom,” in Proceedings of SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Austin: ACM Press, 2012), unpaginated. 15. Timothy Shary, Generation Multiplex: The Image of Youth in Contemporary American Cinema (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002), 61–9. 16. Angela McRobbie and Jenny Garber, “Girls and Subcultures” (1976), reprinted in Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson (eds.), Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain, 2nd edn., 186 (London: Routledge, 2006). 17. McRobbie and Garber, “Girls and Subcultures,” 187. 18. Arnett, “Adolescent Storm and Stress, Reconsidered,” 319. 19. For further reading on masculinity in film, see Pat Kirkham and Janet Thumin, You Tarzan: Masculinity, Movies and Men (London: Lawrence and Wishart Ltd., 1993). 20. William H. Phillips, Film: An Introduction, 4th edn. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 45–6. 21. The library was designed and built during the film’s production in a gymnasium that was part of a disused school. See “The Breakfast Club (1985) – Trivia,” https://www.imdb.com/title/ tt0088847/trivia. Perhaps this conveys an ambivalent tone to the scenes when the teens are rebelling in this space by dancing and generally acting out in a more physical way, which befits a gym environment as opposed to a library. 22. David Bordwell and Kristen Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction, 8th edn. (New York: McGraw Hill, 2008), 122. 23. Murray Milner Jr., Freaks, Geeks and Cool Kids: American Teenagers, Schools and the Culture of Consumption (New York: Routledge, 2004), 42. 24. Michael Montgomery, Carnivals and Commonplaces: Bakhtin’s Chronotope, Cultural Studies and Film (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 88. 25. George H. Lewis, “Community Through Exclusion and Illusion: The Creation of Social Worlds in an American Shopping Mall,” Journal of Popular Culture 24, no. 2 (Fall 2004): 122. 26. V. S. Perkins, Film as Film: Understanding and Judging Movies (London: Penguin Books, 1972), 21. 27. Montgomery, Carnivals and Commonplaces, 89. 28. Montgomery, Carnivals and Commonplaces, 89. 29. Jon Goss, “The ‘Magic of the Mall’: An Analysis of Form, Function, and Meaning in the Contemporary Retail Environment,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 83, no. 1 (March 1993): 26. 30. Mike Presdee, quoted in John Fiske, Reading the Popular (London: Routledge, 1989), 16. 31. Presdee, quoted in Fiske, Reading the Popular, 16–17. 32. John Gibbs, Mise-en-scène: Film Style and Interpretation (London: Wallflower Press, 2002), 16–17.

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Bibliography Arnett, Jeffrey Jenson. “Adolescent Storm and Stress, Reconsidered.” American Psychologist 54, no.5 (1999): 317–26. Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and his World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. Bernstein, Jonathan. Pretty in Pink: The Golden Age of Teenage Movies. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. Bordwell, David and Kristen Thompson. Film Art: An Introduction, 8th edition. New York: McGraw Hill, 2008. Fiske, John. Reading the Popular. London: Routledge, 1989. Gibbs, John. Mise-en-scène: Film Style and Interpretation. London: Wallflower Press, 2002. Gilbert, James. Cycle of Outrage: America’s Reaction to the Juvenile Delinquent in the 1950s. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Goss, Jon. “ ‘The “Magic of the Mall’: An Analysis of Form, Function, and Meaning in the Contemporary Retail Environment.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 83, no. 1 (March 1993): 18–47. Grant, Barry Keith. Film Genre: From Iconography to Ideology. Brighton: Wallflower Press, 2007. Hall, G. Stanley. Adolescence: Its Psychology and its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion, and Education. New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1904. Hudson, Cheryl and Gareth Davies. “Introduction: Reagan and the 1980s.” In Ronald Reagan and the 1980s: Perceptions, Policies, Legacies, 1–15. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008. Kirkham, Pat and Janet Thumin. You Tarzan: Masculinity, Movies and Men. London: Lawrence and Wishart Ltd., 1993. Kowinski, William Severini. The Malling of America: An Inside Look at the Great Consumer Paradise. New York: William Morrow, 1985. Lewis, George, H. “Community Through Exclusion and Illusion: The Creation of Social Worlds in an American Shopping Mall.” Journal of Popular Culture 24, no. 2 (Fall 1990): 121–36. Lichtman, Sarah A. “ ‘Teenagers Have Taken Over the House’: Print Marketing, Teenage Girls, and the Representation, Decoration, and Design of the Postwar Home, c. 1945–1965.” Ph.D. diss., Bard Graduate Center, 2013. Maltby, Richard. Hollywood Cinema. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. McRobbie, Angela and Jenny Garber. “Girls and Subcultures” (1976). Reprinted in Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson (eds.), Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain, 2nd edition, 177–88. London: Routledge, 2006. Medovoi, Leerom. Rebels: Youth and the Cold War Origins of Identity. Durham, NC : Duke University Press, 2005. Milner Jr., Murray. Freaks, Geeks and Cool Kids: American Teenagers, Schools and the Culture of Consumption. New York: Routledge, 2004. Montgomery, Michael. Carnivals and Commonplaces: Bakhtin’s Chronotope, Cultural Studies and Film. New York: Peter Lang, 1993. Odom, William, John Zimmerman, Jodi Forlizzi, Hajin Choi, Stephanie Meier, and Angela Park. “Investigating the Presence, Form and behavior of Virtual Possessions in the Context of a Teen Bedroom.” In Proceedings of SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Austin: ACM Press, 2012, http://willodom.com/publications/paper679-odom_ CHI2012.pdf Perkins, Victor. Film as Film: Understanding and Judging Movies. London: Penguin Books, 1972. Phillips, William, H. Film: An Introduction, 4th edition. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Shary, Timothy. Generation Multiplex: The Image of Youth in Contemporary American Cinema. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002.

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PART 2 THE CURATED HOME

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CHAPTER 5 MOBILIZING MATERIAL CULTURE: COLLECTING AND INTERIORITY IN LUCHINO VISCONTI’S CONVERSATION PIECE 1974 Shax Riegler

Conversation Piece (1974), a late film by the esteemed Italian director Luchino Visconti (1906–76) tells the story of a reclusive, old professor and the brash cohort that invades his solitary existence in the Roman palazzo he calls home when he reluctantly rents them an apartment on the floor above his. A vivid illustration of the clash in cultural values and lifestyle choices between generations and social classes in Italy in the early 1970s, the film also exemplifies Visconti’s approach to production design. Delving into Visconti’s aesthetic philosophy and praxis, factors crucial to any discussion of a film in which the spaces and furnishings are explicitly conceived to convey critical information and messages about characters and their motivations, this chapter will shed light on the ways in which deliberately deployed material culture quietly expresses meaning in cinema. Conversation Piece takes its title from the genre of eighteenth-century group portraiture that the Professor—he is known by no other name—avidly collects and displays throughout his apartment. Fittingly, the film opens on a magnifying glass moving slowly over the cracked surface of one such painting. Calculating art dealers have brought the picture to the Professor in the hope of enticing him to buy it. The camera/magnifying glass lingers for a moment on the face of a child on tiptoe reaching for a biscuit across a small table set for tea, then scans across to show a seated mother holding another child, a father leaning on the back of her upholstered chair, and a third child off to the side pulling a toy horse. The room is furnished simply but luxuriously: a neoclassical-style marble mantelpiece above which hangs a romantic landscape painting, a silver tea urn, a porcelain tea set, and an oriental carpet on the floor. Shortly, the camera stops following the magnifying glass and pulls back to reveal a grand room on the piano nobile of a grand old Roman palace. The ceilings are high. Pedimented neoclassical bookcases packed with tomes and topped with a row of oversize porcelain vases line a wall in the background. Green silk lampas envelops the walls, on which hang dozens of similar paintings of families in interiors in ornate gilded frames. The furnishings consist of comfortable upholstered sofas and chairs, multiple mahogany tables upon which stand marble and bronze statuary, and vitrines filled with other objets de vertu. The window curtains are drawn and most of the light seems to come from table lamps, although what could be a converted bronze gasolier with frosted glass globes can be glimpsed hanging from the ornately plastered and frescoed ceiling in a couple of scenes. Hushed and muted, the space exudes the somber, quiet air of a museum (see Figure 5.1). 107

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Figure 5.1 A view of the Professor’s drawing room-cum-study in Luchino Visconti’s Conversation Piece (Gruppo di famiglia in un interno). © Mario Tursi-Archivio Enrico Appetito. By delivering the audience directly into the mindset of the protagonist, a reclusive collector looking closely at and communing with an object, this sequence establishes the mood of the film to come. Such scenes of his communion with objects recur throughout the film. In one, the Professor is shown quietly absorbed in the task of cleaning the surface of this same painting, carefully stroking it with a solvent-soaked cotton ball and inspecting the surface yet again with his magnifying glass. In another, the Professor connects with one of his new neighbors when the younger man takes an interest in a painting hanging above a fireplace and remarks on its resemblance to a similar picture in the home of a friend. In Italian, the film’s title is simply Gruppo di famiglia in un interno (“family group in an interior”), a straightforward, museographic description of the subject matter of such pictures. Its more evocative English title implies much more than a mere family portrait. The defining characteristics of conversation pieces are specificity, personality, and, as the word “conversation” connotes, interaction amongst those portrayed. As Mario Praz, a professor of English literature at the University of Rome and collector (who, as we shall see, has a strong if tangential connection to this movie), wrote in his authoritative text on this type of painting, “The term ‘conversation piece’ is used in England for paintings, usually not of large dimensions, which represent two or more identifiable people in attitudes implying that they are conversing or communicating with each other informally, against a background reproduced in detail.”1 These intimate scenes always portray a recognizable aspect of a family home and feature related family members and friends. As Visconti repeatedly returned to the family 108

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unit in many of his films, it is easy to imagine how a story inspired by such pictures would have appealed to him. Soon after that quiet opening moment of communion, the familial characters necessary for filling in the film’s celluloid simulacrum of a conversation piece come into focus. When the art dealers leave, a mysterious woman is left sitting behind. Originally mistaken for another dealer, she is instead there to persuade the Professor to rent her the top floor of the palazzo as an apartment for her young lover. This fur-clad marchesa sashays around, cigarette in hand, and makes herself completely at home, opening doors and windows that let air, light, and twentieth-century street sounds into the sepulchral air of the study. As the Professor and the marchesa move through his residence, we catch further glimpses of his art-filled space; they proceed down a hallway lined with more paintings, past several closed doors, and into a large square foyer with walls painted with a trompe l’oeil balustrade overlooking a bucolic landscape. (This decorative mural is the most outward-looking feature of the Professor’s otherwise shut-up abode.) Exiting the apartment, they climb a majestic marble staircase to the unfurnished, seemingly abandoned space on the floor above. Along the way we meet the other main characters: first, the Professor’s long-serving maid, followed by the marchesa’s daughter and her boyfriend, and, finally, the marchesa’s lover, a handsome gigolo. Overwhelmed by their clatter and exuberance, the Professor agrees to rent them the space before he seems to realize quite what is happening. Once the marchesa takes possession of the upstairs space, the sights and sounds of modern life—construction noise, ringing telephones, arguments, vulgar language, extreme political views, cigarette smoke and ash, rock music, and the smell of marijuana— permeate the quiet nest in which the Professor has entrenched himself. The family invading his house is an overpoweringly obvious metaphor for the way they come to infiltrate his mind. Over the course of the film, this culture clash is graphically materialized and contrasted through the two apartments: the Professor’s stolid, traditional, aristobourgeois residence juxtaposed with the groovy new pad being created on the floor above. During the months-long renovation, the Professor is dragged repeatedly, and reluctantly, into the process: first, when demolition causes his ceilings to crumble and a water leak damages the fabric-covered walls in his own apartment (for a portion of the film, his study is depicted with the furniture draped in protective cloths), and second, when the “family” disappears on an impromptu vacation, and he is forced to consult with the workers in choosing paint colors and tiles. About two-thirds of the way through the film, the new apartment is finally revealed (see Figure 5.2). The space is dominated by a slightly raised platform on which sits a wraparound sectional sofa upholstered in white and strewn with vibrant orange and yellow throw pillows. The walls are painted a luminescent, pristine white and floor-toceiling curtains of a bold black-and-white floral-print fabric reminiscent of the designs of the Finnish company Marimekko hang at the windows. A chrome and smoked glass shelving unit holds stacks of LPs. Reflective and metallic accents abound, including a tall floor lamp shaped like a palm tree. Most of the illumination appears to come from 109

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Figure 5.2 A view of the newly renovated upstairs apartment in Luchino Visconti’s Conversation Piece (Gruppo di famiglia in un interno). © Mario Tursi-Archivio Enrico Appetito.

“High-Tech”-style track-mounted lighting. Aggressively contemporary, the art is mostly abstract or Pop Art pieces in thin white or metal frames. To the Professor, it all appears vulgar, but is chic and molto alla moda, the kind of residence that might have been featured in a magazine like Domus or Abitare. At the moment of the Professor’s first (and probably only) visit, the marchesa is making last-minute adjustments and directing the hanging of a canvas clearly meant to evoke one of Mark Rothko’s color field paintings. As it is put into place, the marchesa declares, “It’s simply awful! It makes me vomit!” and her daughter’s boyfriend answers, “But we need some color behind the sofa.” After complaining about the high cost of that bit of color, the marchesa opines, “I think an old painting would be perfect there. I’ll go down to the Professor and ask him to lend us one of his.” As the Professor walks in, the camera swings to reveal that the demolition has created a large, open-plan space which contrasts starkly with the warren of rooms in the apartment below. “Are you revolted?” the marchesa asks. “You’ll get used to it. I let the children decide, since they’re the ones who’ll be living here. But tell me I’m right, I think an old painting would be perfect here.” Such a statement makes vividly clear the characters’ differing attitudes toward art. He collects with a passion for the objects themselves, consuming their history and attuning his space to complement them, while she sees them simply as items in a decorative scheme. Though he does not have a chance to answer, it would be impossible to imagine the Professor voluntarily parting with one of his beloved family groups. 110

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As design historian Anna Calvera has pointed out, in Conversation Piece Visconti astutely “uses decor to depict a seminal culture clash in the early 1970s. Italy’s aristocracy and haute bourgeoisie possessed different ideas of what constitutes good taste.”2 Indeed, Visconti was notorious for his painstaking attention to the details of his craft and for the meticulous care he took with the locations, decoration, and costuming of his films. Every object captured in his camera frame was there for a reason, carefully chosen to convey a desired meaning. Despite some youthful experience as a set decorator for theater and opera, he steered clear of the trompe l’oeil effects and budget-minded shortcuts that were sometimes used in set design and decoration for stage and screen. Instead, Visconti insisted on a particular expression of “realism”: bottles held real vodka, fireplaces burned actual wood, and newspapers bore the very date on which a scene took place. For Bellissima (1951), costume designer Piero Tosi, who also worked on Conversation Piece, later recalled that in order to achieve the authentic look of the working-class characters depicted in the film, he had to literally beg for clothing from the residents of a Roman apartment building; he noted that Visconti “wanted us to take the clothing off ordinary people and have the actors put them on just as they were, still warm.”3 In the case of The Leopard, Palme d’Or winner at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival, Visconti had the dressers of the bedroom set of the main character, the Prince of Salina, filled with sumptuous silk shirts; and he reportedly spent two hours one night himself stuffing a mattress in an effort to achieve the exact mixture of fullness and lumps he required. Though such efforts would hardly—if ever—register on camera, Visconti believed such material authenticity would be reflected in his actors’ performances and lend credence to the stories they, and he, were telling.4 Visconti’s savvy style sense and flair for the baroque and the many glamorous details and colorful anecdotes of his cosmopolitan life, have been chronicled in numerous biographical studies.5 Born in 1906 into one of Milan’s oldest noble families, the fourth of seven children of a duke and a wealthy pharmaceutical heiress, he grew up amidst splendor and aristocratic privilege. The family divided its time between a grand seventeenth-century palazzo in Milan and a picturesque fourteenth-century castle southeast of the city in the countryside of Piacenza. After a brief stint in the Italian cavalry, Visconti spent his twenties breeding, training, and racing horses. At the same time, he often visited Paris, where he became part of the artistic circle centered on fashion designer Coco Chanel. In 1936 he gave up horses and relocated to Paris where Chanel introduced him to the director Jean Renoir and he got his first taste of the cinema working as an uncredited assistant director on some of Renoir’s early films, including Toni (1935) and Partie de campagne (1946). At this time, Visconti also joined the Communist Party, to which he remained committed for the rest of his life. As war loomed, he returned to Italy in 1939 and turned his attention to directing in his own right. During the next four decades he created fourteen feature-length films, forty-one plays, and twenty-two operas. In the decade following his first feature film, Ossessione (1942), Visconti was lauded for his gritty explorations of contemporary Italian life which helped define the Neorealist 111

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aesthetic in Italian cinema, but he would achieve his greatest acclaim for his gorgeous historical epics. Though accused at the release of his fourth feature, Senso (1954), set in 1860s Venice, of abandoning his Neorealist vision and communist credo with such a story, the director saw nothing incongruous between his early work and the sprawling, magnificent spectacles depicting the life of the aristocracy and upper classes. Defending Senso, he stated, “I shall not abandon the line of cinematographic realism which I have followed to this day, nor lose contact with my characters just because they wear nineteenth-century costumes.”6 Of Visconti’s method, which he observed while acting as an advisor during the filming of The Leopard (1963), Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi, Duke of Palma and the adopted son of Giuseppe di Lampedusa, author of the 1958 novel on which the film was based, commented that the director believed “that without the correct ambiance you cannot have real acting . . . It [was] not a capricious idea of ‘real food’ or ‘real flowers’ or ‘real antiques.’ It was that if that environment had been a product of the men who lived in it, only a fastidious remodelling of the environment could give us back those men.”7 This belief takes on particular significance in the interiors of Visconti’s films. A 1960 Film Quarterly essay presciently asserted that “Visconti seems to have judged that the first and major element of a realist film approach is a strenuous effort to recapture from inside the reality of the historical background. His was not simply a concern with exact reconstruction of settings; it was a serious philological effort to evoke the color, the feel, the proportion of the smallest detail.”8 His New York Times obituary noted how he had been consistently praised for his achievements “with the films’ atmosphere, mise en scène, and detail” and “the rich settings” that helped make his movies “convincing . . . as if the details gave confidence to Mr. Visconti and his actors.”9 As cultural critic Richard Locke has commented, Visconti “was determined to mobilize material culture in the service of dramatic psychological and historical moral analysis.”10 Situated stylistically somewhere between Visconti’s early contemporary-set dramas and the historical epics, Conversation Piece was his first film to take place in his own time after a trio of German-subject films comprising The Damned (1969), Death in Venice (1971), and Ludwig (1973). His penultimate film,11 Conversation Piece offers a case study in his masterly approach to filmmaking and his belief that sets, costumes, and props were integral to the tales he set out to tell. Visconti had suffered a stroke during the making of Ludwig (shot in Munich and at locations throughout Bavaria) and, sidelined by his lack of mobility, was forced to give up plans to adapt Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain for the screen. His illness left him aware that he would not be able to repeat such directorial feats as the famous ball sequence in The Leopard (which runs for forty-five minutes—nearly a quarter of the film’s total length), or the Night of the Long Knives massacre in The Damned (approximately twenty minutes), or Ludwig’s glacially-paced coronation scene (fifteen minutes). When asked earlier in his career what kind of movie he would make if offered unlimited funds, Visconti drolly replied, “A story with just two characters, simple and short, all in one room.”12 Now was the time to pick up that idea. He set out, therefore, to 112

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develop a more readily manageable project, one involving only a small ensemble of actors with no location or exterior shots. Visconti’s long-time collaborator Enrico Medioli came up with the story of a lonely, old, retired professor who has isolated himself inside his Roman palazzo. All of the action would take place on just a few sets that could all be built on soundstages. The apartments in the Professor’s palazzo (situated, according to the script, near Rome’s quietly genteel Piazza Campitelli) and their interiors were the work of a platoon of mostly uncredited, but highly skilled, artisans and laborers. Visconti often worked with a favorite team over and over, and for the production design of Conversation Piece, he turned to Mario Garbuglia, with whom he had worked on film and stage projects stretching back to the 1950s, though they had not collaborated on a film since Lo Straniero (1967). Garbuglia chronicled his design work on Conversation Piece in an essay that accompanied the published edition of the film script. The designer noted that this was only the second time in his career that he had been required to create film sets entirely anew (the first being Visconti’s White Nights in 1957). The effort of devising sets to represent the two apartments and the grand staircase that connected them began in late 1973, and before the task was completed Garbuglia and his team had prepared some 800 schematic drawings, blueprints, floor plans, sections, elevations, details, and perspectives. All this work was made more difficult by the fact that the production was forced to pack up and move on two occasions, from adjacent stages at Cinecittà to one at the Dear studios and, finally, to one at the De Paolis studios. Each move required significant and costly alterations to the plans. Without going into detail about the reasons for these moves, Garbuglia noted “the difficulty of achieving the same patinas, the same spots, the same cobwebs, and the same landscapes outside the windows at totally different studios.”13 More than a straightforward record of the work done for Conversation Piece, Garbuglia’s essay celebrates “the men who work in art departments to help realize sets,” and praises “those who with only the use of their hands—building, modeling, painting— often improve our designs.”14 He hoped to educate readers about a crucial and, he feared, vanishing aspect of Italian cinema. In fact, the essay’s title, “Un Mestiere che Muore,” can be translated as “A Dying Profession,” and the whole thing reads eulogistically. As such it is worth quoting at length for the insight it offers into the state of Italian set design at the time, and by inference the challenge of achieving the level of craft that Visconti demanded for this film: The men I met at the beginning of my career as a set designer were fabulous artisans, capable of doing any work, even the most complex. But they have retired, or died, and all their experience, their culture, their trade has been lost because no one has worked to replenish this once great strength of ours . . . Where are those who worked with me on The Leopard just ten years ago? Where are those miraculous men who in 40 days in 1954 were able to create the city of Moscow for Vidor’s War and Peace? Where are the men who worked on Neapolitan Carousel and The Golden Coach? . . . Where are the painters who worked with me on White 113

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Nights . . . Who has taken their place? . . . There are still some, of course, otherwise I could not have accomplished what I did on this film, and I want to list them all. Not to thank them, that’s not what they need, but to tell the management of Cinecittà, the directors, the bosses: “Wait, give respect, dignity, and trust to these men. They alone are your—and our—true wealth.”15 In going on to list fifty-two men by name who worked on the Conversation Piece sets, Garbuglia’s lament obliquely sheds light on the specific efforts that went into creating the film’s lifelike residences. He lauds the sculptors who modeled the Baroque-style stuccowork for the walls, doorframes, and other architectural elements, and praises the painters who frescoed the ceilings, faux-finished walls and doorways, covered hundreds of meters of backdrops with panoramas of the Roman cityscape—and, of course, copied hundreds of conversation pieces to hang on the Professor’s walls. He calls out carpenters, machinists, toolmakers, upholsterers, set decorators, and in the end includes even “all those whose names I can’t remember”—marble workers, pavers, plumbers, electricians, and the studios’ parking lot attendants. “To all a handshake, and a promise to work for a better cinema,” he declares.16 (One can easily imagine Visconti, the old communist and aesthete, nodding in agreement.) In a testament to the seductive power of the designs, Caterina d’Amico, the daughter of one of the film’s co-screenwriters, claimed to “know of people who have examined the view and tried to locate the apartment. Thinking that it really existed, they tried to find it so that they could rent it. They went crazy trying to do so.”17 And, as a further aside, it is interesting to note that Visconti’s quest for authenticity in representing the milieu his characters inhabited did not stop at the ground-up construction of their physical environment. He also turned to the most appropriate purveyors of goods to clothe and furnish that life. The marchesa wears furs by Fendi and jewels from Bulgari and her lover’s rakish wardrobe was created by Yves Saint Laurent. The dinnerware was provided by the Italian porcelain company Richard Ginori, and the furnishing fabrics were sourced from Filippo Haas & Figli, the venerable Milan-based textile, curtain, and carpet purveyor that also supplied fabrics for The Leopard. The modern decor of the renovated apartment was attributed to a firm called, rather generically, Skandinaviska Kompaniet S.p.A., and in one scene wood crates stamped with that name are shown standing on a landing of the palazzo’s staircase.18 These diverse contributions are each acknowledged in the film’s credits. All of this labor and matériel were summoned in service of a story that left, and continues to leave, many viewers scratching their heads. The film is not considered one of Visconti’s best. Audiences at the time did not find the story of the peeping-tom Professor, the shrewish and pretentious nouveau-riche marchesa, and the studentrevolutionary-turned-kept-voluptuary entirely credible. Even though Italy was embroiled in partisanship and violence in the early 1970s, the film’s attempts at political relevance— referencing the 1968 protests, clashes between fascists and communists, and terrorist plots—seemed clumsy. When Visconti died in March 1976, within three sentences the author of his obituary in the New York Times noted that Conversation Piece had been “hooted and hissed” when 114

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it opened the New York Film Festival the preceding September.19 Critics for the Times and other publications had made great sport of reporting on the film’s disastrous initial reception in the United States. In reviewing its festival screening, the Times’s chief critic, Vincent Canby, called Conversation Piece “a disaster, the kind that prompts giggles from victims in the audience.”20 In a follow-up piece published a week later, Canby’s colleague Richard Eder declared that watching the film “produced the effect of slow suffocation in a secondhand furniture shop with the heat turned up.” He then went on to quote an unnamed “Lincoln Center official,” who when asked if he was embarrassed, replied “ ‘Embarrassment I can take,’ he said, [pulling] the back of his dinner jacket over his head. ‘But humiliation . . .’ ”21 Even in Italy, where it had opened the preceding December, it had received similarly dismissive, if not quite so derisive, reviews. There, it was caught up in a different kind of controversy. Journalist Natalia Aspesi recalled that because Visconti—the famously aristocratic communist, who was often referred to as “the red count”—had accepted funding from the right-wing publisher, Edilio Rusconi, many people refused to see the film in protest.22 The version that made its US festival debut in 1975 was presented in English, and many observers blamed the initially scathing responses by people who saw it in New York on the awkwardly dubbed dialogue. At the time of its commercial release in the United States two years later, Conversation Piece was presented in Italian with English subtitles and the linguistic distance did seem to help it go down a little better with audiences, though Canby still deemed it “a disaster.”23 So, just who was the mysterious Professor at the heart of this idiosyncratic story? From the beginning, he was identified by journalists and devotees of the film with Mario Praz, whose survey of conversation pieces, they claimed, inspired the film—or at the very least gave it its title. Although Medioli, who in addition to being co-screenwriter also received credit for the film’s story, never explicitly mentioned Praz in a 1975 essay on the film, several writers have speculated that he lit on the conceit of an old collector after reading Praz’s book. This belief has been repeated for the past four decades. 24 The claim is given further credence by the fact that Medioli’s co-screenwriter, Suso Cecchi d’Amico, who had worked off and on with Visconti since 1945, knew Praz well. Her father, the writer Emilio Cecchi, was a long-time friend of the scholar-collector, and she confirmed that “the character’s profession and surroundings, and traits of his personality, were borrowed from Praz.”25 The sources may have been Praz’s book on conversation pieces and/or his eccentric autobiography, The House of Life. That book was organized as a tour of the rooms of his home and narrated his life story in explicit relation to his carefully collected and curated possessions. Praz had long been a collector of neoclassical furniture and objects as well as conversation pieces and other artworks of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and there are strong parallels between the romantic and nostalgic ambience of Praz’s Roman home and the Professor’s apartment in the film. In fact, a painting of Praz sitting at his desk could easily be mistaken for a depiction of a scene in the film (see Figure 5.3). 115

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Figure 5.3 Sergio de Francisco, Mario Praz in His Study at the Palazzo Ricci, 1965. Courtesy of the Polo Museale del Lazio—Casa Museo Mario Perez.

Though nervous when he first caught wind of the movie,26 Praz eventually seemed to enjoy being taken as the inspiration for this character and would often tell people that the film was based on his life. He even addressed the long-rumored connection in the next-to-last paragraph of a new chapter, “Venti anni dopo” (“Twenty Years Later”), that he wrote for the reissue of his autobiography: Starting from my Conversation Pieces (by his own confession in newspaper interviews), Luchino Visconti had a prophetic inspiration. His star was an old professor assisted by an old female domestic, evidently in allusion to my similar situation, but he also went on to imagine that a band of young and dissolute drug addicts came to live in the same building. Which is more or less what happened in the building where I live, but only after the release of the film. The film, as I could see, is respectful to my double, but perhaps exaggerates with respect to the roommates.27 Art historian Alvar González-Palacios took Praz to see the movie a week after its opening in Rome and later recalled that Praz hadn’t really enjoyed it, pointedly taking umbrage at the array of paintings on the Professor’s walls. González-Palacios remembers Praz asking, “Why did they use all those copies of famous paintings that have never belonged to one person alone? Did you notice that?” And then seeming to further blur the relationship 116

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between himself and the character on screen, Praz went on to declare, “I have authentic paintings in my house, not copies.”28 It is easy to imagine that Praz could have identified most, if not all, of the paintings that fill the background of the movie’s scenes. Indeed, the picture so lovingly appraised in the opening scene is no figment of the filmmaker’s imagination. Johann Zoffany’s John, Fourteenth Lord Willoughby de Broke, and His Family (c. 1766) depicts the subjects in the dining room of Compton Verney, the family seat in Warwickshire at the time of the house’s remodeling by Robert Adam. Praz surely would have recognized it as it was reproduced in his book in a section devoted to pictures depicting the activity of drinking tea.29 Acquired by the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles in 1996, at the time the film was made it was still in the family’s possession. In his book about conversation pieces, Praz wrote, “In the conversation piece the environment is depicted with an attention to detail no less scrupulous than we find practiced in the portrayal of the sitters, and this gives to the picture a Stimmung, an intimate feeling.”30 To express their appeal, Praz wrote that “we linger before these paintings as before the glass showcases of an aquarium.”31 Had he been more of a film aficionado, he could just as easily have written of being drawn into them as audiences are into the projected image. A connoisseur-collector himself, Praz delineated the generic conventions thoughtfully and brought hundreds of examples of these tropes together in the book: women do needlework, children play games, families sit at sumptuously laid tables or drink tea. From the intimation of interaction amongst the sitters, who never sit in isolation, it is only too easy to imagine the conversations taking place—and to infer how Praz’s visually lush book could appeal to a director with Visconti’s tastes and interest in depicting human relationships. Visconti certainly took the artists’ meticulous renderings to heart in creating the environments for his Conversation Piece; he also carefully arranged his flesh-and-blood characters in scenes that echo those in the paintings. In addition to the situations conversation pieces suggested, the paintings were important elements of the sets as objects in their own right, and as such seem to have further informed the director’s vision. New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael commented that, like the artworks, “the film itself is small-scale, intimate, and dark, as if under layers of varnish.”32 And, in another visual analogy with the framed portraits massed on the walls of the apartment, mute but still exerting a powerful pull, Visconti relies heavily on the frame-within-frame technique in this film. The technique, in which an object, detail, or action is situated within an internal foreground framing device such as a doorway in order to draw attention to and emphasize it, is used often to melodramatically underscore the Professor’s voyeuristic behavior—as, for example, when he watches the marchesa and the gigolo furtively embrace at the end of an enfilade of doorways. As befits his saturnine nature, the Professor respects the “frames” that delimit his life, while the other characters are constantly demolishing those boundaries33 (in the end, quite literally, when an explosion kills the gigolo and destroys much of the upstairs apartment). After the new tenants move in, the Professor observes and studies them as if they are figures in one of his paintings, but he ends up being drawn into the storyline 117

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himself. And just as conversation pieces are often filled with symbols conveying messages about the relationships depicted within them, in Conversation Piece the paintings themselves serve as symbols, embodiments of the joys and sorrows that the Professor now realizes have passed him by.34 Both fascinated and repelled by the behavior he observes and the ideas he hears, by the end of the film he concedes, “You could be my family,” as he seems to be trying to place himself within his own conversation piece.35 Both the Professor and Praz were accused of living cloistered lives and shutting themselves up in their private museums far removed from the cares of the modern world. At one point, asked by another character, “Why do you lead this sort of life?” the Professor replies, “You live among people, you’re forced to think about people instead of their works of art. To suffer for them, to become involved.” Intentionally or not, such an expression echoes similar statements in Praz’s autobiography. “Mine, alas, is one of those temperaments that are lazy in human relationships . . . It is perhaps for this reason that I have put so much of my mind into the cult of things,” he wrote.36 And later, “Things remain impressed in my memory more than people . . . people disappoint us too often.”37 On closer inspection, however, material evidence suggests that both men were actually quite engaged with the world outside their carefully-constructed homes. Although the Professor’s front door is secured with no fewer than four locks (and a door brace for good measure), many objects from outside find their way in, from works of art and records, to favorite foods and wines. In the opening sequence, representatives of the Blanchard Gallery (“as famous as Christie’s and Sotheby’s” declares a character later in the film), obviously quite familiar with his tastes as a collector, have brought the beautiful painting he inspects so carefully. His rooms are piled with books waiting to be read and there is a new recording of Mozart’s “Vorrei Spiegarvi, Oh Dio!”—“just sent from New York”—ready to be opened and played. Dozens of salumi hang from the ceiling of his well-stocked larder and at dinner he serves wine from his estate in Tuscany. This is a man who is able to summon the world to him on his terms. Praz’s autobiography took its title, The House of Life, from the ancient Egyptian term for a kind of official library-cum-museum, and to some critics of the book that signaled a lifeless, tomb-like space. (Perhaps most famously, literary critic Cyril Connolly damned it in the Sunday Times as “one of the dullest books I have ever read.”)38 Like the Professor, however, Praz drew the world to him. He existed within an international network of scholars and interacted with art and antiques dealers throughout Italy and Europe.39 In the decades after World War Two, visitors from around the world welcomed the chance to visit his famed apartment, and the guestbook he kept from 1945 until his death records more than 1,000 signatures.40 (Even though both men lived in Rome, sadly, no evidence exists that Visconti and Praz ever met.) In their formidable abilities to order their spaces to conform to their unique and personal visions, both men can be read as stand-ins for the film director and his ability to conjure worlds into material form. Because the extreme limitations imposed by Visconti’s failing health—at one point he could barely stand up to look through the camera—seem to have dictated and enhanced the story’s pronounced interior focus, it has proven tempting for many critics to read Conversation Piece as a personal manifesto. 118

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In her review, Pauline Kael did just that when she noted its “special quality, rather like an apologia pro vita sua,” and commented that as the story unfolded, she could not help but see the Professor, who “hovers on the sidelines, watching, almost forced into voyeurism” as a stand-in for the director.41 In his review of the 1977 US commercial release, which was screened in Italian, Canby noted that the distancing effect of the foreign language and subtitles made it “easier to see the film as an old man’s musings, which are sad because they are so impotent, and because the film that contains them is so vulnerable.”42 While acknowledging the obvious parallels between the Professor and Praz, Suso Cecchi d’Amico also stated that many of the deeper themes in the story had been drawn from Visconti’s own life.43 And Burt Lancaster, the actor who played the Professor, once said, “I knew the old man I was playing was him. In fact, he told me so: ‘It’s my life, I’m a very lonely man, I was never capable of love, I never had a family.’ ”44 Visconti, however, publicly denied any correspondence between his life and that of the Professor. “The character is egocentric, a man shut in on himself who, instead of forming relationships with people, collects pictures of them,” he said, adding, “He is thing-crazy. But it’s people and their problems that matter, not the things they produce. People and their problems are far more important than their works or their things. I’m not that egotistical.”45 In the view of Medioli, “There was a bit of Visconti in all his characters, from the Prince of Salina to Ludwig; he saw himself in the indignation of the fishermen of Sicily and in the rebellion of Rocco. He was present in both the good and the bad of all his characters, so what’s the point of calling out one role as autobiographical.”46 Perhaps it is better to see Conversation Piece within the larger context of Visconti’s oeuvre, in which stories of aging men caught up in a changing world recur. Particularly in his later films, a character representing an older more aristocratic way of life is often overtaken by the new. Events force these characters to come to the melancholy realization that they cannot stand in the way of the future, sadly recognizing that things are both lost and gained in facing such change. This dilemma is profoundly palpable in Conversation Piece. The Professor’s residence is a space laden with overlapping memories as depicted in three emotionally-fraught flashbacks sparked by the surroundings. But, interestingly, although the traditional decor of the Professor’s apartment at the time the film’s action takes place appears suitably ancient and appropriate to the architecture of the palazzo, these flashbacks give the lie to that perceived historical authenticity. Though the same pedimented bookcases anchor the space, the walls are covered in rose-colored damask as is the Rococo Revival furniture. Instead of objets d’art there are flower arrangements and potted ferns. Tinged with Art Nouveau flourishes, the decor of the remembered rooms seems more suited to the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century time frame of the memories. Though more subtle than the marchesa’s intervention in the flat upstairs, clearly some redecorating has taken place during the intervening decades. As film director and historian Mark Rappaport has noted, these flashbacks “suggest a dense layering of history contained in a confined space, in which the decor may change but in which the historical continuity abides.”47 (The film’s enacted memories offer another parallel with the work of Praz, whose memoir is full of scenes in which memories bubble up in relation to specific spaces and particular objects.) 119

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In the end, the film’s most telling design element might not be the paintings that gave it its evocative name, but rather the statues that line the balustrade of the palazzo’s balcony. Glimpsed only twice when the marchesa steps outside, these colossal doublefaced busts of Janus, the Roman god of transitions, show one old and one young face to either side. As Claretta Micheletti Tonetti, film historian and professor of Italian, has noted, “The radical fracture between the young and old which Visconti wanted to present in this film is paradoxically apparent in the impossible relation of two faces frozen in stone and unable to look at each other. They are united and divided at the same time.”48 Such attention to detail—commissioning and deploying mute objects that help tell the story at hand—was a hallmark of Visconti’s visual fluency. Conversation Piece serves as a case study in the ways that a filmmaker’s skilled use of material culture highlights and underscores the psychology of character and story.

Notes 1. Mario Praz, Conversation Pieces: A Survey of the Informal Group Portrait in Europe and America (University Park and London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1971), 33. 2. Anna Calvera, “Gruppo di famiglia in un interno (Conversation Piece), Luchino Visconti (1974),” Design and Culture 1, no. 2 (2009): 197. 3. Quirino Conti (ed.), Conversation Piece: A Film by Luchino Visconti, trans. Sylvia Notini (New York: Rizzoli International, 2014), 186. 4. Kate Buford, Burt Lancaster: An American Life (New York: Knopf, 2000), 225. 5. See, for example, Adam Low, Arena: The Life and Times of Count Luchino Visconti, two-part documentary, Streaming Service (BBC4, 2002, 2003); Laurence Schifano, Luchino Visconti: The Flames of Passion, trans. William S. Byron (London: William Collins Sons & Co., 1990); and Gaia Servadio, Luchino Visconti: A Biography (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981). 6. Gianfranco Poggi, “Luchino Visconti and the Italian Cinema,” Film Quarterly 13, no. 3 (Spring 1960): 18. 7. Buford, Burt Lancaster, 225. 8. Poggi, “Luchino Visconti and the Italian Cinema,” 18. 9. Steven R. Weisman, “Luchino Visconti, Film Director, 69, Dies,” New York Times, March 18, 1976, 44. 10. Richard Locke, “Grand Visconti,” Threepenny Review 136 (Winter 2014): 24. 11. The Innocent, based on a novel by Gabriele d’Annunzio, was released posthumously in 1979. 12. Enrico Medioli, “Come Aschenbach, è caduto in un inganno,” in Giorgio Treves (ed.), Gruppo di famiglia in un interno di Luchino Visconti, 11 (Bologna: Cappelli Editore, 1975). 13. Mario Garbuglia, “Un Mestiere che Muore: Considerazioni e note sulla scenografia,” in Giorgio Treves (ed.), Gruppo di famiglia in un interno di Luchino Visconti, 22–3 (Bologna: Cappelli Editore, 1975). 14. Garbuglia, “Un Mestiere che Muore,” 23. 15. Garbuglia, “Un Mestiere che Muore,” 24–5. 16. Garbuglia, “Un Mestiere che Muore,” 27.

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Mobilizing Material Culture 17. Conti, Conversation Piece, 209. 18. Unfortunately, I have been unable to turn up any information about this “Scandinavian Company” beyond the fact that, according to IMDb, it provided furnishings for another Italian film in 1973. 19. Weisman, “Luchino Visconti,” 44. 20. Vincent Canby, “Film Festival: A ‘Conversation Piece’ by Visconti,” New York Times, September 27, 1975, 21. 21. Richard Eder, “Critic’s Notebook: Puff and Circumstance at Festival,” New York Times, October 3, 1975, 40. 22. Conti, Conversation Piece, 11. 23. Vincent Canby, “Film: Vulnerable Work by Visconti,” New York Times, June 24, 1977, 56. 24. See, for example, Bacon 1998, Calvera 2009, Cattaneo 2010, Colaiacomo 2008, Conti 2014, Corbett 1995, D’Amico 1989, Fohr 1989, Hendrix 2008, Schifano 1990, and Strehlke 1984. 25. Carl Brandon Strehlke, “Mario Praz: An Interior Life,” Art & Antiques, June 1984, 28. 26. Masolino D’Amico, “Mario Praz et le cinema,” in Blaise Gautier (ed.), Mario Praz, Cahiers pour un temps, 264 (Paris: Editions du Centre Pompidou, 1989). 27. Mario Praz, “Venti anni dopo,” in La casa della vita, new edn. (Milan: Adelphi, 1979), 430. 28. Alvar González-Palacios, “Praz v. Visconti,” trans. Sylvia Notini, in Quirino Conti (ed.), Conversation Piece: A Film by Luchino Visconti, 18 (New York: Rizzoli International, 2014). 29. Praz, Conversation Pieces, 102. 30. Praz, Conversation Pieces, 56. 31. Praz, Conversation Pieces, 128. 32. Pauline Kael, “The Current Cinema: Lazarus Laughs,” New Yorker, September 29, 1975, 104. 33. Robert Fohr, “Scene di conversazione,” in Blaise Gautier (ed.), Mario Praz, Cahiers pour un temps, 150 (Paris: Editions du Centre Pompidou, 1989). 34. Fohr, “Scene di conversazione,” 150. 35. Henry Bacon, Visconti: Explorations of Beauty and Decay (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 136. 36. Mario Praz, The House of Life, trans. Angus Davidson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), 118–19. 37. Praz, The House of Life, 333. 38. Cyril Connolly, “The House of Anti-Life,” Sunday Times, September 13, 1964, 34. 39. On March 22, 1982, the day before he died, Praz reportedly asked one favorite dealer if he knew how much an object he was interested in acquiring could fetch at an upcoming auction. When told, he replied, “It’s terribly expensive. I won’t be able to buy anything else” (GonzálezPalacios 2014, 19). 40. Barbara Drudi and Patrizia Rosazza-Ferraris (eds.), Visitors Book: Ospiti a Casa Praz (Rome: Soprintendenza alla Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea/Peliti Associati, 2012). 41. Kael, “The Current Cinema: Lazarus Laughs,” 104. 42. Canby, “Film: Vulnerable Work by Visconti,” 56. 43. Strehlke, “Mario Praz: An Interior Life,” 28.

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Screen Interiors 44. Laurence Schifano, Luchino Visconti: The Flames of Passion, trans. William S. Byron (London: William Collins Sons & Co., 1990), 404. 45. Schifano, Luchino Visconti, 403. 46. Medioli, “Come Aschenbach, è caduto in un inganno,” 14. 47. Mark Rappoport, “Luchino Visconti: Conversation Piece,” essay/liner notes for Conversation Piece [English version] DVD (United States: Raro Video, 2011), 6. 48. Claretta Micheletti Tonetti, “Conversation Piece: A Film about Impossibility,” in Luchino Visconti, 173 (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1997), 173.

Bibliography Bachmann, Gideon. “Review: Conversation Piece by Luchino Visconti.” Film Quarterly 29, no. 2 (Winter 1975–6): 55–7. Bacon, Henry. Visconti: Explorations of Beauty and Decay. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Buford, Kate. Burt Lancaster: An American Life. New York: Knopf, 2000. Calvera, Anna. “Gruppo di famiglia in un interno (Conversation Piece), Luchino Visconti (1974).” Design and Culture 1, no. 2 (2009): 195–7. Canby, Vincent. “Film Festival: A ‘Conversation Piece’ by Visconti.” New York Times, September 27, 1975. Canby, Vincent. “Film: Vulnerable Work by Visconti.” New York Times, June 24, 1977. Cattaneo, Arturo. “Il vaso di Pandora in casa del Professore: Praz e Visconti.” In Piero Boitani and Patrizia Rosazza-Ferraris (eds.), Scritti in onore di Mario Praz, 83–95. Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2012. Colaiacomo, Paola. “The Rooms of Memory: The Praz Museum in Rome.” In Harald Hendrix (ed.), Writers’ Houses and the Making of Memory, 127–36. New York: Routledge, 2008. Colaiacomo, Paola. “La Dolce Vita.” In Piero Boitani and Patrizia Rosazza-Ferraris (eds.), Scritti in onore di Mario Praz, 17–29. Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2012. Connolly, Cyril. “The House of Anti-Life.” Sunday Times, September 13, 1964. Conti, Quirino (ed.). Conversation Piece: A Film by Luchino Visconti. Translated by Sylvia Notini. New York: Rizzoli International, 2014. Corbett, Patricia. “Mario Praz Museum, Rome.” Apollo 142, no. 406 (December 1995): 13–14. D’Amico, Masolino. “Mario Praz et le cinema.” In Blaise Gautier (ed.), Mario Praz, Cahiers pour un temps, 261–5. Paris: Editions du Centre Pompidou, 1989. D’Amico, Suso Cecchi. “Il Destino dei Complici.” In Giorgio Treves (ed.), Gruppo di famiglia in un interno di Luchino Visconti, 17–18. Bologna: Cappelli Editore, 1975. De Gaetano, Roberto. “Gruppo di famiglia in un interno: Le Cornici del Tempo.” In Veronica Pravadelli (ed.), Il Cinema di Luchino Visconti, 295–306. Venice: Fondazione Scuola Nazionale di Cinema, 2000. De Giusti, Luciano. “Gruppo di famiglia in un interno, 1974.” In I film di Luchino Visconti, 138–44. Rome: Gremese Editore, 1985. Drudi, Barbara and Patrizia Rosazza-Ferraris (eds.). Visitors Book: Ospiti a Casa Praz. Rome: Soprintendenza all Gallery Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea/Peliti Associati, 2012. Eder, Richard. “Critic’s Notebook: Puff and Circumstance at Festival.” New York Times, October 3, 1975. Fohr, Robert. “Scene di conversazione.” In Blaise Gautier (ed.), Mario Praz, Cahiers pour un temps, 145–51. Paris: Editions du Centre Pompidou, 1989. 122

Mobilizing Material Culture Garbuglia, Mario. “Un Mestiere che Muore: Considerazioni e note sulla scenografia.” In Giorgio Treves (ed.), Gruppo di famiglia in un interno di Luchino Visconti, 21–7. Bologna: Cappelli Editore, 1975. González-Palacios, Alvar. “Praz v. Visconti.” Translated by Sylvia Notini. In Quirino Conti (ed.), Conversation Piece: A Film by Luchino Visconti, 15–19. New York: Rizzoli International, 2014. Hendrix, Harald. “Epilogue: The Appeal of Writers’ Houses.” In Writers’ Houses and the Making of Memory, 235–43. New York: Routledge, 2008. Kael, Pauline. “The Current Cinema: Lazarus Laughs.” New Yorker, September 29, 1975. Locke, Richard. “Grand Visconti.” Threepenny Review 136 (Winter 2014): 24–5. Low, Adam (dir.). Arena: The Life and Times of Count Luchino Visconti. Two-part documentary. London: BBC4, 2002, 2003. Streaming Service. Medioli, Enrico. “Come Aschenbach, è caduto in un inganno.” In Giorgio Treves (ed.), Gruppo di famiglia in un interno di Luchino Visconti, 11–14. Bologna: Cappelli Editore, 1975. Poggi, Gianfranco. “Luchino Visconti and the Italian Cinema.” Film Quarterly 13, no. 3 (Spring 1960): 11–22. Praz, Mario. “An Empire Flat in a Roman Palace.” Decoration, June 1937. Praz, Mario. The House of Life. Translated by Angus Davidson. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964. Praz, Mario. Conversation Pieces: A Survey of the Informal Group Portrait in Europe and America. University Park and London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1971. Praz, Mario. “Venti anni dopo.” In La casa della vita, new edition, 420–31. Milan: Adelphi, 1979. Rappaport, Mark. “Luchino Visconti: Conversation Piece.” Essay/Liner Notes in Conversation Piece [English version]. United States: Raro Video, 2012. DVD. Sanzio, Alain and Paul-Louis Thirard. “Violence et Passion (Gruppo di famiglia in un interno) 1974.” In Luchino Visconti Cineaste, 131–8. Paris: Editions Persona, 1984. Schifano, Laurence. Luchino Visconti: The Flames of Passion. Translated by William S. Byron. London: William Collins Sons & Co., 1990. Servadio, Gaia. Luchino Visconti: A Biography. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981. Stirling, Monica. A Screen of Time: A Study of Luchino Visconti. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979. Strehlke, Carl Brandon. “Mario Praz: An Interior Life.” Art & Antiques, June 1984. Tonetti, Claretta Micheletti. “Conversation Piece: A Film about Impossibility.” In Luchino Visconti, 169–79. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1997. Treves, Giorgio (ed.). Gruppo di famiglia in un interno di Luchino Visconti. Bologna: Cappelli Editore, 1975. Visconti, Luchino. Conversation Piece [English version]. Written by Suso Cecchi d’Amico, Enrico Medioli, and Luchino Visconti. United States: Raro Video, 2011 (Original release 1975). DVD. Visconti, Luchino. Conversation Piece [Italian version with English subtitles]. Written by Suso Cecchi d’Amico, Enrico Medioli, and Luchino Visconti. United States: Raro Video, 2011 (Original release 1977). iTunes Streaming Service. Weisman, Steven R. “Luchino Visconti, Film Director, 69, Dies.” New York Times, March 18, 1976.

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CHAPTER 6 FROM SEX TO NARCISSISM: UNDERSTANDING MINIMALIST INTERIORS IN NEW YORK FILMS OF THE 1970s Timothy M. Rohan

The dangerous, graffiti-scrawled streets of New York provided the harrowing settings for some of the most famous Hollywood films about urban alienation from the late 1960s and the 1970s, such as Midnight Cowboy (1969, John Schlesinger) and Taxi Driver (1976, Martin Scorsese). But filmmakers also located urban alienation and anxiety in New York residential interiors, ranging from public housing to brownstones to expansive downtown artists’ lofts. Looking beyond conventional interiors, these cinematic spaces often referenced the far from everyday efforts of Manhattan’s flourishing Modernist art and design cultures. This chapter focuses on two films, John and Mary (1969, Peter Yates) and Stardust Memories (1980, Woody Allen). Both films merit attention for their sets, though admittedly as a film per se neither one is of the caliber of Midnight Cowboy or Taxi Driver. After briefly contextualizing the two films in relationship to the emerging neoliberal city and Minimalism as an art movement, the chapter examines how the filmmakers involved employed the Minimalist interior as it had been developed by New York designers in the 1960s and 1970s in order to advance stories about sexuality and narcissism, two of the defining and related concerns of the era. John and Mary focuses on the day after a one-night stand, a topic that explored the consequences of the changing sexual mores of the late 1960s and 1970s. It unfolds almost entirely in a sparsely furnished, all-white apartment interior. The set was inspired by furniture designer Ward Bennett’s own well-known redesign of his apartment (1962) in the landmarked Dakota apartment building at 72nd and Central Park West (Henry Hardenbergh, 1884), known as the grand residence of many members of Manhattan’s artistic intelligentsia during the 1970s, such as Yoko Ono and John Lennon. Celebrated by the design and lifestyle press, Bennett’s apartment refurbishment helped establish Minimalism as the preferred interior expression for those in Manhattan’s cultural elite engaged with Modernism. By contrast, when Stardust Memories was made at the end of the 1970s, the Minimalist interior was so ubiquitous that it was considered hackneyed. Astutely picking up on this shift in design culture, Woody Allen lampooned himself and the Minimalist interior by presenting on screen an all-white apartment featuring surprising, if not shocking, photomurals which explained the self-involved, interior state of the character he played, a film director similar to himself. As Allen well knew, his creative anxieties exemplified the much-maligned narcissism of the 1970s, the “ ‘Me’ Decade.”1 Minimalist apartment 125

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sets not only explained the subjectivities of their film’s characters, but provided views into the greater evolving collective interiority of New York itself during the 1970s.

The neo-liberal city and Minimalism An infrastructural, social, political, and economic breakdown that began in the late 1960s devastated New York in the 1970s and culminated in the near bankruptcy of the city in 1975. Jobs disappeared, as manufacturing, shipping, and many businesses and corporations left the city for the suburbs and other places. Crime rose and this, accompanied by a decline in social services ranging from cleaning and policing city streets to maintaining public transport, helped create the harrowing urban environment depicted in films such as Midnight Cowboy and Taxi Driver. As the public realm faltered in the 1970s, private interests took the lead, redefining social services, transforming civic life, and affecting the building and maintenance of infrastructure.2 Politics reflected this turn towards the private as well. In the aftermath of the political protests of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the energies devoted to the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War protests were shifting to more identity-based political agendas, such as feminism and gay rights, or ones that appeared to take an apolitical stance, such as historic preservation, but which sometimes tacitly endorsed the privatization of New York. Privatization fostered government cooperation with businesses by awarding tax breaks and cutting so-called bureaucratic red tape.3 To attract the dollars of the film industry, New York Mayor John Lindsay simplified the permitting process for filming on-location in streets and public places in 1966, which is part of the reason why movies from the 1970s such as Midnight Cowboy, Rosemary’s Baby, John and Mary, and many more were filmed in New York.4 This period in New York is now seen as foundational for the establishment of global neo-liberalism, characterized by how private rather than public entities began to dominate decisions about civic matters, such as infrastructure, housing, and how public places were used.5 These circumstances also shaped the Minimalist movement in art. Starting in the mid-1960s, New York artists such as Donald Judd and Robert Morris created geometrically rigorous, three-dimensional works situated between painting and sculpture and with structural and aesthetic qualities resembling those of modern architecture and design.6 They made art out of ordinary materials used for construction and by declining industries, such as iron and zinc, and often did so in loft studios carved out of former manufacturing buildings in downtown Manhattan. Though critical of mainstream politics and culture, they inadvertently advanced neo-liberalism by gentrifying neighborhoods and creating an aesthetic that appealed to the rising new urban bourgeois.7 The art world soon moved on from Minimalism to other tendencies, but Minimalism and its methods informed related disciplines well into the 1980s. As the literary scholar Marc Botha explains, the term “Minimalism” was also used to describe related contemporary developments in music, literature, and interior architecture and design. 126

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Seeing it as a set of methods rather than a style, Botha argues that Minimalism usually intensifies and clarifies access to the real by eliminating excess information about a subject and amplifying those facts that define it.8 This broad definition can be better understood by looking at a stack sculpture by Judd, such as Untitled (1969, Albright-Knox Gallery). It consists of a series of ten identical, stacked, galvanized-iron-clad boxes whose tops are covered in a yellow or orange Plexiglas. It foregrounds geometric form in a legible, straightforward way which seems to give access to its “real” qualities. It is also considered to have an “authentic” quality because it is clad with iron, an industrial material associated with the built environment. The sculpture is untitled, just as John and Mary in John and Mary are untitled to each other until the end of the film when they reveal their names to one another. Works of art from many different eras have been untitled, but namelessness is a strategy particularly favored by Minimalism, which seeks to obviate the kind of obvious or trite interpretations of its works that titles can sometimes suggest, such as simplistic, biographical analysis. This paring away of distracting titles or names in a work of art allows the viewer to concentrate on the primary aspects of the piece. Similarly, the Minimalist interior isolates structural elements, emphasizes their abstract qualities, and foregrounds objects, throwing them into sharp relief so that their defining qualities are revealed, making for what seems like an objective truth. Minimalist art can shape intense subjective responses as well. The tinted Plexiglas tops of Judd’s stacked boxes can engage viewers optically. Illusionistic, they suggest a seemingly deep space or interior within the box, a threshold between the real world and an interior one, fostering a self-awareness that can turn to excessive self-regard, like Narcissus looking into the reflective pool.9 Often used simply as an adjective today, almost any all-white interior with sparse furnishings is called Minimalist and little attention has been paid to how such interiors developed out of a set of related strategies pursued across the humanities from art to music in the late 1960s. The Minimalist interior can be better understood by looking at the sets of Yates’s and Allen’s respective films in light of the characteristics of Minimalist art outlined above, especially namelessness and those strategies that contrasted objectivity and subjectivity.

John and Mary Though it describes an absence, namelessness is powerfully present in John and Mary. The film follows the developing relationship between a young man and woman who pick each other up at a bar, spend the night together at his apartment, and in the morning realize that they do not know each other’s names. Indeed, they do not tell each other their names until the final scene. They learn about one another during the course of a long day, asking questions in an apparently objective way. They almost never leave John’s Minimalist apartment except to mentally retreat into memories and fantasies—this is the subjective aspect of the film. For contemporary filmgoers, the two main characters’ namelessness exemplified the radical and disturbing anonymity of the new “sexual 127

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liberation” of the late 1960s. “This is not your mother’s love story!” proclaimed 20th Century-Fox’s posters for John and Mary. But the namelessness of John and Mary was also a Minimalist strategy. Like a Minimalist work of art, they were “untitled” to one another. Any fact they gleaned about each other therefore took on a greater significance than usual. The understated drama unfolds in a Minimalist apartment whose interior architecture throws them into high relief, highlighting both basic facts about them and their uncanny anonymity. John’s and Mary’s namelessness was somewhat ironic since the leads were performed by two famous actors whose names had recently lit up movie marquees advertising their acclaimed films set in Manhattan. Dustin Hoffman played John. He had just appeared in Midnight Cowboy, a gritty drama about street hustlers. Mia Farrow played Mary. She had recently starred in the horror film Rosemary’s Baby (1968, Roman Polanski). Retaining two Britons already working on adapting the British writer Mervyn Jones’s novel John and Mary as a film, 20th Century-Fox studio hired Peter Yates to direct and John Mortimer to write the screenplay. Both were skilled craftsmen adept at making popular entertainment.10 In order to make the film more attractive to North American audiences, the studio moved the story from London to New York and dispatched the director and writer to the city for several weeks in early 1969 to absorb its culture. The New York Times followed Yates as he scouted the city for locations and immersed himself in its singles bars and neighborhoods to give it local color.11 Neither director nor screenwriter had a direct engagement with Minimalist art, but they had arrived in New York just as the “Minimalist look” had crested and gone mainstream, and had become ubiquitous in fields from art to music to fashion.12 Yates and Mortimer absorbed Minimalism’s methods and aesthetics, which encouraged them to employ compelling narrative devices and to create a set that was far more memorable than the movie itself. For his film, Yates chose as a model for the apartment one whose interior architecture could help advance the plot and produce the protagonist’s identities. It was an important one that had established the Minimalist approach for interiors in New York, namely furniture designer Ward Bennett’s above-mentioned apartment in the Dakota building on Central Park West. Coincidentally, Farrow’s character in Rosemary’s Baby had inhabited an apartment in the building crucial to the film’s plot. Yates probably chose Bennett’s apartment as the basis for his film’s set in consultation with a New York-based film crew familiar with the city’s most interesting interiors and latest design trends. The experienced crew included production designer John Robert Lloyd and set decorator Philip Smith, who had worked on Midnight Cowboy. The filmmakers replicated Bennett’s apartment as a full-scale set in the Biograph Studios in the Bronx. Long before it became a standard approach, Bennett had in 1962 unified a series of maids’ rooms in the Dakota’s attics by knocking down walls and painting all the walls and ceiling beams white, thus highlighting their particular qualities and emphasizing the unusual sculptural qualities of rooms defined by dormer windows, sloping roofs, and chimney flues (see Figure 6.1). The abstract sculptural qualities of these shaped interior spaces formally resembled the geometry of works that would soon define Minimalist art, 128

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Figure 6.1 Ward Bennett sits before a shelf that displayed a changing array of objects from his art collection in his Minimalist Dakota apartment (1963). Photo by Philip Harrington/Alamy Stock Photo. such as Robert Morris’s Untitled (L Beams) (1965, Whitney Museum of Art). Bennett’s apartment consisted of a main room for living and dining lit by a large sloping window, like ones found in artists’ studios. Austere and quite small, it also featured a galley kitchen, a bedroom, bathroom, and a studio work space in a turret reached by an iron spiral stair, the twisting form of which was a sculpture in itself. Bennett kept furnishings unconventionally sparse, using the space to test out his own furniture designs. Widely published in the design magazines and popular press, editors and design cognoscenti acclaimed Bennett and his apartment for demonstrating how interior design could become more like contemporary art and architecture and thus be taken just as seriously.13 But rather than claiming Minimalist art as a precedent, Bennett himself said that his approach was intended to be a contemplative one inspired by Zen philosophy, Lao Tzu, Whitman, Thoreau, and Montaigne’s essays which imparted simple yet profound moral lessons about how to improve one’s life.14 Bennett contributed to the widespread characterization of Minimalism as contemplative and calming. Also a designer of interiors, Bennett said his clients hired him because they were inspired by the way he lived, rather than his aesthetics. Bennett boasted, “What I’m most successful at is living the way I do. I really mean that. I design interiors, and furniture, and flatware, and so forth. But I think the way I live is maybe the most meaningful.”15 Bennett was at the forefront of those Manhattan interior designers and architects who saw the residential interior as a producer of a new type of urban lifestyle which thoughtfully but sparingly 129

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reworked the existing materials and spaces of the city into places that would highlight aspects of the occupant’s personality without resorting to overly obvious portraiture. Bennett’s employee and successor as the most thoughtful advocate of the Minimalist interior, Joe D’Urso, explained this ethos best when he said, “Most interior design today is based on a kind of fake individuality in which the designer seeks to ‘interpret’ his client’s personality . . . I try to create firm, clear backgrounds for my clients. They are then responsible for giving them life.”16 Bennett also provided a model in part for the character of John in the film, who was a furniture designer like Bennett. John resembled Bennett in a few other ways. He was meticulous, just like Bennett, to the point of being fussy about the furnishings and objects in his home, including his food. Those furnishings and objects helped shape John’s lifestyle, which was almost as determined as Bennett’s; indeed, consumer choices largely defined it. To Mary’s puzzlement, John buys organic eggs, a preference anticipating twenty-first century consumer choices that would today be seen as a sign of virtue, rather than fussiness. The eggs turn out to be an important metaphor for the story. But Bennett was also inappropriate as a model for John because he was middle-aged, not to mention grey-haired, bearded, and homosexual. In contrast, John was a young, clean cut, heterosexual man, a role Hoffman was encouraged to take to counterbalance his “repellent” and possibly gay street hustler character from Midnight Cowboy released earlier in 1969.17 Non-traditional sexuality might have been John and Mary’s main attraction for audiences, but it was of the heteronormative kind. The filmmakers were cautious about attaching stereotypical signifiers of homosexuality to John. The character’s skill in cooking concerned Hoffman, who told the screenwriter and director that in the United States only “faggots” enjoyed cooking. In order to get Hoffman to take the role, Yates and Mortimer worked hard to convince Hoffman that some men could make a soufflé without sacrificing their heterosexuality.18 Curiously enough, Yates did not acknowledge Bennett’s apartment as the model for John’s apartment. Bennett himself never acknowledged the film; nor did any publication. Unnamed, Bennett himself constitutes another powerful if puzzling absence in a film with many of them. Namelessness was a noticeable aspect of the film, infuriating the film critic Roger Ebert, who found the obliqueness of John and Mary pretentious and unrealistic.19 But namelessness and obliqueness are strategies that subtly enrich John and Mary as is apparent in the film’s beautiful opening scenes. Following Minimalist practices of isolating aspects of a subject, the camera focuses intently upon John and Mary in bed as they emerge from darkness the morning after their one-night stand. The camera makes them almost hyper-real. Unclothed, their bodies and personalities emerge like sculptures in relief against the Minimalist set as they awaken, realize their situation, separate, and move warily around the rooms, framed by apertures and openings almost identical to those in Bennett’s apartment. Though the characters are dislocated by each other’s presence, these nearly wordless scenes have a sense of wonder about them, suggesting that the Minimalist apartment is a place for discovery. Carefully selected objects in the apartment reveal John to Mary. She closely examines the art and books arranged along a long white shelf in John’s living room. The 130

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shelf was directly modeled upon a shelf in Bennett’s apartment, where he displayed his old master and Modernist drawings. Because she works in an art gallery specializing in “primitive art,” Mary is used to observing art and making deductions about the people engaged with it, like a detective, or an art historian. As Walter Benjamin explained, it is quintessentially modern to interpret objects and interiors in order to understand a person.20 More and more objects that provide clues about John appear as the movie unfolds until the interior completes the picture of an apartment inhabited by a young New Yorker aware of new aesthetic tendencies. John’s shelf displays Modernist works of art typical of the era such as sculptures by unknown artists in Lucite or Plexiglas (materials much favored at the time by Minimalists) and a print possibly by former Bauhausler Josef Albers, whose art was foundational for Minimalism (see Figure 6.2).21 Signaling that this is a Minimalist realm, the print appears in many scenes above a shoulder or in the corner.22 For those viewers who do not recognize that the print is by Albers, its regular, boxlike gray forms immediately tell them that John likes art, objects, and spaces that are orderly, suggesting before they fully learn about his fussiness that he might have a controlling personality, or is someone who wants others in his life to be as orderly as he. In order to establish John’s typical but progressive literary tastes, the camera zooms in upon books on his shelf: Norman Mailer’s Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968) and Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968). Trained as a Method actor, Hoffman had talked at length with Mortimer and Yates about John’s preferences in books and music to help him establish the character’s identity.23 On the whole, the New York Times critic Vincent Canby found the apartment and its contents more interesting than the character Hoffman played. Canby commented that “Hoffman, who is so fine in ‘Midnight Cowboy,’ is here upstaged by stage scenery.”24

Figure 6.2 Mary (Mia Farrow) learns about John (Dustin Hoffman) from the objects displayed on the shelf in his apartment in John and Mary (1969, directed by Peter Yates). © 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved. 131

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Who possesses objects and has the rights to them matters greatly in this film. As several flashbacks tell us, these subjects first arise when John and Mary picked each other up the previous night in a crowded singles bar. John meets Mary when he butts into a conversation in which she and another young man are expressing different views about an unnamed film (again an untitled work), but which is obviously Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend (1968). John’s and Mary’s awareness of this recent French “New Wave” movie signals that they each are, or aspire to be, able to understand a film that few intellectuals or artists professed to understand at that time. More middlebrow than highbrow in her tastes, Mary admits to John that she doesn’t really like Weekend, but wanted to defend it against someone who dismissed it unthinkingly. But the filmmakers may have had more ambitious motives here rather than simply establishing aspects of John’s and Mary’s characters. Weekend is about things and who owns them, and so is John and Mary. The French film follows a young couple whose greed for things turns violent. Told from Godard’s Marxist perspective, it is a critique of consumerism and materialism. John and Mary also concerns these subjects, as the two lead characters suggest in the bar scene. Mary tells Dean, the young man who criticizes Weekend, that he should not take its violence literally. She says, “It’s meant to be symbolic, Dean.” John suddenly appears and says the word “symbolic” in unison with her, thus establishing that they are meant for one another and that this is a film in which they themselves are symbols. To further defend Mary from Dean and win her over, John says of Weekend, “I thought it was totally symbolic of our materialistic age.” Those words are the movie’s true thesis. John and Mary is itself a story “symbolic of our materialistic age.” The symbolic importance of objects is borne out the next day during John’s and Mary’s first awkward breakfast together at the apartment; this is done through differences over eggs, a consistent symbol and metaphor in the film. Mary finds John’s preference for organic eggs fussy and pretentious. She buys whatever eggs are available. Her casual ways intrigue but also disturb John, causing him to inquire about how many men she has slept with. Though the film was billed as questioning established sexual mores, it ultimately reinforced them, as is apparent in the greater attention paid to Mary’s sexual activities, rather than John’s. And yet Mary is also given some agency. Mary angrily tells John that he is trying to establish whether she is a “nice girl” or a “whore” with his questions. He says he was only wondering if he had any “rights” to her after having sex with her. “Rights” implies possession and Mary becomes angrier, realizing that she is being objectified, or treated by John just like one more of the carefully curated objects in his meticulous apartment. With words that could be attributed to both a flower child and a Minimalist, Mary then admonishes John for trying to own her. For Mary, possessions limit freedom. As we learn from flashbacks, Mary owns almost nothing and shares an apartment and her life with three other young women similar to her. Theirs is an easygoing communal existence in a messy brownstone apartment far different from John’s pristine environs. Living spaces consistently establish character in this film. With her passionate speech to John, Mary briefly creates a moment that seems to open up myriad possibilities for both of them. The viewer wonders if the all-white spaces of John’s apartment where the unfairness 132

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of the old and new sexual mores are thrown into relief against one another could become a utopia, an ideal place where a truly equable relationship might emerge. All day, the lovers remain in the apartment and talk, triggering memories about previous lovers and fantasies about the possibilities for their lives together. Like in a Judd sculpture where the objective exterior and the subjective interior are in play with one another, the film alternates between the “real” space of the apartment and forays into these more fantastic scenes. They deliberately open up a film that would otherwise be like a stage play because it all unfolds on one apartment set. Accompanied by narration, these sequences are truly interior monologues because they often unfold in other alternative apartments, such as Mary’s. John’s and Mary’s respective musings also bring the protest politics of the late 1960s into the film. Showing that she exists in the public realm, Mary’s memories and fantasies establish her as socially engaged and active in the anti-Vietnam War movement. She marches in protests and is having an affair with a married politician. John’s flashbacks also concern politics, but they show why he has retreated from them and into the private controlled realm of his apartment. They depict how his mother’s labor union activities had deprived him of her attentions during his childhood. For this very personal reason, John avoids political activism, despite his reading Mailer. He fears that Mary’s political activities will also take her away from him. As a rueful joke he makes about not wanting to sleep with his mother demonstrates, John knows that he inhabits a very Freudian interior landscape. John overcomes his anxieties about Mary leaving him with a fantasy or dream set at a downtown loft party that recalls the well-known loft party in Midnight Cowboy. So interrelated or intertextual are their New York films of 1968 and 1969 that both Hoffman and Farrow must have felt that they were making one long movie about the city with several related chapters, as opposed to several distinct ones. In both John and Mary and Midnight Cowboy, loft party scenes feature projected films and slides, an experimental use of images for the interior that began in the 1960s but which extended well into the 1970s. And in both films, these images (some depicting eroticized women) flicker across Hoffman’s face and body, briefly making him into a movie screen and creating a “meta” moment that suggests that actors are blank screens onto which characters are projected by filmmakers and their equipment. The party scene introduces the viewer to another type of New York residential space frequently identified with the city and its creative types, especially in Hollywood films over the next decade: the loft. This space also helps advance the film’s plot. The dangerously amorphous loft full of menacing, fashionable revelers is the opposite of John’s artfully shaped and planned apartment. Like at most New York parties then and now, conversation at the party concerns apartments, but this discussion is about more than real estate. In John’s dream fantasy, he imagines that a former girlfriend named Ruth (Sunny Griffin) tells him that his perfectly controlled apartment helps him keep girlfriends out of his space and thus avoid commitment. Ruth (who had once tried living with him) compares his apartment to an egg box, thus introducing a return to the egg metaphor. At that moment, John realizes that his apartment reflects his interior self. Though Minimalists from Judd to D’Urso wanted to avoid making works that expressed subjectivity 133

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or biography too easily, popularizers of the “Minimalist look,” including Yates and Mortimer, turned to its methods to express and dramatize just such biographical revelations. In the film, John realizes that his creativity has rendered the functional beautiful in a self-involved way, excluding others and making an interior that is only about himself and his need for control and order, thus turning it into a narcissistic space. As we shall see, the revelation of the 1970s was that the liberated ways of the previous decade had set the stage for narcissism. Indeed, this self-analysis which John imagines Ruth delivering to him is a turning point for John. After this sequence, he decides to commit to Mary as a life partner. Though the dream advances the plot, it is all too neat, demonstrating how Yates’s and Mortimer’s expertise at deploying symbols and sets could become trite. Also at this point, the film John and Mary leaves behind its art-house ambitions and reverts to Hollywood formula. The pace becomes frantic. These shifts puzzled critics who were not sure if it was a drama, romantic comedy, art film, or a mainstream Hollywood feature film. John and Mary ends with the lovers returning to the apartment and the bed where they were first found. They at last ask each other their names and with that exchange the audience knows that a more conventional relationship has begun. They will settle in this apartment together, but it seems unlikely that it will become a place where a more equitable or unconventional relationship will develop. Before they repair to bed, Mary is seen preparing dinner, suggesting that she will take over as cook from John, thus assuming the traditional gender normative female role of cook and homemaker. Ultimately, John and Mary is a conventional love story, but within the film other narrative threads emerge that point to new tendencies, both social and aesthetic, worth noting. The Minimalist interior advances the story, but also shows how Minimalism could be normalized for emerging urban tastes. In John and Mary, the apartment of the queer interior designer Ward Bennett becomes the heteronormative domestic space of a furniture designer and an art gallery worker, members of the elite creative classes who will help gentrify the city and turn it into the crucible of neo-liberalism. The film seems to anticipate the future direction of this urban culture. For instance, rather than political action, the protest sequences really concern political disenchantment and thus anticipate the apolitical turn taken by upper-middle-class young urbanites, such as John, in New York during the 1970s. They turned inwards and away from the public realm and towards the private one and the culture of the self. John’s and Mary’s lives together over the next decade in the city as members of this emerging new urban bourgeois class can be imagined by turning to the films of Woody Allen.

Stardust Memories In his popular and critically acclaimed films Annie Hall (1977) and Manhattan (1979), Woody Allan depicted an outwardly peaceful New York City of idyllic streets with little of the crime and decay found in other contemporary films about the city of that era, such as Taxi Driver. In Allen’s films, alienation and anxiety are instead for the most part internalized as well as located in his apartment interiors. 134

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Allen was highly attuned to shifts in New York’s design culture. His film Interiors (1978) had depicted how cultural workers resembling the two characters in John and Mary had adopted and domesticated Minimalism. The title of this film itself shows how preoccupied New York had become with interiors during the 1970s. In addition to the professional design journals, the New York Times, New York Magazine, and other mainstream publications devoted many pages to residential interiors, obsessively interpreting their every detail as keys to understanding the evolving lifestyles of Manhattan’s trendier inhabitants. Picking up on all of this, Allen develops characters in Interiors not only through the sets but also by making Eve, the mother and wife (played by Geraldine Page) in whose beach house much of the film takes place, an interior designer in New York City. Her house’s Minimalist interiors reflect her desperate attempts to control her family—a husband and three adult daughters. Emphasizing the spare Minimalism on screen, film critic Pauline Kael remarked that “The movie, with its spotless beaches, is as clean and bare as Geraldine Page’s perfect house: you could eat off of any image.”25 Allen’s depiction of Minimalism was not a celebration but rather a critique of it that reflected a larger reaction against Minimalism that had arisen by the late 1970s, a shift that again originated in the art world. Advanced by artists such as Eva Hesse, the post-Minimalist art movement of the 1970s criticized Minimalism for being selfcontained and self-involved. Beyond the art world and Manhattan, the historian and social commentator Christopher Lasch also warned about a pervasive and dangerously self-involved and reductive Minimalism, linking the contemporary fascination with it and other trends to the huge rise in consumerism after World War Two, celebrity culture, and the narcissism of the “ ‘Me’ decade” in his bestselling critique of US society, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (1978).26 Of course, the most narcissistic of all would be the rising members of the bourgeois who would soon be known as Yuppies (Young Urban Professionals). This critique of Minimalism and narcissism played out in interiors as well. In 1979, New York Magazine interviewed designers who predicted the end of the Minimalist interior in the coming decade because it had become clichéd.27 Rather than challenge these critiques of people like himself, the ever-self-reflexive Allen made them the subject, either wholly or in part, for a series of “art films” set in New York, including Stardust Memories (1980). In this film, which he wrote and directed, Allen takes this critique one step further by setting key scenes within the Minimalist apartment of an egotistical film director, Sandy Bates, played by himself. The film is a complex meta-narrative wherein Allen wryly comments upon his well-known and much-criticized narcissism—though he denied that the film was autobiographical.28 As in John and Mary, the Minimalist apartment serves as a threshold or pivot between the real-time action scenes and a series of fantasies and flashbacks about Bates’s relationships with several different women. Allen borrowed this structural framework from Federico Fellini’s film 8 ½ (1963), openly referencing its sequences depicting an egotistical film director’s fantasies about the various women in his life. 135

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More schematic and amorphous than the one in John and Mary, the Stardust Memories apartment caricatured a Minimalist interior when it was both at its most popular and also under attack for being hackneyed. Here, “Minimalism” is no longer a method but has become simply an adjective, used to describe a by-then familiar stylistic approach. Obviously expensive, the apartment signified Bates’s success, his ascent up the class ladder beyond his middle-class Brooklyn origins to the cultural elite. Demonstrating that he has achieved advanced Manhattan “good taste,” its Minimalism contrasts with the garishly wallpapered suburban house of Bates’s sister, Debbie. That house’s interiors signify that she is “intensely middle class,” which is how Bates witheringly characterizes her politics, but of course he also means her aesthetics. Here, interiors and objects function as class markers much as Bourdieu has suggested.29 But the Minimalist interior by itself could not fully explicate Bates’s interior state, so Allen turns to several memorable photomurals to help accomplish that task. Elaborating on experiments with projected images and films in interior spaces, architects and designers had used the photomural to provide startling contrasts within Minimalist Modernist interiors, as is evident in the work of New York architects like Charles Gwathmey and Alan Buchsbaum. The Stardust Memories film crew (Mel Bourne was production designer, Steven Jordan set designer, and Michael Molly art director) employed the photomural more provocatively to project Bates’s moods and thoughts onto the white walls of his apartment. Knowledgeable about contemporary developments in art, design, and architecture, the film’s cinematographer Gordon Willis may have been instrumental in creating the Minimalist apartment set and its photomurals. He had also worked on Allen’s Interiors.30 In Stardust Memories, the photomurals activate the very surfaces of the apartment and play important roles in the narrative. The photomurals change from scene to scene, making the apartment’s white walls seem like movie screens. A form of exegesis, the photomurals also resemble cartoon thought bubbles, placed next to Bates’s head to elaborate upon the dialogue. For instance, when Bates is having a joyful moment with his girlfriend Dorrie (played by Charlotte Rampling), a photomural appears behind their heads depicting Groucho Marx mugging with a dark-haired actress (Marion Bell) somewhat resembling Rampling, in a room comically overstuffed with a heterogenous assortment of people from a manicurist to a society lady—a deliberate foil to the Minimalist interior’s relative emptiness. The image is, of course, a film still from the wellknown, overcrowded ocean liner cabin scene in the Marx Brothers’ film A Night at the Opera (1935, Sam Wood and Edmund Goulding). Just as moments of wonder and possibility opened up in John and Mary, here fun briefly seems possible in this all-white interior that suddenly recalls the “all-white” Hollywood Art Moderne (often referred to as “Art Deco,” a term coined in the 1960s) sets of a 1930s screwball comedy. But there are more moments of anxiety than fun in Stardust Memories. Bates feels beleaguered most of the time. The Internal Revenue Service is investigating his tax returns and movie studio executives are demanding that his new film be given a happier ending. Most distressingly, critics and fans alike repeatedly suggest that he should abandon dramas and return to the comedies that made him 136

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famous. But Bates doesn’t want to make funny movies anymore. He says, “I look around the world, and all I see is human suffering.” Bates literally feels like he has a gun held to his head and this is depicted pictorially in the most literal fashion possible in a scene that can jar the viewer. Materializing Bates’s feelings of being under attack, the photomural that appears behind his head is Eddie Adams’s photograph of an execution in Vietnam, General Nguyễn Ngo.c Loan Executing Nguyễn Văn Lém in Saigon, 1 February 1968 (see Figure 6.3). One of the most infamous and horrific of the published images from the Vietnam War, it helped turn popular opinion against the United States’ role in the conflict and lingered in the collective consciousness long after the war’s conclusion in 1975. Like the troubled vacuum within the open white spaces of the apartment, the years after the war were a troubled period of doubts, dislocation, and post-traumatic distress, both socially and at the level of the individual returning soldiers, many of whom were seriously mentally and physically maimed. In Allen’s films, the reckoning with the war takes place inside rather than outside, as it does in Martin Scorsese’s landmark film, Taxi Driver (1976), which followed the alienated wanderings of a Vietnam veteran through the streets of New York, which was itself sliding into crime-ridden chaos. Allen shows us this enormously charged image very quickly; it was only five years after the end of the war. It is difficult to know what to think of the photograph’s sudden appearance in this apparently apolitical context. Is it a sight-gag in deliberately bad taste,

Figure 6.3 Sandy Bates (Woody Allen) discusses his problems before a photomural of Eddie Adams’s General Nguyễn Ngo.c Loan Executing Nguyễn Văn Lém in Saigon, 1 February 1968 in Stardust Memories (1980, directed by Woody Allen). Photo by Picturelux/The Hollywood Archive/ Alamy Stock Photo. 137

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a marker of political anxiety, or both? Though Bates claims that he wants to acknowledge the world’s horrors in his films, politics bewilders him. Later in the film, he expresses amazement when a lover (Marie-Christine Barrault) reveals that she participated in the Paris student uprisings of 1968. Bates cannot comprehend her political commitment. He is as “intensely middle class” as his sister Debbie. Like John in John and Mary, he has withdrawn from the public realm into the private interiority of his all-white apartment to entirely absorb himself in his own creativity, which may have soured into narcissism or worse. Disturbingly, some of the other dialogue, projected images, and photomurals concern sexual crimes, causing today’s viewer to remember allegations of sexual misconduct made against Allen years after Stardust Memories was completed.31 Again Allen vehemently denies that the film is autobiographical, but these curious moments suggest the presence of other darker stories within the film that depart from the core narrative about a movie director’s “nervous breakdown,” which is what Allen claims the movie concerns.32 This chapter has shown that there is much to learn from the study of the interiors in these two films. Despite their apparent spatial emptiness, these cinematic Minimalist interiors were packed with allusions that helped add complexity to each film, especially in terms of the emotionally fraught. The Minimalist interior functioned within each film as a way to develop characters and plots through its architecture and the presentation of specific objects or images dramatically framed by the apartment. Conversely, the sets aid in understanding how Minimalist interiors made by designers like Ward Bennett helped produce new identities and lifestyles in the emerging neo-liberal city. More broadly, the interiors examined here related to the political and economic forces transforming the city, and perhaps wider society too, from the late 1960s through to the early 1980s, and to related social concerns, such as changing sexual mores and narcissism. Though criticized by the late 1970s as self-contained to the point of being hermetic, the Minimalist interiors in John and Mary and Stardust Memories both reveal the anxieties of their times as surely as Times Square does in Taxi Driver. To truly understand New York City and the films about it made in the 1970s, we need to study films made about the city’s interiors as well as those about its buildings, streets, and environs.

Acknowledgments My thanks to Donald Albrecht for telling me about John and Mary, and to Pat Kirkham, Sarah A. Lichtman, Stephen Shellooe, Ashley Williams, Brian Shelburne, and Michael Foldy for their help with this chapter.

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Notes 1. The term was coined by Tom Wolfe in his article “The ‘Me’ Decade and the Third Great Awakening,” New York Magazine, August 23, 1972, 26–40. 2. Kim Phillips-Fein, Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2017), 1–10. 3. Phillips-Fein, Fear City, 303–16. 4. Stanley Corkin, Starring New York: Filming the Grime and the Glamour of the Long 1970s (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 6–7. 5. David Harvey, A Brief History of Neo-Liberalism (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 44–8. 6. For an introduction to Minimalist art, its concepts, and methods, see James Meyer, Minimalism: Art and Polemics in the Sixties (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 3–5. 7. Aaron Shkuda, The Lofts of Soho: Gentrification, Art, and Industry in New York, 1950–1980 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 1–11. 8. Mark Botha, A Theory of Minimalism (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2017), 1–25. 9. However, Rosalind Krauss explains that Minimalist artists like Judd denied that the optically illusionistic aspects of their works functioned “as a metaphor for that privileged (because private) psychological moment.” See Rosalind Krauss, Passages in Modern Sculpture (Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press, 1977), 258. Looking beyond the claims of the artists themselves, the subjectivity of viewers is a factor that should also be considered. One of Minimalism’s most vocal critics, Anna Chave, upholds the significance of viewers’ strong subjective engagements with Minimalist works, claiming that their negative responses challenge the hegemony of white men in the late twentieth-century art world at times. See Anna Chave, “Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power,” Arts Magazine 64, no. 5 (January 1990): 44–63. 10. Yates had directed a popular Hollywood thriller, Bullitt (1968). Mortimer was well known in Britain for his televised, autobiographical play, Voyage Round My Father (1969). 11. Vincent Canby, “Director Carefully Matching City Locations to Story,” New York Times, January 4, 1969, 30; Tom Burke, “Rosemary Has a New Baby,” New York Times, March 16, 1969, D17. 12. James Meyer explains the rise and spread of the “Minimalist look” from 1966 to 1969 by examining the appearance of Minimalist artists and their art in New York-based fashion magazines such as American Vogue. Meyer, Minimalism, 28. 13. For an example of the art world’s recognition of Bennett, see the article that Art in America commissioned short-story writer Jean Stafford to write about Bennett and his apartment: Jean Stafford, “Profile: Ward Bennett,” Art in America 54, no. 6 (November–December 1966): 44–7. 14. Barbaralee Diamonstein, Interior Design: The New Freedom (New York: Rizzoli, 1982), 19. 15. Diamonstein, Interior Design, 19. 16. Paul Carlsen, “A Minimalist’s Paradise,” Interiors 335 (October 1975): 122R. 17. Mark Rowland, “Acting His Age,” American Film, December 1, 1988, 24–5. 18. Valerie Grove, A Voyage Round John Mortimer (New York: Viking, 2007), 222–3. 19. Roger Ebert, “John and Mary,” Chicago Sun-Times, December 23, 1969, https://www. rogerebert.com/reviews/john-and-mary-1969. 20. Walter Benjamin, “Louis-Philippe, or the Interior,” in Peter Demetz (ed.), Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, 154–6 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978). 139

Screen Interiors 21. Edward Strickland, Minimalism: Origins (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993), 28–30. 22. Albers produced affordable portfolios of prints in order to make them available to young people like John and introduce them to modern, abstract art. The first portfolio sold for $50 in 1962. See Brenda Danilowitz, The Prints of Josef Albers: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1915–1976 (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 2001), 24. Other artists followed Albers’s example and by 1966 several presses produced print portfolios costing from $250 to $1,000. See Grace Glueck, “Art Notes: Putting it into Prints,” New York Times, March 6, 1966, A18. 23. Grove, A Voyage, 222–3. 24. Vincent Canby, “Screen: ‘John and Mary’ at the Sutton,” New York Times, December 15, 1969, 68. 25. Pauline Kael, “Fear of Movies,” New Yorker, September 25, 1978, 152. 26. Lasch’s other popular cultural critique was The Minimal Self: Psychic Survival in Troubled Times (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1984). 27. John Duka, “Design Directions for the Eighties,” New York Magazine, October 8, 1979, 47. 28. Woody Allen, Woody Allen on Woody Allen: In Conversation with Stig Björkman (New York: Grove Press, 1994), 121–2. 29. See Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice, with a new introduction by Tony Bennett (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1979; Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2010). 30. Author’s interview with Santo Loquasto, who designed costumes for Stardust Memories, July 21, 2018. 31. Mia Farrow, What Falls Away: A Memoir (New York: Nan A. Talese, 1997), 259–370. 32. Allen, Woody Allen, 121–2.

Bibliography Allen, Woody. Woody Allen on Woody Allen: In Conversation with Stig Björkman. New York: Grove Press, 1994. Benjamin, Walter. “Louis-Philippe, or the Interior.” Translated by Edmund Jephcott. In Peter Demetz (ed.), Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, 154–6. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978. Bennett, Ward. Interview, February 13, 1973. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. For the reprinted transcript, see Elizabeth Beer and Brian Janusiak, Ward Bennett. London and New York: Phaidon Press, 2017. Botha, Walter. A Theory of Minimalism. London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2017. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice, with a new introduction by Tony Bennett. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1979; Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2010. Burke, Tom. “Rosemary Has a New Baby.” New York Times, March 16, 1969, D17. Canby, Vincent. “Director Carefully Matching City Locations to Story.” New York Times, January 4, 1969, 30. Canby, Vincent. “Screen: ‘John and Mary’ at the Sutton.” New York Times, December 15, 1969, 68. Carlsen, Paul. “A Minimalist’s Paradise.” Interiors 135 (October 1975): 120R–122R. Chave, Anna. “Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power.” Arts Magazine 64, no. 5 (January 1990): 44–63.

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From Sex to Narcissism Corkin, Stanley. Starring New York: Filming the Grime and the Glamour of the Long 1970s. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Danilowitz, Brenda. The Prints of Josef Albers: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1915–1976. New York: Hudson Hills Press, 2001. Diamonstein, Barbaralee. Interior Design: The New Freedom. New York: Rizzoli, 1982. Duka, John. “Design Directions for the Eighties.” New York Magazine, October 8, 1979, 47–9. Ebert, Roger. “John and Mary.” Chicago Sun-Times, December 23, 1969, https://www.rogerebert. com/reviews/john-and-mary-1969. Farrow, Mia. What Falls Away: A Memoir. New York: Nan A. Talese, 1997. Glueck, Grace. “Art Notes: Putting it into Prints.” New York Times, March 6, 1966, A18. Grove, Valerie. A Voyage Round John Mortimer. New York: Viking, 2007. Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neo-Liberalism. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Kael, Pauline. “Fear of Movies.” New Yorker, September 25, 1978, 137–57. Krauss, Rosalind. Passages in Modern Sculpture. Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press, 1977. Lasch, Christopher. The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. New York: Norton & Company, 1978. Lasch, Christopher. The Minimal Self: Psychic Survival in Troubled Times. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1984. Meyer, James. Minimalism: Art and Polemics in the Sixties. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004. Phillips-Fein, Kim. Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2017. Rowland, Mark. “Acting His Age.” American Film, December 1, 1988, 20–5, 60–1. Shkuda, Aaron. The Lofts of Soho: Gentrification, Art, and Industry in New York, 1950–1980. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2016. Stafford, Jean. “Profile: Ward Bennett.” Art in America 54, no. 6 (November–December 1966): 44–7. Strickland, Edward. Minimalism: Origins. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993. Wolfe, Tom. “The ‘Me’ Decade and the Third Great Awakening.” New York Magazine, August 23, 1972, 26–40.

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CHAPTER 7 “HOME FURNISHING TAKES A CUE FROM PARIS, TOO”: THE FASHION PROFESSIONAL AT WORK AND HOME IN POSTWAR HOLLYWOOD FILMS, c. 195761 Rebecca C. Tuite

During the 1950s and 1960s, a period noted for close interrelationships between fashion and interior design, a number of Hollywood films prioritized representations of women working in the fashion industry and the design of both their professional (public) and domestic (private) spaces.1 As part of Hollywood’s concerted effort to “translate into screen terms the baffling and bizarre world of high fashion,” these films presented a holistic view of the way in which professional and fashionable women were expected to extend their style beyond the sartorial, and create rich and revelatory interior spaces, thus prompting the melding of clothing and interior decoration on screen.2 This chapter focuses on three films: Designing Woman (1957, Vincente Minnelli), Funny Face (1957, Stanley Donen), and Back Street (1961, David Miller). Glamorous, luxurious, “elaborately produced, designed, costumed—with beautiful fashion show[s] to boot,” each of these films contributed to a visual and thematic understanding of what it meant to work in the fashion industry at the time and to broader notions of high style and taste in both interiors and clothing.3 In the Pygmalion-meets-Cinderella story Funny Face, Jo Stockton (played by Audrey Hepburn) is “whisked out of her dowdy Greenwich Village bookshop and into the world of high fashion.”4 Transformed from bookish intellectual to ravishing Paris model, Jo is photographed by world-renowned fashion photographer and romantic lead Dick Avery (played by Fred Astaire), and selected to appear as the ultimate “Quality Woman” by Quality magazine editor-in-chief and all-around American fashion powerhouse, Maggie Prescott (played by Kay Thompson). Designing Woman, released a few months after Funny Face, tells the story of Mike Hagen (played by Gregory Peck), “a top New York sportswriter who marries a top big-city fashion designer,” Marilla Brown (played by Lauren Bacall), and “finds himself in a world of chic and glamour in sharp contrast to the two-fisted domain of his ringside associates.”5 Released four years later, the third screen adaptation of Back Street features Rae Smith (played by Susan Hayward), an ambitious international fashion designer, who finds love with a married department store heir, Paul Saxon (played by John Gavin).6 These films featured major Hollywood stars but, as one reviewer of Back Street mused, “the true stars” were “the artisans, designers and craftsmen behind the scenes.”7 In helping to create an onscreen melding of the worlds of fashionable clothing and fashionable 143

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interiors, the costume and set design in each film reflects the suggestion of art and design historian John Potvin that “Both fashion and furniture might be conceptualized as two dialects emerging from the language of design.”8 As Henry Grace, the set decorator on Designing Woman, put it, “Our work must reflect the character the author is trying to project. Instead of words, we use color, fabric, motif. They’re our dialogue.”9 On screen, however, the plaudits go to the female fashion professionals who are represented as fluent in this twofold “design language.” Given their professional propensity for the visual, cultural, and tactile qualities of fashion, these characters are shown to possess a preternatural ability to apply or adapt their skills to interior design. This chapter explores the interrelationship of costume design and set design in the representations of fashion designer Marilla/Bacall in Designing Woman, fashion magazine editor-in-chief Maggie/Thompson in Funny Face, and fashion designer Rae/ Hayward in Back Street. The three films are placed within the context of the fashion, interior design, and film industries at the time, and analyzed with special reference to four key aspects of contemporary design discourse, namely color and color coordination, “Frenchness,” modern design, and the curated interior.

Glamour across design boundaries The 1950s and 1960s did not invent glamour or the fashion film, nor was the period the first to bring together on screen highly appealing clothing and interiors. Women stars wearing stunning clothes amidst equally stunning interiors was a hallmark of many motion pictures in the United States from the 1910s onwards, especially “women’s pictures” of the 1920s and 1930s.10 As the “fashion film” progressed into the 1950s and 1960s, however, fashion and interiors were increasingly presented as of equal importance, interconnected to one another, and often vital to character development and plot. Funny Face, Designing Woman, and Back Street are all fashion films, not least because each includes a dazzling fashion show sequence. In addition, they feature “career women” characters working as fashion editors, writers, and designers, and sustain a focus on the interiors used by these women across the boundaries of public and private space.11 Each film blurs the lines between reality and fiction through drawing parallels with and connections to the contemporary fashion industry. For example, Diana Vreeland, Harper’s Bazaar fashion editor (and later, Vogue editor-in-chief), served as the inspiration for the fictional editor, Maggie Prescott, in Funny Face, and press promotional materials and tie-in collections emphasized both fashion and interior design.12 Although of different genres—a musical, a comedy, and a melodrama, respectively— all three were considered “women’s films” aimed predominantly at female viewers and tending to feature leading ladies who, while they might offer gently “subversive” notions of professional and personal freedoms, were predominantly engaged in storylines of love, marriage, and motherhood.13 A significant purpose of women’s films was “to provide a temporary visual liberation of some sort, however small—an escape into a purely romantic love, into sexual awareness, into luxury, or into the rejection of the female 144

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role.”14 The producers and filmmakers of Funny Face, Designing Woman, and Back Street were explicit in their selection of fashion as the profession and/or industry to underpin the lavish “visual liberation” on offer.15 Fashion was big business for Hollywood, and promotional material for Designing Woman pointed out that just as the fashion industry spent approximately 25 million dollars a year “to keep the little woman happy,” so too did Hollywood. M-G-M stated that the film was “a deliberate attempt to please feminine fans—all 54 million of them” and the “bait,” according to George Wells, the film’s author and associate producer, was “based on practical masculine reasoning: ‘Give the little woman something new to wear.’ ”16 At the same time as fashion helped studios “woo women into the theater,” the films studied here also offered filmmakers an easy means of accessing luxury and glamour through fashionable interiors, and often travel too.17 As one review of Back Street noted, a fashion professional character “allows plenty of opportunity—fully exploited – for glamorous costumes and glamorous backgrounds.”18 In all three films, the destinations and interiors within which the fashion world existed were represented as exciting, aspirational, and luxurious. Interior design schemes as well as furnishings offered models for viewers to consider when thinking about their own home decorating. Henry Grace, set decorator for Designing Woman, pointed out that any viewer borrowing them for their own home could become a “designing decorator.”19 Ross Hunter, producer of the Back Street remake, had a history of producing films that prioritized both abundant fashion and “interior shots that will send the homemaker home drooling.”20 He described his approach to creating onscreen worlds of glamour in melodramatic films as “People may suffer, but they must live well while doing so.”21 Declaring that he would “add a bit of glamour to the new version” of Back Street, he substituted an international couturier character for the humble seamstress in earlier versions, prompting one reviewer to comment, “You can fairly bathe in [the film’s] glamour.”22 Former international couturier Jean Louis was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on the film and the sets by Howard Bristol were nominated for the Golden Chair award given by the home furnishings industry for film sets that were “the most outstanding in beauty, good taste and trend-setting effects.”23 At the heart of these films were three glamorous female fashion professionals with excellent taste in interior design; characters who reflected developments in the fashion and interior design industries themselves. The contemporary fashion industry was noted for offering opportunities to women; according to Jessica Daves, editor-in-chief of Vogue, it was a profession “that offers women the greatest opportunity; a profession in which no one is surprised to see a woman head a twenty five million dollar business.”24 As the US economy boomed in the 1950s, and home ownership and the production of goods for the home rose rapidly, interior design boomed too.25 “Never before have American families placed as much emphasis on fashion in the home as they do today,” announced a LIFE magazine advertorial for US carpeting company Alexander Smith in 1952.26 Indeed, the increasingly “fashionized” US interior design industry adopted the bi-annual show schedule favored by the fashion industry so that “the [textile and furnishing] stores can have twice as many chances to yell ‘new!’ at the American 145

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housewife.”27 Affirming the notion that those who worked in fashion clothing were well equipped to offer advice on fashionable furnishings was the renewed attention to interior design in women’s fashion periodicals, and the increasingly holistic approach to style adopted by fashion designers, who were increasingly blurring the lines between their fashion pursuits and their lifestyle brands by engaging in high-profile home furnishings and interior design partnerships.28 Thus, the moment was ripe for Hollywood to produce women’s pictures that exploited both the glamour and gendered professional opportunities that could be gleaned from not just one creative profession, but two.

Fashioning self and space “Matching draperies to damsels is a problem faced by the interior decorator in Hollywood,” explained set designer Grace when discussing the importance of considering character qualities in relation to design.29 However, in the three films under consideration here, it is more accurate to say that the “problem” was matching draperies, damsels, and dresses, and this is a good moment to introduce each of the three main women characters and the ways in which the language and expressions of fashion and interior design professionals helped them to articulate their personal identities and professional brands, before exploring the stylistic hallmarks within the films. Fashion and interiors are both vital to the identity of Marilla in Designing Woman, and she works hard to maintain her image, professional reputation, and personal life through both. After meeting on vacation in Los Angeles, a whirlwind romance, quick wedding, and “honeymoon of exactly twenty-and-a-half hours,” Marilla and Mike find themselves on a plane back to Manhattan. Mike suddenly realizes that the bathing beauty he has fallen in love with is a professional woman. Prior to landing in New York, she exchanges her vacation wear for a fitted navy suit, hat, and extravagant fur stole. “I may have to stop by the office,” she explains, and, in a nod to the new ensemble, adds, “My working clothes.” Her apartment also surprises him. Despite his earlier assumptions that his apartment will be superior to hers, after a shamefaced tour of his cluttered “shoe box” one-bedroom walk-up, he agrees to stay at her ritzy Upper East Side apartment.30 “For some reason, I’d pictured Marilla living in a one-room kitchenette with a girlfriend who studied music,” Mike laments. He has married a woman whose clothes always match the decorative scheme of her rarified surroundings and who speaks the language of highfashion style. Confronted with her lush apartment and creative friends, Mike admits, “I figured if I put on my new suit, maybe I could join the club. I couldn’t. I guess I didn’t speak the language” (emphasis added). In Back Street, Rae takes a slightly longer self-fashioning journey. Viewers first meet her as an aspiring designer in Lincoln, Nebraska, where she falls for Paul to whom she gives one of her sketches signed “rae.” “That’s how I see myself when I become a famous designer with my own salon,” she explains. “That’s my signature, all small letters. Very chic, don’t you think?” Viewers later see her in various chic interiors, from the Manhattan fashion house and her luxe Manhattan apartment to European couture salons, a London 146

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hotel, an Italian beach house, and a French country house. Each space is symbolic of her professional development, and her clothes, including jewelry (by prominent fine jeweler David Webb) and furs (by the top furrier, Alixandre), become as luxurious as the interiors.31 Early in the film, Rae appears in the yellow kitchen of the humble home she shares with her sister’s family wearing a lemon yellow robe monogrammed with an R. That she never again wears a garment with a monogram suggests that she might not feel at ease with the person she has become. Her “all small letters” name/logo appears only on the signs and boxes at her fashion salons, suggesting that she is well versed in a design language which, together with her fashionable clothes and luxe furnishings, enables her to communicate the professional “rae,” the fashion designer that she aspires to become at the beginning of the film. Maggie’s relationship with fashion and interiors in Funny Face operates a little differently. Older than the other two women, an editor rather than a designer, and with no parallel storyline about marriage or family life in the film, she is the consummate fashion professional. We see her in many spaces, yet never see her home. She makes no physical distinctions between the spaces of work and home. She flits in and out of her New York office, photography studios, and Paris fashion houses with ease and authoritative belonging. Her grasp of the necessary design language is excellent and she communicates fluently across the boundaries of fashion and interiors.

Color and coordination “Think pink,” Maggie implores her readers in a splashy, rose-tinted musical number in Funny Face, in “everything you can think—and that includes the kitchen sink!” Thereupon the once rainbow-hued office doors at Quality magazine are transformed by an enthusiastic team of seven pink-paintbrush-wielding decorators into uniformly blush pink entryways, while her assistants adopt outfits that observe her new color codes. The notion that a fashion editor or designer could influence the popularity of a color across both fashion and interiors was not entirely fictional. From her office in the Vogue building, fashion editor Diana Vreeland continually issued color pronouncements, while, only four years after the film was released, Vogue editor-in-chief Jessica Daves and her staff encouraged the whole of the country to “think pink” in 1961.32 While Funny Face popularized “the idea that fashion colors originate with a creative genius who uses the media to impose her tastes on consumers,” each of the three films promoted the idea that fashion professionals were “creative geniuses” with a particular sensitivity to the use of color in interiors as well as clothes.33 Funny Face, Designing Woman, and Back Street emerged at a time when home design and fashion were increasingly considered together: in 1957, the same year that Funny Face and Designing Woman were released, Vogue announced the new “Decorating by Woman” trend, which included dressing to coordinate with the interior decoration.34 Two years later, fashion designer Anne Fogarty devoted a chapter in her Wife Dressing: The Art of Being a Well-Dressed Wife (1959) to “The Art of Being at Home At Home.” She 147

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opined, “What you wear at home should blend in with the décor. You are the picture, your house the frame.”35 The notion of women as particularly motivated by fashion in both clothing and interior design, and the concept of women as decorative objects within their interiors, were not unique to the mid-twentieth century, but there was a renewal of interest in fashionable, unified, and harmonious interiors.36 In 1956, the Color Association of the United States declared that color harmony was “the dominant force in merchandising textiles, apparel and related fashion items,” and in 1953 Vogue advocated color harmony through one-color rooms, advising readers to mix one color “and all its relatives (even distant cousins as long as they’re kissing).”37 Using the same or similar color palettes for both costume and set design was a longestablished practice within the Hollywood industry, whereby costume designers usually liaised with art directors and set dressers, under the overall direction of the head of the studio art department and the director. Costume designer Jean Louis stated that he used “color to key” the characters of Back Street and made the decision to dress Rae predominantly in beige, white, and jewel tones, a notable exception being to dress her in black for a “dramatic confrontation scene.”38 The pale color scheme is carried over into the interiors in a striking example of “decorating by woman.”39 When Rae is first seen in her new, luxurious Manhattan apartment, where the creams, ivories, and golds are interrupted only by sparing hints of color, she wears a draped jersey dress in ivory and an ivory dress-coat with gold polka dots; she is serenely in and of the space. Similarly, in Funny Face when Maggie sits at a small table in her Paris hotel reading the morning newspapers, her outfit, complete with blue handkerchief-hem cuffs, two-tone blue neckerchief, and neat ivory hat, echo the pale blue tablecloth edged with a white tassel fringe. Other markers of the fashion professional’s use of color in interiors across these three films are the ability to work with a neutral palette, knowing when not to use bold color, and how best to use colorful touches. When developing the sets for Designing Woman, Grace was of the opinion that a fashion designer like Marilla would choose “a quiet neutral background as a foil for fashion.”40 Thus Marilla’s living room set was therefore designed as a “one-color room” in creamy, beige, and greige tones.41 Neutral color schemes are also particularly evident in the professional interiors created by all three women. Both Marilla’s and Rae’s showrooms and offices are serene in their neutral hues. Marilla’s largely beige workspace, for example, serves as an effective foil for a bright white, ruched, one-shoulder evening gown. Elsewhere, a television studio dressing room decorated in a soft blue-gray makes a harmonious setting for Marilla’s gray dress in soft chiffon and faille while serving to highlight the bold fuchsia and incandescent pale pink silk of the gown she designed and is fitting on her love rival, Lori Shannon (played by Dolores Gray). The floral arrangements also coordinate with the extravagant sash of white and pale pink flowers that adorn the gown’s bustle and drape down the back of the skirt. Further examples of neutral tones offsetting pink clothing include Jo emerging onto on a dimly lit runway with the bold fuchsia pink of the top and cape of the gown (designed by couturier Givenchy) standing out against the ivory and gold French Beaux-Arts-style 148

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interior decoration, and Marilla sending a rose pink velvet and satin hooded ballgown down the runway in her own French Beaux-Arts-style salon One of the most sustained examples of the close connections between costumes and sets in these films occurs when Marilla is at home in her apartment. With few exceptions, she wears a relatively small capsule collection of colors—red, blue, purple, and white— and consistently coordinates with the interior decoration against which she is filmed. In the living room and on the terrace where she does the majority of her entertaining, her outfits coordinate with jewel-toned throw cushions. When she and Mike first enter her apartment, her crimson sheath dress matches the pillows on her sofa (see Figure 7.1), and when her friends arrive for a party, their ensembles also coordinate with the color scheme.42 Later, while seated on her terrace during a poker night, two lavender cushions bookend her flouncy housedress ensemble of “lavender, black and white moiré” highwaisted skirt and white organza blouse.43 Director Vincente Minnelli, who took a keen interest in all matters visual, requested that this outfit make Bacall “look like she had stepped out of a page in Vogue magazine.”44 When viewed in conjunction with the colorcoordinated set, however, she could just as easily have stepped out of the lifestyle magazine Better Homes & Gardens. Thus, through the careful use of color in her decorative scheme and clothing, Marilla becomes the very definition of “decorating by woman.”45

Figure 7.1 Designing Woman, directed by Vincente Minnelli. © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer 1957. All rights reserved. Courtesy Photofest.

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Interior chic: “Home furnishing takes a cue from Paris, too”46 Upon finding himself in the middle of Marilla’s apartment in New York’s wealthy Upper East Side, Mike can barely articulate his first impressions. “Chic,” he says, looking around in awe. “That’s a word I’ve never used before but now I know what it means.” The word “chic” is used liberally throughout all three films, and “Frenchness” permeates both the sartorial and spatial styles of the three professional women. Designing Woman sends a clear message that even someone like Mike can recognize “chic” when he sees it given concrete expression. Rather than have a professional woman “speak down” to women viewers who might be unfamiliar with the word and uncertain about its connotations, a male sports reporter, previously unfamiliar with fashionable interiors, serves to “educate” viewers (male and female) about the chic interior in an accessible way. The interplay of fashion, interiors, and “Frenchness” in this cycle of films reflects the great postwar interest in French fashion. The United States had attempted to challenge the French fashion industry during World War Two, but in 1947 Christian Dior’s first postwar collection, popularly known as the New Look, re-established Paris as the world’s most influential fashion city.47 As Vogue editor Jessica Daves explained, “France has something so powerful, so desirable that the world will travel as far as it must to get it. That something, that powerful something, is the root of fashion—the creative sense.”48 That powerful something fueled a flurry of “Hollywood goes to Paris” films in the first half of the 1950s that featured both the city and Parisian couture.49 While such films compounded the contradictory mood in the United States towards French fashion, they were testament to the cultural capital that France wielded at the time.50 As historian Karal Ann Marling has noted, such films share “an aura of exclusivity and wealth (French fashion is for the rich)” as well as “a sense of womanly competence.”51 This competence extended not only to taste in clothing but also an overarching notion of France as a center for “good taste” in general. In these films, Paris (and often France more generally) is posited as the “natural” terrain of the US fashion professional and the source of considerable fashion and interior decorating inspiration. The French-inspired interior design style most commonly associated with both the domestic and public interiors of fashion professionals in these films is “French Provincial,” a loosely defined style influenced by the courtly interiors, furniture, and furnishings of eighteenth-century France but made in the provinces with less ornamentation and greater simplicity of form in local materials by local craftspeople.52 By the 1950s, hallmarks of this popular trend in interiors included eighteenth-century-style wood furniture with carved ornament and curved silhouettes and workaday textiles for upholstery, such as the “blue-and-white denim ticking . . . same as a French porter’s apron.”53 As Better Homes & Gardens declared in 1953, “French Provincial gives you Informal Comfort and Elegance”: Today, French Provincial is an important design in modern American homes. Why? Because it has the comfort, grace and versatility that we demand. Because it 150

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mixes well with our contemporary design. And most of all, because it is an informal style, without being pronouncedly rustic.54 Some viewers, particularly those interested in interior design, would likely have been familiar with French Provincial style beyond interior design periodicals. It was frequently discussed as the preferred style of fashion editors—Daves, Vogue editor-in-chief, was said to rule the fashion world from her “all green Francophile office—furniture French Provincial, art French modern”—and the postwar US version of French Provincial, with its mix of formality and informality, was adopted as the pre-eminent style of the fashion professional’s interiors in the three films under discussion.55 Described by the New York Times as “a lovely phantasm made up of romance, tourism and chic,” Funny Face, the only film of the three to be filmed on location in Paris, confirmed the city as the center of high fashion.56 It provided viewers with Hollywood versions of both US interpretations of French Provincial interiors (in the scenes set in New York) and supposedly “authentic” ones in Paris. A suite of modern French Provincial furniture that is stained or painted taupe-gray stands in Maggie’s Manhattan office, and the first time that viewers see her face is when she swivels around in what appears to be a modern rendition of a French eighteenth-century chair and declares that the current issue of Quality magazine is not good enough (see Figure 7.2). With its moldings and carving around the headrest and elegant ivory upholstery, the chair complements her coordinating taupe-gray desk, with its serpentine curve on the apron, softly curved cabriole legs, and delicately molded feet. The third piece of this taupe-gray set is the cabinet in which Maggie stores fabric swatches. Any doubts that viewers may have

Figure 7.2 Funny Face, directed by Stanley Donen. © Paramount Pictures 1957. All rights reserved.

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Figure 7.3 Funny Face, directed by Stanley Donen. © Paramount Pictures 1957. All rights reserved.

harbored as to the authenticity of these furnishings are dropped the first time that Maggie is seen in a Parisian interior; in the Avenue Montaigne couture salon of designer Paul Duval (played by Robert Flemyng), she sits on an almost identical chair (see Figure 7.3). Nearby is a marble-topped table with elaborate bronze mounts on the cabriole legs that is almost certainly meant to appear antique, and which closely resembles the marble and wood console table that sits opposite her desk in her Manhattan office. Similarly, the makeshift office that she establishes at Duval’s couture house, in a room behind the grand, main showroom, features a cabinet of the same shape as her openfront American version, except that this retains its original polished dark-wood finish. Being consistently represented in settings greatly influenced by French interior decorative schemes affirms Maggie’s status as a high-fashion tastemaker. Designing Woman does not feature Parisian locations but Marilla’s private and professional spaces offer all the Parisian style expected of a US fashion professional. Her living room features some French-style furnishings, but her bedroom best exemplifies set designer Grace’s particular blend of French Provincial and Art Moderne (today more commonly known as “Art Deco”) styles with a high-fashion twist.57 Rendered in allwhite-and-ivory, in a manner reminiscent of the dialectic between interwar high-society interiors and so-called “all-white” Hollywood sets in the 1930s, the room features a white and brass metal bedstead, upholstered armchairs in an eighteenth-century manner, and two white cylindrical side tables.58 The bleached oak of a French Provincial cabinet adds to the stylishly serene pale palette, as did the “simulated white porcelain plaques.”59 Such items indicate both the wealth and the discerning tastes of the room’s inhabitant. 152

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“The woman who waits all her life for [a] man she can’t marry will at least get a European tour out of it,” declared Ross Hunter when making Back Street, referring to Rae’s considerable international travel while living “in the shadowy background of the married man she loves.”60 Although Ross decided against his original intention of shooting on location across Europe,61 certain set designs served to remind viewers that they were in France, so much so that the New York Times review of the film quipped, “Producer Ross Hunter has crammed so much swank and so much plush Parisian elegance that we wonder he didn’t change the title to something like ‘Rue de Bac.’ ”62 Rae is seen not only working in her Paris salon, but also in a country house set in provincial France that was gifted to her by her lover. The house drew inspiration not only from aristocratic and bourgeois country homes but also French vernacular homes and gardens. The surrounding countryside even offers viewers a glimpse of a French farmer working the land with a horse and cart, and leisurely bicyclists. The interior architecture features key elements of French Provincial buildings, from stonework, wooden beams, and textured plaster walls to wrought iron stair railings and a brick hearth. “It’s the kind of house I’ve always dreamed about,” Rae comments, something Paul appears to have realized since he adds, in gender normative fashion, “I thought I’d leave the interior decoration up to you.” Viewers later see the fruits of Rae’s labor as an interior decorator, from wooden stools and ladder-back chairs, wingback armchairs, and a smattering of French antique decorative objects, to layered white curtains and white cast-iron furniture on the front porch. Rae’s proficiency at furnishing a tasteful French Provincial-style home confirms her decorating talents and chicness, while her trips between her couture office and country home underscore the close proximity between fashion and interiors in general as well as between Frenchness in clothing and interiors. The producers of Back Street chose Paris as the central location for the film because it enabled them to stage a French fashion show, and in all three films, interior decorating and couture fashion come together in fashion shows drenched in chic.63 The fashion shows in Back Street and Funny Face take place in Paris, in grand French Beaux-Arts ballrooms or salons with antique wall paneling, carving, chandeliers, and eighteenthcentury or eighteenth-century-style upholstered slipper chairs; the fashions on show were designed by French-born designer Jean Louis and Paris couturier Hubert de Givenchy.64 The fashion show in Designing Woman takes place in the United States, but the set references the same key design features associated with French fashion salons (as noted above). All three locations resemble contemporary couture salons in Paris (with Funny Face’s actually purporting to be a couture house on Avenue Montaigne), thus providing additional context for the allure of French furnishings. The mystique of the Parisian fashion show was at its height in the 1950s. Viewers would likely already have some familiarity with images of Paris fashion shows, from coverage in newspapers, newsreels, and all manner of fashion and lifestyle periodicals.65 Seeing onscreen “real” fashion displays set against real or fictional salons further emphasized the close connection between Frenchness in fashion and Frenchness in fashionable furnishings. 153

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Modern women and modern design In Back Street, after several months working in Manhattan, Rae’s couturier boss notices her wearing a sleek, black, scoop neck dress with subtle embellishment at the waist. It is one of her own designs. “It has lines, style, simplicity. It says something,” she announces. “Well, you’ve picked up the lingo quickly enough,” he retorts. The “lingo” could just as easily apply to the contemporary furniture featured in the film sets. Sometimes they are mixed in with antique pieces or pieces loosely based upon particular historical periods in what some historians refer to as “Period Modern” style.66 The embrace of more overtly modern design by all three leading women, however, confronted contemporary perceptions that modern furniture was a “masculine idiom,” even though women were entering interior design in ever greater numbers.67 “There’s something about Knoll furniture that men respond to enthusiastically,” a Town & Country journalist observed in 1967, reviewing the increasing popularity of various Modernist designs manufactured by the US-based Knoll International company.68 The text continued: It could be the bold, distinctive look. Or the lines, architectural in their simplicity. The exciting materials. Or the advanced technology so often involved in production. Whatever it is, Knoll designs do have a special message for men, one they seem to understand instinctively.69 This purportedly gendered understanding of this type of modern furniture’s appeal was also in evidence in 1956 when Playboy magazine unveiled its penthouse design scheme. As historian Elizabeth Fraterrigo has observed, “Playboy appropriated modern design as a masculine idiom, avoiding elements with feminine or familial associations. Devoid of artifice and frivolous decoration, masculine design was, by implication, superior.”70 This was the case in the contexts of both design and fashion.71 In the three films, however, although the dominant spatial context of the fashion professional might have been described as “decoration and excess,” modern design is also present, including two hallmarks of the sleek Playboy penthouse furnishings: a furniture line designed by architect and designer Eero Saarinen (1910–61) for Knoll International, and Japanese Shoji screens.72 When Rae arrives in Rome, she hops out of her jaunty convertible and strides into the reception area of the Italian fashion house of “Dalian and rae.” There, against grand marble walls, were elegant white Tulip chairs in plastic and metal (with seat pads in persimmon orange) and a matching table with marble top from Saarinen’s elegant Pedestal furniture series, which debuted in full in 1958.73 When Back Street was released, Saarinen’s designs were widely admired and featured in fashion as well as architectural and interior design media and circles. One year before it premiered, for example, Vogue profiled Saarinen’s own house and featured the Tulip range.74 Given that in the film the reception area of the company’s Italian headquarters defines the company’s brand identity, Rae’s choice of furniture is significant, and the Tulip line, with its sleek simplicity of form, offers a visual parallel to the “style and simplicity” of her clothes. Sharing the 154

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spotlight with the Saarinen furniture in the reception space is an abstract white wire sculpture with a form reminiscent of contemporary wire sculptures and the flowing movement of a Matisse dancer, thus adding further to the presentation of Rae as a fashion professional equally attuned to introducing fine art into interior spaces as well as understanding shape, structure, and movement in relation to furniture as well as clothing.75 Japanese Shoji screens, a popular feature of many “Mid-Century Modern” interiors, also feature in the space. In traditional Japanese domestic usage, Shoji referred to the sliding partitions, usually made of wood and rice paper, which separated interior rooms, or the interior from the exterior.76 Created in a grid pattern of five blocks high to three wide ratio, many viewers would likely have seen them, or increasingly popular US versions of them, in a range of popular media, from print to films such as Japanese War Bride (1952, King Vidor), House of Bamboo (1955, Samuel Fuller), and Sayonara (1957, Joshua Logan). “The shoji screen was one of the first Japan-influenced items to interest American consumers, and its popularity grew throughout the 1950s”; indeed, the New York Times proclaimed 1953 the year that Shoji officially invaded the United States.77 By the end of the 1950s, most major US department stores sold a version of the screens that “evoked traditional Japan in their appearance” and “were quite functional in American living spaces.”78 In Designing Woman, the most prominent screens mark the division between the living room and the terrace, and in a poker night scene they divide the male, sportsenthusiast card players inside from the creative designers, writers, musicians, dancers, and choreographers outside. The delicate, diaphanous paper of the screens, along with their fashionable “design of white flowers, gold thread and leaves” is paralleled by the gauzy sleeves of Marilla’s outfit.79 The delicacy of the screens is further emphasized by the raucous nature of the crowd of fashion and show business people that are shown in silhouette. Furthermore, when the choreographer of the stage show for which Marilla has been hired to design costumes (played by American dancer and choreographer Jack Cole) performs an elaborate proposed dance routine for the show, he slides the screens open and shut as he dances through them, creating great consternation on the part of Mike and his poker-playing friends who have been separated from Marilla’s crowd, the fleeting contact emphasizing the differences between Marilla and Mike.

Fashioning the curated space When Grace began thinking about his set design for the apartment for the Marilla Brown character, “a top flight designer and obviously a woman of original taste and great chic,” it was evident to him that it would need to be unique and interesting.80 He hypothesized that she had probably “collected furniture, accessories, paintings, bits of glassware, and so forth,” and had possibly found some in Paris, Mexico, North Africa, or “out-of-the-way antique shops in the United States.”81 His suggestion that women who were successful within the fashion industry were adept at injecting personality into interiors is evident 155

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across each of these films, as the women are shown to both decorate and curate spaces with unique and stylish details that bespeak the creativity and intellectual grasp that one would expect from a fashion professional. Fine art was a major marker of the individual tastes of Marilla, Rae, and Maggie. The suggestion that art and fashion were to be brought together is encapsulated in an early scene in Funny Face. Set in Dick’s photography studio, it shows Dick working on the photographs to accompany an article for Quality magazine, being written by Maggie, intended to prove “a woman can be beautiful, as well as intellectual.” He attempts to coach his photographic model (guest star Dovima) into a better performance while posing alongside a modern sculpture by “Isaguchi” (a play on the name of the Japanese American sculptor Isamu Noguchi yet the piece more resembles a typically elongated, figural piece by Alberto Giacometti).82 The choice of sculpture for Maggie’s article suggests that she appreciates fashionable art. In fact, all three women fashion professionals are presented as possessing the necessary cultural capital to know which objects, including paintings and sculpture, are key to high-fashion living and work spaces. While art is seen in close proximity to fashion in Funny Face, most notably when Jo, wearing a red Givenchy gown and chiffon wrap, is posed so as to mirror The Winged Victory of Samothrace sculpture on the steps of the Louvre, for Marilla, art serves to convey her connoisseurial skills and self-assured approach to art display. Her talents in these areas were represented as desirable in the form of educational art features in contemporary women’s fashion periodicals when the film was released.83 Readers were told that her apartment featured many “modern water colors and paintings” in Frenchstyle bleached-wood frames, but it was her ability to render sculpture legible within a high-fashion space through confident experimentation with imaginative installation modes that was particularly notable.84 One of the more prominent sculptural pieces in Marilla’s apartment is a stone Roman or Roman-style figure that is positioned next to the fireplace, as a decorative object d’art (see Figure 7.1). What looks like an antique wood carving of a cherub playing a musical instrument (possibly originally part of a larger piece) is hoisted high on one of the walls (visible in the background of Figure 7.1), once again as an object d’art interesting not only in its own right but also as part of a collection of a carefully curated mélange of objects placed in unusual juxtapositions to one another and producing “cross-cultural surprise” in the manner of the groupings of culturally different objects that were curated and displayed by Charles and Ray Eames in the interior of their home.85 Readers of Vogue were introduced to the Eameses and their work in 1959 and Vogue and other up-market fashion magazines encouraged readers to pay attention to similarly inventive intermingling and curating of objects within the home, with an emphasis on the potential “tactile seduction” of sculpture.86 Art defines both the professional and personal spaces of Rae in Back Street. Painterly trompe l’oeil details feature in her Italian office, and original contemporary oil paintings, some with abstract, Cubist-like compositions, by artist Alison Hunter, are prominently displayed in interiors throughout the film.87 The first interior in the film to feature paintings is Dalian’s office, where a highly-stylized oil painting of a girl with a llama 156

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looms large on the wall and dominates the frame of the scene. Once Rae has become a partner in the fashion house, however, paintings appear in her own homes and offices in Manhattan, Italy, and France. Both decoration and status symbol, the paintings speak to an artistic taste that she has learned. Just as important to the cultural capital of the three women as knowing about painting and sculpture was knowing about furniture and decorative accents. They, too, played a key role in representing the individuality and curatorial skills that fashion professionals were considered able to bring to their interiors. Marilla’s apartment, for example, further made the Eamesian trend of “functioning decoration” visible onscreen with its blend of “rugs from Morocco, an antique mirrored chest from Mexico, Italian Directoire chairs and even cast iron from the Gay Nineties,” all of which indicate Marilla’s finely-honed taste.88 These cross-cultural references reappear in the fashion show scene: eveningwear was described in press releases as featuring “materials from every part of the world, from the saris of India to the woven grass of Hawaii.”89 Furthermore, a note accompanying a coffee table received as a wedding gift from a past lover suggests that she has had an appreciation of fine objects from, or inspired by, other material culture traditions for some time. When Grace came to design this piece, he drew upon brass details he had seen on Indian furniture for the legs but added a gleaming, white lacquered top to fit with fashionable contemporary taste.90 Rae demonstrates a similar mix-and-match approach in the interiors of her luxurious Manhattan apartment. One reviewer considered that Back Street’s “lavish surroundings” put the actors at risk of being “straight men for the set designers,” and Rae’s Manhattan apartment was particularly noted for its extravagance: “The eye is dazzled at times . . . by Miss Hayward’s furnishings as well as by her glamorous costumes.”91 Created by awardwinning art director Alexander Golitzen in collaboration with set decorator Howard Bristol, the set is filled with a variety of objects, from sculpture and miniature antique chairs to candelabra and trinkets, creating an eclectic mix not unlike that seen in some of the sets in Designing Woman.92 Taken together, the treasures from French Morocco mark the space as up to date, from glass bead curtains hanging across the double windows along the entire back wall of her apartment to the small side table with Moroccan trim and a cerulean blue glass and brass light fixture suspended over the dining table (which also references Italian decorative glass traditions).93 Juxtaposed with cozy tufted chairs and an inviting sofa with strong “Hollywood Regency” overtones, as well as sculpture and other objects, this range of international objects offers extra-cultural surprise and shows that its owner, like increasing numbers of leading designers and artists, is sufficiently confident to create rich, eclectic combinations of objects with a transnational flavor in what could be called a fashionably intelligent interior packed with cultural complexities. Variety described Back Street as “dressed to the back teeth” but, at a time when fashion and interiors were increasingly being brought into the same frame of reference, Hollywood created a cycle of films that placed fashion professionals firmly at their centers.94 Just as all three films embody the claim made in 1962 that “sets today—viewed by millions of eyes—not only ‘set moods’ but set new styles,” Marilla, Maggie, and Rae 157

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offered similar but slightly different Hollywood versions of the consummate fashion professional: a figure characterized as possessing the ability to create and communicate high-fashion interior design.95

Notes 1. In addition to the films considered here, one might also include I Can Get it for You Wholesale (1951, Michael Gordon), which starred Susan Hayward playing yet another fashion designer; Lovely to Look At (1952, Mervyn LeRoy); and Made In Paris (1966, Boris Sagal, with costumes by Helen Rose). Several non-US films have parallels with this cycle of Hollywood movies, including the British film It Started in Paradise (1952, Compton Bennett). For a list of French fashion films, see “The Fifties at the Grand Action Cinema,” Palais Galliera, http://www. palaisgalliera.paris.fr/en/news/fifties-grand-action-cinema. 2. James Powers, “ ‘Funny Face’ is a Smart Musical with Top Cast,” Hollywood Reporter, February 13, 1957. Review clipping in Funny Face (1957) Production File, Core Collection, Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, CA). 3. Cue, Untitled Clipping, 3 August 1957. Review clipping in Gregory Peck Papers Clippings (Designing Woman, 1957), 335.f–3451, Special Collections, Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS. 4. Peggy Cook, “A Photographer and His Model Make a Pretty Movie,” Cosmopolitan, February 1957, 50. 5. “Gregory Peck, Lauren Bacall and Dolores Gray Score in M-G-M’s Hilarious Romantic Comedy, ‘Designing Woman,’ ” Press Book, Designing Woman, 1957, Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS. The close timing of the release dates for both Funny Face and Designing Woman did not go unnoticed—see Arthur Knight, “Musicals a la Mode,” Saturday Review, April 13, 1957. Clipping held in Funny Face (1957) Production File, Core Collection, Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS. 6. Previous adaptations: Back Street (1932, John M. Stahl) and Back Street (1941, Robert Stevenson). 7. Tube, “Film Review—Back Street,” Variety, October 10 1961. Review clipping in Back Street (1961), Motion Picture Association of America, Production Code Administration Records, Special Collections, Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS. 8. John Potvin, “The Velvet Masquerade: fashion, interior design and the furnished body,” in Alla Myzelev and John Potvin (eds.), Fashion, Interior Design and the Contours of Modern Identity, 11 (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2010). 9. “Draperies and Damsels Matched By Movie Set Interior Decorator,” Arizona Republic, April 7, 1957, Sec. 5, p. 4. Clipping in Designing Woman (1957), Clippings, Core Collection, Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS. 10. Jeanine Basinger, A Woman’s View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women 1930–1960 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), 6; Michelle Tolini Finamore, Hollywood Before Glamour: Fashion in American Silent Film (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 1–9, 124–31. 11. Of course, fashion models are also fixtures in these films; however, models function differently across this cycle of fashion films, and indeed, across other cycles of fashion films, and would make fascinating material for their own specialized study. This chapter will instead focus on the professional editors, writers, and designers who are prioritized across these films and who, as a grouping, operate in similar ways.

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“Home furnishing takes a cue from Paris, too” 12. Press Book, Designing Woman, 1957; Press Book, Funny Face, 1957; Press Book, Back Street, 1961, all Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS. Real-life parallels include the fact that Lauren Bacall was a fashion model at the start of her career, posing for Harper’s Bazaar and other magazines; Helen Rose was the inspiration for the film Designing Woman, and served as costume designer; Audrey Hepburn and Hubert de Givenchy had established a professional relationship and personal friendship long before Funny Face premiered, which had been originally commemorated on film in Sabrina (1954) and was likely familiar to audiences; Harper’s Bazaar staff assisted and advised on the film, including photographer Richard Avedon, who served as “Special Visual Consultant and Main Title Backgrounds,” and had his genuine Harper’s Bazaar photographs used in the offices of Quality magazine in the film. The opening credits of the film include the acknowledgement, “We are most grateful to Mrs. Carmel Snow [editor-in-chief] and Harper’s Bazaar magazine for their generous assistance.” Despite the obvious connections between Harper’s Bazaar and the production of the film, correspondence between the film’s production and legal departments demonstrates that “fictitious names” were frequently swapped for real life assistants and editors, so as not “to identify our magazine Quality, with Harper’s Bazaar and the characters of our picture with the individuals of the Bazaar organization or associated with it.” See letter from Luigi Luraschi to Mr. Roger Edens, February 23, 1956, The Paramount Pictures Production Records, Funny Face—Legal, 1955–1956, 128.f–1646, Special Collections, Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS. 13. Basinger, A Woman’s View, 6–8, 17–18. 14. Basinger, A Woman’s View, 13. 15. Basinger, A Woman’s View, 13. 16. “Next to Cast, The Glamorous Clothes Cost the Most in ‘Designing Woman,’ ” Press Book, Designing Woman, 1957, Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS. 17. “Next to Cast.” 18. James Powers, “Film Review—Back Street,” Hollywood Reporter, October 10, 1961. Review clipping in Back Street (1961), Motion Picture Association of America, Production Code Administration Records, Special Collections, Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS. 19. “Draperies and Damsels,” 4. 20. Lynn Hopper, “Doris Day–Rock Hudson Duo Glitters In Comedy,” Indianapolis Star, November 12, 1959, 42. Of particular note were the Doris Day films Hunter produced, including Pillow Talk (1959, Michael Gordon), That Touch of Mink (1962, Delbert Mann), and The Thrill of It All (1963, Norman Jewison). 21. Hollis Alpert, “Movies: Producer says Movie public wants to cry,” Woman’s Day, December 1959, 12. Hunter-produced melodramas preceding Back Street include Imitation of Life (1959), All That Heaven Allows (1955), and Magnificent Obsession (1954). 22. Alpert, “Movies: Producer says Movie public wants to cry,” 12; Max Blackman, “In New ‘Back Street’ Little Seamstress Becomes Designer,” Cincinnati Enquirer, October 13, 1961, 13; “Hunter’s ‘Back Street’ Shining Success,” Chicago’s American, October 12, 1961, 33. Clipping in the Virginia Grey Papers, Back Street (1961), Clippings, 2.f–12, Special Collections, Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS. 23. “The 34th Academy Awards, 1962,” Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, https:// www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1962; “Oklahomans Go To Market . . . Cities are Slated to Play Host to Buyers,” Daily Oklahoman, January 7, 1962, 2D. The author, Fannie Hurst, who wrote the novel upon which the film was based, was originally quite dismayed at Hunter’s plans for the film and wrote to ask him “to reconsider ‘gilding-up the plain Americana of my story, thus obscuring the values that made it famous.’ ” Hurst was far from convinced that

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Screen Interiors “Back Street transferred to foreign soil will be an imitation of the life my book depicted.” See Louella Parsons, “Keeping Up With Hollywood,” Cumberland News, November 21, 1959, 10. 24. Jessica Daves, “Graduation Address: Tobé-Coburn School for Fashion Careers,” June 6, 1950, Edna Woolman Chase Archive, Manuscript Collection, New York, Box 2, Fld. 4. 25. William H. Young and Nancy K. Young, American Popular Culture Through History: The 1950s (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004), 3–6; Clifford Edward Clark, Jr., The American Home: 1800–1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 205–10; Sumiko Higashi, “Movies and the Paradox of Female Stardom,” in Murray Pomerance (ed.), American Cinema of the 1950s: Themes and Variations, 65–6 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005); Judith B. Gura, “ ‘A Woman’s Place . . .’? Women Interior Designers; Part Two: 1950– 2000,” in Pat Kirkham (ed.), Women Designers in the USA 1900–2000, 317–21 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000). 26. “Fashion for Floors . . . at Practical Prices,” LIFE, April 21, 1952, 112. 27. “The Dress, the Desk and the Moose,” LIFE, October 5, 1953, 26. 28. Vogue announced in 1956 that the magazine would devote a single section, entitled “Fashions in Living,” to all things interior decorating, architecture, and entertaining. See “Fashions in Living: Here Begin 8 Pages of VOGUE’s ‘Fashions in Living,’ ” Vogue, August 15, 1956, 134. See also Rebecca C. Tuite, 1950s In Vogue: The Jessica Daves Years, 1952–1962 (London: Thames & Hudson, 2019), 216–27. Perhaps the most famous designer to also license a home furnishing line at this time was couturier Elsa Schiaparelli, who brought her fashion talent to everything from shower curtains to upholstery fabrics in partnership with Waverly, which were aimed at “ ‘high fashion’ conscious but budget minded home-makers.” See “Home Fashion Spotlight Falls on New Decorative Fabric Designs,” St. Joseph News-Press, April 9, 1959, 11. 29. “Draperies and Damsels,” 4. 30. Production encountered some pushback from the city of New York regarding featuring an exterior of a building on 74th Street, and originally requested “using address for this apartment such as Sutton Place or Beekman Place,” but the Upper East Side connotations of wealth and elegance are important to Marilla’s character. See Inter-Office Communication from R. Monta, to Bill Dorfman, Preston Ames, Script Clerk, Mr. Wells Property, Productions, August 29, 1956, in The Vincente Minnelli Papers, Designing Woman—Production, 1956, 2.f–37, Special Collections, Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS. 31. For David Webb, see Ruth Peltason, David Webb: The Quintessential American Jeweler (New York: Assouline, 2013); for Alixandre, see “About Alixandre Furs,” http://alixandrefurs.com/ about-us/. 32. Diana Vreeland, D.V. (1984; Repr., New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2011), 103; Regina Lee Blaszczyk, The Color Revolution (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), 282–3. The office décor of major fashion editors was also a source of interest in women’s periodicals of the time; Daves was also reported to enjoy a coordinated all-green office; see “Eye on Vogue,” Women’s Wear Daily, December 5, 1960, 4; “Jessica Daves Retires Jan. 1,” Women’s Wear Daily, October 2, 1962, 36; Tuite, 1950s in Vogue, 20. 33. Blaszczyk, The Color Revolution, 265. 34. “At-Home Dressing: Decorating by Woman,” Vogue, October 15, 1957, 80–5; Tuite, 1950s in Vogue, 224–5. 35. Anne Fogarty, Wife Dressing: The Art of Being a Well-Dressed Wife (1959; Repr., London: V&A Publishing, 2011), 67. 36. Penny Sparke, “Elsie de Wolfe and her female clients, 1905–15: Gender, Class and the Professional Interior Decorator,” in Brenda Martin and Penny Sparke (eds.), Women’s Places: 160

“Home furnishing takes a cue from Paris, too” Architecture and Design, 1860–1960, 47–68 (Abingdon, UK, and New York: Routledge, 2003); Penny Sparke, The Modern Interior (London: Reaktion Books, 2008), 73–90. 37. “Precise Color Descriptions Sought,” Women’s Wear Daily, September 13, 1956, 18; “Decorating News: A Scheme of Reds,” Vogue, April 1, 1953, 98. 38. “Don’t Copy Movie Stars, Says Hollywood Designer,” Calgary Herald, January 19, 1961, 33. 39. “At-Home Dressing,” 80. 40. “Draperies and Damsels,” 4. 41. “Decorating News: A Scheme of Reds,” 98. 42. Christine Brinckmann, Color and Empathy: Essays on Two Aspects of Film (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2014), 44–8. 43. “The Glamorous World of . . . Helen Rose: A Designer’s Director,” Desert Sun (Palm Springs, CA), June 15, 1983, A8. 44. “The Glamorous World of . . . Helen Rose,” A8. 45. “At-Home Dressing,” 80. 46. Doris Thistlewood, “Home furnishing takes a cue from Paris, too,” Chatelaine, October 1955, 8. 47. Valerie Steele, 50 Years of Fashion: New Look to Now (New York: Yale University Press, 1997), 1–16; Colin McDowell, Forties Fashion and the New Look (London: Bloomsbury, 1997), 154–89; Diana De Marly, Christian Dior (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1990), 17–40. 48. Jessica Daves, “Paris Collections Summary,” Vogue, March 1, 1957, 115. 49. Including An American in Paris (1951, Vincente Minnelli), Sabrina (1954, Billy Wilder), and April in Paris (1952, David Butler). 50. Pat Kirkham and Marilyn Cohen, “Contexts, Contradictions, Couture and Clothing: Fashion in An American in Paris, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and That Touch of Mink,” in Eugenia Paulicelli, Drake Stutesman and Louise Wallenberg (eds.), Film, Fashion, and the 1960s, 112–13, 117–20 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017). 51. Karal Ann Marling, As Seen on TV: The Visual Culture of Everyday Life in the 1950s (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 21. 52. John Pile, A History of Interior Design, 2nd edn. (London: Laurence King, 2005), 182–4; Ruth W. Better, “French Provincial gives you Informal Comfort and Elegance,” Better Homes and Gardens, April 1953, 299. 53. Better, “French Provincial,” 300. 54. Better, “French Provincial,” 299. 55. “Eye on Vogue,” Women’s Wear Daily, December 5, 1960, 4. Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy’s love of French culture, from fine art to fashion and interior design, further fueled the trend, but her campaign as First Lady to restore several interiors and furnishings within the White House to their former glory—Perry Wolff, A Tour of the White House (New York: Doubleday, 1962); “The First Lady Brings History and Beauty to the White House,” LIFE, September 1961, 62; James Abbott and Elaine Rice, Designing Camelot: The Kennedy White House Restoration (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1998), 236, passim—favored the high-end and “more regal French styles”—Joyce Schuller, “Now ‘Jackie Look’ Has Come to Furniture Fashions,” Daily Oklahoman, January 7, 1962, 2D—especially the “Louis” styles and US styles and objects influenced by them. 56. Bosley Crowther, “Screen: ‘Funny Face’ Brings Spring to Music Hall” New York Times, March 29, 1957, 16. 57. Henry Grace quoted in Josh Getlin, “Memories of Films’ Heyday Have Home,” Los Angeles Times, March 12, 1980, 5; Pile, A History of Interior Design, 349–52. 161

Screen Interiors 58. Pat Kirkham and Susan Weber (eds.), History of Design: Decorative Arts and Material Culture, 1400–2000 (New Haven, CT, and New York: Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture and Yale University Press, 2013), 620–1; Cathy Whitlock, Designs on Film: A Century of Hollywood Art Direction (New York: Harper Collins, 2010), 19–20. 59. “Draperies and Damsels,” 4. 60. Alpert, “Movies: Producer says Movie public wants to cry,” 12; “ ‘Back Street’ Indiana Film,” Terre Haute Tribune-Star, November 5, 1961, 34. 61. When talking about the changes he intended to make to Back Street in 1959, Hunter declared, “It has a foreign flavor and will be shot in Rome and Paris.” However, by 1960 he appeared to have had a change of heart, saying, “I had planned to make it in Italy, but when I thought it meant jobs for 892 people, counting cast and crew, I decided I wanted to make it in America and use our own people. Susan Hayward, and by the way I’m waiting for her, agreed with me and so did Universal-International.” See Louella O. Parsons, “Susan Hayward To Do Hurst Film,” Indianapolis Star, November 12, 1959, 42; “Back Street Will Be U.S. Product,” San Francisco Examiner, April 16, 1960, Sec. II, 16. 62. Bosley Crowther, “Susan Hayward Stars with John Gavin,” New York Times, October 13, 1961, 27. Several reviews noted both Alexander Golitzen’s art direction and Howard Bristol’s sets as being responsible for “transporting” audiences to these European locations, with the Hollywood Reporter calling their work an “uncanny deception.” James Powers, “Film Review— Back Street,” Hollywood Reporter, October 10, 1961. Review clipping held in Back Street (1961), Motion Picture Association of America, Production Code Administration Records, Special Collections, Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS. See also William Werneth, “Film Review—Back Street,” Motion Picture Daily, October 5, 1961. Review clipping held in Back Street (1961), Motion Picture Association of America, Production Code Administration Records, Special Collections, Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS. 63. Ross Hunter, “Producer Ross Hunter’s Formula for Movies That Entertain,” Daily Journal (Vineland, NJ), June 22, 1962, 4. 64. Mirroring the fashion show significance onscreen, producers invited the nation’s fashion editors to the set at Universal Studios during the National Press Week of the California Apparel Creators for a preview of the fashions from the film. See Press Book, Back Street (1961), Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS. 65. Marlin, As Seen on TV, 21; Kirkham and Cohen, “Contexts, Contradictions, Couture and Clothing,” 112–13. Photographer Mark Shaw captured the rarified world of French elegance in interiors and fashion at the salons of Dior, Balenciaga, and Givenchy on assignment for LIFE, which might also have been familiar to viewers of these films. See “The Shapes Stay Shapely After All,” LIFE, September 6, 1954, 8–15. 66. Kirkham and Weber, History of Design, 620–21. For Modernism/modernism, see Kirkham and Weber, History of Design, 628. 67. Elizabeth Fraterrigo, Playboy and the Making of the Good Life in Modern America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 90; Pat Kirkham and Penny Sparke, “ ‘A Woman’s Place . . .’? Women Interior Designers; Part One: 1900–1950,” in Pat Kirkham (ed.), Women Designers in the USA 1900–2000, 316 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000). 68. “Eye on Living: Designs Men Like,” Town & Country, June 1969, 46. 69. “Eye on Living,” 46. 70. Fraterrigo, Playboy and the Making of the Good Life in Modern America, 90. 71. Potvin, “The Velvet Masquerade,” 10. 162

“Home furnishing takes a cue from Paris, too” 72. Potvin, “The Velvet Masquerade,” 10; Fraterrigo, Playboy and the Making of the Good Life in Modern America, 83. 73. Brian Lutz, “Furniture,” in Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen and Donald Albrecht (eds.), Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future, 255 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006). 74. “A Modern Architect’s Own House,” Vogue, April 1, 1960, 172–9. 75. Interestingly, a similar sculpture (but in a straw color) appears in Maggie’s/Thompson’s makeshift Paris office at the couture house in Funny Face. This juxtaposition only serves to emphasize the way in which the two dialects of the language of design, fashion, and interiors used in the films were mutually understandable. 76. Meghan Warner Mettler, How to Reach Japan by Subway: America’s Fascination with Japanese Culture, 1945–1965 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018), 124. 77. Mettler, How to Reach Japan by Subway, 124; qtd. in Mettler, How to Reach Japan by Subway, 124. 78. Mettler, How to Reach Japan by Subway, 124. 79. “Draperies and Damsels,” 4. 80. “Designer Problem: Movie Set Apartment Matches,” Dallas Times Herald, April 2, 1957. Clipping in Designing Woman (1957), Clippings, Core Collection, Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS. 81. “Designer Problem.” 82. Viewers may have been familiar with Giacometti from a number of fashion sources, including Alexander Liberman, “Giacometti,” Vogue, January 1, 1955, 146–51, 178–9. 83. Tuite, 1950s in Vogue, 197–201. 84. “Draperies and Damsels,” 4. 85. Pat Kirkham, Charles and Ray Eames: Designers of the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press, 1995), 143; Pat Kirkham, “Humanizing Modernism: the Crafts, ‘Functioning Decoration,’ and the Eameses,” Journal of Design History 11, no. 1 (1998): 171–4. 86. Allene Talmey, “Eames,” Vogue, August 15, 1959, 124–9; “Sculpture: Used With Ease,” Vogue, September 1, 1957, 259. 87. Trompe-l’oeil enjoyed a revival in the 1950s in both furniture and furnishings. In Back Street, Rae’s Italian office has faux curtains and jeweled tie-backs painted directly onto the walls. See “Decorations in the Grand Manner,” Good Housekeeping, December 1958, 42–3. In an interesting parallel, Alison Hunter had previously worked as both a fashion designer (for Hattie Carnegie (1880–1956)) in New York and a successful interior designer and artist in Hollywood. To have these paintings by a real-life fashion-designer-turned-artist and interior designer so prominently displayed in the film indicates something of the fluidity between these creative cultural categories. Note that there was no relation between Ross Hunter and Alison Hunter, just a long-standing friendship. See Dorothy Manners, “Hollywood: Good News Reported for Olivier Fans,” Anderson Daily Bulletin, November 15, 1967, 11. 88. Kirkham, Charles and Ray Eames, 143; “Draperies and Damsels,” 4. 89. “Film’s Fashion Show Features Evening Gowns,” Press Book, Designing Woman, 1957, Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS. 90. “Draperies and Damsels,” 4. 91. Barbara Cloud, “Crying Towels Unfurl For ‘Back Street’ Film,” Pittsburgh Press, November 2, 1961, 58; Hope Pantell, “Film Review—Back Street,” Evening Sun (Baltimore), October 17, 1962, 8.

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Screen Interiors 92. Note that IMDB.com also lists Jacques Mapes as an uncredited set decorator on the film. 93. Moroccan influences abounded at this time across fashion and interior design sources. With her design partner Betty White, Alison Hunter (artist for Back Street) was incorporating French Moroccan details into her clients’ homes at around this time; see “Skylarking with James Copp,” Los Angeles Times, June 2, 1955, 2. Irving Penn photographed French Morocco for Vogue in 1952: “Morocco: The Vitality of French Morocco,” Vogue, May 15, 1952, 46–57. Regarding glass objects, it is possible the glass beads and objects had their roots in Italian glass of the postwar period, but within the context of the rest of the room, French Moroccan influences appear likely. 94. Tube, “Film Review—Back Street,” AMPAS. 95. “Oklahomans Go To Market,” 2D.

Bibliography (Abbreviation: AMPAS: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, CA) Abbott, James and Elaine Rice. Designing Camelot: The Kennedy White House Restoration. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1998. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. “The 34th Academy Awards, 1962,” https://www. oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1962 Alpert, Hollis. “Movies: Producer says Movie public wants to cry.” Woman’s Day, December 1959, 12. Arizona Republic (Phoenix, Arizona). “Draperies and Damsels Matched By Movie Set Interior Decorator.” April 7, 1957, Sec. 5, p. 4. Clipping in Designing Woman (1957), Clippings, Core Collection, Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS. Basinger, Jeanine. A Woman’s View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women 1930–1960. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993. Better, Ruth W. “French Provincial gives you Informal Comfort and Elegance.” Better Homes and Gardens, April 1953, 299–300. Blackman, Max. “In New ‘Back Street’ Little Seamstress Becomes Designer.” Cincinnati Enquirer, October 13, 1961, 13. Blaszczyk, Regina Lee. The Color Revolution. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012. Brinckmann, Christine. Color and Empathy: Essays on Two Aspects of Film. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2014. Calgary Herald. “Don’t Copy Movie Stars, Says Hollywood Designer.” January 19, 1961, 33. Chicago’s American. “Hunter’s ‘Back Street’ Shining Success.” October 12, 1961, 33. Clipping in the Virginia Grey Papers, Back Street (1961), Clippings, 2.f–12, Special Collections, Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS. Clark, Clifford Edward, Jr. The American Home: 1800–1960. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986. Cloud, Barbara. “Crying Towels Unfurl For ‘Back Street; Film.” Pittsburgh Press, November 2, 1961, 58. Cook, Peggy. “A Photographer and His Model Make a Pretty Movie.” Cosmopolitan, February 1957, 50–3. Crowther, Bosley. “Screen: ‘Funny Face’ Brings Spring to Music Hall.” New York Times, March 29, 1957, 16. Crowther, Bosley. “Susan Hayward Stars with John Gavin.” New York Times, October 13, 1961, 27. Cue. Untitled clipping. August 3, 1957. Review clipping in Gregory Peck Papers, Clippings (Designing Woman, 1957), 335.f–3451, Special Collections, Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS. 164

“Home furnishing takes a cue from Paris, too” Daily Oklahoman. “Oklahomans Go To Market . . . Cities are Slated to Play Host to Buyers.” January 7, 1962, 2D. Dallas Times Herald. “Designer Problem: Movie Set Apartment Matches.” April 2, 1957. Clipping in Designing Woman (1957), Clippings, Core Collection, Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS. Daves, Jessica. “Graduation Address: Tobé-Coburn School for Fashion Careers.” June 6, 1950, Edna Woolman Chase Archive, Manuscript Collection, New York, Box 2, Fld. 4. Daves, Jessica. “Paris Collections Summary.” Vogue, March 1, 1957, 115–21. De Marly, Diana. Christian Dior. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1990. Desert Sun (Palm Springs, CA). “The Glamorous World of . . . Helen Rose: A Designer’s Director.” June 15, 1983, A8. Finamore, Michelle Tolini. Hollywood Before Glamour: Fashion in American Silent Film. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Fogarty, Anne. Wife Dressing: The Art of Being a Well-Dressed Wife (1959). Reprint, London: V&A Publishing, 2011. Fraterrigo, Elizabeth. Playboy and the Making of the Good Life in Modern America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Getlin, Josh. “Memories of Films’ Heyday Have Home.” Los Angeles Times, March 12, 1980, 5. Gura, Judith B. “ ‘A Woman’s Place . . .?’ Women Interior Designers; Part Two: 1950–2000.” In Pat Kirkham (ed.), Women Designers in the USA 1900–2000, 317–28. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000. Higashi, Sumiko. “Movies and the Paradox of Female Stardom.” In Murray Pomerance (ed.), American Cinema of the 1950s: Themes and Variations, 65–88. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005. Hopper, Lynn. “Doris Day–Rock Hudson Duo Glitters In Comedy.” Indianapolis Star, November 12, 1959, 42. Hunter, Ross. “Producer Ross Hunter’s Formula for Movies That Entertain.” Daily Journal (Vineland, NJ), June 22, 1962, 4. Kirkham, Pat. Charles and Ray Eames: Designers of the Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press, 1995. Kirkham, Pat. “Humanizing Modernism: the Crafts, ‘Functioning Decoration,’ and the Eameses.” Journal of Design History 11, no. 1 (1998): 15–29. Kirkham, Pat. “New Environments for Modern Living: At Home with the Eameses.” In Penny Sparke, Anne Massey, Trevor Keeble, and B. Martin (eds.), Designing the Modern Interior: From the Victorians to Today, 171–82. Oxford: Berg, 2009. Kirkham, Pat and Marilyn Cohen. “Contexts, Contradictions, Couture and Clothing: Fashion in An American in Paris, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and That Touch of Mink.” In Eugenia Paulicelli, Drake Stutesman and Louise Wallenberg (eds.), Film, Fashion, and the 1960s, 112–32. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017. Kirkham, Pat, and Penny Sparke. “ ‘A Woman’s Place. . .?’ Women Interior Designers; Part One: 1900–1950.” In Pat Kirkham (ed.), Women Designers in the USA 1900–2000, 305–16. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000. Kirkham, Pat and Susan Weber (eds.). History of Design: Decorative Arts and Material Culture, 1400–2000. New Haven, CT, and New York: Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture and Yale University Press, 2013. LIFE. “Fashion for Floors . . . at Practical Prices.” April 21, 1952, 112–15. LIFE. “The Dress, the Desk and the Moose.” October 5, 1953, 26. LIFE. “The First Lady Brings History and Beauty to the White House.” September 1961, 54–65. Lutz, Brian. “Furniture.” In Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen and Donald Albrecht (eds.), Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future, 246–57. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006. Marling, Karal Ann. As Seen on TV: The Visual Culture of Everyday Life in the 1950s. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994. 165

Screen Interiors McDowell, Colin. Forties Fashion and the New Look. London: Bloomsbury, 1997. Mettler, Meghan Warner. How to Reach Japan by Subway: America’s Fascination with Japanese Culture, 1945–1965. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018. Pantell, Hope. “Film Review—Back Street.” Evening Sun (Baltimore), October 17, 1962, 8. Pile, John. A History of Interior Design, 2nd edition. London: Laurence King, 2005. Potvin, John. “The Velvet Masquerade: fashion, interior design and the furnished body.” In Alla Myzelev and John Potvin (eds.), Fashion, Interior Design and the Contours of Modern Identity, 1–18. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2010. Powers, James. “ ‘Funny Face’ is a Smart Musical with Top Cast.” Hollywood Reporter, February 13, 1957. Review clipping in Funny Face (1957) Production File, Core Collection, Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS. Powers, James. “Film Review—Back Street.” Hollywood Reporter, October 10, 1961. Review clipping in Back Street (1961), Motion Picture Association of America, Production Code Administration Records, Special Collections, Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS. Press Book, Designing Woman, 1957. “Film’s Fashion Show Features Evening Gowns.” Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS. Press Book, Designing Woman, 1957. “Gregory Peck, Lauren Bacall and Dolores Gray Score in M-G-M’s Hilarious Romantic Comedy, ‘Designing Woman.’ ” Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS. Press Book, Designing Woman, 1957. “Next to Cast, The Glamorous Clothes Cost the Most in ‘Designing Woman.’ ” Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS. Schuller, Joyce. “Now ‘Jackie Look’ Has Come to Furniture Fashions.” Daily Oklahoman, January 7, 1962, 2D. Sparke, Penny. “Elsie de Wolfe and her female clients, 1905–15: Gender, Class and the Professional Interior Decorator.” In Brenda Martin and Penny Sparke (eds.), Women’s Places: Architecture and Design, 1860–1960, 47–68. Abingdon, UK, and New York: Routledge, 2003. Sparke, Penny. The Modern Interior. London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 2008. Steele, Valerie. 50 Years of Fashion: New Look to Now. New York: Yale University Press, 1997. Talmey, Allene. “Eames.” Vogue, August 15, 1959, 124–9. Terre Haute Tribune-Star. “ ‘Back Street’ Indiana Film.” November 5, 1961, 34. Thistlewood, Doris. “Home furnishing takes a cue from Paris, too.” Chatelaine, October 1955, 8. Town & Country. “Eye on Living: Designs Men Like.” June 1969, 46–7. Tube. “Film Review—Back Street.” Variety, October 10, 1961. Review clipping in Back Street (1961) Motion Picture Association of America, Production Code Administration Records, Special Collections, Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS. Tuite, Rebecca. The 1950s In Vogue: The Jessica Daves Years, 1952–1962. London: Thames & Hudson, 2019. Vogue. “Decorating News: A Scheme of Reds.” April 1, 1953, 98–9. Vogue. “Sculpture: Used With Ease.” September 1, 1957, 258–61. Vogue. “At-Home Dressing: Decorating by Woman.” October 15, 1957, 80–5. Vogue. “A Modern Architect’s Own House.” April 1, 1960, 172–9. Vreeland, Diana. D.V. (1984). Reprint, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2011. Whitlock, Cathy. Designs on Film: A Century of Hollywood Art Direction. New York: Harper Collins, 2010. Wolff, Perry. A Tour of the White House. New York: Doubleday, 1962. Women’s Wear Daily. “Precise Color Descriptions Sought.” September 13, 1956, 18. Women’s Wear Daily. “Eye on Vogue.” December 5, 1960, 1–4. Young, William H. and Nancy K. Young. American Popular Culture Through History: The 1950s. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004.

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PART 3 FRAMING INTERIORS AND INTERIORITIES

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CHAPTER 8 FRAMING INTERIORITIES: INTERIORS, OBJECTS, AND HIDDEN DESIRES IN BILLY WILDER’S THE APARTMENT 1960 Imma Forino

In 1960 the film The Apartment, directed by Billy Wilder from a screenplay co-written by Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond, was shown in cinemas all over the world, proving a great success with the public and the critics.1 The winner of numerous awards, including five Oscars, the film is set in New York City at the end of the 1950s. It relates the adventures of a young accountant at an insurance company who lends his small bachelor flat to managers of the firm where he works.2 They use it for their sexual encounters and affairs and, as a result, he is able to climb the corporate ladder. He is gradually stripped of his dignity by this arrangement, however, to the point of being obliged to spend evenings outside in the freezing cold or accepting all sorts of consequences, including giving up the woman he loves. The human redemption of the protagonist comes only at the end of the film, when he quits his job to finally become a mensch, a good and decent person.

Plot synopsis Calvin Clifford “C.C.” Baxter (Jack Lemmon), nicknamed “Buddy-boy,” is a junior accountant with a special interest in statistics at Consolidated Life Insurance, the New York headquarters of which is a Modernist skyscraper of the type favored by large corporations in the postwar US. He allows an office supervisor into his apartment to change his clothes before going to a party and thereafter his home becomes an object of exchange (and negotiation) between himself and four company managers. By ingratiating himself with them, Baxter rises rapidly through the corporate ranks. From the huge open-plan office where he first works, he moves to a glass-walled cubicle on the same floor. Despite some inconveniences, such as waiting in the street for one of the managers to vacate his apartment and his neighbor complaining about the noise (blamed on his presumed playboy lifestyle), the arrangement continues. Then, at work, he falls in love with the warm-hearted working-class elevator operator, Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), the only person to give him a disinterested smile. When he lends the apartment to the personnel director, Jeff Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), he is rewarded with a private office on the twenty-seventh floor, only to discover soon afterwards that Sheldrake’s lover is in fact Fran, who believes that he is going to leave his wife for her. Alerted to the personnel 169

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director’s unreliability by his secretary and former lover, and upset by a depressing encounter with him, after which he leaves her alone in the apartment, Fran attempts suicide. With the help of his neighbor, Dr. Dreyfus (Jack Kruschen), Baxter saves her life and she stays at his apartment while recovering. After a pleasant couple of days together, during which time he teaches her to play gin rummy, Baxter saves Sheldrake’s reputation by allowing everyone to believe that Fran is his lover. Sheldrake’s appreciation results in Baxter being made assistant personnel director, with an office next to Sheldrake’s and the coveted key to the executive washroom. Fired by Sheldrake, his secretary retaliates by recounting the sorry tale to his wife, who promptly throws him out of the marital home. Sheldrake asks Baxter for the key to the apartment, but makes it clear that he intends to enjoy to the fullest being a bachelor again. Baxter realizes that his boss has no intention of marrying Fran. Annoyed that Sheldrake could treat Fran so badly, Baxter returns the washroom key and quits his job. At a New Year’s Eve party, Sheldrake tells Fran about his underling’s seemingly erratic behavior. She slips away and goes to the apartment, where Baxter is packing his bags to leave. The potential lovers are both now free, if unemployed. The film ends with them finishing their previously interrupted game of gin rummy. He confesses his love and she answers him with a smile and says, “Shut up and deal.” And, on the first day of a New Year, he deals the whole pack, instead of the usual ten cards.

Fantasy, desires, sets, inner lives, and “framing” The fantasy of success in the corporate workplace is what cynically drives this “dirty fairy tale,” as I. A. L. Diamond called it,3 in which everyone seems to use everyone else with no holds barred, including the protagonist. While trying to please everyone, he turns his back on the concept of meritocracy in order to advance his career. The film also speaks of the desires—manifest, latent, hidden—that shape people’s lives. They find expression in a succession of repercussions, lies, and manipulations and are played out on a variety of sets, from offices to the bachelor apartment, a Chinese restaurant, and a bar, which were designed by art director Alexandre Trauner in collaboration with set designer Edward G. Boyle, and doubtless after discussions with Wilder, who took a keen interest in architecture and design.4 Shot for the most part in interiors, the film reveals the inner lives of the characters through a number of objects that, in the guise of Lacanian objets petits a(utres), represent the bodily fetishes of desire, illusion, and disappointment. They are details that, on the one hand, “identify roles, characters, situations, feelings and actions” and, on the other, “articulate the cinematic mode of the matter and its stylistic approach, modelled on the experience of Expressionist cinema.”5 The relationship between those objects and the characters in The Apartment is underlined by the different types of setting, which become so many “frames” of the interiorities brought into play by the reflections and allusions that bring the whole story to life. Set design plays a leading role, alongside the direction and screenwriting, and Trauner created a hyper realistic vision of a slice of life in the 170

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United States at the end of the 1950s through a series of visual stratagems aimed at underlining the pathos of the scenes. This chapter unfolds through a selection of frames, each of which connects a set, an objet petit a(utre), and the protagonists, so as to present a series of revelations of their inner lives. It also outlines the wider contexts to which the film refers, especially whitecollar office work in the postwar period, the continued rise of the middle class, the expansion of service industries in the United States, and the ways these are embedded within the film sets. The notion of framing—which gives this chapter its title—refers to a certain kind of interpretation of the representation of culture in the construction of individual and collective identity stemming from the combination of modes of visual production, past and present narratives, and discourses of knowledge and power. The concept of framing has visual, narrative, and discursive dimensions.6 Here, in addition to referring metaphorically to the “cuts” of the film as ways of framing the salient moments of the story, frames perform as a set of meta-concepts.7 Used as meta-concepts, the frames outline the interiorities of the protagonists and, through the reflections provided by the objets petits a(utres), reveal them.

The objet petit a(utre) in Hollywood Several contemporary film critics have seen a connection between the cinema and the ideas of Jacques Lacan, which, for the most part, focus on the gaze of the viewer. Just as a child of between six and eighteen months, who, with fully developed vision but limited capacities for movement, learns to recognize itself through its image reflected in a mirror and thereby constructs a first outline of its identity, members of the audience in a cinema, forcibly immobile and with their gaze concentrated on the screen, experience a process of identification with the characters of a film, replicating in a way their previous experience as an infant.8 The concept of desire formulated by Lacan as “eternization” has also fed into film criticism in relation to the recognition that the viewer’s wish to be told a story is an example of the “endless desire” theorized by the French psychoanalyst and used to explain why people go to the movies.9 On the other hand, the “law of desire,” which also requires transgressions of common norms for the desire to be momentarily satisfied, establishes relations between subject and object in terms of cinematic narration. If in the whole of Wilder’s filmography sex and money represent the cynical fundamental relationship of contemporary US society, for the critic Hugh S. Manon it is also possible to recognize in his filmography “a sort of textual parapraxis—a truth-revealing slippage at the very surface of the film, the meaning of which becomes clear only through its repetition.”10 To explain the nature of the objet petit a(utre), that is, the enigmatic object of desire, Lacan uses the metaphor of the agalma (a figurative statue in honor of a god or, more often, a figurative statue of any sort, as in Plato’s Symposium), “the hidden treasure or small deity . . . whose theme is precisely the attraction of the lover for his beloved.”11 On the other hand, for Lacan that desire is the desire to be recognized symbolically by the 171

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Other: “The subject’s desire does not in fact have an object as its partner but the desire of the Other, the desired desire of the Other.”12 In other words, it is a symbolic satisfaction, linked to the recognition of the subjects: “being recognized as subjects of the Other’s desire.”13 In Lacan’s theory the objet petit a(utre) expresses the essence of desire through a simulacrum, which ceases to be such when it is fulfilled in reality. The Apartment can be seen as a tale of “endless desire,” that is, of the recognition of the subject on the part of the Other embodied by a career, by the love of a woman, but above all by the assertion of an identity, something continually denied by the need to conform in order to survive. The bodily fetishes of desire, the objets petits a(utres), are a series of objects exchanged throughout the film between the protagonist and the other characters; they also represent the illusions, deceptions, and, above all, threatened identities that bourgeois respectability does not allow to be spoken out loud.14 Indeed, through the exchange of these objects, often duplicated in analogous figures, slippages occur that reveal the truth, illuminating the inner lives of the protagonists and giving the whole story its rhythm: the key to the apartment lent by Baxter versus that of the executive washroom received in exchange; the powder compact with a cracked mirror lost by Fran and found by him versus the shaving mirror in his bathroom; the old trilby versus the black bowler hat (worn by many white-collar workers and businessmen) that he replaces it with, and which is later crushed, like his tender heart. Amidst continual toing and froing between desire and disillusion, between promise and disappointment, the film’s narrative unfolds through a series of misunderstandings that put a smile on the viewer’s face but leave a bitter aftertaste. So, too, does the ending. At its bleakest, it can be read as showing “two people without jobs who have lost all their illusions, rejecting every compromise, and find themselves on the margins of society. Because those who are not willing to submit to the logic of power lose any hope of climbing its ladder.”15 It is an open ending, however; the viewer cannot be sure about the real outcome, as is the case in several of Wilder’s films.16

Contexts: the US corporation After World War Two, the US economy experienced a boom in consumer goods while at the same time service industries and white-collar occupations grew faster than ever before. The insurance industry offered a range of respectable white-collar jobs for men, from clerks to top executives, with regular salaries and the prospect of a steady career. In 1951, Charles Wright Mills wrote that the “white-collar people” in the USA “have been taken for granted as familiar actors of the urban mass.”17 Remote from the world of production—of making things—clerks handled paper, information, and statistics, turning them into profit for a usually abstract third party. Baxter’s aim seems to be to move up the white-collar hierarchy within the company and achieve a managerial position. In the postwar period there was increasing interest not only in the rapid growth of the managerial class but also in managerial culture itself. Some books and films suggested that nepotism remained a means of climbing up the 172

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corporate ladder, or entering at the top rung, whereas for many young men like Baxter, while they might climb the bottom and intermediate rungs of the corporate ladder, positions at the top—such as company executives—were for the most part barred to them.18 Wilder and Diamond offered viewers an alternative means of advancement to nepotism or having attended the right university or being a member of the right club: a means that opened up great possibilities for comedy and pathos. The incentive was to become an “organization man,” the well-known expression coined by William Whyte in the mid-1950s to describe the successful young managers who aspired to belong to a sort of company caste that brought with it a set of privileges (such as a private office, access to the executive dining room, an expense account, and a personal secretary) that symbolized prestige and success.19 Some companies hired human relations specialists, who sought to instill company loyalties by psycho-sociological means, with the additional aim of boosting productivity and therefore profits.20 Such specialists argued that gratification, self-esteem, cohesion, and adaptation to one’s group of work colleagues, along with a sense of responsibility and motivation, ensured a better performance from employees. This mass employment of white-collar workers, and the monotony of some of the work given to lower-paid office workers in industries like insurance, provides the socioeconomic and cultural panorama that underpins The Apartment. Furthermore, this being a Wilder–Diamond script, both the broad strokes and the small nuances of the work and lifestyles of the characters in the film are often brought home to viewers through comedy.21 Set in New York, the screenplay speaks, on the one hand, of the protagonist’s conformism, and on the other, of the next “peer group” up the ladder, to which he tries to adapt, represented by the managers who make use of his apartment and the personnel director who lords it over everyone else. The humble Baxter is caught in a web of conventions of respectability and “good behavior” and, at least at the beginning of the film, cynically seeks to manipulate the situation in which he finds himself in his own favor, revealing the basic “secret of American civilization and culture,” which lies in the fact, as Maurizio Grande wrote in 2006, that “everything and everyone are for sale and that everyone is manipulated by everyone else” (emphasis is original ).22 Thus the film lays bare the dominant social mechanisms and the conflicting relationship between the individual and society, subject to the ruthless laws of postwar Western capitalism as they played out in the corporate world. Wilder and Diamond outline this prospect with black humor, presenting to the viewer “the very premise that the rise of an organisation man is a sort of rogue’s progress and that the room at the top is the executive washroom.”23

Frame 1. The office interior: the telephone and the Rolodex card file In his portrayal of the atmosphere at Consolidated Life Insurance, the company where the protagonist works, Wilder was influenced by director King Vidor’s famous depiction of the monotony of office work in a huge open-plan office of an insurance company in New York in The Crowd (1928).24 Presenting the office as a pillory from which there is no 173

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escape, and as indispensable to the survival of the “Everyman” character, Vidor represents the interior of the workplace through “the principle of elementary location or quadrillage. Each individual has his own place; and each place its individual,” as Michel Foucault wrote on the subject of military discipline.25 The serried ranks of desks are set out in mechanistic parallel rows, in accordance with Taylorist managerial theories of the organization of work.26 Wilder and Trauner brought the setting up to date with modern objects, but retained the uniformity of the layout.27 By the 1950s, many companies housed low-level office workers in large open-plan spaces, with lower-level managers in small rooms with transparent partitions, and executives in enclosed private offices. At first sight the openplan office that Trauner designed seems to be an undifferentiated space, artificially and constantly illuminated from above and with no possibility of privacy. Wilder and Diamond described it thus: . . . acres of gray steel desks, gray steel filing cabinets, and steel-gray faces under indirect light. One wall is lined with glass-enclosed cubicles for the supervisory personnel. It is all very neat, antiseptic, impersonal. The only human touch is supplied by a bank of IBM machines, clacking away cheerfully in the background.”28 The open plan shows not only the mass of white-collar workers needed to cope with certain tasks but also the hierarchy of roles within that space: the low-level clerks, like Baxter, are placed in the middle, where they are subject to direct control by one of the company’s managers, while those who enjoy a slightly higher status and can aspire to an advancement in their career, however minimal, are located on the edges. Evoking in part the best-known corporate offices, designed in that period by companies such as SOM (Skidmore, Owings & Merrill), Trauner used an optical trick to exaggerate the breadth and depth of the open space for Consolidated Life Insurance’s innumerable employees in order to heighten the impact on viewers. On the 120-by-200foot set were placed desks of ever smaller size, at which shorter and shorter extras were seated, culminating in people of very small stature, while through the windows at the sides tiny cars could be seen, so that the perspective was amplified to an extraordinary extent in the filming.29 Covering the ceiling with alternate strips of aluminum and fluorescent lights further exaggerated the depth of the space. Most of the takes concentrated on the people in the foreground in a markedly horizontal view, however, thereby underlining the sheer size of the room, which appears nearly boundless (see Figure 8.1).30 The overall effect is of an office transformed into a “corporate hell” where the clerks are so dehumanized as to be identifiable only by numbers (or names) on the edges of their desks, a device that was also used by Vidor to great effect.31 At the beginning of the story Baxter, seated at desk no. 861 in the middle of the open space, seems caught in an invisible grid created by the serried ranks of desks, ceiling strip lights, and narrow aisles. It is from this ethereal and segregative web that Baxter will seek to escape. Meanwhile he flips through his card index while using his phone to handle “appointments,” that is, reserving his apartment for the managers’ trysts. These two 174

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Figure 8.1 Baxter’s triumphant walk in the Corporation’s open office: he brings his Rolodex card file with him. The Apartment, directed by Billy Wilder. © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. 1960. All rights reserved.

objects, the Rolodex file and the telephone, embody his desire to emerge from the condition of “ordinary office worker,” as they are the tools which he uses to plan how to attain his goal of successive promotions. It is the key of the apartment, concealed in an envelope and carried by an office boy from floor to floor, however, that is the real means by which the negotiations are conducted: a promotion in exchange for the use of his bed.

Frame 2. The bachelor apartment: the record player and television Baxter’s cozy flat provides a marked contrast to the organizational rigidity of the office.32 Situated on West 69th Street, a hundred yards from New York’s Central Park, it has two rooms and a poky kitchen, and even though it is furnished simply and cheaply there is some evidence of his personal taste.33 Fixed to the wall with drawing pins, a poster with a reproduction of a picture in the Museum of Modern Art bears witness to his solitary visits there, while the bed’s bentwood headboard and chairs around the dining table belonged to Wilder, who admired and collected this kind of furniture.34 “It’s a real nice apartment—just right for a bachelor,” Baxter declares at the beginning of the film.35 But Trauner makes it sufficiently shabby for contemporary audiences to understand it to be the home of a man of limited means: the wallpaper is torn in several 175

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places, the upholstery of the couch is worn. Baxter lives somewhat untidily, but some of the mess is made by his inconvenient “guests,” who make abundant use of liquor, crackers, and olives, and whose lovers often leave their personal effects lying around: hairpins, earrings, even a pair of galoshes. The continuing profaning of the sanctity of his home serves to highlight the loss of identity on the part of the protagonist, who no longer has a place he can wholly call his own: the violated apartment represents “the disintegration of the individual’s private space and of his image, crushed by the tensions that are growing outside him; and that strip him of his identity and its connotations.”36 Two objects embody different aspects of Baxter’s interiority when he is in the apartment. The record player brightens the evenings of the occasional lovers while the high volume of the music annoys the neighbors, but Baxter often experiences it as a remnant of someone else’s pleasure: the record is still spinning on the turntable. The silent movement of the needle over the disc underlines the solitude of a man at the service of other people’s enjoyment; he clears away the traces, from cocktail glasses stained with lipstick and an ashtray filled with cigarette butts to a pitcher with martini dregs (which he drinks). The television set, by contrast, keeps him company while eating a miserable pre-packaged meal. The stars of the films seem to be his only friends: “Sometimes I have dinner with Ed Sullivan, sometimes with Dinah Shore or Perry Como—the other night I had dinner with Mae West—of course, she was much younger then.”37 His aloneness is spelled out when he likens himself to Robinson Crusoe, “shipwrecked among eight million people,” and draws the curtains on what lies outside the apartment, including love.38

Frame 3. The elevator: the flower Baxter’s ascent to the top echelons of the company and, literally, to the upper floors of the building is mapped through the elevator operated by Fran, “the inadvertent facilitator of upward mobility.”39 She is also the prize for which he and the unsavory Sheldrake compete, although neither is aware of the fact. According to Wilder and Diamond’s script, the elevator is inhabited by the pretty girl, hardly ever alone and often the butt of vulgar remarks on the part of company executives. Indeed, she comments, “Something happens to men in elevators. Must be the change of altitude—the blood rushes to their head, or something—boy, I could tell you stories.” 40 Only rarely is she treated courteously; she tells Baxter, “You know, you’re the only one around here who ever takes his hat off in the elevator.”41 The elevator becomes the cramped “place of communication”42 in which Baxter and Fran converse freely and smile at each other as they get to know one another, even if in front of others. As he leaves the elevator on the twenty-seventh floor to go to see Sheldrake, the personnel director, Fran, whom Baxter has told he might be promoted, takes the carnation from the buttonhole of her uniform jacket and puts it in his. The flower that Fran wears every day represents her freshness and kindness of heart in Baxter’s eyes: “That’s the first thing I ever noticed about you—when you were still on the 176

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local elevator—you always wore a flower.”43 As objet petit a(utre), Fran’s flower embodies a desire for purity to which Baxter, in the end, also seems to aspire, notwithstanding the atmosphere of corruption with which he has been contaminated. At the end of the workday, while Baxter is waiting for Fran in the lobby of the company building to invite her to the theater, the carnation peeps out from under the raincoat he is wearing, revealing how much he had taken her gift to heart, and kept it close to his heart. Yet Baxter does not immediately recognize her without her uniform.44 Indeed he is caught somewhat off guard; Fran now is not just a “delicate flower” but also a seductive young woman. His invitation to take her out for the evening comes to naught, however; she stands him up for Sheldrake who takes her to Baxter’s apartment.

Frame 4. The cubicle and the apartment’s bathroom: two mirrors After his first promotion, Baxter strides across the open space in which his desk is located and moves into his private office on the nineteenth floor. This small room with glass walls and a single window houses a metal filing cabinet, a desk, and two synthetic-leather chairs. Despite the modest furnishings, Baxter feels like he has entered Paradise, even though the four managers who are vying for the use of his apartment take the mickey: “Quite an office: name on the door, rug on the floor, the whole schmear.”45 His joy at being a junior executive finds expression in purchasing a new black bowler hat. He wants Fran to see this symbol of his new status, possibly at the company Christmas Eve party during which all employees, from executives to switchboard operators, drink, dance, and make merry. In a corner, Sheldrake’s personal secretary and former lover enlightens the naive Fran about Sheldrake, stating that he will never leave his wife for her, nor for the many other women before her. In a surge of high spirits, Baxter succeeds in leading Fran into his cubicle (which by now he considers almost a “second home”) for a seasonal toast. He shows her his hat and she invites him to take a look at himself in the mirror of her compact. Opening it, Baxter sees that the mirror is cracked. Wilder cuts to a close-up of the mirror and we see Baxter’s dismayed expression split in two (see Figure 8.2). He had found the compact at his home and that morning had given it to Sheldrake, who had used the apartment the night before. Baxter’s face turns into a mask of consternation, having grasped the truth: Fran is the “object of desire,” in the literal sense, of his boss. Returning the compact, Baxter comments with difficulty, “The mirror—it’s broken.” With resignation, Fran replies, “I know. I like it this way—makes me look the way I feel.”46 This mirror is one of the most important objets petits a(utres) in the story, but with the opposite of the meaning assigned to them by Lacan. It is not a simulacrum of desire, but of disappointment—that of Baxter, who liked Fran and who knows that he will have to give her up if he does not want to lose his job—and that of Fran, who feels her heart is broken like her mirror. A mirror figures again in a dramatic scene shortly afterwards. That same evening, after a distressing confrontation with Sheldrake in Baxter’s apartment, Fran goes to the bathroom before leaving. She washes off her mascara, ruined by her tears, and looks in the pull-away shaving mirror while she dries her face. There, behind 177

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Figure 8.2 Fran’s compact mirror and Baxter’s dismayed expression split in two. The Apartment, directed by Billy Wilder. © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. 1960. All rights reserved. her own reflection, she sees a bottle of pills on the shelf of the medicine cabinet. She picks it up and reads the label (“Seconal: One at bedtime as needed for sleep”). She returns it to its place. As she takes her lipstick out of her handbag, she sees the $100 bill Sheldrake gave her as a Christmas present, a gift that makes her feel she is being treated as a sex object. She then swallows all the pills. The broken mirror of the compact and the intact shaving mirror are a dual visual and allusive device, which Wilder adeptly uses to tell a story with little dialogue. He was probably inspired by what he called the “Lubitsch touch,” in particular the way that director Ernst Lubitsch used certain objects to provide the viewer with a key to the thoughts, not expressed out loud, of the characters in his films.47 Here a mirror, in itself a means of alluding to “another world,” reflects the interiorities of the two young people. Their faces are filmed by the camera in the mirror: “mirrors show characters who they really are.”48 Within the “frame” of each of the two mirrors comes a revelation: Baxter learns that Fran is Sheldrake’s lover while Fran sees a way out of a painful situation. Both mirrors function as “micro-sets,” each framing a dramatic scene: one about devastating disappointment, the other ending in desperation. Words are not needed; their expressions, reflected by the small pieces of glass, suffice.

Frame 5. The kitchen: the tennis racquet The only really romantic moment in the movie is the dinner that Baxter cooks for Fran in his small kitchen during her convalescence after the attempted suicide. There is a delicate interplay of movement and conversation between them two of them. She appears 178

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in the doorway, saying, “Are we dressing for dinner?” while he replies, “No—just come as you are,” that is, in pajamas and dressing gown. And again: Fran

Shall I light the candles?

Baxter It’s a must—gracious-living-wise.49 There is no sexual innuendo here, but a spontaneous dialogue between two human beings who feel they are on the same side. Both are victims of the social system: Fran is reduced to a sex object while the accountant’s job has been made a mockery by the moral corruption that holds sway in the office. In the kitchen—perhaps the most memorable scene of the film—Baxter demonstrates his culinary talent, draining the spaghetti on a tennis racquet before serving it with meatballs (see Figure 8.3).50 Made aware of his skills as a cook, Fran comments, “Say, you’re pretty good with the racquet,” while Baxter is reminded of his loneliness and realizes how an empathetic female presence could change his life: “It’s a wonderful thing—dinner for two.”51 The conversion of the tennis racquet into a colander hints that established roles and patterns of behavior can change suddenly and in an unexpected manner. Accustomed to eating frozen food or straight out of a can, Baxter has no need of a colander, just as his temporary guests—the pairs of lovers—never cook during their fleeting encounters. In his little kitchen Baxter is not just truly “at home,” but savors for the first time the ineffable taste of familiarity: place (the kitchen) and action (cooking) come together and suggest what his life could be. Moreover, he demolishes the cliché of the bachelor who cooks only to seduce his female guests, a picture fostered by the journalism of the time.52 Baxter

Figure 8.3 In the apartment’s kitchen, Baxter demonstrates his culinary talent, draining spaghetti onto a tennis racquet before serving it with meatballs. Fran is on the threshold of the kitchen. The Apartment, directed by Billy Wilder. © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. 1960. All rights reserved. 179

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wants to take care of Fran, make her disillusionment about Sheldrake less distressing, and reconcile her with life, having saved her from death (with the help of the neighbor). If at the beginning of the film Baxter seems to live in a sort of love hotel, clearing up the mess left by its temporary occupants, he can now call that place “home” thanks to the hours spent in Fran’s company.

Frame 6. The personnel director’s office: the two keys The apartment’s availability as well as Baxter’s rise up the corporate ladder is symbolized by its key, hidden in an envelope or left under the doormat. The other key, desired and finally obtained by Baxter, opens the executive washroom. It epitomizes the agalma, the unexpressed and unattainable desire for professional distinction, and in general for the recognizability of his identity, but in the viewer’s eyes it also represents the absurdity of Baxter’s position and the moral level to which he has sunk in order to obtain it. Baxter receives the second key in Sheldrake’s office on the twenty-seventh floor. The set created by Trauner was an exaggeration of contemporary executive offices, and showed the public what the room of a top manager ought to look like: a large window on one wall, a card index set flush in the wooden paneling that also conceals the wardrobe, a soft fitted carpet, leather armchairs, small sculptures, and original paintings. The desk is modern and more imposing than those of his underlings. In order to help the actor get into his part, stationery and memo pads with the manager’s name printed on them were placed on it, “even though no one but MacMurray would see them on Sheldrake’s desk.”53 A similar office, the one reserved for Baxter when Sheldrake later shows his gratitude for the way he has preserved his boss’s reputation, is also the setting where Baxter the executive decides to be a “mensch . . . A human being,” as he puts it. When Sheldrake insists on having the key to the apartment to take Fran there again, Baxter gives him instead the one to the executive washroom, that is, the key to what had previously been his dream. At this point, the key that first gained him promotion in exchange for the apartment and led to the accountant’s human degradation changes its significance, just as had happened in the earlier scenes with the two mirrors, and “The key is thus both a symbol of Bud’s misplaced pride, and his moral regeneration.”54 The exchange of the two keys and what they represent as objets petits a(utres) is for Baxter now definitive. His career ends and the film moves toward its epilogue. Leaving the Consolidated Life Insurance building, Baxter places his bowler hat on the handyman’s head: free at last (even from his own aspirations).

Conclusion In The Apartment the interiorities of the protagonists are revealed by means of objects of everyday use that, in the guise of Lacanian objets petits a(utres), represent the bodily fetishes of desire, illusion, and disillusionment. The relationship between those objects and people is, on each occasion, underlined by different types of interior, both domestic 180

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and public, which become so many “frames” of their interiorities, surfacing from the interplay of reflections and allusions that enliven the whole film. Most of the scenes were shot in interiors, since here, as in Wilder’s other films, the city is more or less a backdrop.55 New York appears in only a few takes and is used to highlight “isolation in the mass, anonymity among neighbours.”56 For the most part, the scenes of New York were shot on sets created in Los Angeles under the art direction of Trauner. They refer to a generic metropolis, abstract in some of its essential lines, like the view of the city from above, Baxter’s street, the park, and the exit from the theater. The narration focuses on the events that take place indoors, in the apartment, the office, and the bar, whose sets were also designed by Trauner. The importance of set design in Wilder’s movies is underlined in numerous interviews with Trauner, his art director of choice. For Trauner, “design was rarely neutral, unmediated or impersonal; there was always a willed compliance between the designer and the final aesthetic or functional demands of the narrative.”57 The mise-en-scène in The Apartment provides a subterranean dialogue, invisible to the eyes of an inattentive viewer but indispensable to the narrative of the film. This is evident from the care with which Trauner prepared Baxter’s apartment, which has to reflect the character and the lifestyle of a solitary bachelor, as well as the offices in which he works, which have to represent the intolerable burden, in a Kafkian sense, of the bureaucratization of work and the underbelly of corporate culture in the postwar US. At one level, the sets have a disarming simplicity. Trauner made few concessions to superfluous decoration, preferring a minimal style in setting the various scenes.58 While this is a characteristic of his work, in The Apartment the sobriety of the scenery serves to underline dramaturgically the importance of the objets petits a(utres) in the narration as well as the quality of the intense dialogues between the main protagonists, whose figures stand out visually from the backdrops against which the story plays out. The apartment, for example, was made to look even smaller by eliminating all the pale colors from the surfaces and covering them with wallpaper or fabric, while the space of the large office was expanded by strips of aluminum alternating with fluorescent lights housed in milkycolored Plexiglas fixtures. In these two contexts, diametrically opposite in significance and spatial composition, the objets petits a(utres) take on a performative quality as a result of Trauner’s deliberate reduction in the embellishment of the sets and the ways in which Wilder’s shots concentrate on those elements. In The Apartment, set design, objects, close-ups, and horizontal shots contribute, along with the screenplay and all the performances, to the creation of a justly multi-award-winning film. (Translated by Huw Evans.)

Notes 1. The Apartment (1960), directed by Billy Wilder, produced by Billy Wilder and Walter Mirisch, script by Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond, cinematography by Joseph La Shelle (Pana-

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Screen Interiors Vision), music by Adolph Deutsch, art director Alexandre Trauner, set design by Edward G. Boyle, distributed by United Artists. Starring Jack Lemmon (C.C. “Bud” Baxter), Shirley MacLaine (Fran Kubelik), Fred MacMurray (Jeff D. Sheldrake), Ray Walston (Joe Dobish), David Lewis (Kinkerby), David Whyte (Eichelberger), Willard Waterman (Vanderhof), Jack Kruschen (Dr. Dreyfuss), Edie Adams (Miss Olsen), and Hope Holyday (Margie MacDougall). Running time 125 minutes. Filmed on location in New York City and at the Goldwyn Studios in Hollywood, November 1959–February 1960. 2. Five Oscars at the 33rd Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Writing-Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White); BAFTA Award for Best Film from any Source; BAFTA to Jack Lemmon; BAFTA to Shirley MacLaine. 3. Diamond quoted in Axel Madsen, Billy Wilder (London: Secker & Warburg, 1968), 31. 4. Before starting to collaborate regularly with Billy Wilder, from 1957 onward, Trauner worked on the set design of a number of films. These included, in France, Quai des brumes (1938), Les Enfants du Paradis (1945), and Les Portes de la nuit (1946), directed by Marcel Carneé and scripted by Jacques Prévert, and Rififi (1955), directed by Jules Dassin; and in the US, The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice (1952), directed by Orson Welles, and Land of the Pharaohs (1955), directed by Howard Hawks. 5. Maurizio Grande, Billy Wilder (Rome: Bulzoni, 1978, 2006), 23. 6. Natalie Edwards, Ben McCann, and Peter Poiana, “The Doubling of the Frame—Visual Art and Discourse,” in Natalie Edwards, Ben McCann, and Peter Poiana (eds.), Framing French Culture, 3 (Adelaide: University of Adelaide Press, 2015). 7. See Werner Wolf, “Introduction: Frames, Framing and Framing Borders,” in Werner Wolf and Walter Bernhart (eds.), Framing Border, in Literature and Other Media, 5 (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2006). 8. Todd McGowan, “Looking the Gaze: Lacanian Film Theory and Its Vicissitudes,” Cinema Journal 42, no. 3 (Spring 2003): 28. 9. Francesco Linguiti and Marcello Colacino, L’inconscio cinema: Lo spettatore tra cinema, film e psyche (Cantalupa, Turin: Effatà Editrice, 2004), 32, 38. 10. Hugh S. Manon, “Some Like It Cold: Fetishism in Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity,” Cinema Journal 44, no. 4 (Summer 2005): 22. The film critic interprets Wilder’s earlier film, Double Indemnity (1944), through the identification of the objet petit a(utre) as a driver of the narrative. 11. Lewis A. Kirshner “Rethinking Desire: The Object Petit A in Lacanian Theory,” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 53, no. 1 (2005): 84. The psychoanalyst reflects on Lacan’s objet petit autre in relation to Pedro Almodóvar’s film Hable con ella (Talk to Her), 2002. 12. Antonio Di Ciaccia and Massimo Recalcati, Jacques Lacan (Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2000), 167. 13. Di Ciaccia and Recalcati, Jacques Lacan, 169. 14. Imma Forino, “The Gift of Bathroom,” Abitare 536 (November–December 2013): 143. 15. Noël Simsolo, Billy Wilder (Paris: Cahiers du cinema Sarl, 2011), 73. 16. In contrast to the happy ending typical of the American comedy of the 1950s and 1960s, in many of Wilder’s films the ending is not so obvious. In Some Like It Hot (1959), for instance, what is going to happen between the elderly millionaire and Jerry, the musician dressed up as a woman? The film doesn’t say and neither does it offer a hint. 17. Charles Wright Mills, White Collars: The American Middle Class (London, Oxford, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1951), ix. 18. Imma Forino, Uffici: Interni arredi oggetti (Turin: Einaudi, 2011), 153. 182

Framing Interiorities 19. William H. Whyte, The Organization Man (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1956), 193. 20. Franco Fontana, Il sistema organizzativo aziendale (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 1981, 1999), 37. 21. Other films that described the world of the American office during the 1950s were Executive Suite (1954, Robert Wise), The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956, Nunnaly Johnson), Patterns (1956, Fielder Cook), and The Solid Gold Cadillac (1956, Richard Quine). With respect to these movies, Spector sees The Apartment as the expression of a diminution of acceptance of the values championed in the Cold War years. Bert Spector, “A Crack in the Cold War Consensus: Billy Wilder’s The Apartment,” Management & Organizational History 4, no. 2: 187–201. 22. Grande, Billy Wilder, 85. 23. Madsen, Billy Wilder, 123. 24. For a detailed comparison between The Crowd and The Apartment, see Gerd Gemünden, “Being a Mensch in the Administered World: The Apartment (1960),” in A Foreign Affair: Billy Wilder’s American Films (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), 130–5. The stories are different, but there is a similarity in the way in which the two films, The Crowd and The Apartment, begin, with a shot of the city from above and then, from the bottom up, of the building in which the clerk works. In the pre-sound film The Crowd, the story is introduced by inter-titles; in The Apartment the voice of the protagonist describes the city of offices and his role in it. A fundamental difference between the office in Vidor’s film and the one in Wilder’s is that in the former it is shot from above and then the camera gradually zooms in on the protagonist, John Sims, seated at his desk. Wilder, however, places the camera in front of the desks and at eye level, focusing on C.C. “Bud” Baxter’s face (Phillips, Some Like It Wilder, 234). The Crowd (1928) is a film directed by King Vidor, produced by Irving Thalberg, written by Joseph Farnham (titles), script by King Vidor and John V. A. Weaver, music by Carl Davis, produced and distributed by Metro-GoldwynMayer and starring James Murray (John Sims), Eleanor Boardman (Mary Sims), Bert Roach (Bert), and Estelle Clark (Jane). Running time ninety-eight minutes. 25. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Paris: Gallimard, 1975; Harmondsworth and New York: Penguin Books, 1977), 143. 26. Forino, Uffici, 111. 27. All the office equipment in the film (calculators, punch card machines, sorters) is made by IBM, as was usually the case in the United States at that time. 28. Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond, The Apartment and the Fortune Cookie: Two Screenplays (London: Studio View, 1971), 14. Here and elsewhere the quotations are taken from the published script of the film. It should be remembered that for the offices of the Lever Brothers Corporation in New York (1950– 2), the designer Raymond Loewy had created a dominant color, a pale beige-grey, that was also used for the uniforms of the elevator operators: all the surfaces, including those of the tables, ceilings and Venetian blinds, were in the same pale shade of grey. 29. Charlotte Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect: Billy Wilder, a Personal Biography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), 226, cites an interview in which Wilder says that he had used midgets in the last rows of desks. In another interview, however, Diamond claims that they were children seated at toy desks; see Gene D. Phillips, Some Like It Wilder: The Life and Controversial Films of Billy Wilder (Lexington: Kentucky University Press, 2010), 235. Visually, the office appears to be a space of 650-by-800 feet. 30. Alexandre Trauner, Alexandre Trauner: Décors de cinema (Paris: Flammarion, 1988), 152. 31. Ed Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder (New York: Hyperion, 1998), 434. 32. For Wojcik, the “apartment plot” characterizes a difference in cinematic representation between the 1950s and 1960s, arguing that, rather than an accidental setting, the apartment 183

Screen Interiors “functions as a particularly privileged site for representing an important alternative to dominant discourses of and about America in the mid-twentieth century, and as a key signifier of an emerging singles discourse.” See Pamela Robertson Wojcik, The Apartment Plot: Urban Living in American Film and Popular Culture, 1945 to 1975 (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2010), 5. 33. The interiors were rebuilt by Trauner in the film studios. 34. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 440. In an interview, Wilder stated that he had used bentwood furniture in the film because it was what he would have wanted himself if he had had a bachelor pad on the Upper West Side (Chandler 2002: 235). Considered by most people to be old fashioned in the late 1950s, it could be bought cheaply second hand. Certain types of bentwood furniture, however, were favored by Modernist architects and designers from Le Corbusier onwards. 35. Wilder and Diamond, The Apartment, 14. 36. Grande, Billy Wilder, 60. 37. Wilder and Diamond, The Apartment, 96. 38. Wilder and Diamond, The Apartment, 96 . 39. Gemünden, “Being a Mensch,” 127. 40. Wilder and Diamond, The Apartment, 33. 41. Wilder and Diamond, The Apartment, 33 . 42. Grande, Billy Wilder, 84. 43. Wilder and Diamond, The Apartment, 33. 44. In the scene, Fran wears a once stylish but now somewhat out-of-fashion coat of Audrey Wilder’s, reflecting the fact that she has bourgeois aspirations for a working girl. 45. Wilder and Diamond, The Apartment, 44. 46. Wilder and Diamond, The Apartment, 51. 47. In an interview with Cameron Crowe (Conversations with Wilder (New York: Knopf, 2001), 19 and passim), Wilder speaks at length of the “touch” of the director Ernst Lubitsch, for whom he worked as an assistant. In his film Trouble in Paradise (1932), Lubitsch uses a brass ashtray in the shape of a gondola to make one of the protagonists realize he has been tricked, having undergone a robbery in Venice of which he remembers almost nothing: cf. Hellmuth Kasarek, Billy Wilder—Eine Nahaufnahme: Erweiterte und aktualisierte Sonderausgabe (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1992); Italian ed., Billy Wilder: Un viennese a Hollywood, trans. Michele Lauro (Milan: Mondadori, 1993), 195. 48. Richard Armstrong, Billy Wilder: American Film Realist (Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland & Co., 2000), 104. 49. Wilder and Diamond, The Apartment, 95. 50. Baxter calls the recipe an “Italian dinner,” but it is a wholly American invention: spaghetti with tomato sauce and meatballs. On the symbolic value of Baxter’s kitchen in relation to 1960s domestic culture, see Imma Forino, La cucina: Storia culturale di un luogo domestico (Turin: Einaudi, 2019), 344. 51. Wilder and Diamond, The Apartment, 95. 52. See Joanne Hollows, “The Bachelor Dinner: Masculinity, Class and Cooking in Playboy, 1953–1961,” Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 16, no. 2 (2002): 143–55. 53. Phillips, Some Like It Wilder, 236.

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Framing Interiorities 54. Armstrong, Billy Wilder, 104. 55. Gemünden, “Being a Mensch,” 129. 56. Kasarek, Billy Wilder, 348. 57. Ben McCann, “The Return of Trauner: Late Style in 1970s and 1980s French Film Design,” in Natalie Edwards, Ben McCann, and Peter Poiana (eds.), Framing French Culture, 158–9 (Adelaide: University of Adelaide Press, 2015). 58. Ben McCann, “What Trauner Did Next: The Continuation of a French Design Aesthetic in an American Context,” French Cultural Studies 20, no. 11 (February 2009): 66.

Bibliography Armstrong, Richard. Billy Wilder: American Film Realist. Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland & Co, 2000. Chandler, Charlotte. Nobody’s Perfect: Billy Wilder, a Personal Biography. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002. Crowe, Cameron. Conversations with Wilder. New York: Knopf, 2001. Di Ciaccia, Antonio and Massimo Recalcati. Jacques Lacan. Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2000. Edwards, Natalie, Ben McCann, and Peter Poiana. “The Doubling of the Frame—Visual Art and Discourse.” In Natalie Edwards, Ben McCann, and Peter Poiana (eds.), Framing French Culture, 3–25. Adelaide: University of Adelaide Press, 2015. Fontana, Franco. Il sistema organizzativo aziendale. Milan: FrancoAngeli, 1981/1999. Forino, Imma. Uffici: Interni arredi oggetti. Turin: Einaudi, 2011. Forino, Imma. “The Gift of Bathroom.” Abitare 536 (November–December 2013): 144. Forino, Imma. La cucina: Storia culturale di un luogo domestico. Turin: Einaudi, 2019. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Harmondsworth and New York: Penguin Books, 1977. Gemünden, Gerd. “Being a Mensch in the Administered World: The Apartment (1960).” In A Foreign Affair: Billy Wilder’s American Films, 125–46. New York: Berghahn Books, 2008. Grande, Maurizio. Billy Wilder. Milan: Moizzi, 1978. Edited by Robert Gaetano, Rome: Bulzoni, 2006. Hollows, Joanne. “The Bachelor Dinner: Masculinity, Class and Cooking in Playboy, 1953–1961.” Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 16, no. 2 (June 1, 2002): 143–55. Kasarek, Hellmuth. Billy Wilder—Eine Nahaufnahme: Erweiterte und aktualisierte Sonderausgabe. Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1992. Italian edition, Billy Wilder: Un viennese a Hollywood. Translated by Michele Lauro. Milan: Mondadori, 1993. Kirshner, Lewis A. “Rethinking Desire: The Object Petit A in Lacanian Theory.” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 53, no. 1 (March 1, 2005): 83–102. Linguiti, Francesco and Marcello Colacino. L’inconscio cinema: Lo spettatore tra cinema, film e psiche. Turin: Effatà Editrice, 2004. Madsen, Axel. Billy Wilder. London: Secker & Warburg, 1968. Manon, Hugh S. “Some Like It Cold: Fetishism in Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity.” Cinema Journal 44, no.4 (Summer 2005): 18–43. McCann, Ben. “What Trauner Did Next: The Continuation of a French Design Aesthetic in an American Context.” French Cultural Studies 20, no.11 (February 2009): 65–81. McCann, Ben. “The Return of Trauner: Late Style in 1970s and 1980s French Film Design.” In Natalie Edwards, Ben McCann, and Peter Poiana (eds.), Framing French Culture, 157–73. Adelaide: University of Adelaide Press, 2015.

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Screen Interiors McGowan, Todd. “Looking for the Gaze: Lacanian Film Theory and Its Vicissitudes.” Cinema Journal 42, no. 3 (Spring 2003): 27–47. Phillips, Gene D. Some Like It Wilder: The Life and Controversial Films of Billy Wilder. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2010. Sikov, Ed. On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder. New York: Hyperion, 1998. Simsolo, Noël. Billy Wilder. Paris: Cahiers du cinema Sarl, 2007/2011. Spector, Bert. “A Crack in the Cold War Consensus: Billy Wilder’s The Apartment.” Management & Organizational History 4, no. 2 (May 1, 2009): 187–201. Trauner, Alexandre. Alexandre Trauner: Décors de cinema. Paris: Flammarion, 1988. Whyte, William H. The Organization Man. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1956. Wilder, Billy and I. A. L. Diamond. The Apartment and the Fortune Cookie: Two Screenplays. London: Studio View, 1971. Wojcik Robertson, Pamela. The Apartment Plot: Urban Living in American Film and Popular Culture, 1945 to 1975. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. Wolf, Werner. “Introduction: Frames, Framing and Framing Borders.” In Werner Wolf and Walter Bernhart (eds.), Framing Borders in Literature and Other Media, 1–40. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2006. Wright Mills, Charles. White Collars: The American Middle Class. London, Oxford, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1951.

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CHAPTER 9 FRAMES, VEILS, AND WINDOWS: MODERN CINEMATIC SET DESIGN IN EARLY RUSSIAN FILMS BY EVGENII BAUER Maria Korolkova

This chapter focuses on cinematic representations of interiors in early Russian films by Evgenii Bauer and in so doing raises methodological questions about how we think about modernity during this period. I argue that the preoccupation of modernism (in its many versions) with speed, dynamism, and the modern city has left little space for the discussion of other urban representations, including interiors. I show that there are significant links between interiors and themes favored by modernists, especially speed and porosity, and argue for a methodological approach to studying what I categorize as “the cinematic interior.” Having outlined factors related to the neglect of interiors within cinematic modernism, in contrast to the focus on cities and spaces of transition—trains, planes, trams—I foreground the interior as an important metaphorical locus of early cinematic innovation based on the close reading of two films by Evgenii Bauer (1865– 1917), a major figure of early Russian cinema. The triumvirate of movement, cinema, and the city has dominated much of the critical thinking about modernity and has become “definitional of modernity” as well as linked to the concept of the moving image “in its imbrications with the modernist city.”1 Key characteristics of modernity, such as speed, motion, and dislocation, are often seen as derivatives of the new technologies of communications, transportation, and representation which flourished in the diverse urban environments of the early twentieth century and were captured by the new cinematic medium as a “culture of shocks and flows.”2 While film offered a unique capacity to capture and recreate movement, the growing metropolises—with their masses of people, streets, squares, vehicles, public spaces, and places of transition—provided perfect locations for these agencies of movement and became formative loci of modernism. City symphonies, also known as city films and city poems,3 such as Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler’s Manhatta (1921), Walter Ruttmann’s Berlin: Der Sinphonie der Grosstadt (Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, 1927), and Dziga Vertov’s Chelovek s kinoapparatom (Man with a Movie Camera, 1929), have tended to dominate discussions of the city and the cinematic, preparing the path to multiple variations of this urban–cinematic unity. The city is the true protagonist, and the cinematic medium is considered the best way to capture the experience of living in an urban space: dynamic, fluid, and always in motion. More recent studies cover the invention of modernity through film and the city;4 early cinematic representations of modes of movement via transport across the city;5 phenomenological and semiotic 187

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approaches to cinematic cities;6 utopian and dystopian representations of cities in film;7 haptic mapping of the cinematic urban space;8 and urban cinematics as a category in itself with the influence of global screens.9 Yet, within all these variations of the interplay between the urban, the cinematic, and modernity, there are few references to a primary element of the social and architectural structure of any city, namely the interior.10 My aim is to broaden our critical and methodological approaches to the modern cinematic city on the basis that interior sets can provide material vital to our explorations of cinematic modernism; material that, at times, proves as, if not more, powerful and illustrative than its “whole,” the city. One reason why the cinematic interior has been neglected is the strong associations of the interior with notions of comfort and stability which, all too often, have not been considered central to the modern world. Another reason is the relatively low status of interior design within the hierarchies of both design and early cinema, which took over many of the static characteristics of theatrical interior sets. The understanding of the interior as primarily a place of stability and comfort comes from the theoretical model established by European cultural historians, particularly Walter Benjamin, who argued that the concept of the modern interior emerges “under the reign of Louis Philippe,” when for the first time in social history “the places of dwelling are . . . opposed to the places of work.”11 According to Benjamin, this opposition of private versus public was key to establishing the interior as “not just the universe of the private individual,” but also as an “étui” protecting the individual from the rapid development of the modern city, guarding the border between the inside and the outside.12 Following Benjamin, scholars have viewed the interior as strongly associated with family, intimacy, privacy, and domesticity. Witold Rybczynski argues that from the early sixteenth century the sense of intimacy and privacy becomes a constant attribute of interior representations in European culture, and more recently Charles Rice and Penny Sparke continue to cite privacy and domesticity as the key aspects of private European middle- and upper-class spaces, but, as Sparke puts it, with the expansion of the city and technological developments of the turn of the twentieth century, the boundaries between the inside and the outside fragmented and became “fundamentally unstable.”13 This instability, Sparke argues, “defined modernity, and by extension, the modern interior, reflecting the constantly shifting identities and the increasingly fragmented experiences of inhabitants of the modern world.”14 These “fragmented experiences” of the modern inhabitant who moves around within an interior (and as opposed to the modern flâneur who moves around the city) was given strong emotional expression by Gaston Bachelard for whom the interior represents the ontology of the individual’s intimate being, which he refers to as topophilia: the realization of one’s identity in one’s own place. For him, being in the room becomes “one of the great interrogative forces in man’s life.”15 In order to find oneself, one does not need to travel but simply to occupy a space and reflect upon the experience. In this way, topophilia can be found in every part of the interior, from chests and walls to corridors and cabinets, and is permanently linked to what Bachelard calls “cosmicity,” an absolute space of human existence in harmony.16 Bachelard locates the disruption of this harmony to the 188

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emerging modern city, especially Paris at the turn of the century, where “there are no houses” and “the inhabitants . . . live in superimposed boxes” that no longer provide the dwellers therein with the intimate feeling of home.17 At the turn of the twentieth century, Moscow too was experiencing all the chaos and uncertainty of the modern city, and all the more acutely because Russia “was so late to embrace and experience economic and social modernization and the contradictory drives of modern discipline and disorder.”18 The ubiquitous sense of vitality, speed, and flux of city life was evident in Moscow, and by the 1910s, painters, poets, sculptors, and filmmakers were seeking out innovative artistic means for conveying the velocity of their rapidly industrializing, urban landscape.19 When examining the state of Russian culture in the 1910s, Vladimir Papernyi coined the term Kul’tura odin (Culture One)—a culture of displacement, constant change, flux, instability, “eternal battle,” and “permanent revolution.”20 The idea of movement was central to all kinds of artistic imagination, and some of the “advanced” architectural constructions of this time were unfixed and movable. According to Papernyi, the true protagonist of this culture was someone who could freely embark upon a journey: a person with a suitcase or, in other words, the typical flâneur.21 In 1915, the poet Velimir Khlebnikov, whose conception of a house on wheels was echoed in Bachelard’s description of Parisian houses as superimposed boxes, wrote, “it was not a man who travelled, but his house on wheels or, better to say, a booth, screwed to the train platform, then to the ship.”22 The relatively new art of moving pictures was the perfect medium to represent the moving interior, and Moscow was the center for filmmaking in Russia.

New approaches: the cinematic interior At its best the study of architecture and design in film is a cross-disciplinary undertaking. Anthony Vidler has noted that “the obvious role of architecture in the construction of sets (and the eager participation of architects themselves in this enterprise), and the equally obvious ability of film to ‘construct’ its own architecture in light and shade, scale and movement, from the outset allowed for a mutual intersection of these two ‘spatial arts.’ ”23 Examples from early cinema that illustrate the power of the cinematic interior include Robert Weine’s Das Kabinet des Dr. Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 1920), which demonstrated the victory of the “fourth dimension” over the traditional twodimensional space: “Space—hitherto considered and treated as something dead and static, a mere inert screen or frame, often of no more significance than the painted balustrade-background at the village photographer’s—has been smitten into life, into movement and conscious expression.”24 Such ideas were developed by critics commenting on Expressionist design, from Siegfried Krakauer to Rudolf Kurz, and the interior’s capacity to “frame” as well as to break the frame: “Perpendicular lines tense towards the diagonal, houses exhibit crooked, angular outlines, planes shift in rhomboid fashion, the lines of force of normal architecture, expressed in perpendiculars and horizontals, are transmogrified into a chaos of broken form.”25 189

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Central to my interest in the cinematic frame and its relationship to the domestic interior is Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener’s suggestion to look at film through a methodological framework of interior-based metaphors, such as doors and windows. Drawing parallels between cinema as window and frame, and cinema as door, screen, and threshold, they explore different theoretical approaches to film that have employed “interior metaphors,” including Andre Bazin’s theory of filmic realism, David Bordwell’s study of staging in depth, and Rudolf Arnheim’s and Sergei Eisenstein’s exploration of “within the frame-as-frame” effect.26 Set design and artistic direction are clearly central to considerations of cinematic interiors, and in the 1910s, although the design of sets was being taken more seriously than before, set designers tended to play the role of the “masters of invisible sets.”27 In my discussion of early Russian set design, I draw upon Charles and Mirella Jona Affron’s work in addressing the relationship between set design and the organization of cinematic narrative. They highlight a category of set design or “design intensity” that they define as “narrative” itself and apply to films that take place almost solely in one apartment, where “décor becomes the narrative’s organizing image, a figure that stands for the narrative itself ”28 They observe, “Where the set is narrative, décor’s topography, no matter how complex, becomes utterly familiar . . . In the end, this décor takes on for the spectator a relationship to the narrative akin to that which it had for the character.”29 Bauer’s sets are indeed the characters in his films and they provide a particular version of early Russian cinematic interiors characterized by flux, porosity, and instability.

Evgenii Bauer and set design Since the “rediscovery” of his films and their screening at the 1989 Festival of Silent Cinema in Pordenone, Italy,30 the Russian director, artist, and cameraman Bauer has come to be greatly admired: some consider him the “outstanding auteur of prerevolutionary Russian film.”31 A leading stylist of Russian silent cinematography and pioneering set designer, he placed great emphasis on the pictorial aspect of filmmaking and “literally shed new light on the origins of modern film design.”32 Only twenty-six of his films survive, but his talents at creating and handling cinematic interior space and set design is evident. All the films include elaborate interior scenes, and this study focuses on two.

Sumerki zhenskoi dushi (Twilight of a Woman’s Soul, 1913) Sumerki zhenskoi dushi (Twilight of a Woman’s Soul, 1913) was Bauer’s first film as director for the film production company of Aleksandr Khanzhonkov, then the most important in Russia. It focuses on certain oppositions and their impact upon a woman’s fate. Bauer’s use of liminal space is excellent and the interior imagery shows upper-class Vera Dubovskaia (played by Nina Chernova) as trapped in a liminal zone, a transitional 190

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space; “between” inside and out, between her luxurious lifestyle and the poverty of the lower class. Bauer’s stylistic and spatial choices are dictated by the narrative, by Vera’s choices from options available to her. Young, beautiful, wealthy, and the daughter of a countess, she fails to find meaning in her luxurious lifestyle and decides to devote her life to the poor. Her visit to the slum dwelling of a laborer called Maksim Petrov proves traumatic. He rapes her and, in self-defense, she stabs him to death. Resuming her life of luxury, she marries Prince Dol’skii who, when she reveals what happened, rejects her. She pursues a career as a performer and after Dol’skii sees her on screen, he begs for her forgiveness. Vera tells him he is too late, and he dies of a broken heart. In the opening sequence, Bauer shows Vera as physically trapped within her bedroom (see Figure 9.1). “Vera feels lonely among this luxury,” the intertitle states as we see Vera’s bedroom, almost ghost-like, and partially through a gauze curtain. Heavy fringed curtains hang in front, suggesting at least two barriers between her and the small space crammed with furniture and other objects where she sits passively. Located between Vera and the viewer, the gauze creates a mood of ambiguity. It draws a partial veil over Vera and her view of the world, suggesting a possible mystery to come. Bauer “pioneered the

Figure 9.1 Vera alone in her bedroom, Twilight of a Woman’s Soul (Sumerki zhenskoi dushi), directed by Evgenii Bauer. © Star Film Factory (A. Khanzhonkov & Pathé Frères) 1913. All rights reserved. Courtesy of Dr. Philip Cavendish. 191

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use of tulle sheets in place of painted flats to create lightness on the screen” and believed that “frames of mind, like Vera’s lonesome mood in this shot, come across to audiences better when cued by light and ambience, rather than acting.”33 Different spaces within the set suggest dark as well as light sides to Vera and her world. The dark heavy curtain and armchair create a massive dark frame around the lighter part of the bedroom where Vera sits. Compositionally, her sitting in the lightest area suggests her purity, and the silhouette of the arm of the chair echoes her posture while the chair itself is part of a group of objects that seem to block the exit. Vera is hemmed in, literally and psychologically; trapped by the objects as well as her society lifestyle. Bauer’s carefully composed frames draw upon the pictorial tradition within Dutch seventeenth-century art of viewing the subject through windows, open doors, or curtains. Martha Hollander concludes that in the Dutch tradition, such spaces, which often bear multiple meanings, serve as rhetorical devices to create more complex compositions, offer pathways into and expand upon narratives, and suggest ambiguity.34 Using the terms doorsien (view through) and insein (view into) that Karel van Mander, a Flemish artist working in the Dutch Republic, used “for an opening in the picture space,” Hollander argues that they emphasize penetration and points out that the word Mander uses to describe the “plunging” movement of the eyes literally means “to plow,” thus evoking an aggressive, perhaps erotic, mode of looking.35 This description is close to Bauer’s approach to interior scenes. The narrow space between the gauze curtains through which we first see Vera is a type of doorsien (view through). In Dutch paintings it signifies the penetration of the pictorial narrative, but the cinematic medium takes this further in a later scene that begins outside with Maksim entering Vera’s room through a window (see Figure 9.2). The light space of Vera’s room is penetrated by Maksim’s dark silhouette exactly at the point of doorsein, and in the very center of the room. Seen in the foreground in Figure 9.2, the camera angle makes him look enormous, in contrast to the vulnerable sleeping Vera. This, together with his gesture of opening the curtain, allude to the rape to come.36 Noted for his sense of composition, Bauer enjoyed freedom of camera movement. For example, when Vera attends her mother’s upper-class salon which she finds pretentious, she sits aside from the others. The organization of space in the shot signals her loneliness and detachment. A lamp separates her from the others while the white background wall creates two parallel screens: one shows the group moving to the right, and in a slightly smaller section of the screen we see Vera immovable and in white. A gentleman invites her to dance, but she refuses. She then stands up and, with her back towards the viewer, moves into the depth of the screen. The camera follows her movement, as if, while refusing to dance with others, Vera invites the viewer to follow her. This camera movement suggests to viewers a sharing of Vera’s mood, a mood very different from that of the others who are shown in a static frame. Vera then sits again, now on the right side of the frame where she is almost lost, if not trapped, amidst the floral arrangements. By now the frame is crammed with people and objects, and when her mother asks her to be polite and join her and the guests, she consents and moves into a frame in which there is little room for her. In search of places where she feels she belongs, Vera visits the slums with her mother. The next series of shots comes from inside a dark basement.37 The movement of these 192

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Figure 9.2 Maksim enters Vera’s bedroom, Twilight of a Woman’s Soul (Sumerki zhenskoi dushi), directed by Evgenii Bauer. © Star Film Factory (A. Khanzhonkov & Pathé Frères) 1913. All rights reserved. Courtesy of Dr. Philip Cavendish.

two upper-class women to the basement is a descent to a space occupied by members of the lower classes. Poor people sit around a table drinking and playing cards, but upon noticing the women through a small window remove all evidence of their previous activities. A cinematic detail suggesting unease, Bauer uses an unusual low-angle shot when showing the basement from the point of view of its only window. This point of view establishes a connection between the basement and the world outside, but the small window and cramped claustrophobic room also suggest a prison cell. Additionally, this scene reveals the privileged position of men, who, despite their “low” social and spatial positions, have a good view of the arrival of Vera and her mother, while the women can only imagine what is going on in the basement; the men control the situation by rearranging the room and mocking the women before they enter.38 Another scene sees the women in Maksim’s tiny attic kamorka (closet or very small room), another room type associated with the lower classes. It serves all Maksim’s needs, from sleeping to eating, and, not surprisingly in this cramped environment, all boundaries are confused (unlike the clear divisions between light and dark in Vera’s room). It is here that the rape and stabbing occur. For the moment, Vera takes care of an injury to Maksim’s hand, a gesture he mistakes for more than kindness. We understand this when Vera enters the 193

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kamorka again. Now unaccompanied, with her face veiled (a reference back to the “veiling” implicit in the early scene in her bedroom), she brings lunch for Maksim. It is the first time we see Vera outside and the first time we see her from above from Maksim’s viewpoint. The unusual angle makes the viewer realize that Vera is an object of his gaze and highlights her vulnerability by making her look small and fragile. Looking down at her, Maksim is master of the situation. The rape and the manslaughter are contained within the tiny attic. Afterwards we see her going down the outer staircase, shaking from side to side, helplessly touching the wall and the railings as if for support, but these walls seem to be transparent and vulnerable: nothing is stable anymore. Shot at an angle, the camera follows Vera down the steps, symbolizing her downfall. This visual motif is repeated towards the end of the film when Vera leaves her husband to begin a new life on her own, but she is also shown walking, deliberately and independently, through the interior towards the camera. The corridor is narrow, but she does not need support. Filmed at a high angle, the shot is deliberately long, lasting twenty-six seconds. The length of the shot, the slowness of Vera’s pace, and the confidence of her stride indicate her transition from the interior towards the outside world: from a lonely, trapped young woman to an independent, wiser woman who moves confidently in the modern city. The interiors of the film help to define the identity of the female protagonist as she passes through different interior spaces. Philip Cavendish calls the work “a rites of passage film” because it charts the liberation of the young female protagonist “from virginal fantasy-figure and cherished ideal” to “her own discovery of freedom, independence, and self-definition beyond the confines of marriage and the male gaze.”39 The interiors shown in the film play a major role in creating this liminal sense; they mediate and explain Vera’s choices.

Ditia bol’shogo goroda (Child of the Big City, 1914) In his second extant film, Child of the Big City (1914), Bauer introduces another female figure whose character and fate are influenced, guided, and explained by the interiors she inhabits. Born in a crowded basement flat, a room type that housed so many of Moscow’s poor, the young seamstress Mania dreams of a better life. While window shopping, she meets the wealthy Viktor who, as the intertitle tells us, is bored by high society and searching for a perfectly innocent and uncultured woman, and Mania appears to be the embodiment of his dream. Once she is Viktor’s mistress, however, elegantnaya Mary— “the elegant Mary,” as she is called from now on in the intertitles—is so extravagant and spends so much money on luxuries that she leaves them on the brink of poverty. Viktor begs Mary to move with him to a more affordable apartment where they could live a modest and happy life together. Mary rejects this and finds herself another lover. In despair, Viktor kills himself on the steps of her apartment. The film famously ends with a close-up of the heartless Mary’s foot theatrically stepping over Viktor’s dead body. From its beginning in a small basement with the birth of Mania and her mother’s death and ending on the steps of a luxurious flat with the death of her lover, the film is literally 194

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“closed” into interior spaces that capture and convey an atmosphere of death, unhappiness, and coldness. The big city of the title is represented not by cityscapes, but mostly through its apartments and what takes place behind closed doors. Mania The opening intertitle introduces the first interior space––a small basement––and Mania. All the people who live in that small space are gathered by the bed of Mania’s dying mother.40 The opening frame conveys extreme claustrophobia. Compressed by the low camera angle, it barely succeeds in accommodating all the characters, let alone the only piece of furniture—the deathbed itself. And that bed is situated so close to both the viewer and the surrounding characters that it leaves no space within the frame for someone to die in privacy. The opening scene of abject poverty and its consequences indicates that there is every chance that Mania’s life will echo her mother’s, namely working and dying in the same tiny overcrowded space.41 But Mania has dreams and the film cuts to a grown-up Mania in a new place of work. She has become a seamstress, an occupation associated with textiles and texture, materials and notions to which Bauer, as noted, pays particular attention in his films. Unlike Vera from Twilight of a Woman’s Soul, who is dressed in light-colored fabrics, lace, and gauze, Mania is dressed in black, albeit with the addition of a white collar and cuffs, the marker of a respectable young, urban working woman at that time. The collar and cuffs are made from a light delicate material, suggesting that one day she may fulfill her dreams of wearing gowns made from such fabrics, indeed from even more beautiful ones. The next shot takes us to the space of Mania’s dreams. An intertitle reads, “Mania would often drift in her daydreaming to a life full of luxury and wealth.” We see a closeup shot of Mania with the background of a living, bursting city behind the window as she is daydreaming sitting on a windowsill. She is looking at us; the window and the view of the city is behind her, yet it is this big city life from the title of the film she is dreaming about. This particular shot, without much change (we can only notice Mania slightly altering her posture) lasts for eighteen seconds, much longer than any of the previous shots and an unusually long time for a cinematic narrative of this time, especially one that does not seem to carry any specific narrative value. Instead, it celebrates Mania’s desired connection to the city and the street that is seen behind her.42 Technically a closeup of Mania, this shot also opens up the world of her dreams in the window behind her, showing it as vibrant and moving. The camera invites the viewer to enter both Mania’s dreams and the life of the city. Gauze curtains help define the sides of the frame, and immediately behind them are the glass window panes, thus blurring the view of the city through the windows. Her dream is not yet attainable. This shot and its use of gauzes is somewhat akin to one used by Bauer in his previous film to metaphorically illustrate the “twilight of a woman’s soul” (see Figure 9.1). However, if Vera’s room is the representation of her soul, Mania’s soul is situated in between the “inside” and the “outside.” Bauer holds this shot for eighteen seconds precisely so that viewers grasp the metaphor. The shot shows her as a liminal character, as a figure with a potential to cross borders and 195

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boundaries. Her position and her movements confirm and multiply this sense. She sits on a windowsill, a place not designed for sitting, just as the spaces in her childhood were used for purposes other than those for which they were designed. The window frame behind her divides the space of the cinematic frame into two, with her located partly in front of it but mainly to one side, as if she cannot find a stable position. After holding still for a moment, she turns to one half of the frame, then to the other, then turns around and sighs three times. In this, she behaves like Vera from Bauer’s previous film, who also could not find a place of her own. When the windowpane turns into the screen that shows her dreams, once again female anxiety is revealed through interior details. The next time we see Mania, she is again by a window but now she is outside, window shopping in front of a flower shop and a jeweler’s, gazing at items associated with femininity that are outside her financial reach.43 Bauer deliberately doubles this experience in order to establish an even stronger connection between Mania and the new urban consumer culture of desire, reinforcing her liminal position just “on the edge” and her desire to destroy the social border between herself and the glamorous life of the big city. Mania will soon become Mary. The windows of the city street level, the constant confusion between the inside and the outside of experiencing the city, become the primary concern of Benjamin’s arcades, “the furnished and familiar interior of the masses.”44 A central notion here is the one of “porosity,” the quality of social, spatial, and temporal organization in the city which, as Graeme Gilloch puts it, refers to “the notions of dislocation and disorientation within the urban environment,” and hence provokes the merging of opposites, such as public and private, male and female, inside and outside.45 Bauer does exactly the same when he puts Mania in front of the windows, from both the inside of her working space daydreaming and the outside of the city streets as she is window shopping in the arcades. This liminal figure of a liminal space is the child of a city of porosity. Little wonder that it is precisely while window shopping that she meets Viktor, a man from her dreams inviting her to cross the border. Mania is now Mary. From now on, she and Viktor are often seen through the glass of the city’s doors and windows, sometimes with the beautiful Art Nouveau stained glass decoration for which Moscow was renowned, that signifies their transition to a new state in the new age of the modern city. We can observe the city’s streets with the heavy traffic through the transparency of these doors for several seconds—a shot which does not bear any narrative significance but alludes to Mary’s connection to the city. Bauer’s focus on the glazed, transparent doors takes us back to the idea of the porosity of the modern city and of the barrier between the inside and the outside, a barrier that Mary is about to pass through—or rather ascend—as she climbs the wonderful Art Nouveau staircase leading to Viktor’s fashionable nightclub, which Bauer again captures with a low-angle shot that was highly unusual for the time. Viktor and “tangomania” Viktor is introduced through carefully selected interior details. The first time we see him, he is in his spacious high-ceilinged study, surrounded by flowers, statues and pictures— all things that Mania would like to possess. This is the first interior of the film that 196

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showcases Bauer’s skills at creating sets of a more luxurious nature. Bauer placed great emphasis on tailoring specific interiors to specific scripts. For example, the orderly nature of Viktor’s room is revealed in the shape of the wooden panels on the walls that match the shape of the windows, the pattern on the floor that is similar to the shape of the table, as well as the formal rectangular geometry of the rest of the space. The symmetry and order of the set suggests that Viktor needs order and convention in his life. He is determined to find the girl of his dreams. However, Bauer leaves a subtle hint of things to come in the set, namely a chessboard on Victor’s desk and the checkerboard-type floor pattern. While aspects of the set’s decoration may pay homage to similar imagery in many Dutch interior paintings, as well as to the contemporary design associated with the Vienna Secession and popular across many parts of Europe at the time, it also suggests a game of chess or draughts, as do the white immovable female statues in the room and the black figures of the men who move through the frame. The next move in this game takes us to a dining room, where the seduction scene takes place. If in the previous interior the characters were planning the game of seduction (with the male figures lined up in opposition to “innocent” and immovable female statues), this scene introduces dynamic movement through the tango, a dance so popular that people gave the name “tangomania” to the popular craze that was sweeping Europe and North America at the time.46 The tango arrived in Russia from Paris in late 1913, and by March 1914, when the film premiered, both Moscow and St. Petersburg were gripped by tangomania. Highly provocative and sexual, the tango symbolized and was seen as “the icon of the new age.”47 It is no coincidence that Mary is played by Elena Smirnova, a well-known tangistka (tango dancer), a selection which, as Rachel Morley suggests, was intended to transform the Mania character into a “new woman.”48 While noting the tango’s sexual connotations, however, scholars rarely mention the role of interiors and mise-en-scène in relation to constructing and analyzing tango scenes. Originally a dance of the Argentinian streets, in Russia (as elsewhere) the tango and its sexual connotations moved indoors into ballrooms, dance halls, restaurants, dining rooms, and behind closed doors of private apartments, as in this film. Influenced by tangomania, Bauer’s characters imitate tango movements in their everyday life. In the scene of seduction in one of Moscow’s private dining rooms, Mary and Viktor almost dance towards the moment of their first stylized kiss, which is performed as a dancing tableau, beautifully framed by the horizontal lines of the interior. Equally, when Mary is daydreaming later of a new lover, he appears to her as crossing his hand with hers, as if inviting her to dance. Interestingly, Mary is reclining on a sofa, introducing the private interior as a primary location to the state of seduction. Later in the film this daydream comes true; in the final scenes a remarkable high-angle shot shows Mary dancing the tango with her new lover, also played by a tangist, Leonid Iost,49 while Viktor is outside begging for an audience. Vibration of the soul Interiors continue to play a crucial role as the film progresses. The next time we see Mary, she is in her new role as Viktor’s mistress. The background of the set is divided into two 197

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parts, but rather than unite the characters (as in the kissing scene), it separates them by the pattern of the background. Viktor is shown against a floral wallpaper and she against a patterned privacy screen. Thereafter, the metal grille or screen motif becomes a constant companion for Mary. Bauer uses it in key narrative scenes: when Mary writes a letter of denial to Viktor’s request to abandon the luxurious life; when Victor finds her kissing the butler; and, finally, just before Viktor kills himself on the steps to Mary’s house. According to the German cultural historian Christoph Asendorf, around 1910 decorative structures such as grilles were believed to generate certain “vibrations” in space that produced similar responses of the nerves of people who looked at them, resulting in what Asendorf called neurosis.50 Importantly, the effect was doubled for cinemagoers: “The construction of the vibration of the soul is reminiscent of the effect achieved by the cinema: movements whose succession and relations do not proceed according to the laws of logical and mechanical causality take on a fantastic quality, which is produced by the technique of editing.”51 In Child of the Big City, Bauer’s interior imagery seems to draw upon such ideas. A constant background to Mary’s character, patterns associated with Mary and grilles “capture” Victor. Abandoned by Mary, who left him for a servant, each of his attempts to come back to her is depicted through a patterned background associated with her. One frame even pictures him inside a decorative construction on one of the city’s bridges. Finally, Viktor dies on the steps leading to Mary’s house, and Mary steps over his dead body, showing her elegant foot in a shoe, the lace pattern of which echoes the pattern of the bridge seen earlier in the film. While the various interior details, such as doors, windows, and gratings, help to construct a general sense of anxiety and proximity, the rooms themselves provide their own twists to the plot. Through the careful sequence of editing we can see a complete reversal in the social positions of Mary and Viktor. By the end of the film, Mary has not only crossed the boundaries of class, but also is the one who has power, money, and better rooms. Mirroring Mania at the beginning of the film, Viktor is now the one living in a small, claustrophobic room with only one window while hoping for yet another encounter with Mary. In sharp contrast and irony, Viktor’s beautiful former apartment is now Mary’s and it is on the steps to the home of her dreams that she strides over his dead body as she hurries to one of Moscow’s trendy tango salons. The use of interior spaces here, as in many of Bauer’s films, echoes what became emblematic features of Russian urban modernity. The modern city was a place characterized by the porosity of its borders where old and new, death and life, rich and poor, inside and outside were not only situated side by side but also sometimes merged together. In Bauer’s cinema we see his ability to highlight detail through close-ups and movement in ways that created a sense of the modern city’s anxiety on the screen through both interior and exterior settings. According to Benjamin, the new art of cinema was the best medium to represent urban porosity between the inside and the outside: Our taverns and our metropolitan streets, our offices and furnished rooms, our railroad stations and our factories appeared to have us locked up hopelessly. Then 198

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came the film and burst this prison-world asunder by the dynamite of the tenth of a second, so that now, in the midst of its far-flung ruins and debris, we calmly and adventurously go traveling. With the close-up, space expands; with slow motion, movement is extended. The enlargement of a snapshot does not simply render more precise what in any case was visible, though unclear: it reveals entirely new structural formations of the subject.52 As a perfect illustration of what cinema can do, Bauer moves his camera through the close-ups of sets that have no boundaries, taking us from the claustrophobic dirty basements of the Russian poor to the boudoirs of Moscow’s high society; from bachelor salons to the attics of hooligans; and from the worker’s basement to the most luxurious restaurants of the modern metropolis. And if some of these places are literally separated only by transparent glass doors and windows, Bauer’s camera makes these boundaries even more uncertain by further constricting, dividing, and decorating the interior spaces with details such as lace, gauzes, and grilles. These compositional elements of Bauer’s sets allude to Benjamin’s notions of porosity between urban and domestic spaces. Setting his films in constantly changing and vibrating interiors, Bauer creates new types of spaces that become characteristic of the modernity of the time—what I call here a cinematic interior.

Notes 1. David Bradshaw, Laura Marcus, and Rebecca Roach (eds.), Moving Modernisms: Motion, Technology, and Modernity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 2. 2. Tom Gunning, “Modernity and Cinema: A Culture of Shocks and Flows,” in Murray Pomerance (ed.), Cinema and Modernity, 297 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006). 3. Steven Jacobs, Eva Hielscher, and Anthony Kinik (eds.), The City Symphony Phenomenon: Cinema, Art, and Urban Modernity Between the Wars (New York: Routledge, 2019). 4. Bradshaw et al., Moving Modernisms; Nezar Alsayyad, Cinematic Urbanism: A History of the Modern From Reel to Real (London: Routledge, 2006); Ted Perry (ed.), Masterpieces of Modernism Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006); Scott McQuire, Visions of Modernity: Representation, Memory, Time and Space in the Age of the Camera (London: SAGE, 1998); Leo Charney, Empty Moments: Cinema, Modernity, and Drift (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998); Leo Charney and Vanessa R. Schwartz (eds.), Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); James Donald, “The City, the Cinema: Modern Spaces,” in Chris Jenks (ed.), Visual Culture, 77–95. (London: Routledge, 1995). 5. Lynne Kirby, Parallel Tracks: The Railroad and Silent Cinema (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1997); Edward Dimendberg, “The Will to Motorization: Cinema, Highways, and Modernity,” October 73 (Summer 1995): 91–137. 6. Vivian Sobchack, The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992); André Gardies, L’Espace au cinema (Paris: Méridiens Klincksieck, 1993); Juhani Pallasmaa, The Architecture of Image: Existential Space in Cinema, trans. Michael Wynne-Ellis (Helsinki: Rakennustieto Publishing, 2007).

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Screen Interiors 7. David Butler, Fantasy Cinema: Impossible Worlds on Screen (Brighton: Wallflower Press, 2009); Gyan Prakash (ed.), Noir Urbanisms: Dystopic Images of the Modern City (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010). 8. Giuliana Bruno, Atlas of Emotions: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film (New York: Verso, 2002); Tom Conley, Cartographic Cinema (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006). 9. François Pens and Andong Lu (eds.), Urban Cinematics: Understanding Urban Phenomena through the Moving Image (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011); Johan Andersson and Lawrence Webb (eds.), Global Cinematic Cities: New Landscapes of Film and Media (London and New York: Wallflower Press, 2016). 10. Morag Shiach’s work on “Modernism, the City, and the ‘Domestic Interior’ ” (2015) is a valuable exception to this rule, however Shiach focuses predominantly on literary modernism and the figure of the flâneur. 11. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), 19. 12. Benjamin, The Arcades Project, 20. 13. Witold Rybczynski, Home: A Short History of an Idea (London: Heinemann, 1988); Charles Rice, The Emergence of the Interior: Architecture, Modernity, Domesticity (London: Routledge, 2007), 4–5; Penny Sparke, The Modern Interior (London: Reaktion Books, 2008), 7, 11. 14. Sparke, The Modern Interior, 7. 15. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space: The Classic Look at How We Experience Intimate Places, trans. Maria Jolas (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1958; Boston: Beacon Press, 1994), 5. 16. Bachelard, The Poetics of Space 24. 17. Bachelard, The Poetics of Space 26. 18. Mark D. Steinberg, Proletarian Imagination: Self, Modernity, and the Sacred in Russia, 1910–1925 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002), 147. 19. Tim Harte, Fast Forward: The Aesthetics and Ideology of Speed in Russian Avant-Garde Culture, 1910–1930 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009), 4. 20. Victor Papernyi, Kul’tura Dva (Moscow: Novo literaturnoe obozrenie, 1996), 4. Papernyi later juxtaposes the state of Culture One to the Culture Two, which emerged in the 1930s in the Soviet Union that (diametrically opposite to the state of Russia in the 1910s and 1920s) was static, immovable, and stagnating. 21. Papernyi, Kul’tura Dva 61. 22. Velimir Khlebnikov, “My i doma,” in Sobranie proizvedenii, 5 vols., vol. 4, 275–86 (Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo pisatelei v Leningrade, 1933). 23. Anthony Vidler, “The Explosion of Space: Architecture and the Filmic Imaginary,” Assemblage 21 (August 1993), 46. 24. Herman George Scheffauer, “The Vivifying of Space,” in Lewis Jacobs (ed.), Introduction to the Art of the Movies, 77 (New York: Noonday Press, 1960). 25. Rudolf Kurz, Expressionismus und Film (Berlin: Lichtbildbühne, 1926), 123; quoted in Vidler, “Explosion of Space,” 58. 26. Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener, Film Theory: An Introduction through the Senses (New York: Routledge, 2010), 8. 27. Tim Bergfelder, Sue Harris, and Sarah Street, Film Architecture and the Transnational Imagination: Set Design in 1930s European Cinema (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2007), 11. 200

Frames, Veils, and Windows 28. Charles Affron and Mirella Jona Affron, Sets in Motion: Art Direction and Film Narrative (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995), 36. 29. Affron and Affron, Sets in Motion, 177. 30. This is a week-long festival showcasing works of the silent era. The year 1989 was marked by rediscovery of more than 200 Soviet silent movies dating from 1908 to 1917, including most of the surviving films by Evgenii Bauer. 31. Rachel Morley, “Zhizn’ za zhizn’/A Life for a Life,” in Birgit Beumers (ed.), The Cinema of Russia and the Former Society Union, 22 (London: Wallflower Press, 2007). 32. Ian Christie, “Set Design,” in Richard Abel (ed.), Encyclopedia of Early Cinema, 587 (London: Taylor & Francis, 2005). 33. Christie, “Set Design”; Yuri Tsivian, video essay, in Mad Love: Three Films by Evgeni Bauer, DVD (London: British Film Institute, 2002). 34. Martha Hollander, An Entrance for the Eyes: Space and Meaning in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art (Berkeley: University of California Press), 8. 35. Hollander, An Entrance for the Eyes, 8. 36. On scenes in Vera’s bedroom representing Vera as a social, cultural, and ideological gender construct, see also Rachel Morley, Performing Femininity: Woman as Performer in Early Russian Cinema (London: I.B. Tauris, 2017). 37. In Russia, as elsewhere, the basement apartment was typically a place where the lower class would live. At the beginning of the twentieth century, 10 percent of all Moscow flats were in basements; see Georgii Andreevskii, Zhizn’ Moskvy na rubezhe XIX–XX vekov (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 2009), 219. 38. In another sequence, when their worlds swap places and Maksim is visiting Vera, he is the one who controls the situation. Vera is asleep and does not notice him. 39. Philip Cavendish, “The Hand that Turns the Handle: Camera Operators and the Poetics of the Camera in Pre-Revolutionary Russian Film,” The Slavic and East European Review 82, no. 2 (April 2004): 215–16. 40. This depiction illustrates the real social conditions of the time. In early twentieth-century Russia, basement apartments would usually house over ten poor working-class people living side by side. See Blair A. Ruble, Second Metropolis: Pragmatic Pluralism in Gilded Age Chicago, Silver Age Moscow, and Meiji Osaka (Cambridge: Woodrow Wilson Center Press with Cambridge University Press, 2001), 267. 41. At that time, many workers like Mania and her mother would sleep and work in the same room, and peasant and proletariat children usually started working at the age of six or seven, Mania’s age as first depicted in the film. See Robert Eugene Johnson, Peasant and Proletarian: Working Class of Moscow in the Late Nineteenth Century (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1979), 52. 42. The alternative title of the film was A Girl from the Streets. 43. For window shopping as a popular cinematic motif associated with women, see Anne Friedberg, Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993). 44. Benjamin, The Arcades Project, 423. 45. Graeme Gilloch, Myths and Metropolis: Walter Benjamin and the City (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996), 25. 46. Yuri Tsivian, “Russia, 1913: Cinema in the Cultural Landscape,” in Richard Abel (ed.), Silent Film, 207 (London: Athlone Press, 1996). 201

Screen Interiors 47. Tsivian, “Russia, 1913,” 207. 48. Rachel Morley, Performing Femininity: Woman as Performer in Early Russian Cinema (London: I.B. Tauris, 2017), 103. 49. Morley, Performing Femininity, 103. 50. Christoph Asendorf, Batteries of Life: On the History of Things and Their Perception in Modernity, trans. Don Renaeu (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 205–8. 51. Asendorf, Batteries of Life, 205. 52. Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, trans. J. A. Underwood (London: Penguin Books Ltd., 2008), 29.

Bibliography Affron, Charles and Mirella Jona Affron. Sets in Motion: Art Direction and Film Narrative. New Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers University Press, 1995. AlSayyad, Nezar. Cinematic Urbanism: A History of the Modern From Reel to Real. London: Routledge, 2006. Andersson, Johan and Lawrence Webb (eds.). Global Cinematic Cities: New Landscape of Film and Media. London and New York: Wallflower Press, 2016. Andreevskii, Georgii. Zhizn′ Moskvy na rubezhe XIX–XX vekov. Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 2009. Asendorf, Christoph. Batteries of Life: On the History of Things and Their Perception in Modernity. Translated by Don Renau. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1993. Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space: The Classic Look at How We Experience Intimate Places. Translated by Maria Jolas. Boston: Beacon Press, 1994; first published Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1958. Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Translated by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge, MA : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999. Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Translated by J. A. Underwood. London: Penguin, 2008. Bergfelder, Tim, Sue Harris, and Sarah Street. Film Architecture and the Transnational Imagination: Set Design in 1930s European Cinema. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2007. Bradshaw, David, Laura Marcus, and Rebecca Roach (eds.). Moving Modernisms: Motion, Technology, and Modernity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Bruno, Giuliana. Atlas of Emotions: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film. New York: Verso, 2002. Butler, David. Fantasy Cinema: Impossible Worlds on Screen. Brighton: Wallflower Press, 2009. Cavendish, Philip. “The Hand that Turns the Handle: Camera Operators and the Poetics of the Camera in Pre-Revolutionary Russian Film.” Slavonic and East European Review 82, no. 2 (2004): 201–45. Charney, Leo. Empty Moments: Cinema, Modernity, and Drift. Durnham, NC : Duke University Press, 1998. Charney, Leo and Vanessa R. Schwartz (eds.). Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Christie, Ian. “Set Design.” In Richard Abel (ed.), Encyclopedia of Early Cinema, 584–7. London: Taylor & Francis, 2005. Conley, Tom. Cartographic Cinema. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. Dimendberg, Edward. “The Will to Motorization: Cinema, Highways, and Modernity.” October 73 (Summer 1995): 91–137. 202

Frames, Veils, and Windows Donald, James. “The City, The Cinema: Modern Spaces.” In Chris Jenks (ed.), Visual Culture, 77–95. London: Routledge, 1995. Elsaesser Thomas and Malte Hagener. Film Theory: An Introduction through the Senses. New York: Routledge, 2010. Friedberg, Anne. Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993. Gardies, André. L’Espace au Cinéma. Paris: Méridiens Klincksieck, 1993. Gilloch, Graeme. Myth and Metropolis: Walter Benjamin and the City. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996. Gunning, Tom. “Modernity and Cinema: A Culture of Shocks and Flows.” In Murray Pomerance (ed.), Cinema and Modernity, 297–31. New Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers University Press, 2006. Harte, Tim. Fast Forward: The Aesthetics and Ideology of Speed in Russian Avant-Garde Culture, 1910–1930. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009. Hollander, Martha. An Entrance for the Eyes: Space and Meaning in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Jacobs, Steven, Eva Hielscher, and Anthony Kinik (eds.). The City Symphony Phenomenon: Cinema, Art, and Urban Modernity Between the Wars. New York: Routledge, 2019. Johnson, Robert Eugene. Peasant and Proletarian: The Working Class of Moscow in the Late Nineteenth Century. New Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers University Press, 1979. Khlebnikov, Velimir. “My i doma.” In Sobranie proizvedenii, 5 vols., vol. 4, 275–86. Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo pisatelei Leningrada, 1933. Kirby, Lynne. Parallel Tracks: The Railroad and Silent Cinema. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1997. Markus, Laura and David Bradshaw. “Introduction: Modernism as ‘a space that is filled with moving.’ ” In David Bradshaw, Laura Marcus, and Rebecca Roach (eds.), Moving Modernisms: Motion, Technology and Modernity, 1–10. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. McQuire, Scott. Visions of Modernity: Representation, Memory, Time and Space in the Age of the Camera. London: SAGE , 1998. Morley, Rachel. “Zhizn’ za zhizn’/A life for a life.” In Birgit Beumers (ed.), The Cinema of Russia and the former Soviet Union, 13–22. London: Wallflower Press, 2007. Morley, Rachel. Performing Femininity: Woman As Performer in Early Russian Cinema. London: I.B. Tauris, 2017. Pallasmaa, Juhani. The Architecture of Image: Existential Space in Cinema. Translated by Michael Wynne-Ellis. Helsinki: Rakennustieto, 2007. Papernyi, Victor. Kul’tura Dva. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 1996. Penz, François and Andong Lu (eds.). Urban Cinematics: Understanding Urban Phenomena through the Moving Image. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. Perry, Ted (ed.). Masterpieces of Modernist Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006. Prakash, Gyan (ed.). Noir Urbanisms: Dystopic Images of the Modern City. Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 2010. Rice, Charles. The Emergence of the Interior: Architecture, Modernity, Domesticity. London: Routledge, 2007. Ruble, Blaire A. Second Metropolis: Pragmatic Pluralism in Gilded Age Chicago, Silver Age Moscow, and Meiji Osaka. Cambridge: Woodrow Wilson Center Press with Cambridge University Press, 2001. Rybczynski, Witold. Home: A Short History of an Idea. London: Heinemann, 1998. Scheffauer, Herman George. “The Vivifying of Space.” In Lewis Jacobs (ed.), Introduction to the Art of the Movies, 76–85. New York: Noonday Press, 1960. Shiach, Morag. “Modernism, the City, and the ‘Domestic Interior.’ ” Home Cultures 2, no. 3 (2015): 251–67. 203

Screen Interiors Sobchack, Vivian. The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience. Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 1992. Sparke, Penny. The Modern Interior. London: Reaktion Books, 2008. Steinberg, Mark D. Proletarian Imagination: Self, Modernity, and the Sacred in Russia, 1910–1925. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002. Tsivian, Yuri. “Russia, 1913: Cinema in the Cultural Landscape.” In Richard Abel (ed.), Silent Film, 194–216. London: Athlone Press, 1996. Tsivian, Yuri. Video Essay, in Mad Love: Three Films by Evgenii Bauer, DVD. London: British Film Institute, 2002. Vidler, Anthony. “The Explosion of Space: Architecture and the Filmic Imaginary.” Assemblage 21 (1993): 44–59.

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PART 4 SCREENING QUEERNESS: CLASS, AMBIGUITY, AND POWER

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CHAPTER 10 INTERIORS, CLASS, PERVERSITY, AND AMBIGUITY IN THE SERVANT 1963 Barry Curtis

The Servant (directed by Joseph Losey) premiered in London in late 1963. Losey claimed it as a film of its time; its darkness and density speak to many of the tensions and social and cultural dislocations of early 1960s Britain at a time when the British class system was troubled by youth and insubordination and the testing of social hierarchies. Anthony Sampson, in Anatomy of Britain (1962), saw Britain as poised between “tradition and innovation,” oppositions evident throughout the film.1 The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and a distinctive British popular music emerged; Pop Art was widely celebrated in mainstream media; television screened new kinds of generic dramas such as The Avengers, The Prisoner, and Doctor Who. Opposition Leader Harold Wilson aligned the Labour Party with modernity and “the white heat of technology,” and generated a sense of inevitable “innovation.” This was heightened by the completion of landmark modern buildings—the Barbican, Vickers House (later Millbank Tower), the Hilton Hotel, the Elephant and Castle complex. Photogenic structures like the Post Office Tower and the Brutalist Engineering Building at Leicester University (James Stirling with James Gowan) were widely featured and celebrated. The wonders of modern science and technology also brought consumers the polypropylene chair (designed by Robin Day for Hille) and the Astro or “lava” lamp (designed by Edward Craven Walker for Mathmos). Economic growth was at a postwar high, and there was a sense of transformation that engaged with the breaking down of class barriers, prison reform, and the repeal of legislation that criminalized homosexual relationships between men. Private Eye magazine (1961), the Establishment Club (1962), and the popular television program That Was The Week That Was (1962–3) bear witness to a “satire boom,” symptomatic of a new irreverence towards authority, and the media repeatedly presented the government as synonymous with corruption, perversion, and deceit. Rumors abounded about sexual scandals and the implication of the intellectual and social elite in espionage and corruption that extended to the behavior of judges, cabinet ministers, and members of the Royal Family.2 The revelation that Kim Philby, a high-ranking member of the British intelligence service who defected to the Soviet Union in 1963, had been a double agent and the mastermind of a spy ring contributed to a growing sense of the decadence of establishment culture and the countervailing potency of youth at a time of expanded educational opportunities, dynamic new media, and social reform. Widely acclaimed as an outstanding and troubling film, The Servant had been screened earlier that year at the Venice Film Festival,3 with two other films released in 1963—Tom Jones (directed by Tony Richardson) and Billy Liar (directed by John 207

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Schlesinger). The film critic Alexander Walker saw in Billy Liar a turn away from social realism, combined with a capacity to conjure “prophecies of and metaphors for” social change.4 The Servant explored, simultaneously, new realms of fantasy and reality. Unlike Tom Jones and Billy Liar, which starred emergent “angry young men” actors of the 1960s (Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay, respectively), The Servant instead deployed Dirk Bogarde, who had achieved success as a handsome matinée idol, youthful delinquent, and war hero in earlier British films. A theater and film director, Losey came to Britain from his native United States in 1952 after his career was curtailed by the blacklisting of suspected communist supporters. He had worked in Moscow in the 1930s, met the Russian theater actor, director, and producer Vsevolod Meyerhold, filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, and German Marxist playwright, poet, and theater director Bertolt Brecht, both in Germany and when Brecht was living in exile in the United States. After leaving the United States, Losey made films in Europe, where he assimilated elements of the Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) and Italian Neorealism, which were influencing new ways of thinking about cinema in Britain. Movie magazine, founded by Nicholas Luard in 1962, became an advocate for the French New Wave, Francophile film criticism, and “auteurship.” Film critic Dilys Powell, in her Sunday Times review of The Servant, saw in it something “of what the great Italians and the best of the young French have been doing for their own screens.”5 By 1963, Losey was forty-three years old and an experienced filmmaker (it was his fifteenth film) with a background in theater and a reputation for left-wing convictions. Furthermore, as he expressed during in-depth interviews with Tom Milne in the mid-1960s, he wanted to move away from realism into “less literal aspects of film”—into denser and darker territories.6 The Servant reflects that ambition. It is effectively a “film noir” and, in spite of its favorable reviews, critics drew attention to a troubled and troubling darkness in a film that many filmgoers experienced as both dislocated and unresolvable. The tensions in The Servant arise from the relationship between the upper-class Tony (played by a conspicuously blond James Fox, then twenty-four years old) and the mysterious darkhaired Hugo Barrett (played by Dirk Bogarde, then aged forty-two) whom Tony hires as a personal servant.7 The power of their performances won the actors the BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) Most Promising Newcomer and Best Actor awards, respectively. The role of servant was unconventional at the time, and is recognized in the film as something of an anachronism by Tony’s girlfriend, Susan. Barrett’s obedience is soon compromised and he begins to cause unrest in the household. Tony finds himself under pressure from Susan (played by Wendy Craig) to dismiss Barrett. But Barrett’s influence extends further than Tony realizes, and he finds himself entangled in an intense psychological conflict of wills. Barrett enlists Vera (played by Sarah Miles) to pose as his sister in an inscrutable exercise of his power over the vulnerable, comfortloving “master” that eventually reduces Tony to impotence. The Servant is a multiple-authored and inflected text. It originated in a short novel, published in 1948, by Robin Maugham, the son of Frederick Maugham, a life peer and Lord Chancellor in the government of Neville Chamberlain. Robin Maugham had 208

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trained as a barrister, joined a tank regiment at the outbreak of war, and worked in intelligence, helping to set up the wartime Middle Eastern Centre for Arab Studies as a branch of the Foreign Office in Jerusalem. Bisexual and prone to alcoholism, he followed the example of his famous uncle, Somerset Maugham, and became a writer. At the age of thirty-two he published The Servant, later rewritten as a play.8 His autobiography suggests that it partly derived from experience and related to an occasion when a servant had offered him “the use of ” a young boy in post-Blitz Chelsea. The narrator of the novel is an army friend of Tony’s, who is described as a wealthy ex-officer, “homely” and “very fair.” He describes Tony’s relationship with his manservant Barrett, his seduction by Vera, and his subsequent decline and dependency. Tony is brought to admit,“I’m unclean,” and persists in what is represented as a sordid relationship. Tony’s parting words to the narrator are defiant: “Have a good time in prig’s alley.” Elements of the novel persist in nuanced form in the film: the dripping tap that accompanies moments of sexual arousal and tension, the use of vases of flowers to signify lightness and freshness in the “charming little house” that Tony and the narrator discover together in Chelsea. Perhaps most intriguing, and relevant to the dramatization in the film script, is the attribution to Barrett of the qualities of a nanny, reminding Tony of the only loving adult in his childhood, but also occupying the role of “dragoman”—a resourceful manservant who can “bring Tony safely whatever he needed.”9 The 1948 novel belongs to a different historical moment from that of the film. The film makes a distinctive break from the “blowsy,” foggy London of rationing, derelict barges, and disused factories, and from the fictional world of grotesque working-class stereotypes. In the novel, Barrett is oily and reptilian, with “the rosebud lips of a dissolute cherub,” described in terms that hint at anti-Semitism, while Vera, the young prostitute with a “garish, wizened face” who captivates Tony, is a “nymphomaniac”—Barrett, and his accomplice Vera, “reek of cheap scent.” The novel is set at a time when class distinctions were clearly defined and there was a strong sense of the boundaries between officers and “other ranks.” The military theme persists in 1963—indeed, one of the moments of bonding between Tony and Barrett occurs when they both remember moments of intimacy experienced in their army days. Losey encountered Maugham’s novel in the early 1950s and saw its potential for a film. He tried to interest Dirk Bogarde in playing the character of Tony at that time, but reported that Bogarde (a gay man himself) was wary of the homosexual implications, particularly as his role in the film Victim (1961, Basil Dearden) had been one of a lawyer blackmailed as a result of a homosexual affair. Losey appreciated Bogarde’s ability to portray “dark” characters—evident in such films as The Blue Lamp (1960, Basil Dearden), in which he played a delinquent, youthful “cop-killer.” Losey explored Bogarde’s sinister side in his first British film, The Sleeping Tiger (1954). By 1963, when Losey had secured the rights to the novel and Harold Pinter had written the screenplay, Bogarde considered himself too old for the role of the ingénue Tony, and accepted the more sinister role of Barrett, the manservant. It is hard to convey adequately the nuanced virtuosity of his performance. It is by turns sinister, pathetic, sadistic, insubordinate, and invasive. His constantly shifting registers of subservience and triumph are conveyed through facial 209

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expressions and body language, as well as the minimal subtlety of Pinter’s script.10 The Servant is the first of three collaborations between Losey and Pinter, all of which explored the British class system.11 The early 1960s was a time when newspaper color supplements and popular magazines drew a wider public’s attention to the possibilities of experimentation and self-expression in interior design.12 In The Servant, Losey exploits spaces and the décor of interiors to express social and sexual tensions. French critics, like Truffaut, had characterized British cinema as a cinema of repression, in which the mise-en-scène carried meanings that were not expressed through performance or cinematography. What members of the Independent Group referred to as “the drama of possessions” in their enthusiasm for advertising and the signifying landscape of the new consumer culture is evident in Richard MacDonald’s set designs.13 Before working on The Servant, MacDonald, who trained as a painter at the Royal College of Art, had headed the Painting School at Leeds College of Art and subsequently worked in advertising; he had produced drawings for Losey’s The Sleeping Tiger (1954), a claustrophobic drama that featured a young Bogarde as a patient who commits crimes and seduces the wife of the psychiatrist who is trying to cure him, whilst living in his house. The house in which the drama takes place is located in Royal Avenue, Chelsea, the grandest road in an area left shabby by postwar austerity.14 It is spatially unstable and morphs throughout the film. The rooms were sets: the sinuous staircase was built as a unit at Pinewood Studios and is subject throughout the film to extravagant lighting effects and camera angles that exploit the power relations implicit in points of view. The stairs separate and unite the rooms from the basement kitchen to the servants’ rooms on the top floor. The theme of social disruption is played out on the staircase, at several points taking the form of actual “games”: from the opening scene where Tony leads Barrett up the stairs and points out to him the proposed functions of the rooms at different levels, there are a series of transgressions when servants appear in, and take control of, inappropriate places. Particular attention was paid to the finish of the handrail at the foot of the stairs, which becomes emblematic of the derelict, then highly finished, then dissolute condition of the whole house. Barrett’s first arrival in the house sees him curiously touching the banister in the hallway with a gloved hand (see Figure 10.1). In the 1948 novel on which Pinter’s screenplay is based, Tony chooses a “small house’ ” in Chelsea because he admires the “shape of the rooms.”15 The house is transformed under Barrett’s watchful eye. He supervises the painters at work and manages the renovation. It is a process of gentrification carried out at a time when the damaged housing stock of London was being renovated and settled by young professionals like Tony. Roy Brooks, an estate agent in the King’s Road, was associated at the time with this process of refurbishment. Brooks had an eye for the attractions of preVictorian houses, and his newspaper advertisements in the Observer and Sunday Times were brutally and amusingly honest. Brooks was particularly influential in the gentrification of Chelsea, and advertised houses similar to Tony’s, in which the action unfolds: “3 normal-sized bedrooms and one for a dwarf lodger,” and “plenty of scope for the socially aspiring to express their decorative taste.”16 Penelope Gilliatt suggested in a 210

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Figure 10.1 The Servant, directed by Joseph Losey. © Elstree Studies/Springbok Productions 1963. All rights reserved.

review of the film that “The furnished space is a takeover of power every bit as much as the master’s evacuating personality.”17 Other critics at the time commented on the symbolic nature of the breakdown of defined spaces and hierarchies within the house, and suggested that this reflected Losey’s view of the political scandals that were developing at the time of the film’s making (see below), although he disavowed any direct influence. Territoriality plays an important part in the film, and the house is a constantly contested environment in which “knowing one’s place” is asserted and transgressed. At one point of exasperation, Susan asks Tony to restrict Barrett “to quarters.” The film is set in the harsh winter conditions of the first three months of 1963, with snow lingering into spring, presenting a visual climate that reinforces the need for interiority. The title sequence is presented in a fluid camera movement that follows a roofline behind the bare branches of horse chestnut trees. A hallucinatory swooping and circling of the camera is a feature of the film. The point of view angles down to a close-up of the royal coat of arms above the sign “Sanitary Engineers” on the fascia of a shop, and draws back to observe Barrett standing on the pavement waiting to cross the street.18 Dressed in formal attire, he wears a wide-brimmed “pork pie” hat, advancing with an air of menace towards the camera, which turns to follow him as he strides along the central reserve of Royal Avenue. Barrett approaches a house, looks up at the “Sold” sign, steps up to the front door, pushes gently with one finger on the doorknob, and the door yields. A clock chimes three (the precise time of the arranged interview) and the camera, positioned inside the house, observes him entering: he takes two steps up the staircase, touching the banister rail 211

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Figure 10.2 The Servant, directed by Joseph Losey. © Elstree Studies/Springbok Productions 1963. All rights reserved. thoughtfully, then steps down, turns to one side and enters a room. From a position behind his dark silhouette, the camera’s point of view observes, through two doorways, Tony sleeping off a lunchtime drink, insensible on a deckchair in a small garden room (see Figure 10.2). Barrett’s expression is characteristically inscrutable, with a hint of amusement. Tony is conspicuously fair-haired and dressed in pale-colored, casual clothes, in dramatic contrast to the more “correct” dark, brilliantined formality of Barrett. Tony has fallen asleep after drinking too many lunchtime beers. Barrett introduces himself, and Tony stands and gestures expansively, ushering him upstairs for the “interview.” When first encountered, the house is nearly empty, randomly under-furnished, and clearly in need of decoration. Tony questions Barrett and tells him that his duties will include “everything in general,” and that he needs to be “looked after.” This abandoned dependence on a “manservant” signals his susceptibility to indulgence, and the willingness to pay for nebulous services. Tony indicates how the house will be used, and where his rooms and Barrett’s are located. In the process of climbing to the servants’ rooms on the top floor, he discovers a remote room that he seems not to have noticed before. This “box room” is to become “the maid’s room” and the haunting locus of transgression. Tony’s schema is a conventional allocation of space between servants and served. Thereafter Barrett helps to bring about the ideal home that Tony gestures towards, but the house is not one in which everyone’s place is secure. In an interview shortly after the film’s release, Losey suggested that the house is a trap: “All the characters are products and victims of the same thing—class. The same trap—the house and the society in which they live.”19 Although the film has been read as an example of the reversal of class roles, Barrett 212

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remains the servant throughout, controlling all aspects of the house and gradually dominating his degenerating master. The formally dressed Barrett is, in turn, humble and sinister. He is omnipresent, intimately aware of the presence of others and able to insinuate his “sister.” In defending Barrett against Susan’s claim that he is a “peeping Tom,” Tony jokingly counters with “He’s a vampire in his spare time.” There is some truth in both accusations. Barrett tells Tony that he has been in service for thirteen years. Tony knew his previous employer, and mentions that his own father died within weeks of his death, indicating that both men find themselves recently “orphaned”. Tony is evidently wealthy, with recently inherited money. He claims to know “a hell of a lot about Indian dishes” and has just “returned from Africa.” In a number of scenes, he elaborates on his involvement in an indistinct enterprise involving trips to Paris, building three cities in the Brazilian jungle, and populating them with “peasants from Asia Minor.” Tony’s privilege and business dealings are schematic caricatures of imperial enterprise, and Susan gently taunts him as they become increasingly vague and implausible. The house is furnished and decorated according to Tony’s wishes, but under Barrett’s alert supervision. In one scene, Barrett admonishes the painters to prevent “faults” and “errors,” and ensures that Tony’s suggestion that white should be the dominant color is carried out.20 Douglas Slocombe, the cinematographer, contrived four phases of lighting for the interior of the house: “empty and cold, painted and beautiful, rotting,” and “partially decorated with a gaudy, meretricious look.”21 In a relatively short time we witness the process of gentrification and the breakdown of the rituals that maintain it. The lighting changes with the mood, from a gray tone to a glossier rendition that sets off the new furnishings, and then to a more selective, spot-lit dramatization of sinister and telling details. Slocombe characteristically establishes a new scene by focusing on an inanimate object, thus lending significance to the details of the interior and their shifting significance. The same meticulous attention to detail was one of the attributes Losey valued in MacDonald who, as production designer, characteristically drew “cartoons” to storyboard the progress of scenes, specifying the disposition of walls and furniture and also enlarging the scenarios to incorporate more detailed design objects. The Servant is a claustrophobic drama that pays meticulous attention to the mise-en-scène and the staging of the complex dynamics of power and guilt. This was the first collaboration between Losey and Pinter, and Pinter’s first screenplay.22 Critics have drawn attention to the apparent mismatch between the baroque extravagance of Losey’s directorial style and the meticulous understatement and economy of Pinter’s writing. The careful furnishing of the rooms of the Chelsea house in which most of the action takes place relates closely to Pinter’s oft-quoted description of his disruptive intention to describe “the weasel under the cocktail cabinet.”23 At various times within the drama the embellishing and distressing of the mise-en-scène conveys the aspirations and antagonisms that are played out in the interchanges between characters. It is characteristic of Pinter’s scripts to describe a struggle over territory and who has control of it. I have described this film elsewhere as a “haunted house” film, and, indeed, it does have supernatural dimensions in the antagonistic battle of wills, often focused on what 213

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are regarded as appropriate objects and their social meanings.24 The significance of things is reinforced by the distortions achieved through extravagant cinematographic strategies and by the use of multiple and meaningful reflections in mirrors. Slocombe was of Jewish origin; he filmed the rise of fascism in Germany and the invasion of Poland; indeed, his documentary footage had been incorporated into wartime Ealing Studios films. He worked for Ealing until 1955, filming the claustrophobic, but much humbler, interior of a working-class home in It Always Rains on Sunday (1947, Robert Hamer). His work for The Servant was recognized for its virtuosity, and won the BAFTA award for Best Cinematography (monochrome), and a further award from SEFT.25 Slocombe dramatized the confined spaces of the sets through the ingenious ordering of lights and concealment of camera and crew. One critic described the house as wrapped around the staircase like a snail’s shell: it is never far from the staircase, and it unfolds as a constant interplay of points of view. The gentrification of Tony’s house in Royal Avenue, which dates back to the 1690s, is characteristic of 1960s makeovers. Losey was himself a gentrifier. The interior decoration of his own house in Royal Avenue was by David Hicks, along with Anthony Cloughley.26 Hicks was known for mixing antique and modern furnishings and featuring bold colors and contemporary art for his A-list clients from the social and entertainment elites. The camera moves restlessly around the refurbished interiors, sometimes following Barrett whilst he cleans, deodorizes, and carries trays and bottles from room to room. The living area is separated from the hall by an opening bookcase, which functions as a concealed door. The bookshelves are plausible testimony to inheritance—antique, leather-bound volumes with a few novels and contemporary books on art. The house is shown in the process of redecoration—painters erect trestles on the stairs and apply a top coat to the doors. In a brief exchange on the landing, Barrett suggests that “Mandarin blue and fuchsia are a very chic combination this year,” but Tony scorns the suggestion, favoring white “with touches of blue.” Barrett’s taste is subordinated to Tony’s, but Tony is impressed by Barrett’s interest in interior decoration. Barrett responds to Tony by saying, “it makes all the difference, pleasant surroundings,” before walking towards the concealed door in the bookcase and passing through the wall of the living room into the hall. Throughout the film, this unusual feature facilitates Barrett’s uncanny ubiquity and spectrality. In the early stages of renovation, before the interiors are furnished, Tony brings Susan back to the house after a meal at the Russian-themed “1815” restaurant (where Tony languidly sends back a corked bottle whilst discoursing on vague plans and prospective business trips). They lie on newspapers on the floor, Susan looks affectionately at him and says “Bachelor.” When Tony then announces that he has found a manservant, Susan reacts, indignantly, “—a what?” Suggesting that the idea of a “live-in” manservant is a surprising contemporary affectation, and betraying an anxiety that the new arrangements for bachelor living might be an obstacle to a family home. When Susan arrives in Tony’s Mercedes to view the transformed house for the first time, her reflection is distorted in a convex mirror in the living room as she enters to find Chippendale cabinets, Regency chairs and etagères, military portraits, Corinthian column 214

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table lamps, Georgian urn-shaped tea caddies, and model gun carriages disposed around a conventionally furnished living room with a conspicuously crude eighteenth-century allegorical painting and the circular convex Regency mirror that plays a significant role in reflecting and distorting conflicted relationships.27 In the hall, there is a grandfather clock and a console table with a vase of flowers. The “period” elements in the decorative scheme, some of which are family heirlooms, are subsumed into a modernized rendition of an early nineteenth-century style, “masculinized” by the military bric-à-brac, and reminiscent of the interiors of the television series The Avengers (1961–9). An antagonism and rivalry develops between Barrett and Susan. It is signaled in their very first meeting, when she rebuffs his offer to take her coat (see Figure 10.3). A proud Barrett resists her attempts to domesticate the home, stating that “simple classic is always best,” only to have Susan gesture towards the neoclassical painting, saying, “This isn’t classic . . . it’s prehistoric!” Tony intervenes and counters with “We’ve always had it, and I like it”—overruling considerations of taste with a sense of familiarity and continuity. He also identifies a particular chair as his mother’s favorite. Some of the furniture used in the sets was borrowed from Somerset Maugham, Robin Maugham’s uncle.28 Furniture like this was a feature of the “design advice” that leading figures like Terence Conran and David Hicks offered, suggesting that modern design was compatible with and, interestingly, juxtaposed to period items. Tony has a number of personal objects that speak of an interest in contemporary design: a modern desk lamp and a Braun SK4 record player, on which he plays the recurrent Cleo Laine track, “Alone,” that resonates throughout the film as a constant reminder of loss and solitude.29

Figure 10.3 The Servant, directed by Joseph Losey. © Elstree Studies/Springbok Productions 1963. All rights reserved. 215

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Susan’s “contemporary” response to the changes in the house is that there should be more color and that she will organize a proper “spice shelf ”—a feature of the up-to-date kitchens and expanded repertoires of 1960s culinary life.30 As Susan is increasingly, and finally, excluded from the house, and as the roles of master and servant become more intimate, the spice rack is one of the features of Susan’s influence that is eliminated, cast into a cardboard box by Barrett, ready for disposal. Barrett prepares a meal for Tony and Susan on the occasion of her first visit, serving the wine from a basket, wearing white gloves; Susan is scornful, and challenges Barrett’s claim that the wine is provided by a “good bottler.”31 In the next scene, Barrett, alone with a bottle of brown ale, picks his teeth with a toothpick and discards the gloves—it seems that Susan’s contempt has had an impact and there is a suggestion that he is contemplating a different strategy. In the fully transformed house, Susan lies on the couch and Tony on the floor next to it. They drink from brandy balloons and Tony smokes a cigar. He sends Susan to the window to draw the curtains and see the new abstract sculpture that has been erected in the garden, mimicking Barrett’s working-class pronunciation of “very sheek.” They kiss and embrace on the floor. Just as Tony impulsively whispers “Marry me!” there is a cut to Barrett approaching the door and, seemingly, withholding a warning knock. He enters abruptly and intrusively. They spring apart; Susan angrily asks why Barrett is still there, insisting that Tony “restrict him to quarters,” to restore the conventional barriers between master and servant. Tony is apologetic and insists that Barrett needs to “live in” because he has to “lock up.” This ritual figures in the concluding scene, by which time Barrett has become more of a gaoler than a servant. Susan decides to leave, refusing Tony’s offers to escort her home. Barrett is apologetic; Tony angrily rebukes Barrett and then relents and asks if there is any aspirin, allowing Barrett to resume his role as provider and comforter. Tony and Susan meet again at a restaurant in a stylized Pinteresque scene, among other couples who are engaged in disputes.32 Tony defends Barrett against her accusations. Other confrontations between Susan and Barrett are played out over domestic arrangements and the disposition of furnishings. Objects assume key roles. Susan brings flowers when Tony is ill in bed; Barrett starts to remove them, claiming that they are against “doctor’s advice,” but Susan insists they remain. Susan visits the house when only Barrett is there and confronts him, insisting that he bring a vase: she aggressively plants a large bunch of flowers in it. In a further effort to assert her authority, she sends Barrett to the taxi to bring in a large parcel of colorful scatter cushions, and, defiantly, arranges them on the couch. After ordering him to light her cigarette, she tells him that she doesn’t give “a tinker’s gob” what he thinks, because his role as “servant” has become an intrusive and controlling influence on the house. In a tense confrontation, she asks, “Do you think you go with the color scheme?” She demands, “What do you want from this house?” Barrett answers, with an insubordinate, direct gaze, “I’m a servant, Miss.” In a later scene, when the two men are alone, Barrett tells Tony that he has removed the chintz frills from the dressing table, as part of his elimination of Susan’s feminine influence. The equilibrium is further disturbed by Barrett’s introduction of his alleged sister, Vera. First encountered in long shot, Barrett escorts her down the steps of the grim, sootencrusted St. Pancras railway station. Played by the relatively inexperienced actor Sarah 216

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Miles, who looks younger than her twenty-two years, Vera is playful and flirtatious: the camera focuses on her legs as she skips down the station steps.33 Barrett confronts Tony with his concern that her skirts are too short, and Vera later responds that “all the girls are wearing them like that.” Vera wakes Tony as she clumsily maneuvers a breakfast tray into his bedroom. This intimate space is seen for the first time as its class and sexual boundaries are disrupted. It has a combination of heirlooms and contemporary elements, including a large eighteenth-century painting of a nymph and lithographs by the contemporary Chelsea artist Elizabeth Frink.34 Both spatially and sexually transgressive, Vera is a constantly troubling presence. In one dramatic instance of not “knowing her place,” she is discovered by Tony bathing in his private bathroom. Later she is joined there by Barrett, playfully basking in the warmth of a sun lamp and splashing on Tony’s cologne. Tony is increasingly sexually obsessed by Vera, who is both innocent and predatory. She sits provocatively on a table in the kitchen under a huge industrial lampshade, and a handheld camera, representing Tony’s point of view, moves compulsively towards her. Tony’s need for her impels him to climb the stairs and reach through the banisters to knock on the door of the box room. He turns away, but the camera sees Vera stepping tentatively down the stairs. Behind her, seen through the banisters, is Barrett, lying in her bed, smoking. Images from men’s “physique” magazines are tacked up on the wall behind him. As her bare legs descend the stairs to take possession of the house’s master, the expression on Vera’s face is supernaturally predatory, a moment of sensual vampiric temptation and parasitism. The role of the staircase and the convex mirror in amplifying and focusing the deteriorating situation is most emphatic when Tony and Susan return from their second visit to their aristocratic friends, the Mountsets, at their stately home.35 Caricatures of aristocracy, the Mountsets are posed in a dramatically stylized fashion in a grand interior that is introduced by a tracking shot from behind a servant carrying a tray. Just before midnight, Tony and Susan return to Royal Avenue and are transfixed by a light in Tony’s bedroom. They enter the house and stand at the foot of the stairs, hearing the voices of Barrett and of Vera, who is coaxing Barrett to resume sexual intercourse. The shadow of a nude Barrett is projected onto the staircase wall—an extraordinary visual effect that was produced by mounting a powerful arc light on a rostrum at the top of the stairs. It is made clear to Susan that Tony has been sexually involved with Vera. Distraught and out of control, she hisses to Tony, “This is your house, they are in your room, in your bed!” The issue of possession and demarcation has come to a crisis point. Barrett, cool and insubordinate, explains that Vera is not his sister, but his fiancée, and, laughing, the two “servants” bundle together their possessions and depart, with Vera chanting “Here comes the bride” in counterpoint to the melancholy Cleo Laine lyric. Tony and Susan are left to share the disorienting humiliation of Tony’s vulnerability and unfaithfulness and, more significantly, his failure to maintain the hierarchy of relationships and the conventional allocation of spaces within the house. The scene is played out in the distorted reflections in the convex mirror, which heighten the grotesque confrontational nature of the scene. Tony is left distressed and incoherent, and Susan leaves abruptly (see Figure 10.4). 217

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Figure 10.4 The Servant, directed by Joseph Losey. © Elstree Studies/Springbok Productions 1963. All rights reserved.

Perhaps the most notorious sequence in the film is the culmination of Vera’s seduction of Tony, as she sits in a knock-off version of Arne Jacobsen’s 1958 “Egg” lounge chair with a swivel base—a key marker of sophistication and modernity at the time. There are visual echoes in this scene of Lewis Morley’s portrait of an apparently naked Christine Keeler, the prostitute at the heart of the Profumo scandal that led to the downfall of the Conservative government. Keeler posed on a simulated version of Jacobsen’s earlier 1950s single-shell plywood (Series 7) chair.36 The organic forms of the chair and its role in hiding the full nakedness of the women links the two images. In one of the posters for The Servant, the chair, with Tony leaning into the concealed torso of Vera, features as an iconic link with other representations of British culture in the 1960s. The timing of the revelations about Keeler’s affair with the Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, was uncannily calibrated with the making of The Servant. The Vassall affair of the previous year established evidence of homosexuality and espionage, associated with corruption in the upper echelons of government, and Profumo was forced to resign after lying to Parliament about his association with Keeler. In June, Profumo admitted to lying to Parliament, and in September the Denning Report revealed the intricate and salacious details of call girls and the criminal demi-monde. It became a bestseller. The opening shots of The Servant and all of the outdoor scenes evoke the prolonged winter, when the first rumors of Profumo’s involvement with Keeler surfaced. A number of critics have drawn attention to the ways in which the plot of The Servant echoes the drama of the Profumo affair, with Tony as the naive, susceptible establishment 218

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figure, Vera as Keeler, and Barrett as Stephen Ward, a key agent who procured young women for upper-class men.37 Time passes: the interior of the house has become desolate, rendered in under-lit scenes of confusion and disarray. Tony climbs to the box room, where he lies in despair on the bed under pages torn from physique magazines that reinforce the mysterious yet pervasively homoerotic element in Barrett’s relationship to Tony. Later, in a scene set in a local pub, a disheveled Barrett sits at the bar next to Tony, separated by a mahogany and glass barrier.38 In a disorienting, fluid movement, the camera moves between their spaces. An apparently repentant Barrett apologizes, claims that he saved Vera from a brutal father and that she has now left him for “a bookie in Wandsworth,” and that he is “slaving” for an unsympathetic woman. He claims to have been the victim, “led up the garden path” by his love for Vera. The two men return to the unruly house. They bicker. Barrett complains of the mess, the tea dregs on the carpet; Tony idly fills in a crossword. They are casually dressed, and the mise-en-scène registers abundant signs of deterioration and confusion. There are angry interchanges and threats of violence. Barrett’s possessions—a grotesque “modern” portrait of a young woman and his Bush TR82 radio (first produced in 1959), previously seen being carried from the house in his chaotic exit with Vera, are now mingled with the jumble of furnishings. In one confrontation, Barrett, after being called “a peasant,” expresses the contingent absurdity at the heart of the master–servant relationship, asserting, “I am a gentleman’s gentleman, and you are no gentleman!” Barrett and Tony argue whilst they move through the house. On the stairs, they play an aggressive ball game, during which a vase is shattered (see Figure 10.5). In a virtuoso visual exercise, the surreality of the game is dramatized by intense overhead lighting that causes the shadows of the banisters to radiate from the two antagonists.39 Vera returns, asking for money, and Barrett hustles her into the hall, but they exchange complicit glances before she leaves. Barrett’s hands are seen laying out cards, and Tony, in a subordinate position by the open fire, gratefully allows him to administer a liquid from a bottle of “something special” he has brought from “a man in Jermyn Street.” This is a “Faustian” moment —a scene that dramatizes the transfer of power and the extinguishing of Tony’s identity. Barrett has now conclusively installed himself as mentor and procurer of sustaining comforts and experiences. When Susan returns to the house it is in complete disarray; Tony is incoherent and stumbling. His last confrontation with Susan takes place before the “prehistoric” painting. They are interrupted by the arrival of unruly and exotic visitors, invited into the house by Barrett. In Tony’s bedroom the lighting emphasizes the gothic shadows of the furniture, as if the Regency restraint has been overwhelmed by the more unruly contorted and allegorical elements of a more primal décor. Strange, formally dressed people point cameras and projectors in a confusion of shot and counter-shot—there is a sense of a sedate orgy. Vera sits combing her hair in front of a dressing table mirror, and a stupefied Tony views the room through a distorting glass lens. He stumbles over furniture and falls on the bed. Barrett abruptly tells everyone to leave, but in an aside to one of the women he tells her to “make it tomorrow, bring John,” indicating that this is a new status quo. 219

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Figure 10.5 The Servant, directed by Joseph Losey. © Elstree Studies/Springbok Productions 1963. All rights reserved.

After aggressively kissing her, Barrett conclusively ejects Susan from the house. She slaps him defiantly and then stumbles into the snowy street, clutching a nearby tree and sobbing. In the last sequence of the film, Barrett, formally dressed again, “locks up.” The camera is positioned above the door and looks down on the distorted “noir” scene as he turns off the lights. The camera follows him up the staircase past Tony, seen through the bars of the banister rails collapsed and still drinking brandy. At the top of the stairs, Vera is preparing for bed. The sexual politics of The Servant are ambiguous, but something of Bogarde’s previous role as a blackmailed bisexual lawyer in the 1961 film Victim, at a time when homosexuality was illegal, may have added to a sense of the film as “dangerous,” in terms of sexual orientation as well as class inversion and decadence.40 Losey was determined that the film should not be seen as a study of a “little homosexual affair,” but, as one recent critic has observed, “Homosexuality is everywhere and nowhere” in the film.41 The narrative is pervaded by a polymorphous perversity that is never resolved into hetero- or homosexuality. Sexual attraction and guilt are fluid and associated with the exercise of power and spatial distinctions. In the 1948 novel, Maugham refers to the shattering of “the screen of convention” that separated classes, and The Servant provides a spatial sense of the consequences of class antagonism.42 The homoerotic elements in the film foreshadow the complex interplay between characters in the film Performance (1970, Nic Roeg and Donald Cammell), the filming of which began only five years after The Servant was released. By 1968 the role of a manservant is fulfilled by sinister and sadistic criminal henchmen. 220

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Notes 1. Anthony Sampson, Anatomy of Britain (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1962), 675. 2. Bernard Levin, The Pendulum Years (London: Jonathan Cape, 1970), 49. 3. Its selection has been attributed to an official who was sympathetic to Losey’s left-wing reputation. 4. Alexander Walker, Hollywood England (London: Michael Joseph, 1974), 167. 5. Dilys Powell, Sunday Times review, quoted in Geoffrey Macnab, “The Servant that Led Cinema into a New Era,” Independent, March 15, 2013, https://www.independent.co.uk/artsentertainment/art/features/the-servant-that-led-cinema-into-a-new-era-8535019.html. 6. Joseph Losey, Losey on Losey, ed. Tom Milne (London: Secker & Warburg, 1967), 34. An “art film” that used relatively inexperienced actors and a restricted set, The Servant was made for a modest £135,000. 7. “Tony” has no surname in the film. 8. In 1972 (after Pinter’s version). 9. This term perhaps relates to the common wartime experience of the narrator and Tony in the Middle East—a “dragoman” was a translator and interpreter between cultures who, in the Ottoman Empire, could acquire considerable power. 10. Bogarde’s versatility is remarkable: later in 1963 he was the leading actor in the “hilarious” comedy Doctor in Distress (1963, Ralph Thomas). 11. The others are Accident (1967) and The Go-Between (1971). 12. In 1962 the Sunday Times produced the first “colour supplement,” followed in 1964 by the Observer, and by the Sunday Telegraph in 1965—these were sources of information on “lifestyles”—a term coined in the 1960s. The Sunday Times’s “Design for Living” feature (from April 1962) was particularly influential. 13. The Independent Group met at the Institute of Contemporary Arts between 1952 and 1955. Members exerted considerable influence on all aspects of art, design, architecture, and future thinking. The “drama of possessions” was a phrase invented by Laurence Alloway in 1957 to describe the symbolic significance of mass culture. 14. The location also served as the fictional home of James Bond. 15. A similar fascination with the gentrifiable potential of the Georgian house is evident in the horror story The Victorian Chaise Longue by Marghanita Laski (London: Cresset Press, 1953). 16. At a time when houses like Tony’s were selling for between £5,000 and £6,000. 17. Penelope Gilliatt, Observer, November 17, 1963, quoted in Walker, Hollywood England, 213. 18. The shop is Thomas Crapper’s—some commentators have suggested that this is an irreverent commentary on the sordid realities of upper-class pretension. 19. Jonathan Gilli, “On Losey,” Isis 1456 (February 1964): n.p. 20. The “whitening” of earlier twentieth-century décor is emblematically central to The Knack (1965, Richard Lester). The use of dramatically contrasting monochrome was a stylistic sign of modernity in the work of photographers like David Bailey, who termed it “soot and whitewash.” 21. David Caute, Joseph Losey: A Revenge on Life (London: Faber & Faber, 1984), 10. 22. They went on to collaborate on two further films: Accident (1967) and The Go-Between (1971).

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Screen Interiors 23. However, Pinter later downplayed the importance of this remark: “Once many years ago, I found myself engaged uneasily in a public discussion on theatre. Someone asked me what was my work ‘about.’ I replied with no thought at all and merely to frustrate this line of enquiry: ‘the weasel under the cocktail cabinet.’ This was a great mistake. Over the years I have seen that remark quoted in a number of learned columns. It has now seemingly acquired a profound significance, and is seen to be a highly relevant and meaningful observation about my own work. But for me the remark meant precisely nothing.” Harold Pinter, speech on being awarded the German Shakespeare Prize, 1970. 24. Barry Curtis, Dark Places (London: Reaktion, 2008), 61. 25. The Society for Education in Film and Television. 26. Losey’s house, 29 Royal Avenue, now bears a ‘blue plaque’ commemorating his lengthy residence there. David Hicks designed the interior decoration, along with Anthony Cloughley of the architectural firm Garnett Cloughley Blakemore (GCB). GCB designed the Chelsea DrugStore, a boutique that replaced an old-established public house on the corner of King’s Road and Royal Avenue. Both the demolition and the boutique store were indicators of things to come. 27. The military portraits are positioned overlooking a number of situations, as if disapproving of Tony’s progressive degradation. 28. And the husband of Syrie Maugham (divorced 1928), whose interior design career commenced in the 1910s and flourished in the interwar years. She was known for her “all white” rooms, including the music room at her house at 213 King’s Road. 29. Johnny Dankworth supplied the lyrics, but Pinter wrote schematic and repetitive lyrics of his own that Dankworth felt didn’t fit the tune—we hear a few detached lines repeated in different combinations and moods. 30. The kind of item that was featured in Terence Conran’s first Habitat shop that opened in Fulham Road in 1964. 31. Barrett’s apparent knowledge of where to get good wine is complemented later on by the drug bottle that he administers to Tony. This may refer to a component of his character that is emphasized in the 1948 novel, in which it is stated that “he knows the ‘Black Market’ for miles around.” Robin Maugham, The Servant (London: William Heinemann, 1964), 34. 32. Pinter plays one of the characters in this scene. The camera moves between conversations, all redolent of peevish conflict and demonstrating Pinter’s ability to deploy dialogue that confounds communication. The essence of Pinter’s work has been described as “marked especially by halting dialogue, uncertainty of identity, and air of menace”; Philippe Naughton, “Pinter: not just a playwright, but an adjective too,” The Times, December 25, 2008, https:// www.thetimes.co.uk/article/pinter-not-just-a-playwright-but-an-adjective-too-99t05ctqkvp. 33. Sarah Miles had previously played a schoolgirl in Term of Trial (1962, Peter Glenville), a character described as “a husky, wide eyed nymphet.” David Thomson, A New Biographical Dictionary of Film (London: Little, Brown and Company, 2002), 594. 34. Frink’s sculpture figured prominently in Losey’s The Damned, made later in the same year, 1963. 35. Chiswick House, in West London. 36. The chair is now in the V&A Museum. The signatures of Keeler and the photographer are under the seat. 37. The sensual scene involving a chair that resembles the Jacobsen chair deployed in the famous photograph of Christine Keeler was noted at the time as a significant parallel.

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Interiors, Class, Perversity, and Ambiguity in The Servant (1963) 38. The Queen’s Elm (now no longer a pub). 39. This effect involved using clusters of spotlights. 40. “At 5.50am on 5 July 1967, a bill to legalise homosexuality limped through its final stages in the House of Commons. It was a battered old thing and, in many respects, shabby. It didn’t come close to equalising the legal status of heterosexuals and homosexuals (that would take another 38 years). It didn’t stop the arrests: between 1967 and 2003, 30,000 gay and bisexual men were convicted for behaviour that would not have been a crime had their partner been a woman.” Geraldine Bedell, “Coming out of the Dark Ages,” Guardian, June 24, 2007, https:// www.theguardian.com/society/2007/jun/24/communities.gayrights. 41. Peter Bradshaw, “Homosexuality is Everywhere and Nowhere in The Servant,” Interlitq, March 11, 2018, http://interlitq.org/blog/2018/03/11/homosexuality-is-everywhere-and-nowhere-inthe-servant-harold-pinters/. 42. Maugham, The Servant, 40.

Bibliography Bedell, Geraldine. “Coming out of the Dark Ages.” Guardian, June 24, 2007, https://www. theguardian.com/society/2007/jun/24/communities.gayrights. Bradshaw, Peter. “Homosexuality Is Everywhere and Nowhere in ‘The Servant.’ ” Interlitq, March 11, 2018, http://interlitq.org/blog/2018/03/11/homosexuality-is-everywhere-and-nowhere-inthe-servant-harold-pinters/. Caute, David. Joseph Losey: A Revenge on Life. London: Faber & Faber, 1984. Curtis, Barry. Dark Places: The Haunted House in Film. London: Reaktion Books, 2016. Laski, Marghanita. The Victorian Chaise Longue. London: Cresset Press, 1953. Levin, Bernard. The Pendulum Years: Britain and the Sixties. London: Jonathan Cape, 1970. Losey, Joseph and Tom Milne. Losey on Losey. London: Secker & Warburg, 1967. Maugham, Robin. The Servant. London: William Heinemann, 1964. Naughton, Philippe. “Pinter: Not Just a Playwright, but an Adjective Too.” The Times, March 29, 2010, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/pinter-not-just-a-playwright-but-an-adjective-too99t05ctqkvp. Powell, Dilys. “Sunday Times Review”. Quoted in Geoffrey Macnab, “The Servant That Led Cinema into a New Era.” Independent, March 15, 2013, https://www.independent.co.uk/ arts-entertainment/art/features/the-servant-that-led-cinema-into-a-new-era-8535019.html. Sampson, Anthony. The Anatomy of Britain. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1962. Thomson, David. A New Biographical Dictionary of Film. London: Little, Brown and Company, 2002. Walker, Alexander. Hollywood England. London: Michael Joseph Ltd., 1974.

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CHAPTER 11 IN PLAIN VIEW: LONDON COMMERCIAL INTERIORS AS QUEER SPACES IN THREE 1960s BRITISH FILMS: VICTIM 1961, THE LEATHER BOYS 1964, AND THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE 1968 Andrew Stephenson

Three films about homosexual life in 1960s London—the mystery thriller Victim (1961, Basil Reardon), which was the first British film to explicitly address male homosexuality, the rocker drama The Leather Boys (1964, Sidney J. Furie), which included a workingclass gay male character, and the lesbian drama comedy The Killing of Sister George (1968, Robert Aldrich)—all feature the interiors of London public houses, bars, and clubs as spaces of queer sociability.1 In these films, the pub, saloon bar, and club interiors are presented as “authentic” spaces within which 1960s British same-sex desires and identities are shaped by the built environment.2 They are also locations where the homosexual body is staged in his/her metropolitan habitat for a heterosexual cinema audience as well as a gay one, thereby underpinning these films’ claims to veracity and contributing to the greater visibility of homosexual culture, which was a distinctive feature of the increased engagement of film and the media with the metropolitan social scene and urban sexual mores in the period.3 In Victim, the pub’s location is the Chequers pub (actually the Salisbury Public House on St. Martin’s Lane in Covent Garden and still operating);4 in The Leather Boys, it is an East End dockside pub (actually the Tidal Basin Tavern in Canning Town, closed in 1997 and demolished in 2017);5 and The Killing of Sister George features the exterior of the Holly Bush Pub in Hampstead (whose pub interior was professionally reconstructed later in the United States by Hollywood set designers and set builders) and the lesbian Gateways Club, filmed on location at the Kings Road in Chelsea, which closed in 1985.6 The disclosure of London’s queer geography in these three films was of an urban subculture that was largely unknown to wider British or international film audiences given the fact that male homosexuality, presented in Victim and The Leather Boys, was illegal at this time. Only later in July 1967 was homosexuality partially decriminalized in England and Wales and then only allowing homosexual acts to take place between consenting men in private, retaining the illegality of showing demonstrable signs of homosexuality between men in public.7 By contrast, the Gateways Club, the underground membership-only, lesbian club, was largely unaffected by these legal changes. It formed part of a newly emergent, thriving, and distinctive lesbian social scene in London’s West End from the 1940s onwards. Although lesbianism was not illegal, it was often allied with 225

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the criminal underworld and drug dealing and this brought it into the orbit of the police and social reformers.8 As a result of differences in both legality and policing, lesbian bars in general and the Gateways Club in particular were never subject to the same degree of scrutiny as clubs attracting gay male customers.9 In The Killing of Sister George, the club is presented to the film camera as a women only, queer space, even if the club itself is accessed through a nondescript doorway and presented as welcoming to only those in the know, who have had to gain membership at least forty-eight hours in advance, and pass scrutiny, to get in.10 What I wish to examine is how the first two films’ exposure of queer life in the metropolis in the 1960s pivots around scenes in seemingly ordinary London pubs and bars, depicting their interiors as imminently queer environments where gay men negotiate public space and surveillance rather than operating in the designated private venues of members-only gay clubs that existed in this era.11 These public saloon and bar interiors accommodated many forms of public sociability.12 To straight customers they are undisclosed and unmarked as queer spaces, while those in the know and the police keep them under surveillance or raid them from time to time in the so-called interest of maintaining public moral security.13 Yet they constitute filmic forms of queer interior space as a type of visual culture which in design and layout is receptive to new forms of social and sexual interaction, notably the soliciting of gay men by other men or by accommodating the social gathering of homosexuals facilitating social interaction, gossip, and camaraderie. By contrast, in the third film, the actual filming of the Gateways Club, an existing lesbian dance club, has none of this sense of ambiguity or equivocation in terms of reading its clientele’s sexual interests that the pub or bar have in the other two films. As The Killing of Sister George makes clear in its advanced publicity, the film featured a scene in a recognizably lesbian environment; an unequivocal and actual queer space, the basement bar of one of the longest-running exclusively lesbian clubs in London that attracted West End fashion designers and celebrities with an openly gay reputation.14 While all these locations presented in these three films act to highlight the existence of London’s growing gay demi-monde, it is particularly the pub and bar interiors that expose the difficulties for the heterosexual viewer of recognizing them as distinctly queer spaces operating under and against the radar of police surveillance and heteronormativity.15 Rather, with the exception of the members-only door policy of the Gateways Club that restricts general public access, this marginal homosexual economy operates in plain sight in the mundane locations of the public house and saloon bar, even when the homosexual nature of its clientele is not recognized. Moreover, like the films’ protagonists who “pass” as straight until they are exposed or come out as gay, the interior spaces of London public houses only slowly reveal themselves as part of the newly emergent homosexualized cityscape.16 For non-queer audiences, any understanding of the same-sex dynamics of these commercial interiors and the homosexual tastes of some of the characters that inhabit them only dawns slowly, perhaps due to their lack of exposure to London’s homosexual subculture and experience of its ways. Indeed, the film director of The Killing of Sister 226

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George, Robert Aldrich, was careful to clarify any sense of ambivalence about the nature of the homosexual audience being featured in the footage from the actual Gateways Club, arguing that a recognizably lesbian environment was necessary for audiences who might not otherwise grasp the sexual dimension of June “George” Buckridge’s (Beryl Reid) and Alice “Childie” McNaught’s (Susannah York) lesbian relationship.17 Consequently, these 1960s films offer a fascinating insight into how during a period when homosexual public culture was attracting more attention and becoming better known, location and environment, as well as bodies, mannerisms, and performance, registered sexual difference even if not always clearly to those not in the know. This ambivalence in understanding what was being presented to straight viewers highlighted the problematics of designating particular urban spaces as “queer” if their codings were not clear; a contradiction that many recent writers about queer geography have underlined.18 Given that in principle “queer space” can exist almost potentially anywhere in the public realm, it is not constituted by particular types of the built environment nor by conspicuous forms of interior design. Moreover, as Christopher Reed has proposed, “queerness is constituted not in space, but in the body of the queer, in his/her inhabitation; in his/her gaze.”19 If such bodies could not be recognized as gay, then these spaces remained invisible to the viewer: a lack of exposure which all three films were hoping to rectify. In this sense, the examination of urban queer space in these films might be better approached more as a “strategy than a space” activated by the recognizable presence of gay men and women.20 Indeed, what Victim and The Leather Boys expose is that the queerness of space is not marked as conspicuously different in the interior style of the pub bar nor is it evidenced in the differentiated spatial architecture of the London public house frequented by gays. Only it seems could such conclusive visible signs of gay culture exist in the separate commercial venues of the members-only gay bars or the exclusive lesbian club, like the Gateways Club, as such venues were emerging or existed in post-war Britain because of the illegality of male homosexuality and the increasing investigative prying of the social reformers and police. As Chris O’Rourke has emphasized, since the previous century “to the wider public, however, the existence of a queer metropolitan subculture remained obscure, surfacing occasionally in news of scandalous cases” in the press.21 Nevertheless, some interiors are queerer than others, either through the neighborhoods in which they are located, in terms of the bohemian or raffish communities they attract, and/or by their reputation, well known to initiates and/or communicated by word of mouth to interested parties.22 In these cases, any claims to such spaces as queer is understood to a sufficient degree in that they are prone to being homophobically attacked, as the case of the Admiral Duncan Pub nail bombing in 1999 attests. Whilst cinematic representations of homosexuality in these years was not restricted to London, the metropolis held a distinctive reputation for its queer networks of social and sexual spaces, and it is not surprising that it featured as the location selected for three films.23 In Victim, the Chequers pub’s proximity to Soho situates it within an area that had a reputation as part of the London criminal underworld, known for petty theft, drug 227

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selling, and pimping, and close by a quarter notorious for its thriving sexual economy supporting both male and female prostitution and a thriving gay community.24 In The Leather Boys, it is an East End dockside boozer that harbors a shifting community of homosexual men in a decidedly working-class neighborhood, which was known for its sailors and their portside promiscuity, the easy availability of drugs, and for its itinerant working-class trade, including many sailors, dockers, and their admirers.25 By contrast, in The Killing of Sister George, the Holly Bush Pub is located in the more respectable suburb of Hampstead, whilst the pub is actually seen only in exterior shots. The pub interior, as already noted, was reconstructed in Hollywood and any interior scenes filmed on set. It was a relocated set that evoked the atmosphere and interior features, design and layout of a “real” English pub, if in fact it was a totally fabricated version.26 Conversely, the Gateways Club was filmed on location in London as part of the director, Aldrich’s desire for authenticity and to establish a direct link with contemporary social reality, as already noted. Situated just off the Kings Road, the Chelsea location was one associated with artistic bohemianism and offering a liberal social environment; a quarter that later in the 1960s would gain a reputation for its permissive and “swinging” lifestyles.27 To investigate these issues further, I want to consider how these films’ protagonists and any claims for homosexuals as social participants in a thriving metropolitan community are shaped and reinforced by the interior spaces of the pubs and clubs they inhabit. At a time when gay culture and the homosexual was becoming more prominent in the British and American press, on film and on television and more familiar to the general public through sociological studies, these films were pioneering in their mapping of the social and sexual networks of the homosexual in London, being the first to feature a homosexual man (Victim), the first to portray a gay British biker gang member (The Leather Boys), and the first to be shot, in part at least, in an actual lesbian club (The Killing of Sister George).28 In Victim the plot focuses on the central figure of the closeted middleclass lawyer Melville Farr, acted by Dirk Bogarde, who is married to Laura (played by Sylvia Simms) and having an affair with Jack Barrett (known as “Boy,” acted by Peter McEnery). The crime thriller revolves around not only outing Farr, but also following the activities of a group of blackmailers who are targeting a number of gay men from a range of social backgrounds, Farr included. The various locales in which the plot unfolds signal the extensive geography of gay networks in London, including scenes set in a private members’ club, an up-market car showroom, a specialist bookstore, the theater, a men’s hairdressing salon, and the Chequers public house. While the film adopts many of the tropes of the crime thriller in its narrative construction, it is also a rallying cry for the decriminalization of homosexuality. Moreover, the scenes in the pub offer opportunities for the film to present gay sociability, with gay men meeting with each other, interacting with straight customers and the bar staff—while under police surveillance. The first scene in the Chequers pub shows Barrett using the public house’s telephone, located in a corridor away from the main bar separated by a frosted glass door, to call Farr, presumably to warn him about the police investigation into his affairs. In the bar are Mickey (David Evans) and his partner P.H. (Hilton Edwards), who go there “to hear the 228

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gossip” about the latest actions of the blackmailers, as we later learn. They sit in one of the curved niches opposite the counter which furnishes them with a panoramic view of the pub and its customers, allowing them to clearly observe and comment on events. After the arrival of Barrett’s friend, Eddy Stone (Donald Churchill), who has a bag with Farr’s love letters to Barrett in it, and following Barrett’s sudden departure with the incriminating correspondence, the barman (Frank Pettitt), talking to a female regular, the resting actress and sometimes model Madge (Mavis Villiers), passes comment on the pub’s growing appeal to homosexual drinkers. The barman, who “hates their bloody guts,” nevertheless has to acknowledge that the gay men who inhabit the pub are “good for a laugh, very witty at times, generous too.” Madge replies “[they are] just not quite normal,” while the barman concludes in a reference to contemporary calls for the decriminalization of homosexuality, “if ever they make it legal, they might as well license every other perversion.” One other figure, who we later learn is an under-cover policeman, is characterized by Madge as “a real lone wolf,” and he surveys the bar from one of the niches, overhearing conversations and monitoring goings-on, thereby making an explicit correlation between homosexuality, surveillance, and criminality. At the start of the second scene in the pub, this is made explicit when, as Eddy enters through the pub doorway, the detective inquires if he’d like to meet up later for a coffee, a form of soliciting and casual entrapment that police employed at this time. As a component of the habitus of gay culture in the West End, the complex architectural and spatial organization of the Chequers pub creates a drinking environment where visual contact between staff and customers, and the pleasures of exhibitionism and voyeurism, was facilitated. However, as in many updated London public houses, the use of a modern central bar and counter service acted to regulate interactions between customers. This layout made pubs easier to control since it allowed the barman to clearly observe the floor and effectively oversee the clientele. At the same time as these open spaces facilitated communal sociability, the pub had some separated areas, such as the telephone booth in the corridor, where conversations were less public, alongside relatively intimate spaces, such as the seating alcoves and niches, sometimes with glass partitions or decorative features that offered a greater, if limited, sense of privacy. Opening in 1898, the Chequers (Salisbury) is an exceptional example of a late Victorian pub interior with organizational features that responded to updated legislative requirements and commercial imperatives. Its attractive interior had ornate decoration with frosted, cutand stained-glass windows, panels and partitions, elaborate polished brass fittings, and Belle Époque lamps with nymphs holding flowers that separated the niches. The alcoves are used dramatically in the film as a vantage point, set slightly apart, from which events and conversations at the counter can be clearly observed and commented upon. For example, the second scene in the Chequers features a close-up of a nymph light fitting before showing Mickey and P.H. sitting in one of the niches. They are following with great interest a conversation at the counter between three gay men— Eddy, Henry (Charles Lloyd Pack), and Phip (Nigel Stock)—and Madge about the recent violent murder of a gay hairdresser, which has been reported in the press. The hairdresser, who was a victim of blackmail, was killed because of his inability to pay up and because 229

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of suspicions that he was a police informer. At this moment, the camera viewpoint assumes a position behind Mickey and P.H., adopting the viewpoint from their alcove seats. P.H., who can lip-read, relays to Mickey (and to viewers) the details of this conversation between the gay men. Later, the camera assumes a vantage point from the counter, allowing us to see, from Eddy’s perspective, the detective seated in another niche making eye contact and soliciting him. Given the wide variety of homosexual characters represented in Victim, from “Boy” Barrett, Farr’s lover, who works on a building site but has embezzled company funds in order to pay the blackmailer, to the aristocratic Lord Fullbrook (played by Anthony Nicholls), who is a well-respected and successful industrialist, as well as Farr, the seemingly highly respectable barrister who is about to become a Queen’s Counsel, the film shows homosexual men from varied class backgrounds, although all the main gay characters are racially white. By presenting this variety, the film therefore largely avoids easy and demeaning stereotypes or well-worn clichés about effeminate homosexuals as individuals showing psychological aberrations or as deviant social types. It also refrains from pathologizing homosexuality as a congenital condition, instead signaling its relationship to the social environment, thereby providing a broader sociological perspective on homosexuals and their community—a view that was gaining favor amongst psychiatrists and sociologists in this period as part of a growing call for the decriminalization of homosexuality.29 However, Victim’s overriding sense of paranoia and its acute climate of fear of exposure are presented as the defining features characterizing gay life in London, with homosexual men under surveillance by the police, exploited by confidence tricksters, and subject to blackmail and extortion. This impression was heightened by the blackand-white film’s adoption of the crime thriller’s atmosphere of suspense and anxiety, and by Czech cinematographer Otto Heller’s use of dramatic lighting to enhance the tension of many of its scenes. Nevertheless, according to Victim’s producer, Michael Relph, the film was specifically made in response to the Wolfenden Report, published in 1957, which proposed legal reform to the status of male homosexuals, supporting more liberal laws for gay men.30 As the Kinematograph Weekly applauded, the result was “propaganda skillfully clothed in suspenseful ‘who-dunnit.’ ”31 The second film that includes reference to homosexual men and their urban experience is The Leather Boys, directed by Sidney J. Furie, who would later in 1965 establish his reputation as the maker of the successful espionage thriller The Ipcress File. The film follows the courtship and marriage of a London working-class couple, Reggie (Colin Campbell) and Dot (Rita Tushingham). Nominated for a Golden Globe in 1966, the film is noteworthy in that it offers a keen scrutiny of London working-class life and manners and also an up-close view of two male friends, Reggie and his best mate Pete (Dudley Sutton). Both are involved in the outlaw world of British motorcycle gangs, notably centered on the famous Ace Café bikers’ café on the North Circular Road in North London. They wear the gang’s distinctive leather biker gear and take part in shows of masculine prowess and in racing competitions (see Figure 11.1). However, as Reggie and Dot’s marriage starts to fall apart, the conflicts between Reggie’s lifestyle and Dot’s 230

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Figure 11.1 The Leather Boys, directed by Sidney J. Furie. © Allied Artists Pictures 1964. All rights reserved. Courtesy Photofest.

aspirations leads to a break-up in their marriage and the two male friends start living together, sharing a double bed and planning a new future together abroad. What Reggie fails to realize is that Pete is gay, and he misses the significance of Pete’s lack of interest in women, his keen sense of domesticity, and the motivation for the high level of emotional intimacy that they share. It is only in the final scene as they are about to embark upon a boat trip to America together that Reggie, dressed in his leathers after selling his motorbike while waiting for his friend in a dockside pub, realizes the true nature of Pete’s affection for him. Once again it is the saloon interior that frames the revelatory event within which public and private perceptions of the homosexual body are contrasted and where the clear distinction between Reggie’s homosocial reading of the male body in leathers and Pete’s homosexual intent is finally recognized. The Tidal Basin Tavern, which opened in 1862, attracted a predominantly male clientele of seamen, stevedores, and dock workers from the nearby Victoria Docks, part of the Royal Docks that first opened in 1855. The dockland tavern is presented as part of the social geography of homosexual life in London, a place where gay men could pick up working-class men. When Reggie enters the saloon bar, the camera’s viewpoint from behind the counter shows the cargo ships and docks through the semi-frosted bar window, thereby reinforcing the pub’s closeness to the 231

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London harbor. The saloon is an open, unpretentious space whose simple décor features decorative floral wallpaper panels, wooden paneling, and a wooden floor. An unadorned wooden counter is set against the back wall, with shelves behind it displaying alcoholic drinks and snacks. Simple wooden benches and sturdy wrought-iron tables with stools complete the plain interior, thereby underpinning the film’s claims to working-class authenticity and its adherence to a realist “kitchen-sink” aesthetic. As he approaches the counter, Reggie in his leathers attracts attention from the other drinkers. A couple of homosexual men at the counter, who we later learn are waiting to set sail, engage Reggie in conversation. One is dressed formally in a smart suit with shirt and tie, while the other wears a seaman’s jacket over a rough woolen roll neck sweater with holes in it. One of the gay men attempts to pick up Reggie by lighting his cigarette, offering to buy him a drink, and complimenting him on his attractive leather jacket. However, the exact nature of this interest is not realized by Reggie, not even when one of them mimics his working-class accent and choice of drink in a camp manner and calls him “love”; a feature of gay banter. Reggie’s initial inability to recognize that the two members of the bar who are talking to him are gay parallels his earlier obliviousness to the signs of Pete’s homosexuality and his failure to comprehend the exact nature of Pete’s growing intimacy. It is only when the gay men compliment him on his hazel eyes and other men in the bar look him up and down that Reggie comprehends what is happening and what their distinctive mannerisms, gay slang, and camp humor signifies in terms of their interest in him. When Pete arrives, the camera viewpoint shifts to allow the pub to be seen from the door. One of the patrons recognizes Pete by name and familiarly calls him over “to have a drink, dear,” then compliments him on his “drag.” It is at this moment that we sense that the revelation about Pete’s homosexuality is about to take place. When the plan for the friends to get the next departing boat leads to comments from the two men (“We’ll all be together dear—we’ll have a ball” and “we’ll have a foursome—see you on board, dear”) and to recollections about what took place between Pete and the gay couple on a sea trip to the Red Sea, Reggie realizes that Pete is homosexual. In response and in the final scene of the film, Reggie rushes out of the pub in a homophobic flight, suitcase in hand. Chased by Pete, Reggie turns around and stares at him anxiously, but stays silent. Reggie then turns away and quickly walks across the bridge over the River Thames with Pete receding into the distance until the final credits roll. What is especially significant about this final segment of The Leather Boys is that it is in the docklands pub in an East End working class community that gay sociability thrives, although, as the film’s ending underscores, when the exact nature of Pete’s desire for closeness and intimacy is revealed he is rejected; a conclusion that was often invoked as a sign of the gay man’s inability to develop lasting relationships and a reason for their sense of self-loathing and self-pity. Nevertheless, in its realistic depiction of workingclass biker gangs and in its use of actual locations such as the Ace Café where gangs congregated, it mines a familiarity with gang subculture and notoriety that was increasingly disseminated in the press, popular literature, and public imagination; an exposure that marked bikers as an outlawed, dangerous, and sexually charged subculture. 232

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Biker gangs were positioned in such accounts as having an attraction to violence and unsociable behavior. In their celebration of unfettered masculinity, bikers achieved a celebrity appeal in films of the period in the United States as well as in Britain, one famously demonstrated by Marlon Brando in the film about American gangs, The Wild One (1953), although the film was not released in Britain until 1968. Hence, The Leather Boys marked one of the earliest filmic introductions to the free-spirited, rugged masculine lifestyle and anti-social, lawless nature of biker gang culture in Britain. Also, Pete’s ability to “pass” as a “straight” leather boy gang member is significant. Pete has none of the distinctive unmanly mannerisms of the stereotypical effete sissy, nor is he the archetypical urbane, artistically inclined, serious middle-class aesthete—two of the most frequent tropes of gay masculinity circulating in British films and literature of the period. As a confident, sociable and well-liked working-class man, Pete is not particularly conflicted about his homosexuality and he readily passes as a respected member of the motorcycle gang engaging in their laddish banter and rough camaraderie, though not in their heterosexual exploits. Dressed head to toe in biker leathers and able to ride a powerful motorbike and win biker races, Pete sports one of the most admired, hypermasculine homoerotic dress codes of the era as the gay men in the pub make clear in their admiration for Reggie’s jacket, a fetishist taste for leather which the film brings to a wider audience and which had already taken root in London’s gay scene in the late 1950s.32 By contrast with the initial ambiguities about identifying homosexuals in pub interiors shown in these two films about gay men in the metropolis, The Killing of Sister George as the first Hollywood feature film actually shot in a lesbian nightclub is clear from the start about its topic. The role that the social environment plays in facilitating a queer identity is fully exploited by the on-location color filming of an actual and recognizable London lesbian club, the Gateways Club.33 The film features the complex, often sadistic, relationship between an ageing actress Buckeridge ( Beryl Reid) and a younger lover nicknamed “Childie” (Susannah York). Buckeridge is a famous actress, Sister George, on a popular television soap opera called Applehurst, but who is concerned that her character is about to be killed off. The hard-drinking, cigar-smoking, foulmouthed and domineering butch “George” is accused of molesting two nuns in a taxi cab, an event that draws press outrage, and she is informed by a BBC executive, Mrs. Mercy Croft (Coral Browne) that she must write a letter of apology before her final exit from the series in a fatal scooter accident. Whilst visiting the couple at home, Croft makes a number of passes at Childie, which are noticed by George. This interest leads to the scene when the BBC executive visits the lesbian club where both George and Childie are clad in fancy dress while drinking, dancing, and celebrating under the misapprehension that George’s character is not going to be written out. In the scene in the busy club, they do a comical Laurel and Hardy routine in costume to the delight of the packed crowd before Croft gives them the news that George is not to be spared and will, indeed, be “killed off.” Two commercial drinking environments feature in The Killing of Sister George. The first interior is George’s local pub, the Holly Bush Pub in Hampstead, close by the heath which was a well-known and popular cruising ground for gay men. As already mentioned, 233

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the exterior shots of the pub were filmed on location in London, but the interior was reconstructed as a Hollywood film set. In the film, this is George’s local pub where she anxiously awaits Childie’s phone call and where she is shown in brief conversation with the barman, mostly ordering more drinks until she is inebriated. Built as a domestic dwelling in 1797, then used as an Assembly Room from about 1907, the Holly Bush Pub became a public house in 1928. In the opening section of the film, it can be seen that the saloon in which George drinks while waiting for Childie’s call retains many of the interior spatial features of its earlier domestic function. The wooden paneled interior has a curved wooden counter set against the adjoining wall, which is accessed by serving staff through a back door with etched glass panels above which there is a large clock that registers Childie’s increasing lateness. On the left wall, there is a public telephone (with no booth for privacy) from which George repeatedly calls her unresponsive girlfriend. The floor is simple, unpolished wood and the bar panels are plain with little decoration. Seating is provided at the counter by tall wooden bar stools and by simple benches and wrought-iron tables with stools throughout the rest of the room. This adaptation of an eighteenth-century-style domestic interior would have been relatively easy for Hollywood set makers to reproduce, since the saloon does not have the complex architectural layout or elaborate interior design features of a modernized late Victorian pub interior such as the Chequers, with its large central servery, decorated bar stallion, radiating drinking compartments, and divided seating niches. The second venue, the Gateways Club, was filmed on location in Chelsea between June 10 and 13, 1968. It was a shoot only made possible because of recent technological innovations that enabled filmmakers to film on location with relative ease. As Kelly Hankin has wryly observed, “why, when Aldrich was able to simulate an English pub on a U.S. soundstage, was it necessary for him to shoot the lesbian bar on location?”34 Her conclusion is that it was the overriding desire of the film’s director, Aldrich, to show “real” lesbians, not acting “frauds,” using the actual club members rather than extras in the footage, thereby exploiting “the ideological import of conveying ‘authenticity.’ ”35 As the notes of the location scout for the film make explicit, there were ultimately two venues shortlisted that could have been used, both known about from the pub listings of the London lesbian magazine Arena Three: the Bell Haven and the Gateways Club. The latter was chosen because of its reputation as “a famed nightclub haunt” and the “best known haunt of London’s Sapphic demi-monde” with “its membership only open to women.”36 In the film, the actual club owner, Gina Ware, “the Madam of the Gateways,” is shown at the door entrance where she appraises and questions the entrants. Also depicted is the narrow staircase down to the basement bar, the packed clubroom itself, and the distinctive mural decorations on its walls (see Figure 11.2). Sandy Martin remembered the club interior from the mid-1960s as being badly illuminated and somewhat clandestine: “dark, smoky and relatively small with a capacity of two hundred,” usually packed on Friday and Saturday nights: It was a fairly largish room, basement room, or cellar really, which had been converted and the walls were completely covered with murals, paintings of, there 234

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were people’s faces, it was like a painted collage . . . All the members, they would all be portrayed all around the walls, friends of Gina [Ware, the owner] and Smithy’s [the ex-American air force bar manager] . . . It was very dark. The paint, all the paint in this mural was very, very dark: dark brown and reds. Very very dark. And it was dimly lit [sic].37 As Maxine Woolfe has noted, the lack of windows and low illumination were conspicuous features of lesbian bars and clubs at this period: “Most lesbian bars have no windows or cover up their windows. The lights are generally very dim to protect the users from recognition should unwanted people enter purposely or unknowingly.”38 This is not the case in the film, where the badly lit basement room had special lighting installed to make the interior, the women, their dress, and mannerisms clearly visible to the camera and openly discernible to the film’s audience. In fact, panning shots of the crowded basement bar from above are accompanied by close-ups of the women themselves, especially when dancing or being affectionate, using hand-held cameras. The film, as Aldrich expressly desired, shone a light on contemporary lesbian subculture in

Figure 11.2 The Killing of Sister George, directed by Robert Aldrich. © Cinerama Releasing Corporation 1968. All rights reserved. Courtesy Photofest.

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London, exposing its interior spaces and décor in full technicolor. It can, as Chris O’Rourke has argued, “be read both as intimate celebrations of lesbian affection and, conversely, as prurient, potentially intrusive glimpses of queer lives packaged for mainstream consumption.”39 To contextualize the series of events, after George and Childie complete their fancydress Laurel and Hardy routine to rapturous applause, the all-women band, the Mission Belles, perform a song (later dubbed with a squeaky pitched, chip-monk style tune). Following a sharp exchange between George and Childie and banter with another couple, George retires to drink at the bar while Childie dances to lively pop music with another woman. There follows a slower song when the women dance together in couples before the arrival of Croft, who descends down the narrow stairs looking for her “friends.” After drinks are bought, all three leading characters go into the quieter billiard room to discuss Croft’s news, namely the decision by the Board to sanction George’s tragic departure from the soap opera in the light of the recent press scandal. At this point actual footage of the club interior stops. In the Gateways Club sequence, there is a strong sense that the film is reveling in revealing the London lesbian community to a wider international film audience for the first time, one that was not attuned to the intricacies of lesbian dance styles, dress codes, slang, and the femme-butch culture that was so dominant in the period.40 If these three films present a more complex picture of the shifting social and sexual geography of London’s homosexual community in the 1960s, they also highlight the growing interest in and fascination with such gay characters, their social spaces and their subcultural lifestyles by non-homosexual film goers. In many ways, the films exploited for commercial opportunity, the growing fascination with gay culture and its various social and sexual networks at this period, while, at the same time, they also acknowledged the importance that such spaces had in shaping national debates on homosexuality and legality, thereby contributing to the greater public understanding and visibility of homosexual communities that eventually led to changes in the law resulting in the partial decriminalization of sex between homosexual men in England and Wales in 1967.

Coda By the end of the twentieth century, the politics of greater visibility of homosexuality produced by these early films came under scrutiny as the enhanced visibility and greater acceptance of gay culture in London and other British cities was beginning to be seen as double-edged. Contemporary accounts of London’s thriving gay scene in 1980s and 1990s highlighted the growing appeal that gay bars, pubs, and clubs held for straight audiences, and which had produced a burgeoning pink pound and thriving night-time economy in parts of the city once the preserve of gays and lesbians.41 This assimilation of gay leisure into the heterosexual mainstream alienated many gay men and women and it dismantled earlier notions of a gay community and its social networks operating with a distinctive sexual geography of metropolitan queer spaces. In the new century, the 236

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impact of austerity on minority businesses and the development of new forms of technologically enhanced gay dating apps such as Grindr and Recon meant the need for extensive urban social spaces for gay sociability declined. The subsequent closure of many city center gay-only establishments, notably leather or fetish clubs or saunas, often under pressure from increasing rents and escalating gentrification, and negatively affected by restrictive opening hours and conservative licensing laws, meant that many exclusively lesbian and gay pubs, bars, and clubs started to disappear at an alarming rate. As Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings’ UK Gay Bar Directory (conceived and filmed in 2015–16) shows, these developments impacted upon the livelihood and survival of not only London’s gay leisure venues and social spaces, but more broadly on the sustainability of commercial queer culture in the metropolis.42 Their video archive documented the interior spaces and design of over a hundred gay bars in major UK cities, many of which either turned gay-friendly rather than exclusively gay, or at worst stopped operating. In recording these interior environments, the archive exhibited in 2017–18 exposed the disturbing and accelerating pace of closure of many British gay bars and clubs and the increasing disappearance of the once-thriving metropolitan gay scene since 2015, a decline that the artists link to other changes in the commercial environment and symbolically to climate change.43 What the UK Gay Bar Directory especially underscored was the complex interrelationship that had existed and still does between place, interiors, community, sociability, and sexual identity. Quinlan and Hastings’ photographs and video demonstrated the importance that these bar and club interiors played in shaping and supporting modern queer culture and community in Britain’s cities. What the archive also reinforced was how film, video, and photography played a crucial role in documenting the gay community’s remaining, if increasingly lost, queer interior spaces and in offering up the visual evidence of their remarkable histories.

Notes 1. Victim (1961), UK, 90 mins. Director: Basil Dearden. Producer: Michael Relph. Writers: Janet Green, John McCormick. The Leather Boys (1964), UK, 106 mins. Director: Sidney J. Furie. Producer: Raymond Stross. Writer: Gillian Freeman. The Killing of Sister George (1968), UK, 138 mins. Director and Producer: Robert Aldrich. Writer: Lukas Heller from a play by Frank Marcus, The Killing of Sister George. A Comedy (London: Samuel French Ltd., 1965). 2. For the proposal that “the politics of space are always sexual,” see Beatrice Colomina’s “Introduction” in Sexuality and Space (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1992), unpaginated, and for questions of space and identity, see Michael Keith and Steve Pile (eds.), Place and the Politics of Identity (London: Routledge, 1993), 6. For the specifics of approaching queer space, see Christopher Reed, “Imminent Domain: Queer Space in the Built Environment,” in “We’re Here: Gay and Lesbian Presence in Art and Art History,” special issue, Art Journal 55, no. 4 (Winter 1996): 64–70. 3. See Steven Paul Davies, “Victims, Villains and Sissies—the 60s,” in Out at the Movies: A History of Gay Cinema (Harpenden: kamera books, 2008/2016), 45–51. 4. See Ben Nicholson, “In Search of the Locations for Dirk Bogarde thriller Victim,” BFI, https:// www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/locations-dirk-bogarde-gay-drama-victim.

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Screen Interiors 5. For the Leather Boys, see “The Leather Boys | 1964,” Movie-Locations.com, http://www. movie-locations.com/movies/l/Leather-Boys.php. 6. For The Killing of Sister George, see Kelly Hankin, “Lesbian Locations: The Production of Lesbian Bar Space in The Killing of Sister George,” Cinema Journal 41, no. 1 (Fall 2001): 3–27; Hankin (p. 2) quotes the director Robert Aldrich as stating, “we transported chunks of an English pub . . . to Hollywood,” from Richard Combs (ed.), Robert Aldrich (London: British Film Institute, 1978). 7. See Matt Cook, A Gay History of Britain: Love and Sex Between Men Since the Middle Ages (Oxford: Greenwood World, 2007). 8. Rebecca Jennings, “The Gateways Club and the Emergence of a Post-Second World War Lesbian Subculture,” Social History 31, no. 2 (May 2006): 206–25. See in particular 210–11. 9. Jennings, “The Gateways Club,” 213. 10. Jennings, “The Gateways Club,” 213–15. 11. For the earlier history, see Matt Houlbrook, Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918–1957 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005) and Chris Waters, “The Homosexual as a Social Being in Britain 1945–68,” in “British Queer History,” special issue, Journal of British Studies 51, no. 3 (July 2012): 685–710. 12. For the history of the commercial interiors that developed into the London public house, see Fiona Fisher, “Privacy and Supervision in the Modernised Public House, 1872–1902,” in Penny Sparke, Anne Massey, Trevor Keeble, and Brenda Martin (eds.), Designing the Modern Interior: From the Victorians to Today, 41–51 (Oxford: Berg, 2009). 13. For the gay man as a figure of equivocation, see Brian Lewis, “Introduction—British Queer History,” Journal of British Studies, 51 no. 3 (July 2012): 520; and in the same issue Jeffrey Weeks, “Queering the Modern Homosexual,” 525–6. 14. Hankin, “Lesbian Locations,” 6. 15. For the increasing social and legal investigation of London’s sexual geography, see Waters, “The Homosexual as a Social Being,” 696–710, and Frank Mort, “Mapping Sexual London: The Wolfenden Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution, 1954–57,” in “Sexual Geographies,” special issue, new formations 37 (Spring 1999): 92–113. 16. For the increasing prevalence of the notion that the male homosexual “must be studied in the wider context of the whole community of which he is a part,” see Gordon Westwood (aka Michael Schofield), A Minority: A Report of the Life of the Male Homosexual in Great Britain (London: Longmans, 1960), 1. The notion that the male homosexual was “environmentally produced” is advocated in Richard Hauser, The Homosexual Society (London: Bodley Head, 1962). 17. Aldrich quoted in Hankin, “Lesbian Locations,” 2. 18. See Reed, “Imminent Domain,” 64–6. 19. Reed, “Imminent Domain,” 64. 20. Project statement published as Benjamin Gianni et al., “Queering (Single family) space,” Sites 26 (1995): 54–7, as quoted by Reed, “Imminent Domain,” 64. 21. Chris O’Rourke, “Queer London on Film: Victim (1961), The Killing of Sister George (1968) and Nighthawk (1978),” in Pam Hirsch and Chris O’Rourke (eds.), London on Film, 118 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). 22. Reed, “Imminent Domain,” 66. 23. See O’Rourke, “Queer London on Film,” 119, who references the gay art student, Geoffrey, played by Murray Melvin, in A Taste of Honey (1961), where the film is set in the northern town of Salford. 238

In Plain View 24. See Frank Mort, Capital Affairs: London and the Making of the Permissive Society (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2010), 222–8. 25. See Peter Ackroyd, Queer City: Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day (London: Chatto & Windus, 2017). 26. Hankin, “Lesbian Locations,” 2–3. 27. Jennings, “The Gateways Club,” 222. 28. See Waters, “The Homosexual as a Social Being,” 709–10, and Richard Hornsey, The Spiv and the Architect: Unruly Life in Post-war London (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 258–9. 29. Waters, “The Homosexual as a Social Being,” 699–706. 30. O’Rourke, “Queer London on Film,” 119. For the Wolfenden Report, see Mort, Capital Affairs, 92–113. 31. Quoted in John Coldstream, Victim (London: Palgrave MacMillan/British Film Institute, 2011), 89. 32. For a history of the homoerotic appeal of leather dress, see Adam Geczy and Vicki Karaminas, Queer Style (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 108–10. 33. For a full account of the enormous effort placed on finding the right lesbian club location, see Hankin, “Lesbian Locations,” 3–6. 34. Hankin, “Lesbian Locations,” 2. 35. Hankin, “Lesbian Locations,” 2. 36. Hankin, “Lesbian Locations,” 3. 37. Interview with Sandy Martin, Hall Carpenter Collection, London School of Economics and Political Science Library, London, File: NSA (C456), F2483–F2487, quoted in Jennings, “The Gateways Club,” 214. 38. Maxine Wolfe, “Invisible Women in Invisible Places: The Production of Social Space in Lesbian Bars,” in Gordon Brett Beemyn, Anne-Marie Bouthillette, and Yolanda Retter (eds.), Queers in Space: Communities, Public Places, Sites of Resistance, 318 (Port Townsend, WA: Bay Press, 1997), quoted in Hankin, “Lesbian Locations,” 2. 39. O’Rourke, “Queer London on Film,” 123. 40. These butch-femme codes and mannerisms are discussed by Jennings, “The Gateways Club,” 217–21. 41. See Richard Quest, the BBC’s Business correspondent’s article “Business: The Economy, the Pink Pound,” which estimated that the Pink Pound economy was worth $350 billion a year and that pub retail and leisure businesses were notably focusing on taking advantage of this thriving sector in terms of their focus for advertising and investment. Richard Quest, “Business: The Economy, the Pink Pound,” BBC News, July 31, 1998, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/ hi/business/142998.stm. 42. Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings’ UK Gay Bar Directory was exhibited at the Arts Council Collection Coming Out: Sexuality, Gender and Identity exhibition, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, from July 25 through November 5, 2017, and the show toured to Birmingham City Art Gallery from December 2, 2017 through April 15, 2018. The video contains several minutes for each venue, incorporating footage of the deserted interior with a soundtrack that includes music, sounds taken from the natural environment that reference climate change, and the chatter of patrons and their footsteps. “It evokes nostalgia for all the nights that that have gone before” (quote from the catalogue, p. 34).

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Screen Interiors 43. See Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings’ “Introduction” to their book UK Gay Bar Directory (London: Arcadia Missa Publications, 2017), 1–7. Three images of London bars from Quinlan and Hastings’ UK Gay Bar Directory are reproduced in Hatty Nestor’s interview with the artists in Studio International; https://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/rosie-hastingshannah-quinlan-interview-uk-gay-bar-directory-sexuality-gender.

Bibliography Ackroyd, Peter. Queer City: Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day. London: Chatto & Windus, 2017. Coldstream, John. Victim. London: Palgrave MacMillan/British Film Institute, 2011. Colomina, Beatrice (ed.). Sexuality and Space. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1992. Combs, Richard (ed.). Robert Aldrich. London: British Film Institute, 1978. Cook, Matt, Robert Mills, Randolph Trumbach, and Harry Cocks. A Gay History of Britain: Love and Sex Between Men Since the Middle Ages. Oxford: Greenwood World Publishing, 2007. Davies, Steven Paul. “Victims, Villains and Sissies—the 60s.” In Out at the Movies: A History of Gay Cinema. Harpenden: Kamera Books, 2008/2016. Geczy, Adam and Vicki Karaminas. Queer Style. London: Bloomsbury, 2013. Hankin, Kelly. “Lesbian Locations: The Production of Lesbian Bar Space in The Killing of Sister George.” Cinema Journal 41, no. 1 (Fall 2001): 3–27. Hauser, Richard. The Homosexual Society. London: Bodley Head, 1962. Hirsch, Pam and Chris O’Rourke (eds.). London on Film. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Hornsey, Richard. The Spiv and the Architect: Unruly Life in Postwar London. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. Houlbrook, Matt. Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918–1957. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Jennings, Rebecca. “The Gateways Club and the Emergence of a Post-Second World War Lesbian Subculture.” Social History 31, no. 2 (May 2006): 206–25. Keith, Michael and Steve Pile (eds.). Place and the Politics of Identity. London: Routledge, 1993. McDonald, Charlotte Keenan. Coming Out: Sexuality, Gender and Identity. Liverpool: National Museums Liverpool, 2017. Mort, Frank, “Mapping Sexual London: The Wolfenden Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution, 1954–57.” New Formations: Sexual Geographies 37 (Spring 1999): 92–113. Mort, Frank. Capital Affairs: London and the Making of the Permissive Society. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2010. Quinlan, Hannah and Rosie Hastings (eds.). The UK Gay Bar Directory. London: Arcadia Missa Publications, 2017. Reed, Christopher. “Imminent Domain: Queer Space in the Built Environment.” In “We’re Here: Gay and Lesbian Presence in Art and Art History.” Art Journal 55, no. 4 (Winter 1996): 64–70. Sparke, Penny, Anne Massey, Trevor Keeble, and Brenda Martin (eds.). Designing the Modern Interior: From the Victorian to Today. Oxford: Berg, 2009. Waters, Chris. “The Homosexual as a Social Being in Britain 1945–68.” Journal of British Studies 51, no. 3 (July 2012): 685–710. Westwood, Gordon. A Minority: A Report of the Life of the Male Homosexual in Great Britain. London: Longmans, 1960.

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CHAPTER 12 QUEER INTERIORS: DEREK JARMAN’S CARAVAGGIO 1986 AND EDWARD II 1992 Adam Vaughan

The lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, plus (LGBTQ+) people are defined, constituted, and managed according to notions of space. As social theorist Wayne H. Brekhus explains, for us, “who one is depends, in part, on where one is and when one is. Identity resides not in the individual alone, but in the interaction between the individual and his or her social environment” (emphasis in original).1 For many (if not all) of us who identify as LGBTQ+, the social environment in which we live our daily lives can usually be defined as “heteronormative”; that is, unless otherwise stated, one is assumed to be heterosexual/straight. As this is the dominant ideology, and because of that ideology’s fear of difference, in order to exist in this social environment without fear of judgment or persecution, LGBTQ+ people are often forced to hide or completely disavow their “queer” identities. Recognized as a constant need to appear, or “pass,” as “straight,” we manage how we behave in order to be included within this society. Failure to do so risks exclusion, persecution, and, depending once again on where and when you are, that most permanent of negations: death. As an openly gay artist and filmmaker working from the 1960s until his death from AIDS in 1994, Derek Jarman experienced various forms of exclusion, especially during the conservative Thatcher era in Britain. Jarman writes that “homosexuals have such a struggle to define themselves against the order of things, an equivocal process involving the desire to be both ‘inside’ and ‘outside.’ ”2 For Jarman, this is a central tension of gay experience. From the above quotation, Jarman’s description of homosexuals (including himself presumably) as simultaneously desiring to be both “inside” and “outside” of society, culture, and the symbolic order, or merely to be acknowledged as existing, summarizes a central tension in gay experience. On the one hand, inclusion and acceptance could allow for greater understanding and the possibility of tolerance to all kinds of people, irrespective of gender, sexuality, race, or class. However, the celebration of precisely this difference is what some LGBTQ+ people take pleasure from and thus do not require social inclusion. This was a position Jarman himself took later on in his career as a response to the anti-gay laws of the 1980s and the demonization of gay men during the AIDS epidemic. However, the fact remains that queer identities are marginalized identities that are frequently excluded from the symbolic order. This chapter examines issues related to interiority through interior design in Derek Jarman’s two historical biopics of “queer” figures: Caravaggio (1986) and Edward II (1991). As such, it is the “inside” of Jarman’s mapping of homosexual experience that is critically examined in detail, with issues related to exteriority serving to help define what 241

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these interiors look and feel like. It discusses the extent to which we can identify elements of Jarman’s own “queer” identity in the set design, costume, and narrative meanings of both films. In other words, I will be exploring how the interiors of Jarman’s films manifest his own negotiation of a gay interiority and identity. I chose these two films because they are probably the director’s best-known works and because they demonstrate Jarman’s complex relationship with the historical past as speaking to contemporary issues. Consequently, these films provide insights into Jarman’s own queer identity and can be understood as the director’s attempts to “queer” that most nostalgic and British of film genres, the costume drama. Numerous theorists highlight discourses of space when defining LGBTQ+ experience. Sociologist Erving Goffman, writing in 1968, includes homosexuality as a social stigma; that is, a marker which disqualifies an individual from full social acceptance.3 Goffman continues by describing evidence of stigma as “reflexive and embodied” and so communicated by the person through bodily expression via “stigma symbols.”4 For the lesbian/gay man these could range from (self-evident) sexual relations with someone of the same sex to less obvious symbols which have developed in society and culture over time, for example drag queens and kings, effeminate behavior in gay men, and particular ways of dressing or acting. In the interest of self-preservation, an individual may want to conceal his or her stigma symbol(s), which means that visibility, in varying degrees, is important for someone who is stigmatized.5 However, the opposite could be true when an individual draws attention to their stigma in attempts to change social or political perceptions of them and their group in what Goffman terms “militancy.”6 Therefore, this spatial dimension continues for LGBTQ+ subjectivity. One might know they are gay but may be reluctant to declare this identity openly. Indeed, how can someone even communicate their “gayness”? Gender, race, and physical disability are usually clearly identifiable on the body and do not require any social performance for a spectator to understand that aspect of that person’s identity. The same is not true of LGBTQ+ identity. So instead of identity markers being visible on the external body, gay identity could be said to exist as an interiority which then needs to be performed on the body to communicate “gayness.” Instead, questions of epistemology (“How do we know?”) “enjoy a privileged status in theorizations of gay and lesbian identity.”7 Over time, cultural stereotypes disseminated in advertising, on television, and in films have fashioned images as a type of shorthand to enable spectators to identify gay characters. These often involve an inversion of gender norms, so a gay man will act effeminately, and a lesbian will appear “masculine.” However, less obvious identifiers will require audiences to be “in the know” and “inside” that cultural realm of understanding. The same can be said for those included in the LGBTQ+ community as a way of identifying others “like them.” See, for example, Polari, a form of spoken slang which emerged in Britain out of the theater and circus cultures during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It was adopted and adapted by the gay community “for reasons of self-protection, secrecy, and statement of common identity” at a time when to be gay was illegal.8 242

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Consider also the personal and political process of “coming out,” that performative act of declaring one’s LGBTQ+ identity. The phrase implies a metaphysical movement from inside and then out of the “closet,” the object associated with our oppression. However, each case is particular to itself and rarely as clear and simple as it might seem to those not involved. In Inside/Out, Diana Fuss explains how the “philosophical opposition between ‘heterosexual’ and ‘homosexual,’ like so many other conventional binaries, has always been constructed on the foundations of another related opposition: the couple ‘inside’ and ‘outside.’ ”9 She continues by analyzing what happens to the individual once they have “come out” of the closet: To be out, in common gay parlance, is precisely to be no longer out; to be out is to be finally outside of exteriority and all the exclusions and deprivations such outsiderhood imposes. Or, put another way, to be out is really to be in—inside the realm of the visible, the speakable, the culturally intelligible. But things are still not so clear, for to come out can also work not to situate one on the inside but to jettison one from it.10 As previously mentioned, lesbian and gay identity is only rarely apparent on the site of the body and so it is likely that “coming out” will be an ongoing process for LGBTQ+ people throughout their lives. This means that “being ‘out’ must produce the closet again and again in order to maintain itself as ‘out.’ ”11 For example, an individual moves town and starts a new job, leaving those friends and colleagues who knew of their sexuality. They are then introduced to their new workmates, but for that time, to this new “audience” they are—in a heteronormative society—assumed to be straight and consequently back “in” the closet. This perpetual “coming out” necessitates the reconstruction of the (performative) closet.12 Therefore, it can be said that the inside/outside binary is a constant discourse which LGBTQ+ people engage with when negotiating identity. At stake in this process is the power of subjectivity, the desire to be able to be oneself. Hegemonic society attempts to banish the “other” because they embody the “ever-present threat of a collapse of boundaries, an effacing of limits, and a radical confusion of identities.”13 As will be seen later, especially in his adaptation of Edward II, the political machinations of state powers are often positioned against same-sex desire in Jarman’s films, and the two case-study historical films represent the banishment of queer characters in order to highlight parallels with contemporary society. There are comparisons we can make here with Jarman’s own sense of exile from various cultural circles throughout his career. He studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London between 1963 and 1967, but increasingly worked in theater design because of its greater acceptance of homosexuality compared with the more “constrained atmosphere of the painting studios.”14 He was also traditionally viewed as working outside of the British film industry and frequently relied on international funding for his projects. Finally, despite being labeled as a queer filmmaker, his work was often criticized within gay communities because of his depictions of homosexuality related to sadomasochism, a connection that was often disparagingly made in the popular press.15 If discourses of 243

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inclusion and exclusion have informed Jarman’s personal and professional lives, then are we able to see a “working out” of these issues within the films themselves in terms of their design? For a critic such as Richard Dyer, it should come as no surprise to find that films made by gay filmmakers display a more pronounced “aestheticism” precisely because of the constant requirement for the filmmakers to monitor their own “look” in everyday social interactions, either to “pass” as heterosexual or to highlight their queerness.16 LGBTQ+ people spend so much attention on how they present their identity that it is perhaps understandable that an LGBTQ+ filmmaker will emphasize the “look” of their films. As such, these films can be understood as performative of LGBTQ+ identity with heightened style performing the social reality experienced by many individuals who must constantly monitor their behavior and adapt to specific locations and situations. Of course, this will not be the case for all queer filmmakers. Rather, it can be insightful to analyze the “look” of these films to gauge how the filmmakers’ visual style corresponds with their sense of self or worldview, and my focus here is on the appearance and representation of interiors in two of Jarman’s films. The term “queer interiors” can have many meanings. It can describe the director’s own internal homosexual identity and the ways he has negotiated this identity in public discourses, and therefore Jarman’s films can be termed “queer” because they have been directed by a homosexual director. This is one of the five ways Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Griffin use to conceptualize queer film. The others are whether the films include queer characters as part of their narratives, if they are viewed by LGBTQ+ spectators (meaning that any film has the potential to be “queered”), or when straight audiences are forced to identify with queer characters, or as entire film genres like horror, science fiction, fantasy, and musicals, that can include monstrous, strange, or otherworldly representations of characters, sexualities, and ways of life.17 This last category introduces the traditional definition of “queer,” subsequently appropriated by LGBTQ+ people, as being different or strange. At a basic level, Jarman’s films are queer in terms of dominant cinematic narrative and design elements. They are mostly non-narrative, often depicting languorous, ethereal images such as those found in The Angelic Conversation (1985) and In the Shadow of the Sun (1981). Other times, Jarman uses unusual story or formal conceits, like the Latin dialogue and religious and sexual symbolism of Sebastiane (1976), the time-travelling Queen Elizabeth I viewing the depraved and violent country her royal namesake rules over in 1980s Britain in Jubilee (1978), or the monotone image track of his last film, Blue (1993). “Queer interiors” also describes the distinctive and sometimes unnerving sense of enclosure achieved in Caravaggio and Edward II. Such effects are mainly created through set design, costume, and other aspects of mise-enscène, and this is where I will begin. Jarman began his career in film as production designer on director Ken Russell’s controversial film version of The Devils (1971). Based on the book by Aldous Huxley, the film tells the story of demonic possessions at a convent in Loudun, France, in the seventeenth century. Jarman’s designs for the city, built at Pinewood Studios, are strikingly modern in style and most likely a continuation of his work in theater. The exteriors 244

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include stark white brickwork interspersed with undulations of black rock, and the scale and color scheme of the sets reflect Jarman’s aim to recreate the look of black-and-white silent movie epics.18 However, Jarman was to continue the design and palette of the exteriors when depicting the interior of the Ursuline Nuns’ convent. Taking his cue from Russell (who, in turn, was inspired by the Huxley source), Jarman created an aesthetic evocative of a rape in a public toilet by featuring a stark contrast of white tiles on the floors and walls with the black bars on doors and windows that further emphasize the blood and feces in the notorious exorcism/enema sequence. According to Christophe Van Eecke, the design of The Devils is instrumental in understanding the film as a political allegory. The modernity of the settings exposes “the mechanisms of power” operating in seventeenth-century France and establish a connection with present-day practices as a “‘distant mirror’ reflecting back upon our own, seemingly more enlightened, times.”19 Jarman’s experience working with Russell clearly inspired the “look” of his own films and he would develop a similarly reflexive approach to representing history in ways that would mix historical accuracy with contemporary anachronisms in order to draw parallels between gay male experience across different time periods. Design is central to Jarman’s feature films and he worked in close collaboration with groups of distinguished practitioners in their fields: production designer Christopher Hobbs, costume designer Sandy Powell, and cinematographer Gabriel Beristain. Arguably Jarman’s collaboration with Hobbs was at its most formidable in Caravaggio and Edward II. The set designs provide a privileged source of analysis for Jarman’s creative voice and intended effects, and in Caravaggio and Edward II interiors and various other forms of interiority dominate the images on screen, a mode of filmmaking that provoked very different responses from film critics. The care taken with each shot is evident and it is notable that, with the exception of one scene from Caravaggio, both films were shot entirely in a film studio: Caravaggio in a warehouse belonging to Limehouse Studios on the Isle of Dogs, and Edward II at Bray Studios, near Maidenhead, Berkshire. The significance of space, and how spaces are dressed or framed, is a key feature that production designer, filmmaker, and scholar Charles Tashiro identifies in historical films. He notes how such films, and the paintings from which they may have drawn inspiration, are “usually organized around the closed frame.”20 This enables the filmmaker to designate a “self-referential space” where recreation of the past can take place and the “external world can be ignored.”21 This, of course, is vital if the desired effect is historical verisimilitude. However, Jarman uses the enclosure of space in these two films to such an extreme that it becomes a central style through which the films develop their meanings. Firstly, the interiors of the films begin to reflect and comment upon the creative processes evident in each. For Caravaggio, this involves the performative act of painting; in Edward II, the cinematic style mirrors the theater and theatrical performance styles of the period around 1594 when Christopher Marlowe wrote the play, The Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, King of England, with the Tragic Fall of Proud Mortimer, upon which Jarman drew for inspiration. According to Leo Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit, both the interior sets and the ways in which they were lit in Caravaggio indicate Jarman’s efforts to recreate the aesthetics of 245

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Caravaggio’s paintings as if the film itself is one of the Italian artist’s works.22 Caravaggio’s paintings rarely depicted exterior scenes and were therefore created within his studio according to the prevailing lighting and conditions therein. The film’s recreation of the painter’s life and works within an almost exclusively interior studio set is rooted in Jarman’s understanding of the conditions in which Caravaggio worked, and this approach is granted even greater significance when Caravaggio appears to paint or imagine himself “into” some of his most famous images, such as The Entombment of Christ (1603–4) in the film’s final and visually powerful sequence. Jarman has stated how he planned “to create every aspect of the film in the ambience of the paintings.”23 When commenting on Christopher Hobbs’s working relationship with Jarman, Jane Barnwell sees the various examples of paintings, either completed or in early stages of production, that are seen throughout the film as “woven into the fabric of the story in a manner that allows them to comment on the film’s themes and characters.”24 For instance, in a scene wherein the young Caravaggio, or Michele—as he was known by friends and which moniker Jarman uses, from his full name Michelangelo Merisi (or Michele Angelo Merigi or Amerighi) da Caravaggio—(played by Dexter Fletcher), is visited in his sickbed by Cardinal Del Monte (Michael Gough), the Cardinal notices Michele’s self-portrait by the side of his bed and comments on the green tint that has been added to the skin in the picture to mirror the artist’s sickness. This scene is a relatively clear example of the film’s plot influencing or affording opportunities for artistic creation, especially in terms of production design and cinematography. The next scene is subtler in the way that it weaves the paintings into the narrative. The Cardinal leaves Michele, taking with him a key prop, namely the artist’s precious knife. It has Caravaggio’s personal motto, “No hope. No fear,” engraved across its blade and the young Michele has a curious habit of scraping the blade between his teeth, as if sharpening them on his mantra. Now recovered from his illness, Michele visits Del Monte in the hope of exchanging a new painting for his knife. The design of the sequence shows the Cardinal as an enthusiastic collector. He is seen in a room cluttered with large statues covered in white cloth which are lit so as to further emphasize them against the black shadowy background. Michele shows his painting, and it is notable how the dark outer limits of the picture highlight the figure at its center, mimicking the palette and lighting of the scene in which it appears. The Cardinal agrees to make the exchange and an assistant takes the painting away. The following scene has Del Monte sitting in bed reading and we hear Michele reading aloud. It seems that the Cardinal has acquired the painter along with the painting, an event highlighted by the fact that Michele is now wearing the same clothes as the figure in the painting. This transition between sequences and visual similarities between real characters in the film and characters in portraits creates meaning at the narrative level; we understand that the Cardinal is a collector of fine art as well as young men. It is also possible, however, to interpret the use of these paintings within the narrative as influencing the set designs in which they feature. Furthermore, in addition to Caravaggio being a film full of interior spaces, both the paintings and the numerous scenes of Michele painting his posed subjects function as interiors within interiors wherein we see the model in one section of the film frame and 246

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the painter’s interpretation of that scene on the canvas in another. In so doing, Jarman and Hobbs not only emphasize enclosure but also foreground the performativity of painting as a parallel to the creation of the film; Caravaggio paints his work of art at the same time as Jarman and Hobbs are producing theirs. Writing about Edward II, Bert Cardullo argues that “the settings in the film are spare interiors” and that the lighting “is evocative of the theater in its lack of natural sources and self-conscious deployment; and the camera, for its part, is stationary throughout, framing the human figures in the center of each shot.”25 If we accept this interpretation, then Jarman once again is visualizing the creative process, and highlighting the theatrical origin of Marlowe’s text. However, both historical protagonists demonstrate homosexual identity and therefore Jarman’s organization of space in each film must also be considered as representative of gay male identities. Jarman made the connection between Caravaggio, himself, and space in gay experience saying, “We’re both nocturnal back-room boys.”26 Bersani and Dutoit consider this comparison crude and argue that both Jarman’s position and the film are more nuanced than this reference would suggest, and argue that Jarman is concerned with the creative process and a (sub)conscious comparison on the filmmaker’s part with the painter and their various self-portraits. Their point notwithstanding, Jarman’s remark makes clear his understanding of Caravaggio as a queer figure, affirming the film’s reclaiming of Caravaggio thus and Jarman’s desire to position a counter-hegemonic reading of a celebrated painter. Furthermore, it is possible to read both films’ dimly lit and enclosed sets as allusions to public toilets, gay nightclubs, and cruising sites. Viewed in this way, Caravaggio’s hidden alleyways, subterranean catacombs, the narrow, decaying corridors, and metallic underground dungeon of Edward II are all visual signifiers of gay experience generally and Jarman’s gay identity in particular. Edward II is stylistically and tonally a much darker film than Caravaggio. Echoing its theatrical origins, the lighting is self-consciously used to highlight key events. The positioning of artificial light creates distorted shadows on dull, cavernous stone walls and there is a general sense of claustrophobia throughout. There is a degree of blurring between interiors and exteriors, partly because there is little variation in design, palette, or tone, and therefore it is often difficult to ascertain whether events occur inside or outside. It could be argued that because so much of Marlowe’s play and Jarman’s film adaptation is concerned with the struggle for control of the kingdom, and its oppressive systems of law and order (which Jarman equates with the oppression of homosexuality), the film’s dark interiors, and indeed its general darkness, are representative of imprisonment, oppression, or both. Both films situate their queer protagonists within worlds of illegal activity. In Caravaggio, the adult Michele (played by Nigel Terry) and Ranuccio (played by Sean Bean) become implicated in the murder of their mutual lover Lena (played by Tilda Swinton) and the painter is forced to flee the country, later dying in exile. In Edward II, the king (played by Stephen Waddington) and his relationship with Piers Gaveston (played by Andrew Tiernan) leads to Queen Isabella (played by Tilda Swinton) and Mortimer (played by Nigel Terry) plotting to overthrow and imprison Edward and seize 247

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the throne for themselves. David Gardner notes how “the criminal has been conspicuously central to representations of homosexuality, giving rise to a number of configurations: theft as an act of love, the outlaw as comrade, and the criminal as artist.”27 This is unsurprising given that historically laws have attempted to punish or eradicate homosexuality, and determined how one is able to live a queer life. However, in the careers and films of filmmakers such as Jean Genet and Pier Paolo Pasolini, Gardner finds attempts to mythologize criminal gay heroes, a construction to which Jarman also contributes, both in his films and his life. Gardner argues that: Jarman explored the history of this criminal and “heroic” identity within his film texts, but himself progressed, through political engagement, from the potentially passive role of filmmaker (as social commentator) to both public activist and hero. This heroism (or martyrdom, in the fashion of Genet) can be quite readily attributed to his resilience in working outside the system: not surprisingly, the mainstream film industry was reluctant to embrace his films; more to the point, in his later career the broader society never sufficiently recognised his political constituency, much less responded adequately to the dire health crisis afflicting both his community and him personally.28 Whether we can describe Jarman’s Caravaggio and Edward as “gay heroes” may be open to debate, given that they are depicted as relatively passive characters. During each film, however, they are either figuratively or physically imprisoned and are thus offered to the viewer as further examples of the homosexual-as-criminal character. More to the point, their imprisonment also visually represents the homosexual as forcibly positioned inside a prison cell as a result of being made external to the accepted symbolic (heteronormative) order. Following his murder of Ranuccio, Michele performs a kind of self-exile and imprisonment and recounts the story of his life in flashback from his deathbed while being cared for by his mute assistant, Jerusaleme (played by Spencer Leigh). The room is spartan, consisting only of a wooden-framed bed, a table, and stool. The outside world is flagged visually only by a small window positioned high on one of the walls and is suggested by sounds of birds screeching and waves crashing. A more overt rendering of queer incarceration occurs in Edward II. As with the earlier film, it is structured in flashback but with Edward actually imprisoned. His only contact is with the jailer (played by Kevin Collins). The jail cell, with its walls of metal sheets and bolts and a central furnace, looks like a mixture of industrial boiler room and gay sauna, or, according to Jarman, the “bowels of a hulk, the beached ship of state.”29 As the film develops it becomes clear that this jailer–jailed relationship is not one of animosity or abuse, but instead has the potential for same-sex desire, in accordance with Genet’s Un Chant d’amour (1950). The lighting of these scenes, the furnace casting an orange glow, visually position these sequences apart from the rest of the film. In much the same way as Jarman seemed to identify with Caravaggio, casting Collins, who was the director’s long-time partner, in the role of the jailer creates a special association between Jarman and the tragic English king. In so doing, Jarman is countering the negative associations of homosexuality with 248

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illicit behavior to propose that for queer identity prison has, or can have, a “liberating potential: imprisoned, one is somehow freer to love.”30 In any comparison of Caravaggio and Edward II, including this exploration of interiors as expressions of Jarman’s views of queer identity at those particular moments in his career, it is necessary to comment on Jarman’s AIDS diagnosis. He completed Caravaggio in 1986 and received the news that he was HIV positive in December that year. By 1991, and during production on Edward II, Jarman’s health was deteriorating and he had to leave assistant director Ken Butler in charge of shooting some sections while he recuperated. The toll the disease takes on the body, as well as the popular media’s anti-gay rhetoric as a response to the outbreak, finds its visual parallel in these two films that correspond with Jarman’s experiences with AIDS. Writing about the “body positive” in Edward II, Lee Benjamin Huttner makes the connection between HIV as being mainly sexually transmitted and existing in the bloodstream with the numerous examples of bodily openings and blood in Jarman’s film.31 He summarizes his position thus: Those who do bleed in the film, however, are not always queer figures themselves, as Edward, Gaveston, and Spencer are, but they are always situated in a scene of queer sexuality; the Bishop of Coventry is stripped naked and sexually assaulted by Gaveston, while the young soldier hung on the carcass has his hair lovingly combed by Edward before he is stabbed in, it would seem, the groin, after which Edward backs away holding his phallic knife coated in blood. Likewise, Kent’s death is framed by a sensual caress by Isabella, before her deadly “kiss” and the young Edward’s prodding of his wound. The bodily pleasures gained from queer sexual encounters are extrapolated from the discourse of AIDS, trussed together by the figurally binding power of blood.32 This figural “binding power of blood” is also evident in Caravaggio in the scene where Michele and Ranuccio spar with knives. Ranuccio, in an act of frustration at being bested, inflicts a flesh wound on Michele who, having grasped the cut, then places his bloody hand on Ranuccio’s face declaring them “blood brothers.” The gesture is reversed at the end of the film after Michele cuts Ranuccio’s throat for murdering Lena. These moments exist as further examples of an internal/external dichotomy as part of the films’ visual discourse, with the interiority of the body forcibly made exterior. The relationship of HIV and AIDS to the body is visually represented in the contrast of set design in the films. Therefore, the pared-down, minimal designs for sets of Renaissance Italy in Caravaggio have, by the time of Edward II, been replaced with designs that point to decay and deterioration. They present “a picture of a world in which notions of physical decay and abandonment are inevitable, and inevitably befall the brave.”33 However, James Parkes counters this seemingly pessimistic view by pointing out that such a “discordant perspective is balanced by successively redemptive narratives.”34 Perhaps the clearest indication of this potentially optimistic future that Jarman visualizes is found at the end of Edward II, where he rewrites history to depict Edward’s murder, where a red-hot poker is inserted into his anus, as being nothing more than a hallucination. 249

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Moreover, the film ends with the boy-Prince, Edward (soon-to-be Edward III) dancing on top of a cage imprisoning the treacherous Isabella and Mortimer. He is wearing women’s clothes and earrings and hops impishly to the tune of Tchaikovsky’s (another queer artist) Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. With the two people who represent the barriers to same-sex love captured—and also notably decaying, their skin covered in grey dust—this final image seems to represent the possibility of an equally queer ruler who is “freer to love.”35 Jarman’s ending to Edward II reveals another “queer” element to his films: the tendency to include anachronisms as part of the mise-en-scène. Not only is his “happy ending” of Edward and the jailer in a romantic embrace historically inaccurate, but Prince Edward listens to the Tchaikovsky composition on a 1990s Sony Walkman. Throughout his career, Jarman distrusted the “costume drama” genre. He explained: The image is the image, and the word, oh don’t muck around with that, in the beginning was the word . . . Filmed history is always a misinterpretation. The past is the past, as you try to make material out of it, things slip even further away. “Costume drama” is such a delusion based on a collective amnesia, ignorance and furnishing fabrics. (Lurex for an Oscar). Vulgarity like this started with Olivier’s “Henry V” and deteriorated ever after . . . Social realism is as fictitious as the BBC news which has just one man’s point of view. Like my film . . . Does this answer the question: “Why are you doing it in modern dress?” Our “Edward” as closely resembles the past as any “costume drama” (which is not a great claim).36 Instead, Jarman attempted to make “the present past” present.37 In other words, he endeavored to forge a conscious link between the historical past and the contemporary present in order to reveal the similarities between supposedly distinct time periods. Huttner introduces the useful phrase “anachronistic imaginary” to characterize the miseen-scène of Jarman’s films.38 As such, Jarman is designing a space where objects, people, or events that do not belong (the word “anachronism” originating from the Greek for backwards or against time) are brought into the present diegesis. In Caravaggio we hear the sounds of sport being played on a radio, Ranuccio tinkers with a motorbike, an art critic angrily writes his reviews on a typewriter, and an electronic calculator is used for a transaction. In this latter scene, Jarman playfully highlights this technique when one character asks another whether they have tried strawberries with pepper, adding that “sometimes the incompatible can make perfect partners.” By complicating (even queering) traditional historical biopics, Jarman seems to be saying that Caravaggio is an artist who does not belong to one time; his genius is timeless and can equally be recognized in a twentieth-century context.39 In his article on Edward II, Huttner (citing Lee Edelman) takes this analysis further by arguing that the film’s anachronisms and decaying set designs stand as visual metaphors for Jarman’s own body suffering from AIDS. He argues that the “body positive” becomes “asynchronous” in the way it “permanently prefigure[s] its own destruction.”40 Therefore, the body positive exists outside of time, acts against time, just like the objects Jarman includes in his film sequences. 250

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We might then say that in the earlier film Jarman is queering the British period film drama genre, as Benshoff and Griffin stated, but in Edward II, and perhaps as a result of his changed personal situation of now living with AIDS, Jarman uses anachronisms and “the present past” to reflect upon and criticize contemporary treatment of homosexuals in Britain. When the bed in Gaveston’s room later changes from one in an historical period design to a modern hospital bed after he is stabbed by Mortimer, we are meant to make the connection between the character and current victims of homophobic abuse and those suffering with AIDS. The costume points to contemporary British class systems, with Edward and Gaveston wearing simple black suits with white shirts and Mortimer dressed as an English army general, and the assorted lords and ladies of the court wearing upper-class hunting attire, accompanied by snarling hounds. Later, Annie Lennox sings Cole Porter’s “Every Time We Say Goodbye” (1944) as Edward and Gaveston dance, and Edward reluctantly signs Gaveston’s banishment order with the date 1991. Jarman’s decision to frame Mortimer and Isabella’s attempts to dethrone the queer king as an assault on homosexuality is the film’s dramatic center, and this is visualized as a present-day gay demonstration with Edward speaking to members of the gay social protest group OutRage, before the army attacks. Jarman explained that the reluctance he saw from academics to acknowledge the overt homosexual relationship between Edward and Gaveston was paralleled by the contemporary British legislation of Clause 28, which banned local government authorities from promoting homosexuality as an accepted practice.41 Complementing his increased social activism within British gay society and in his later films, Jarman here combined a queering of the historical biopic with an explicit comment on contemporary queer identity politics. This demonstrates how apt is James Parkes’s description of Jarman as a “subversive academic” who “mocked, mauled and made use of the past.”42 Viewed in this way, Jarman’s inclusion of historical anachronisms, particularly props that do not belong, serves as a visual analogy for contemporary government legislation that attempts to erase queer existence. The political is so often inextricably linked to the personal, especially for LGBTQ+ individuals who fight to be acknowledged as visible within heteronormative society. This is no different in Jarman’s films, which were often “intensely personal” projects that the director fought to get produced and would often feature Super-8 home movies and friends cast in various roles.43 Jarman often appeared in his films and his placing himself within the interior meaning of the film worlds he created as well as analyzing his role within the film texts themselves reveals a further link to his queer identity. Jarman’s personal connection to Caravaggio as a fellow homosexual artist and “a gay hero in a homophobic culture”44 has already been noted. This, together with him choosing to portray Michele as a Christ-like figure (as a young boy, he sees his adult self in the Entombment tableau at the end of the film) creates a Jarman–Caravaggio–Christ trinity, as Bersani and Dutoit explain: Finally, the identification of Jarman with Caravaggio, and of Caravaggio with Christ, naturally infuses Caravaggio’s death (and Jarman’s) with the sense of a martyrdom, of a death at the hands of others—as if Caravaggio’s collapse on the 251

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beach at Porto Ercole and Jarman’s succumbing to AIDS several years after he made this film were somehow also a kind of crucifixion. Jarman, it’s true, would not learn his HIV status until 22 December 1986, but it’s of course possible that he already suspected he would die “martyred” by a government unwilling (as it appeared especially in the mid-80s) to spend its resources to conquer a disease whose victims were predominantly society’s undesirables (gay men and IV-drug users).45 This reading further develops the connection of the contemporary world with the historical past and how each treats homosexuality as something dangerous and to be negated. Jarman is seen in the sequence where Michele visits the Pope shortly before the Easter procession sequence described above. Played with camp glee by Jack Birkett, the Pope is coded as queer when he says to Michele, “I hear you’re one of the family” and “you little bugger.” Jarman’s appearance in this sequence, playing one of the Pope’s attendants, offers an oppositional reading to that of oppressive religious systems. It offers instead an imagining that homosexuals are able to reach a position of power. In terms of design, this sequence sees Michele walking down a long black corridor punctuated by vertical shafts of light while white drapes sway in the air. He enters the throne room and bends to kiss the Pope’s ring. Jarman is seen in the background of the scene to begin with. He stands at a table dressed in a red robe which mirrors the Pope’s costume. The Pope ends the scene by stating that “revolutionary gestures in art can be good for us” as the action cuts to Jarman-as-attendant, center of the frame, appearing to consecrate jars of paint and a pot of brushes, bathed in a warm, holy light. Such a self-aware moment sees the Pope, and Jarman, indicating that works of art by gay artists that depict elements of gay existence are personal and political acts. Jarman-as-attendant is blessing a painter’s tools in the film’s diegesis. Yet this moment is equally about Jarman-as-filmmaker in the process of creating and queering a biopic of the famous painter; it would be just as appropriate for him to be blessing a camera. Jarman’s position within this scene further highlights how he wishes Caravaggio to be seen as part of this activist discourse. Such a sentiment is suggested earlier in the film during a scene mentioned previously when the Cardinal visits young Michele when he is sick and sees his portrait. Del Monte admires it as great art; Michele snaps back that it is “not art,” prompting us to wonder what it is. A product for sale? A record of the young painter’s illness over the summer? Or is it life? An older Michele laments that “art is lived experience,” and asks, “How can you compare flesh and blood with oils and pigment?” Through these characters, their dialogue, and the interiors in which they exist, Jarman suggests that art can only tell us so much about reality, but that its creation can prompt change.

Conclusion Jarman’s films are personal and complex representations of queer identity. As we have seen, both visuals and text work to disrupt traditional homosexual narratives and merge 252

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historical time periods in order to call attention to the experiences of LGBTQ+ people, then and now. I began with a quotation from Jarman which addressed the assumption that most homosexuals struggle to be both “inside” and “outside,” and through my analysis of his films Caravaggio and Edward II have shown how these films’ almost exclusive use of interior locations shot in film studios helped visually represent this ambiguous desire. The ways in which the style of the sets and the use of lighting helped signal a shift in Jarman’s own worldview, before and after his diagnosis with HIV and then AIDS, was discussed, and it was to the “outside” of the “inside/outside” binary that Jarman traveled in his later life when afflicted with the disease. The garden he tended at his cottage retreat in Dungeness, overlooking a nuclear power station, became a space for calm, contemplation, and writing, and would later inspire the feature film The Garden (1990).46 He probably completed parts of his script for Edward II here and thought about how to give it visual form. Therefore, while designing a film full of oppressive interiors, both the natural exterior landscape and the cottage interiors that he created for himself accompanied Jarman’s ruminations on queering history and making comparisons within the film to his own contemporary queer existence, as well as the desire to be both “inside” and “outside.”

Notes 1. Wayne H. Brekhus, Peacocks, Chameleons, Centaurs: Gay Suburbia and the Grammar of Social Identity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 17. 2. Derek Jarman, Dancing Ledge, ed. Shaun Allen (1984; repr., London and New York: Quartet Books, 1991), 241. 3. Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes of the Management of Spoiled Identity (Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1968), 9. 4. Goffman, Stigma, 59. 5. Goffman, Stigma, 65. 6. Goffman, Stigma, 139. 7. Diana Fuss (ed.), Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories (New York: Routledge, 1991), 6–7. 8. Leslie J. Cox and Richard J. Fay, “Gayspeak, the Linguistic Fringe: Bona Polari, Camp, Queerspeak and Beyond,” in Stephen Whittle (ed.), The Margins of the City: Gay Men’s Lives, 110 (Aldershot: Arena, 1994). 9. Fuss, Inside/Out, 1. 10. Fuss, Inside/Out, 4. 11. Judith Butler, “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,” in Diana Fuss (ed.), Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories, 16 (New York: Routledge, 1991). 12. Adam Vaughan, “Performing Pride: Re-enactment, Queer Identity and the Performance of Solidarity,” Open Library of Humanities 6, no. 1 (2020): 24, http://doi.org/10.16995/olh.321. 13. Fuss, Inside/Out, 6. 14. Michael O’Pray, Derek Jarman: Dreams of England (London: British Film Institute, 1996), 40. 15. O’Pray, Derek Jarman, 11.

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Screen Interiors 16. Richard Dyer, Now You See It: Studies on Lesbian and Gay Film (New York: Routledge, 1990), 65–6. 17. Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Griffin (eds.), Queer Images: A History of Gay and Lesbian Film in America (New York and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 9–11. 18. Jarman, Dancing Ledge, 100. 19. Christophe Van Eecke, “Staging the World: The Devils as Theatrum Mundi,” Journal of British Cinema and Television 12, no. 4 (2015): 498. 20. C. S. Tashiro, Pretty Pictures: Production Design and the History of Film (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998), 71. 21. Tashiro, Pretty Pictures, 71. 22. Leo Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit, Caravaggio (London: British Film Institute, 1999), 67–70. 23. Bersani and Dutoit, Caravaggio, 67–70. 24. Jane Barnwell, “Between Realism and Visual Concept: the Role of the Production Designer in Contemporary British Cinema,” Journal of British Cinema and Television 2, no. 1 (2005): 117–29. 25. Bert Cardullo, “ ‘Outing’ Edward, Outfitting Marlowe: Derek Jarman’s Film of Edward II,” Literature/Film Quarterly 37, no. 2 (2009): 86–96, 88. 26. Quoted in Bersani and Dutoit, Caravaggio, 10. 27. David Gardner, “Perverse Law: Jarman as Gay Criminal Hero,” in Chris Lippard (ed.), By Angels Driven: The Films of Derek Jarman, 31 (Trowbridge: Flicks Books, 1996). 28. Gardner, “Perverse Law,” 32–3. 29. Derek Jarman, Queer Edward II (London: British Film Institute, 1991), 4. 30. Gardner, “Perverse Law,” 38. 31. Lee Benjamin Huttner, “Body Positive: The Vibrant Present of Derek Jarman’s Edward II (1991),” Shakespeare Bulletin 32, no. 3 (Fall 2014): 405. 32. Huttner, “Body Positive,” 406. 33. James Cary Parkes, “Et In Arcadia . . . Homosexuality and the Gay Sensibility in the Art of Derek Jarman,” in Roger Wollen (ed.), Derek Jarman: A Portrait, 137 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1996). 34. Parkes, “Et In Arcadia,” 137. 35. O’Pray, Derek Jarman, 192. 36. Jarman, Queer Edward II, 86. 37. Bersani and Dutoit, Caravaggio, 8. 38. Huttner, “Body Positive,” 398. 39. Bersani and Dutoit, Caravaggio, 22–3. 40. Huttner, “Body Positive,” 400–1. 41. O’Pray, Derek Jarman, 184. 42. Parkes, “Et in Arcadia,” 141–2. 43. Chris Lippard (ed.), By Angels Driven: The Films of Derek Jarman (Trowbridge: Flicks Books, 1996), 1. 44. Bersani and Dutoit, Caravaggio, 9. 45. Bersani and Dutoit, Caravaggio, 46–7. 46. O’Pray, Derek Jarman, 178. 254

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Bibliography The Angelic Conversation. Directed by Derek Jarman. 1985. UK: Channel Four Films. Film. Barnwell, Jane. “Between Realism and Visual Concept: The Role of the Production Designer in Contemporary British Cinema.” Journal of British Cinema and Television 2, no. 1 (2005): 117–29. Benshoff, Harry M. and Sean Griffin (eds.). Queer Images: A History of Gay and Lesbian Film in America. New York and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. Bersani, Leo and Ulysse Dutoit. Caravaggio. London: British Film Institute, 1999. Blue. Directed by Derek Jarman. 1993. UK/Japan: Channel 4 Television Corporation. Film. Brekhus, Wayne H. Peacocks, Chameleons, Centaurs: Gay Suburbia and the Grammar of Social Identity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Caravaggio. Directed by Derek Jarman. 1986. UK: British Film Institute. Film. Cardullo, Bert. “ ‘Outing’ Edward, Outfitting Marlowe: Derek Jarman’s Film of Edward II.” Literature/Film Quarterly 37, no. 2 (2009): 86–96. The Devils. Directed by Ken Russell. 1971. UK/USA: Russo Productions. Film. Dyer, Richard. Now You See It: Studies on Lesbian and Gay Film. New York: Routledge, 1990. Edelman, Lee. Homographesis: Essays in Gay Literary and Cultural History. New York: Routledge, 1994. Edward II. Directed by Derek Jarman. 1991. UK/Japan: BBC Films. Film. Fuss, Diana (ed.). Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories. New York: Routledge, 1991. The Garden. Directed by Derek Jarman. 1990. UK/Germany/Japan: Basilisk Communications. Film. Goffman, Erving. Stigma: Notes of the Management of Spoiled Identity. Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1968. Huttner, Lee. “Body Positive: The Vibrant Present of Derek Jarman’s Edward II (1991).” Shakespeare Bulletin 32, no.3 (2014): 393–412. In the Shadow of the Sun. Directed by Derek Jarman. 1981. UK/West Germany: Dark Pictures. Film. Jarman, Derek. Dancing Ledge. Edited by Shaun Allen. London and New York: Quartet Books, 1984/1991. Jarman, Derek. Queer Edward II. London: British Film Institute, 1991. Jubilee. Directed by Derek Jarman. 1978. UK: Whaley-Malin Productions. Film. The Last of England. Directed by Derek Jarman. 1987. UK/West Germany: Tartan Films. Film. Lippard, Chris (ed.). By Angels Driven: The Films of Derek Jarman. Trowbridge: Flicks Books, 1996. O’Pray, Michael. Derek Jarman: Dreams of England. London: British Film Institute, 1996. Sebastiane. Directed by Derek Jarman. 1976. UK: Cinegate. Film. Tashiro, C. S. Pretty Pictures: Production Design and the History of Film. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998. Un chant d’amour/A Song of Love. Directed by Jean Genet. 1950. France. Film. Van Eecke, Christophe. “Staging the World: The Devils as Theatrum Mundi.” Journal of British Cinema and Television 12, no. 4 (2015): 496–514. Whittle, Stephen (ed.). The Margins of the City: Gay Men’s Urban Lives. Aldershot: Arena, 1994. Wollen, Roger, et al. Derek Jarman: A Portrait. London: Thames and Hudson, 1996.

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CHAPTER 13 THE HORROR OF THE HOMICIDAL FLOOR: DESTABILIZED ELEMENTS OF INTERIOR ARCHITECTURE Alexandra Brown and Kirsty Volz

In his foundational text, Analysing Architecture, Simon Unwin introduces what he describes as four basic elements of architecture: a defined area of ground, a raised area or platform, a lowered area or pit, and a marker.1 For Unwin, space can be defined simply by demarcation on the ground plane without the need for walls, structure, or frames to indicate spatial boundaries. The floor, then, is the only architectural element required to represent the extent and intended purpose, or function, of a space. Within existing literature on architectural surfaces, however, emphasis is often placed on the wall and its visual reception, reflecting a somewhat ocular-centric reading of architecture and surfaces. Gravity dictates that any experience of the occupation of architecture and interiors involves an interaction with the floor; it is the surface with which the occupant of any space will always have some form of physical contact. The floor can also be an important visual element, whereon designers may inscribe paths of movement, places to queue, and many other behavioral patterns through the finish applied to the surface, as well as images to delight the viewer. In this way, the floor quite literally supports and “grounds” us but, as a stabilizing element of architecture and interiors, it also represents broader cultural and figurative readings. To have the “ground fall out from beneath you” or “the rug pulled out from underneath one’s feet” is to feel that suddenly something very unexpected has happened and that nothing is as it should be. A solid floor surface may appear to stop us from descending into nothingness; even an imagined sense of the floor falling away from under our feet can conjure feelings of dizziness, confusion, and horror. This chapter explores connections between the floor surface and the horror that might be induced through its violent destabilization. By investigating extreme versions of this condition, it examines the ways in which a floor might intentionally activate feelings of horror through the expression of subjective qualities and its refusal to function as a static or fixed boundary. While real and catastrophic instances of floors falling away, as for example when a building collapses, might tell us something about the horror and terror of accidental structural failure, this chapter looks to the filmic floor surface within the cottage of the unnamed woman, played by Scarlett Johansson, the main protagonist in Under the Skin (2013, Jonathan Glazer) and the Victorian mansion in mother! (2017, Darren Aronofsky), starring Jennifer Lawrence as the film’s titular character. Both the unnamed woman’s cottage and mother’s mansion are examples of deliberately deceptive 259

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and horrifically destabilized floor surfaces that disrupt the logic of the interiors that they (de)construct.

Unnamed women and unknowable worlds: Under the Skin and mother! Jonathan Glazer’s film adaptation of Under the Skin, a reinterpretation of Michel Faber’s book of the same name, begins with Scarlett Johansson’s unnamed woman undressing another, lifeless, woman and stepping into her clothes. Working with a man on a motorcycle who appears to assist her in covering up her crimes, the woman drives a white van around Glasgow attempting to pick up single men, bringing them back to her cottage, one at a time, and luring them into the depths of its inky, liquid-like floor. In the film, we follow Johansson’s version of this figure as she goes about this process, slowly revealing more information about the grotesque fates of the men who slip beneath the cottage floor, as well as tracking her growing curiosity and empathy in relation to the human world she inhabits. When the woman strays from her position by allowing one of her possible victims to survive, her attempted escape from the cottage and the man on the motorcycle lead her to be violently attacked by a logger she meets in the woods. The unnamed woman’s death coincides with Glazer’s revelation of her true (alien) form, but the film resists any definitive interpretation of the motivation for her actions. Glazer’s film shifts Faber’s novel from a morally-driven science-fiction novel into horror. In the novel, the protagonist Isserley is in pain after enduring several operations, tired, displeased with her work, and resents her employer and the situation in which she finds herself.2 Her body is imperfect, uncomfortable, and abject, and her awareness of this makes her appear human, even though she is an extraterrestrial being. Faber’s development of the Isserley character encourages a sense of empathy for her, despite her stalking the Scottish Highlands in search of human men (Vodsils) to prey upon and bring back to a factory for processing as meat (Vodisin) to be sold in her homeland. Isserley is just doing her job. From the outset of the novel, she takes the reader through a process of increasingly heightened compassion for her victims. By contrast, and until very late in the film, the unnamed woman/Johansson in Glazer’s Under the Skin is presented as an unfeeling murderess whose reactions to situations are distressing to the audience. Glazer underlines the sexualization of the femme fatale through Johansson’s portrayal. Instead of the abject and slightly deformed Isserley that her male victims look at with varying degrees of suspicion in Faber’s book, Glazer chose a very attractive actor to play a dehumanized, unfeeling, and overtly sexualized version of the character. In both the book and the film, Isserley and the unnamed woman/Johansson chart the predictable path of the femme fatale where, as Lindop writes, “the fatal woman is never shown to get away with any transgressions. She is punished, often with death.”3 In Glazer’s adaptation in particular, though, this arc appears to come full circle. The unnamed woman/ Johansson’s exact purpose and the reason for her house’s ability to paralyze and process its male victims is never fully explained. We are left to wonder if the inert woman at the 260

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beginning of the film was a victim or a predecessor, and if a new being will be sent shortly to resume driving the white van in search of new victims. Released just a few years after Under the Skin, mother! follows the personal sacrifices of the main female character, mother/Jennifer Lawrence, while her partner, a famous writer known only as “him,” writes his magnum opus. The film is divided into two acts. In the first, mother/Lawrence’s life is interrupted by intruders into her domestic life, causing her to become increasingly agitated while she is neglected by her partner. Wrapped up in his project, he seeks ways to stimulate his writing. The second act takes place after his work has been published to considerable acclaim. The film spirals into chaos as his fans and followers literally consume the house, mother/Lawrence, and the couple’s newborn baby. Finally, mother/Lawrence reaches her breaking point. This signals the climactic scene of the film wherein she sets a fire, causing an explosion, that incinerates the house and all of its inhabitants, with the exception of her partner. Both mother and her mansion are reborn and renewed respectively through this process. mother! has no discernible beginning and end. It features a cyclical narrative with iterations of mother/Lawrence continually flourishing and finally dying along with the house. Most interpretations of the film search for a didactic meaning within the plot, or discuss a lack thereof. The two prevailing interpretations see the first act of the film either as representative of Genesis in the Bible or as referencing Gaia (mother earth) and the Anthropocene.4 These two films share a number of commonalities. Both can be located within the broader category of horror through what Joan Hawkins has described as the new Gothic tendencies of “quiet horror”—part of the “post-slasher history of the Gothic genre” that replaces “the aesthetics of fear, violence and gore that marks the slasher, and the aesthetics of pain that marks torture porn . . . with an aesthetics of the Uncanny.”5 In this sense, Under the Skin and mother! leave the viewer with significant doubts about who the women at the center of these stories really are and what they have done (or undone, as the case may be). At the same time, both films take up key Gothic tropes in their “haunted” houses—the domestic interiors to which their main characters are intimately connected. These violently destabilized and homicidal interiors, while not necessarily home to traditionallyconceived ghosts, are nevertheless spaces of presences, apparitions, and threats— demonstrating “that there are different knowledges, different modes of knowing.”6 In their impossible spaces and circular sequences, Under the Skin and mother! borrow from the iconic haunted houses of horror on film, including The Shining (1980, Stanley Kubrick), along with Burnt Offerings (1976, Dan Curtis) and The Haunting before them (1963, Robert Wise). Unlike the supernatural threats of iconic haunted-house settings such as the Overlook Hotel, Hill House, or 17 Shore Road, however, the houses of Under the Skin and mother! are framed by homicidal architectural elements that demand blood without giving form to malevolent spirits of the dead. The cottage of the unnamed woman and mother’s mansion are not structures that terrorize or provoke fear in their inhabitants. These are not possessed or compromised interiors—they appear to operate as intended. The two main female characters in each film appear to have a somewhat cyclical existence. We see them end and begin again in different forms, as though merely 261

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replaceable objects within their given settings. Both women are oppressed or under surveillance by dominant men. Most interestingly, they share, or are defined by, the living, subjective qualities of the domestic spaces they occupy and are confined within. It is this living, monstrous existence of their domestic settings, especially the floors, that conjures up for viewers a deep sense of the uncanny and horror.

Approaches to horror in architecture and interiors Joshua Comaroff and Ong Ker-Shing’s Horror in Architecture (2013), one of relatively few recent attempts to formulate an aesthetic approach to horror in relation to buildings and architecture, treats horror as a kind of productively destabilized normative aesthetic condition.7 In this instance, they argue, horror can be connected to various formalist modes of “morphological deviance”; they identify a number of typologies of horror, classifying buildings and projects as, among other things, “exquisite corpses,” “clones,” “mostly dead,” and “Trojan horses.”8 Instead of discussing these elements or qualities according to conventional notions of beauty or ugliness, however, Comaroff and KerShing attempt to recover a concept of horror that speaks to an expanded aesthetic framework and a healthy suspicion of conformity within the discipline of architecture. After explaining that the presence of the horrible in architecture “does not imply that such works are necessarily appalling or negative, although some certainly are,” they add that they selected their examples “because they say something important about what architecture might be or become.”9 While acknowledging that the examples discussed are products of the economic, social, and cultural conditions of their production,10 in Horror in Architecture Comaroff and Ker-Shing skew the discussion towards a formalist analysis of horror in contemporary architecture—the architectural object as it is acted upon by a series of larger societal forces and the passing of time. Architecture is here presented as a series of unconventional urban conditions. Buildings feature along with the broader social and economic forces that render them as “incontinent,” “corpses,” “mostly dead,” or a “homunculus.” To understand some of the more destabilizing implications of aesthetic conceptualizations of horror within architecture, it is useful to consider a moment towards the end of the twentieth century, and with it the much older notion of the sublime. Within architecture, references to horror have typically been embedded within the notion of the sublime as an aesthetic category. Until relatively recently, the sublime was understood primarily in relation to the theorization of beauty by Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) and Edmund Burke (1729–97). While Kant divided the sublime into three subcategories, one being the “terrifying sublime,” Burke made a direct connection between the vastness of the sublime and “some degree of horror.” The latter wrote: The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature, when those causes operate most powerfully, is astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror. In this case the 262

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mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other, nor by consequence reason on that object which employs it. Hence arises the great power of the sublime, that, far from being produced by them, it anticipates our reasonings, and hurries us on by an irresistible force. Astonishment, as I have said, is the effect of the sublime in its highest degree; the inferior effects are admiration, reverence, and respect.11 From the early twentieth century to mid-century and beyond, the rationalist agenda of the architectural avant-garde led to the suppression of terms such as “beautiful” and “the sublime” (posited as beauty’s other) in architectural discourse. According to Kate Nesbitt, in order to affect a radical break, “the terms of aesthetic theory had to be changed” and “a modernist polemic calling for a tabula rasa and the application of scientific principles to design supplanted the preceding rhetoric.”12 The emphasis on positivism, rationality, and functionalism marginalized the notion of beauty, and “the subjectivity of beauty’s reciprocal, the sublime, led to its demise.”13 The aesthetic potential of the sublime would ultimately resurface within postmodern architectural theory in the form of two key terms: the “uncanny” and the “grotesque.”14 It is perhaps no coincidence that these postmodern reincarnations of the sublime were resurfacing in the 1970s at roughly the same time as philosophers like Robert C. Solomon and Noël Carroll began to turn their attention to the philosophy of “art-horror” in response to the growing popularity of the horror novel and horror film.15 Comaroff and Ker-Shing’s appalling and disturbing horror and Nesbitt’s presentation of the contemporary sublime as grotesque and uncanny constitute relatively recent attempts to recover a productive notion of subversive and disruptive architectures through the monstrosity of form and experience. To varying degrees, both accounts approach what might be broadly described as “horrible” architecture in relation to normative beauty and formal abstraction. The following discussion marks a departure from horror constructed within these intertwined aesthetic conditions. Turning our attention to the interior and, more precisely, to the destabilized and homicidal floor, extracts horror in architecture from matters of taste and appearance, in the process describing a more precise emotional and psychological condition, “art-horror,” that is drawn from film and horror studies. In The Philosophy of Horror, or, Paradoxes of the Heart, Noël Carroll coined the term “art-horror” (as opposed to “natural horror”) to describe the specific emotional and aesthetic response to horror as a genre of film and literature.16 As Carroll noted, arthorror’s emergence can be traced to developments in the horror genre during the nineteenth century: “Art-horror,” by stipulation, is meant to refer to the product of a genre that crystallized, speaking very roughly, around the time of the publication of Frankenstein [1818]—give or take fifty years—and that has persisted, often cyclically, through the novels and plays of the nineteenth century and the literature, comic books, pulp magazines, and films of the twentieth. This genre, moreover, is 263

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recognized in common speech and my theory of it must ultimately be assessed in terms of the way in which it tracks ordinary usage.17 Carroll’s connection between art-horror and Frankenstein points to an important aspect of his definition of the term as it relates to the existence of monsters. For Carroll, horror stories “are marked by the presence of monsters” as well as human reactions to them.18 In other words, for Carroll, horror can be at least partially distinguished from other genres such as science fiction through the featured presence of monsters that human characters within these stories understand to be abnormal and menacing. As Solomon pointed out in his review of The Philosophy of Horror, however, Carroll’s reliance on monsters within his early treatment of art-horror connects the horror story to a set of interactions with a particular monstrous object, unnecessarily limiting the understanding of this term as a more precise emotional response. He commented thus: One monster is pretty much the same as any other, and it is a symptom of the limited imagination of Hollywood (and Tokyo) that it seems necessary to invent ever new and odder monsters. Where disgust meets horror is in the existential dimension, not the Twilight Zone. Horror is not just confrontation with an object, it is an imaginative confrontation with oneself and life itself. Of course, what one imagines may be as straightforward as being bitten by a shark or crushed under one of King Kong’s shark-sized toes, but it could also be a peek through the thin veneer of rationality into the far more confusing cauldron of whims, obsessions, and desires below.19 (emphasis added) It is this “far more confusing cauldron” and its metaphysical “below” that we attempt to confront in this chapter through the specific horror of the homicidal floor in filmic art horror, drawing upon recent iterations of Solomon’s definition of art-horror as an “emotional phenomena,” rather than an emotion and its monsters.20 After Carroll and Solomon’s framing of art-horror through abnormality and emotional phenomena, Hawkins has also used the term to describe the “double-niche” occupied by films at the intersection of horror paracinema and art cinema from the midtwentieth century onwards. For Hawkins, films like Georges Franju’s Les yeux sans visage (1960), and their initial mixed reception by audiences and critics, are important examples of art-horror and its capacity to combine elements of gore and disgust with the cinematography and ambiguous structures that tend to be read as part of art cinema.21 The activated ambiguity of art-horror (as both a genre and a spatial condition) has emerged as crucial to understanding the more recent use of the term. For example, film theorist Caetlin Benson-Allot has explored the potential for Solomon’s definition of arthorror to describe spatial settings in films and “the horror of the void” that they appear to generate. Building on Solomon’s description of art-horror as “the recognition that things are not as they ought to be,” instead of a broader set of emotional reactions to perceived threats or danger, Benson-Allot argues that spatially constructed “zones of intensity” are able to invoke horror independently of narrative and figuration: 264

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Solomon goes on to distinguish horror from disgust (which does not require recognition and is not always epistemically significant), shock or startledness (which is a physiological response, not an emotion), wonder and the sublime (which are aesthetic responses but not emotions or affects), fear and terror (whose objects produce “action readiness” as opposed to helpless fixation), anxiety (which does not require an object), and dread (whose object is the “unknown”) . . . He also points out that, as a “spectator emotion,” horror can arise in response to either an event or an object. “Certain moments in horror films are horrible,” he observes, “quite apart from any development or narrative.”22 In this way, and despite its connection to the normative in terms of “the way things ought to be,” Solomon’s definition of art-horror can be liberated from questions of form and deformation tied to beauty. Circling back to the sublime at some level, Benson-Allot suggests that the spatial voids constructed in films such as Alien (1979, Ridley Scott) generate art-horror through their vast scale and apparently immeasurable depths. More specifically, the void as a form of unknowable space “confronts the viewer with his or her human triviality and threatens human subjectivity” that combines distinct but related notions of dread and horror.23 A particularly powerful combination of destabilization and ambiguity exists within the interior’s interface with the void or apparently limitless conditions through the arthorror of the homicidal floor. Unlike much of the existing literature on this subject, such an expression of horror in architecture has very little to do with a subversion of beauty. Homicidal floors activate horror (understood as a specific cognitive response) within and through architecture and the interior. These are the kind of horrible qualities that have a specifically architectural or interior architectural expression and rely on architecture and interiors to both establish and subvert “what ought to be.” The architectural interiors discussed here are directly implicated in the violent and unsettling acts of art-horror within the films discussed, prompting us to consider how architecture acts upon its inhabitants and audiences.

“It keeps them down there and me up here”: basements, stores, and doors in floors Before exploring some specific examples of the violent and destabilized domestic floor on film, it seems important to distinguish these from a more familiar trope within horror films, namely the basement. As Scott Martin has observed, as “the sinister underbelly of the house,” the basement or cellar has a long history of operating as a horror-filled space on film.24 As an interior, it is always below both the ground and the living spaces of the house. It is no coincidence that the basement is the space where Mrs. Bates’s true state as a badly decomposed corpse is revealed in Psycho (1960, Alfred Hitchcock), and where we find Deadites and dead cats in Evil Dead (1981, Sam Raimi; 2013, Fede Álvarez), as well as Buffalo Bill’s victim pit in The Silence of the Lambs (1991, Jonathan Demme), to name 265

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but a few of the better-known domestic basements within the horror film genre. The basement or cellar quite literally makes room for things to lurk below, and bad things happen to good people in its hidden spaces. In this way, the floors that cover such spaces might be more menacing for what they conceal, yet they remain relatively stable as a structural surface that separates the living from the dead and doomed. We might say the same thing about the eternally creepy basement or cellar door that so often releases beings and forces that seek to harm while also imprisoning those unfortunate enough to venture there, or be dragged kicking and screaming into this dark space. The basement with a trap door is all the more terrifying in horror on screen, invariably becoming the portal that confuses what belongs upstairs with the chaos and violence of the world below, but it remains a fairly effective door in an otherwise unremarkable floor. Stephen King reinforced this sense of stability and order in a 1981 essay for Playboy magazine when he evoked the horror of the subterranean space in an attempt to help explain “Why We Crave Horror Movies.” He wrote that horror films have a specific role to play: It deliberately appeals to all that is worst in us. It is morbidity unchained, our most base instincts let free, our nastiest fantasies realized . . . and it all happens, fittingly enough, in the dark . . . I like to see the most aggressive of them—Dawn of the Dead, for instance—as lifting a trap door in the civilized forebrain and throwing a basket of raw meat to the hungry alligators swimming around in that subterranean river beneath. Why bother? Because it keeps them from getting out, man. It keeps them down there and me up here. It was Lennon and McCartney who said that all you need is love, and I would agree with that. As long as you keep the gators fed.25 The trapdoor offers a controlled view down into darkness, allowing one to “keep the gators fed.” Likewise, the floor does its job—it “keeps them from getting out.” The following examples of destabilized, homicidal domestic floors on film, by contrast, take away this certainty of containment and, with it, of being able to step into these interiors without fear of falling. With the highly unexpected and somewhat unpredictable set of floor conditions comes a set of larger investigations about the horror of interiors and buildings that don’t do what we think they are supposed to do. To find out more about what interiors and buildings might be capable of means to catch them in the act; to witness the kind of horror that can be enacted from within the spaces and surfaces themselves. It is the horror of an architecture that is depicted as capable of carrying out acts of violence and mayhem.

Mother’s mansion: the explosive, resetting floor The Victorian mansion in which Aronosky’s film mother! takes place is central to the character development of mother/Lawrence, more specifically through her intense 266

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relationship with its walls and floor surfaces. Even though only a small number of scenes are set there, as the location for mother!’s penultimate sequence, the basement also emerges as a key space within the mansion. Aaronofsky, who wrote as well as directed the film, worked with set designer Philip Messina to create the settings for mother! Together they scouted late nineteenth-century Victorian houses in the towns and suburbs of upstate New York, paying special attention to ones in the Gothic Revival style.26 Long a staple to the horror genre, neo-Gothic architecture was first used as a setting for eighteenth-century horror novels, then again in nineteenth-century novels.27 It then fell out of fashion until the mid-twentieth century when Gothic Revival styles of architecture re-emerged in the genre, especially in film. By the postwar era many of the neo-Gothic buildings and houses associated with the Victorian era were left empty and derelict. With so many rooms and furnishings to maintain and without a bevy of servants to attend to them, many large houses and mansions easily fell into disrepair as stylistic trends shifted towards the rational functionalism of Modernism. Some were taken over by institutions, some simply abandoned. These buildings were not designed to scare or intimidate, and design historians do not present their histories as such. Thus, the fate of Victorian mansions as the haunted houses of horror is one of cultural association and not necessarily intention. Perhaps the most notable example of neo-Gothic architecture at the center of a horror film was the Bates Hotel in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), with its decaying exterior serving as a signifier to viewers of strange things to come.28 A Victorian mansion was also used in the recent remake of Stephen King’s It (2017). The enduring association between large Victorian houses and horror can be partly attributed to both the aesthetic and spatial characteristics of these houses. The spatial layout tends to involve a series of separate rooms of varying size—from very large ballrooms and entertaining spaces to the small, back-of-house spaces that serve them. Regularly laid out in a circular arrangement that can easily be made to appear mazelike on screen, characters can quickly become trapped or lost within such spatial structures, thus enhancing a sense of terror and tension within both the narrative and the visuals.29 The same spatial tactic was employed in the labyrinthine set design for Stanley Kubrick’s film The Shining.30 Another Stephen King novel adapted to film, The Shining was set in the fictional Overlook Hotel, and was actually shot on the grounds of Colorado’s Stanley Hotel. Although the exterior of the building does not present as neo-Gothic, the planning very much draws inspiration from the style, with an impossible spatial layout that deliberately disorients both the audience and the film’s characters.31 Drawing on this established horror trope, the maze-like planning of Victorian mansions and the sense of unknowable ending and dread they provide was central to the set design for mother! The house that Messina and Aaronofsky chose as the basis for the house in mother! was built in the nineteenth century by a doctor with an interest in phrenology. The shape of the house was said to be based on the structure of the brain, with an octagonal plan and rooms organized around central spiraling stairs.32 Messina stated, “I thought about how the house could be laid out to support her point of view and I started coming up 267

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with these labyrinthine mazes with no dead ends.”33 mother’s inextricable relationship with the house is central to the story. In the first act, she dedicates nearly all of her time to painting, finishing, and maintaining the house. Other than him/Bardem, the house is the main focus of her attention. There are several short scenes where she touches or stares into the surface of the wall or architrave, momentarily capturing a glimpse of the burnt and ashy past (or present) of the house. The house reveals its subjective nature to mother/Lawrence, perhaps as a warning about an imagined future. Such moments of close encounters with architecture on film are described by Simone Brott as an “architectural close-up.” Brott clarifies that this is not a close-up as in a camera shot but rather a close interaction between a subject and the surfaces of the architecture. As she observes, “the architectural close-up produces a new entity—neither the entire room nor a fragment of it in the region of wall; but what might be called a material becoming-subject born in the indifferent or ‘impersonal’ effect.”34 Within mother! the house becomes a character in the film, one with whom only mother/Lawrence interacts. The house communicates with mother/Lawrence, seemingly leading her to her ultimate demise. Importantly, the house itself re-emerges from the ashes of these final scenes just as it was, but this time with a new mother at its center. It is this subjective and unknowable element of the architecture in mother! that is the agent for horror. As Brott elaborates on close encounters between subjects and the wall surfaces in film, the “encounter” should not be considered “as a meeting between two constituted wholes, a building and a formed consciousness, but rather as a field of effects for what cannot yet be determined, for the creation of something new and unforeseen.”35 It is this unknown or unforeseeable quality of the architecture in mother! that creates a sense of horror. In Sean Pickersgill’s thesis on fictocritical readings of architectural horror and the sublime, he explains “the sublime and ‘horrific’ aspects of what is

Figure 13.1 mother/Lawrence works closely with the surfaces of the house wall, breathing life into the old house. mother!, directed by Darren Arronofsky. © Paramount Pictures 2017. All rights reserved. 268

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irretrievably unknown in architecture.”36 The subjective, living quality of the architecture provokes the very sense of things that are not as they ought to be. Another aesthetic device in the film is the assimilation of the setting and mother/ Lawrence’s body. Early in the film, mother/Lawrence mixes a yellow powder from a small jar into a wall rendering material, which she spreads across the wall’s surface, transforming a patchy, white undercoat to yellow, but the covering of the surface is never complete (see Figure 13.1). Later, she mixes a similar (or perhaps the same) yellow powder into a glass of water when she feels agitated. This device linking the body of mother/Lawrence with the body of the house is heightened toward the end of the first act of the film when mother discovers a bleeding hole in the floor that never heals. Initially, the blood leaks out from the timber floor boards until mother/Lawrence covers the “wound” with a woven carpet mat. When the blood seeps through to the carpet, mother/Lawrence engages closely with the carpet’s soft, textured surface (see Figure 13.2). The bleeding hole has several interpretations, one being the damage that violence wreaks upon the environment. It is often seen to represent a bleeding vagina, a menstrual or birthing vagina,37 a reading that draws on Kristeva’s notions of abject bodies, especially the abject actions of female bodies (menstruating, lactating, defecating, and so on). The fear associated with menstrual blood is that it “is dangerous because it holds the power to disrupt our conceptions of the border between life and death; blood that flows from no wound.”38 This fear is exacerbated in mother!, equally disrupting borders between subject and object—between life and the apparently lifeless. Several texts elaborate on how domesticity is structured to conceal and control women’s abject bodily functions.39 The abject also links to the concepts of the grotesque and the uncanny, especially through this mimicking of abject bodily functions. Referencing Kristeva, Barbara Creed argues that horror films use the abject to unsettle and destabilize, to create a sense of things being as they ought not to be:

Figure 13.2 mother/Lawrence interacts with the bleeding floor. mother!, directed by Darren Arronofsky. © Paramount Pictures 2017. All rights reserved. 269

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This . . . is also the central ideological project of the popular horror film— purification of the abject through a “descent into the foundations of the symbolic construct.” In this way, the horror film brings about a confrontation with the abject (the corpse, bodily wastes, the monstrous-feminine) in order, finally, to eject the abject and redraw the boundaries between the human and non-human. As a form of modern defilement rite, the horror film works to separate out the symbolic order from all that threatens its stability, particularly the mother and all that her universe signifies. In Kristeva’s terms, this means separating out the maternal authority from paternal law.40 In other words, the unrestrained expression of the abject female body in horror acts to destabilize patriarchy and domestic control over women’s bodies. In the film, the bleeding floor plays a part in leading mother/Lawrence to the act that finally decimates the guests who have persecuted her. mother! reaches its climax when mother/Lawrence expresses her rage at her house guests’ destructive and violently obsessive behavior. She screams in rage and the floor beneath her literally breaks apart into pieces, as though shattered into splinters, albeit momentarily. This splintering action of the floor in mother! highlights the significance of architectural horror within this discussion. In contrast to, say, the splintering of the Outlook’s bathroom door at the hands of Jack Torrance’s axe in The Shining, mother’s mansion breaks itself apart before mother/Lawrence sets her world ablaze.41 That is, the splintering floor in mother! is enacted autonomously by the architecture itself and not the action of a character. mother’s mansion is the actant and not the receiver of violence. From this point onwards, all of mother/Lawrence’s previous motivations are lost. It is as though she becomes desubjectivized and uses the floor to destroy her house and its unwanted guests. Brott discusses this act of exploding the architecture as one in which “to mobilize a radical production, to lose one’s individuality, and to lose one’s self, something has to be made—or, in this case, blown up.”42 In this film, mother/Lawrence loses herself in the restoration and creation of the house, and then destroys it all to begin the cycle again.

The unnamed woman’s cottage: the processing kill-room floor At the center of Glazer’s film Under the Skin is an unnamed woman played by Scarlett Johansson. In the film, she lures men back to her cottage with the promise of a sexual encounter. None of her male victims appear to feel threatened by her advances and they each follow her faithfully into her cottage and towards their own demise. Seemingly typical and nondescript from the outside, the woman/Johansson’s cottage conceals a dark, cavernous, and deadly interior. Each of the male characters walks forward into the space in a trance-like state, following her as she walks backwards. Facing each other, they both undress and move deep into the space. There, each male victim begins to sink into the viscous liquid floor, seemingly unaware of what is happening as the unnamed 270

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Figure 13.3 One victim of the unnamed woman/Johansson as he sinks into the liquid surface of the cottage floor. Under the Skin, directed by Jonathon Glazer. © Film 4 2014. All rights reserved.

woman/Johansson walks across its surface without becoming submerged (see Figure 13.3). As David Roche has described, she is shown luring the men by walking backwards across a sort of stage. And yet each scene introduces variation by modifying not only the characters, but also the staging, camera angles, and music. For instance, the first victim is initially shot from the left side (18:45) and is led into the right background (19:49); the third is initially shot from the right side (32:20) and is led into the left mid-ground (33:10). These variations undermine the initial impression that the female is a modern avatar of the Fates. On the contrary, she herself profits from, and is subjected to, contingency, of which she is merely another instance. Her signature murders, though highly stylized, remain as unfathomable as the liquid.43 The cottage’s empty, dark, and “unfathomably” large interior creates a complex space through which the unnamed woman/Johansson could be filmed using framing conventions typical of cinematic presentations of femme fatales. As Lindop observes, femme fatales in horror are classically captured “in long or medium-long shot, allowing for contemplation of their shapely figures and are highly stylised.”44 Long shots through the vast emptiness of the cottage allow for the uninterrupted gaze of the female subject, gendering and dehumanizing her at the same time. When we see the unnamed woman/ Johansson in her car, searching for prey, her face is defined by the lighting and framed by medium shots that make her human. Once she is filmed from a distance in the shadows of her empty dwelling, however, she becomes a part of the killing machine that is her cottage. This type of framing is archetypical of the cinematic femme fatale, as “the dark lady who hovers in its shadowy recesses appears in many forms.”45 Glazer’s depiction of 271

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the femme fatale in this film is heavily dependent on, and bound by, the deep shadows, voids, and surfaces of the cottage. It is arguably the cottage that transforms the unnamed woman/Johansson into a femme fatale. The liquid surface of its floor traps her victims, like insects caught on the sticky surface of a carnivorous plant, until they are slowly dissolved. This is sheer horror: the familiarity of a domestic cottage disturbed through its ingestion of the male victims of the unnamed woman/Johansson via this unknown, unfathomable liquid surface. The cottage is present in Faber’s novel, but it is not used to capture “vodsels.” From where, then, does Glazer’s cottage of dread emerge? Is it an attempt to anthropomorphize the domestic as the female body itself in which the cottage enacts the unnamed woman/ Johansson’s murderous intention? Drawing upon a significant amount of literature on women’s bodies being assimilated with the home, in the film the unnamed woman/ Johansson and the cottage act as a single entity.46 And yet, to look at the film only in this way would also be to absolve architecture to some extent of its role in creating or performing the abject. Glazer’s deployment of the liquid surface in the cottage is also an autonomous agent of horror. The woman/Johannson’s cottage in Under the Skin is represented as a form with boundless, interior surfaces. The viscosity of the floor surface is intentionally dissociated from its unassuming external appearance. Returning to Solomon’s definition of horror, the condition of the floor is fundamentally connected to “the recognition that things are not as they ought to be” where architecture is concerned. Thus, the deceptive and destabilized surface, both in terms of the move from exterior to interior, as well as the idea that such surfaces are products of stable and static structures, plays a central role in visualizing the experience of horror within and by architecture, rather than the appearance of horror as it might act upon architectural form. The horror of the cottage initially relies on its unremarkable exterior, but it quickly becomes much more than just an unusual interior. What begins as a disparity between exterior and interior culminates in a deadly disconnect between the idea of the floor surface as an established and fixed boundary and its reality as a viscous space that contributes to (rather than limits) the depthlessness of the cottage interior. Like the unnamed woman/Johansson, the cottage does not initially present itself as a recognizable trope of horror, such as a “graveyard at midnight,” and thus induces a sense of horror when it presents itself as something different. Unlike the unnamed woman/ Johansson, however, the cottage bears none of the consequences of its violent actions. In classic femme-fatale manner, she is doomed from the beginning of Under the Skin when the audience witnesses the retrieval of what was likely the unnamed woman/Johansson’s predecessor. She appears deceased, other than the moment when one single tear rolls down her lifeless face, signaling danger ahead for the unnamed woman/Johansson. At the same time, this interaction also serves as a reminder that, although the unnamed woman/Johansson’s subsequent reign of terror is frightening, this situation is only temporary—whatever this character is, she remains tied to a form of mortality. By contrast, the cottage seems to have existed with its murderous liquid surface well before

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the unnamed woman/Johansson inhabited it, and will continue to exist and operate after her demise. The cottage suffers no consequences for its horrific actions.

Destabilized domesticity In the films discussed in this chapter the two main women characters are contained within their domestic settings. mother/Lawrence never leaves the confines of the Victorian mansion and is assimilated with the house, living and ingesting its subjectivity. When mother/Lawrence perishes, only the house re-emerges in the same form, creating a new version of mother with it. The two entities are dependent on each other for their existence, producing a sublime liminal existence between house and woman. For the unnamed woman/Johansson, once she escapes her cottage to an open forest in the Scottish Highlands, she becomes doomed. In leaving the cottage she is transcending the patriarchal norms of domesticity that contain her. As Sorenson writes, “when she leaves the Scottish suburbs, it is with the knowledge of her place within the patriarchal construction of essentialist femininity, and this is precisely what she sets out to escape.”47 In both films, viewers watch the two female characters come to terms with the oppressive structures of male domination, which they ultimately overcome by finding ways to escape their domestic imprisonment. Filmic horror has long been associated with dismantling or disturbing concepts of safety and security in the domestic home and suburbia, especially through the actions of the monstrous woman-cum-femme fatale. This is directly linked with horror’s long obsession with fears about women’s sexuality and its capacity to thwart male dominance and patriarchy.48 Horror draws attention to the notion of domesticity as a site of terror, as experienced by women. As Marco and Pandzic write, “For many women, home is a place concealing patriarchal power relations and can, in extreme cases, be related to domestic violence and sexual abuse. It is also where the nuclear family—the central patriarchal institution—produces convenient gender products through the process of socialization.”49 What is especially interesting in the two films discussed here is that this subversion of male dominance, which is read as being made manifest through the physical structure of architecture, is not enacted by female characters so much as their architectures—especially these living, bleeding, and homicidal floors. Both the unnamed woman/Johansson and mother/Lawrence are haunted by oppressive men. The unnamed woman/Johansson is followed and, in the end, hunted by the man on the motorcycle, only to have her life taken by a violent male stranger. mother/ Lawrence is oppressed by her husband’s desire to create, until his followers take away everything she possesses from her. What is fascinating is that the floors of their domestic settings drive the violent and murderous actions depicted in both Under the Skin and mother! It is the architecture that enacts, or draws the women into, its violence. This subjective quality of the architecture is at the center of the horror in each film; neither the Georgian cottage nor the Victorian mansion are what they appear to be. In both

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films, this is especially enacted through the floors that destabilize the domestic setting and the characters who walk these surfaces.

(Un)limiting conditions If floors can be thought of as fundamental yet sometimes overlooked surfaces within architecture, this chapter has suggested that they might also be considered as powerful repositories of horrors through the assumption of their stability and centrality to architectural space. More than walls or ceilings, the stability of an interior’s floor is taken for granted through its implied connection to the earth. Destabilized and homicidal floors in mother/Lawrence’s country house and the unnamed woman/Johansson’s cottage are particularly powerful depictions of horror in architecture because they transcend matters of style and aesthetic formal decay to more fundamental disruptions of ontological categories. The deceptive and destabilized floors in these films demonstrate a form of horror that implicates architecture as its knowing accomplice. In this sense, this discussion has attempted to make a contribution to the discourse on horror in architecture that moves beyond its status as purely a question of subversive appearances—to that of subversive acts committed by architecture itself. While Comaroff and Ker-Shing have suggested that horror can function as a productive threat to narrow definitions of the discipline of architecture and its canon, their definition of horror in architecture remains indebted to a history of the term “horror” constructed primarily through eighteenth-century notions of the sublime as a deviation of beauty—that is, the sublime as “agreeable horror.” Viewed as a component of theories of beauty in architecture, horror can easily be conflated with sensations of fear, dread, terror, anxiety, or awe more broadly. Dulled by this more generalized use, the term has often been relegated to instances of purely visual deviance, either as innovative design, or as buildings that have not been carefully maintained or managed. In this form, horror poses a symbolic threat to the conventions of architecture and to the image of the city respectively. Nevertheless, taking Nesbitt’s understanding of postmodern architectural expressions of the sublime through experiential conditions such as the grotesque and uncanny as a starting point, the potential for horror in architecture to have much more far-reaching consequences has been explored. Making the link to horror (as art-horror) within architecture on film provides an opportunity to activate Solomon’s more precise investigations of horror as an “emotional phenomenon,” as well as to build on Benson-Allot’s suggestion that horror is regularly generated through spatial settings and conditions on film. Filmic representations of architecturally-induced art-horror are important attempts to visualize violent destablizations and disruptions between characters and interiors that would otherwise remain abstract. The horror of Glazer’s interpretation of Under the Skin elevates the unnamed woman/ Johansson’s cottage from a camouflage device concealing underground levels of intensive human farming to a killing machine that captures its victims through disrupting and 274

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disintegrating the floor surface—and thus violating a fundamental contract made by architecture to support, order, or frame human existence in some way. On its most basic level, the unnamed woman/Johansson’s cottage is architecture for human’s other and the deceptive floor surface (in all of its horror) is a powerful way to signal this. The floor of the cottage is just that for the unnamed woman/Johansson; it fulfills its purpose of supporting her and separating her from what lies beneath. For its human victims, however, the cottage floor offers no such limiting condition. Aaronofsky and Messina’s choice of a Victorian mansion expands on the spatial and aesthetic of known and traditional horror settings. By placing mother/Lawrence in a liminal setting between the real and unreal, the known and unknown, the audience is given an insight into both mother/Lawrence and the house’s impending demise. In both of these films the living qualities of the cottage and the mansion draw attention to architecture’s role in enabling patriarchal orders and the control of women’s bodies by domestic architecture. This departs from the tradition of horror films where monstrous women or femme fatales execute the subversion of suburbia and domesticity through their own violent acts. In mother! and Under the Skin the architecture acts to transcend these orders, with the unnamed woman/Johansson’s cottage absorbing male bodies and mother/ Lawrence’s mansion leading her to explode the house and all of its unwanted guests. These films acknowledge that architecture is not a passive party to women’s oppression but complicit in the division of power—an agent for the structures of oppression. Notes 1. Simon Unwin, Analysing Architecture (New York: Routledge, 2003), 6. 2. Michel Faber, Under the Skin (London: Harcourt: 2001). 3. Samantha Lindop, Postfeminism and the Fatale Figure in Neo-noir Cinema (London: Springer: 2015), 25. 4. See, for example, Alyssa Wilkinson, “Darren Aronofsky’s Mother! is an explosive retelling of creation in fire and blood,” Vox, September 15, 2017, https://www.vox.com/ culture/2017/9/10/16277234/mother-review-aronofsky-lawrence-bardem-tiff. 5. Joan Hawkins, “ ‘It fixates’: indie quiets and the new Gothics,” Pallgrave Communications 3 (September 2017): 2–3. 6. Hawkins, “ ‘It fixates,’ ” 3. 7. Joshua Comaroff and Ong Ker-Shing, Horror in Architecture (Novato, CA: ORO editions, 2013). 8. Comaroff and Ker-Shing, Horror in Architecture. 9. Comaroff and Ker-Shing, Horror in Architecture, 46. 10. Comaroff and Ker-Shing, Horror in Architecture, 208. 11. Edmund Burke, On the Sublime and Beautiful, 6th edn. (London: J Dodsley, 1770), Part II, Section I, 95–6. 12. Kate Nesbitt, “The Sublime and Modern Architecture: Unmasking (An Aesthetic of) Abstraction,” Narratives of Literature, the Arts, and Memory, New Literary History 26, no. 1 (Winter 1995): 96.

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Screen Interiors 13. Nesbitt, “The Sublime and Modern Architecture,” 96. 14. Nesbitt, “The Sublime and Modern Architecture,” 96. 15. Noël Carroll, “The Nature of Horror,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 46, no. 1 (Autumn 1987): 51–9. Also, for an early example of Solomon’s distinction between fear and horror, see Robert Solomon, “On Kitsch and Sentimentality,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 49, no. 1 (Winter 1991): 1–14. 16. Noël Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror, or, Paradoxes of the Heart (New York: Routledge, 1990). The term also appears in more recent scholarship on horror studies, but its definition has been expanded by scholars such as Cynthia Freeland in The Naked and the Undead: Evil and the Appeal of Horror (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000). See also Matt Hills, The Pleasures of Horror (New York: Continuum, 2005). 17. Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror, 12. 18. Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror, 16. 19. Robert Solomon “The Philosophy of Horror, Or Paradoxes of the Heart (review),” Philosophy and Literature 16, no. 1 (April 1992): 170. 20. Robert Solomon, In Defense of Sentimentality (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 112. 21. Joan Hawkins, Cutting Edge: Art-Horror and the Horrific Avant-Garde (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000). See also Jeffrey Sconce (ed.), Sleaze Artists: Cinema at the Margins of Taste, Style, and Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007). 22. Robert Solomon, “Real Horror,” in S. J. Schneider and D. Shaw (eds.), Dark Thoughts: Philosophical Reflections on Cinematic Horror, 230–63 (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2003), cited in Caetlin Benson-Allott, “Dreadful Architecture: Zones of Horror in Alien and Lee Bontecou’s Wall Sculptures,” Journal of Visual Culture 14, no. 3 (2015): 269. 23. Solomon, “Real Horror,” 230–63. 24. Scott Martin, “King for a Day: Performance and Expression in the Cinematic Space of the Basement,” in Eleanor Andrews, Stella Hockenhull, and Fran Pheasant-Kelly (eds.), Spaces of the Cinematic Home: Behind the Screen Door, 45 (New York and London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2016). 25. Stephen King, “Why We Crave Horror Movies,” Playboy (January 1981): 150–4. 26. Bill Desowitz, “ ‘Mother!’: How Darren Aronofsky’s Team Turned a Victorian Mansion Into a House of Horrors,” IndieWire, September 21, 2017, https://www.indiewire.com/2017/09/ mother-darren-aronofsky-house-of-horrors-production-design-1201877929/. 27. Peter Lindfield, “How Gothic buildings became associated with Halloween and the supernatural,” The Conversation, October 31, 2016, https://theconversation.com/how-gothicbuildings-became-associated-with-halloween-and-the-supernatural-67820. 28. Sarah Burns, “ ‘Better for Haunts’: Victorian Houses and the Modern Imagination,” American Art 26, no. 3 (2012): 2–25, https://doi.org/10.1086/669220. 29. Amy Nolan, “Seeing is Digesting: Labyrinths of Historical Ruin in Stanley Kubrick’s ‘The Shining,’ ” Cultural Critique 77 (Winter 2011): 182. 30. Nolan, “Seeing is Digesting,” 182. 31. Mehruss Jon Ahi and Armen Karaoghlanian, “The Shining (1980),” Interiors, 2013, https:// www.intjournal.com/0613/the-shining. 32. Desowitz, “ ‘Mother!’ ” 33. Desowitz, “ ‘Mother!’ ” 276

The Horror of the Homicidal Floor 34. Simone Brott, “Close encounter, withdrawn effects,” Journal of Architectural Education 61, no. 4 (2008): 8. 35. Brott, “Close encounter,” 6. 36. Sean Pickersgill, “Architecture and horror: analogical explorations in architectural design” (Ph.D. diss., RMIT, 2009), 121. 37. Eliana Dockterman and Eliza Berman, “An Exhaustive List of All the References We Could Find in Mother!,” Time, September 15, 2017, https://time.com/4943762/mother-moviejennifer-lawrence-references/. 38. Abigail Sorensen, “The Feminine Sublime in 21st Century Surrealist Cinema” (Master’s thesis, Wright State University, 2016), http://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/etd_all/1501. 39. See, for example, Mark Wigley’s “Untitled: the housing of gender,” in Beatriz Colomina (ed.), Sexuality and space, 336 (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1992). 40. Barbara Creed, “Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An imaginary abjection,” in Mark Jancovich (ed.), Horror, The Film reader, 75 (London and New York: Routledge, 2002). 41. Gina Wisker has discussed Torrance/Nicholson’s shift from nurturer to tormentor and his physical and symbolic destruction, or splintering, of his family’s domestic setting. See Gina Wisker, “ ‘Honey, I’m home!’ Splintering the Fabrication in Domestic Horror,” Femspec 4, no. 1 (September 2002): 108. 42. Brott, “Close encounter,” 11. 43. David Roche, “Fault lines in Under the Skin (Glazer, 2013): An ethics and aesthetics of the ‘monstrous,’ ” Horror Studies 8, no. 1 (2017): 52. 44. Lindop, Postfeminism and the Fatale Figure, 22. 45. Lindop, Postfeminism and the Fatale Figure, 21. 46. A very good example of this architecture in film is in an article by Jane Blocker, “WomanHouse: Architecture, Gender and Hybridity in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?” Camera Obscura 13, no. 3 (September 1996): 126–50. 47. Sorensen, “The Feminine Sublime,” 55. 48. Valerie Wee, “Patriarchy and the Horror of the Monstrous Feminine,” Feminist Media Studies 11, no. 2 (2011): 151–65, https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2010.521624. 49. Marko Lukic and Maja Pandzic, “Dreading the White Picket Fences: Domesticity and the Suburban Horror Film,” Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture, 1900 to Present 13, no. 2 (Fall 2014), http://www.americanpopularculture.com/journal/articles/fall_2014/ lukic_pandzic.htm.

Bibliography Benson-Allott, Caetlin. “Dreadful Architecture: Zones of Horror in Alien and Lee Bontecou’s Wall Sculptures.” Journal of Visual Culture 14, no. 3 (2015): 267–78. Berman, Eliza and Eliana Dockterman. “An Exhaustive List of All the References We Could Find in Mother!” Time, September 15, 2017, https://time.com/4943762/mother-movie-jenniferlawrence-references/ Blocker, Jane. “Woman-House: Architecture, Gender and Hybridity in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?” Camera Obscura 13, no. 3 (September 1996): 126–50. Brott, Simone. “Close encounter, withdrawn effects.” Journal of Architectural Education 61, no. 4 (2008): 6–16. 277

Screen Interiors Burke, Edmund. On the Sublime and Beautiful, 6th edition. London: J. Dodsley, 1770. Burns, Sarah. “ ‘Better for Haunts’: Victorian Houses and the Modern Imagination.” American Art 26, no. 3 (2012): 2–25, https://doi.org/10.1086/669220. Carroll, Noël. “The Nature of Horror.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 46, no. 1 (Autumn 1987): 51–9. Carroll, Noël. The Philosophy of Horror, or, Paradoxes of the Heart. New York: Routledge, 1990. Comaroff, Joshua and Ong Ker-Shing. Horror in Architecture (Novato, CA : ORO editions, 2013). Creed, Barbara. “Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An imaginary abjection.” In Mark Jancovich (ed.), Horror, The Film Reader, 44–71. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. Desowitz, Bill “ ‘Mother!’: How Darren Aronofsky’s Team Turned a Victorian Mansion Into a House of Horrors.” IndieWire, September 21, 2017, https://www.indiewire.com/2017/09/ mother-darren-aronofsky-house-of-horrors-production-design-1201877929/. Faber, Michel. Under the Skin. London: Harcourt, 2001. Freeland, Cynthia. The Naked and the Undead: Evil and the Appeal of Horror. Boulder, CO : Westview Press, 2000. Hawkins, Joan. Cutting Edge: Art-Horror and the Horrific Avant-Garde. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. Hawkins, Joan. “ ‘It fixates’: indie quiets and the new Gothics.” Pallgrave Communications 3 (September 2017): 1–7. Hills, Matt. The Pleasures of Horror. New York: Continuum, 2005. Jon Ahi, Mehruss and Armen Karaoghlanian. “The Shining (1980).” Interiors, 2013, https://www. intjournal.com/0613/the-shining. King, Stephen. “Why We Crave Horror Movies.” Playboy (January 1981): 524. Lindfield, Peter. “How Gothic buildings became associated with Halloween and the supernatural.” The Conversation, October 31, 2016, https://theconversation.com/how-gothic-buildingsbecame-associated-with-halloween-and-the-supernatural-67820. Lindop, Samantha. Postfeminism and the Fatale Figure in Neo-noir Cinema. London: Springer, 2015. Lukic, Marko and Maya Pandzic. “Dreading the White Picket Fences: Domesticity and the Suburban Horror Film.” Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture, 1900 to Present 13, no. 2 (Fall 2014), http://www.americanpopularculture.com/journal/articles/fall_2014/ lukic_pandzic.htm. Martin, Scott. “King for a Day: Performance and Expression in the Cinematic Space of the Basement.” In Eleanor Andrews, Stella Hockenhull, and Fran Pheasant-Kelly (eds.), Spaces of the Cinematic Home: Behind the Screen Door, 45–59. New York and London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2016. Nesbitt, Kate. “The sublime and modern architecture: unmasking (an aesthetic of) abstraction.” New Literary History 26, no. 1 (1995): 95–110. Nolan, Amy. “Seeing is Digesting: Labyrinths of Historical Ruin in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.” Cultural Critique 77 (Winter 2011): 182–204. Pickersgill, Sean. “Architecture and horror: analogical explorations in architectural design.” Ph.D. diss., RMIT, 2009. Roche, David. “Fault lines in Under the Skin (Glazer, 2013): An ethics and aesthetics of the ‘monstrous.’ ” Horror Studies 8, no. 1 (2017): 45–59. Sconce, Jeffrey (ed.). Sleaze Artists: Cinema at the Margins of Taste, Style, and Politics. Durham, NC : Duke University Press, 2007. Solomon, Robert. “On Kitsch and Sentimentality.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 49, no. 1 (Winter 1991): 1–14. Solomon, Robert. “The Philosophy of Horror: Or, Paradoxes of the Heart. London: Routledge, 2003. Solomon, Robert. “Real Horror.” In S. J. Schneider and D. Shaw (eds.), Dark Thoughts: Philosophical Reflections on Cinematic Horror, 230–63. Lanham, MD : Scarecrow Press, 2003. 278

The Horror of the Homicidal Floor Cited in Caetlin Benson-Allott, “Dreadful Architecture: Zones of Horror in Alien and Lee Bontecou’s Wall Sculptures.” Journal of Visual Culture 14, no. 3 (2015): 267–78. Solomon, Robert. In Defense of Sentimentality. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Sorensen, Abigail. “The Feminine Sublime in 21st Century Surrealist Cinema.” Master’s thesis, Wright State University, 2016, http://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/etd_all/1501. Unwin, Simon. Analysing Architecture. New York: Routledge, 2003. Wee, Valerie. “Patriarchy and the Horror of the Monstrous Feminine.” Feminist Media Studies 11, no. 2 (2011): 151–65, https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2010.521624. Wigley, Mark. “Untitled: the housing of gender.” In Beatriz Colomina (ed.), Sexuality and Space, 327–89. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1992. Wilkinson, Alyssa. “Darren Aronofsky’s Mother! is an explosive retelling of creation in fire and blood.” Vox, September 15, 2017, https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/9/10/16277234/ mother-review-aronofsky-lawrence-bardem-tiff. Wisker, Gina. “ ‘Honey, I’m home!’ Splintering the Fabrication in Domestic Horror.” Femspec 4, no. 1 (September 2002): 108.

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CHAPTER 14 DESIGNED TO DESTROY: ACTION FILM INTERIORS AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF KILLSCAPES Lennart Soberon

In Hollywood, the action film has been one of the most prolific and popular genres for several decades.1 Since the 1980s, films such as Rambo (1982, Ted Kotcheff ), Die Hard (1988, John McTiernan), Lethal Weapon (1987, Richard Donner), Mission Impossible (1996, Christopher McQuarrie), The Fast and the Furious (2001, Rob Cohen), and The Bourne Identity (2002, Doug Liman) have launched many installments and garnered massive box office acclaim. While extensive monographs by Eric Lichtenfeld, Lisa Purse, and Yvonne Tasker go into great detail regarding the action film’s generic conventions and cultural politics,2 research on the action film’s formal aspects remains rather limited. To fill this lacuna, this chapter foregrounds the genre’s treatment of interior space and design in order to better understand the formal workings of action sequences, specifically in relation to the use of interiors. While the relationship between space, set design, and narrative will be touched upon in this chapter, my primary aim is to analyze how space and set design interact with action in order to steer the spectator to anticipate, understand, and even desire violence. Using a diverse selection of recently released films, such as Machete (2010, Robert Rodriguez), John Wick (2014, Chad Stahelski), and The Equalizer (2014, Antoine Fuqua), I explore how interiors are formally and narratively organized in what I call “killscapes.” Killscapes are a type of action-film space in which the interior becomes highly attuned to moments of action, suspense, and violent spectacle. Action filmmakers pay particular attention to the conception, building, and decorating of such “killscape” settings before accommodating these spaces as a vital component of the action sequences. While killscapes have a diverse set of functions, I will chiefly focus on how filmmakers use these interiors in context of action sequences to provide mental maps, generate expectations, and heighten emotions. Each aspect will be discussed in detail after an introduction on the importance of space in the genre and further elucidation of killscapes as a concept. Using the concept of killscapes helps us to better understand how spectacle and violence are patterned and articulated in the genre in a way that transforms them into a pleasurable and engaging spectator experience. Moreover, I argue that the concept contributes to a more extensive understanding of the varied functions film interiors might possess.

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Action film and space Spectacular action and interiors are not something that immediately strike one as an obvious match; why would, after all, a genre that is most renowned for blowing up décors spend time designing them? In line with this perception, settings of spectacle and conflict have rarely been a topic of concern for film scholars studying production design, including interiors. Despite their popular appearance across many film genres, settings such as war trenches, police stations, seedy nightclubs, and construction sites have been neglected in favor of domestic interiors such as boudoirs, drawing rooms, changing rooms, backstage spaces, and artist studios.3 Stemming from these locational preferences, the number of vantage points employed by film scholars remains equally limited. Studies such as those by Tom Conley, Charles Shiro Tashiro, and Elisabeth Bronfen helped strengthen the position of film noir, period pieces, and Hollywood melodramas as topics of scholarly investigation relating to interior and design,4 but many other genres are left out of the picture. Often focusing on character and spatial investigation, the majority of the studies involving interiors seem to be tailored to genres in which aspects of mise-enscène are more prominently accentuated. Moreover, as Lajer-Burcharth and Söntgen argue in relation to literary fiction, much of the research on interiors has dealt with the relationship between interior space and the human interiority of protagonists.5 Because of space’s ability to elicit associations and expectations, it serves as an important container and conveyor of meaning.6 These connotations offer filmmakers a tempting toolkit for grafting narratives and establishing dramatic situations in inventive and diverse ways. To understand what services space can render in the context of the action film, it’s important to firstly understand the generic conventions onto which the action film is grafted. Many scholars view action sequences as a core component of action cinema that, according to O’Brien, is the cinema of striking back, with narratives that restore agency through violent displays of will.7 Dyer noted parallels between the presence and function of the music-and-dance sequence in the classic musical and that of the action sequence in that both are periodically defined moments during which narrative development is halted in favor of a form of spectacle.8 King, however, claimed that these moments of action are not devoid of narrative significance or context.9 Violence within the action film is best understood as motivated from within its genre, and O’Brien argues that form and content are intensively entwined in the genre: “It represents the idea and ethic of action through a form in which action, agitation and movement are paramount.”10 While the textual dynamics of the action sequence are often understood in terms of narrative, the use of designed environments is at least as critical a component of how we cognitively and emotionally engage with action. For Forbes, many Hollywood film sets and environments are forms of “disposable architecture” that do not serve any other function than being a backdrop.11 I argue that it is perhaps more rewarding to see them as a part of action films’ mise-en-scène since the environments presented and the objects therein can serve many ends. Jones’s innovative monograph on spatiality and the action film argues that the role of sets and settings cannot be stressed sufficiently since they help shape the presented action in a variety of ways.12 Jones considers space especially vital in 282

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the context of action sequences since these are moments, heavily embedded in the genre’s conventions, in which “routine is interrupted and attention is drawn to the possibilities and threats of the surrounding environment.”13 Here I support this claim by showing that space and design are of prime importance in understanding violent action within the genre. According to Purse, spatial mastery is a core component within this genre where ordinary heroes rise up to extraordinary challenges and opportunities.14 Similarly, Jones considers the action film to be “a form of filmmaking exceptionally interested in the constraints and possibilities of space.”15 Using the canonical action film Die Hard (1988, John McTiernan) as an example, he points out that the hero’s power to “triumph over adversity is directly linked to his ability to master the building.” Notions of access to and exclusion from particular buildings and environments drive these stories. Many action films rely upon captivity narratives in which the hero has to invade several levels of security before retrieving a prisoner from the enemy and successfully escaping through those same levels of security. Accordingly, the space–narrative relationship is not unlike that of a nesting doll. In the canonical Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985, George P. Cosmatos), for example, war veteran John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) leaves the USA, travels to Thailand, enters Vietnam, infiltrates a Vietcong prison camp, and breaks open the cages holding US military POWs. After escaping with the former captives, Rambo transports his human cargo through the same route, only in reverse order. The component of spatial navigation and control of surroundings is most apparent when the environment itself is involved in the action scenes. Jones aptly points out that the average action hero “does not just move in space but puts space into motion, and in doing so reveals its multiple trajectories and his capacity to negotiate and modify them.”16 The “triad of spatial subjection, spatial involvement and spatial manipulation is the conceptual framework at the core of action sequences.”17 Further evidence can be found in the large number of subgenres designed around spatial limitations, such as airplanehijacking-themed genre films. In films such as Executive Decision (1996, Stuart Baird) and Air Force One (1997, Wolfgang Petersen) the stakes are raised because the hero has to fight the villain under specific constraints and claustrophobic pressure. Another important convention is the action film’s obsession with the physical destruction of space. Purse refers to the fascination with destroying environments as a determinant of the genre’s identity.18 During the course of the action sequence, windows are shattered, cars crashed, rooms trashed, buildings demolished, and more often than not all manner of private and public property explodes. While such destruction relates to the display of spectacle that characterizes the genre, such a high degree of demolition also serves a different, more productive, function. By obliterating elements of sets and décor, new solutions are revealed and villains exposed. In essence, action films are stories of hide and seek. Villains either commit evil deeds and go into hiding or hide in order to prepare for an evil deed. While the narrative nuances in such situations relate to revenge or suspense, the second act of the action film is structured around investigation and prosecution. The hero/heroine has to find the villains before they escape or carry out their evil plans, thus establishing a deadline for the protagonist to complete their mission 283

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and upping the level of drama and sense of urgency as the film unfolds. Opacity equals vulnerability in the genre and, accordingly, the surveillance and control of space signifies power.

Constructing killscapes The choice and design of space is instrumental in the delivery of spectacular violence in action films. Production design encompasses the interiors created for a film, but its role in film expands far beyond the mise-en-scene. As Berfelder et al. comment, “set design cannot be separated from simultaneous developments in cinematography and editing.”19 With its frantic editing style, non-stop movement, and hyper-stylized shots, the contemporary action film can be seen as an extreme expression of what Bordwell termed “intensified continuity.”20 Cinematography also plays a key role in altering perceptions of space, and long lenses help visually compress space for dramatic effect, along with a fast editing pace, different types of cameras, and a plethora of camera angles. The all-seeing eye of the action filmmaker stimulates the viewer while providing a great deal of visual information to process. As O’Brien notes, the action film is a mode of address, and filmmakers use spatial cues to encourage the spectator to engage with the unfolding action.21 Interiors and environments are designed with violent action in mind as well as the ways in which the heroes and villains have to operate within them. Writing between 1927 and 1940 in his Arcades Project, Walter Benjamin considers the interior as a space that could integrate different types of possibly unrelated objects into its own particular order.22 The power of the interior thus lies in its capability to transform the established use and context of seemingly everyday objects. Functioning within the framework of action sequences, interiors possess a similar transformative force. Interiors help define how viewers comprehend and enjoy the unfolding action, cueing them to where, and why, violence takes place. Given that action films and their protagonists have a strong relationship vis-à-vis the employment of space, in order to function in action scenes heroes often have to approach their environments with heightened perception. Indeed, it is through knowledge of their surroundings that the super-spies James Bond, Ethan Hunt, and Jason Bourne succeed in surviving the many obstacles they are faced with; by utilizing their surroundings to the maximum, more often than not they attain the upper hand in combat. Thus, it can be argued, these films cue both protagonist and spectator to read space as exploitable. Filmmakers construct zones of conflict for violence to unfold in and through, and those spaces are narratively contextualized, geographically situated, and aesthetically designed so as to accommodate the particular sequence. I refer to these spaces that are characterized by violent action and intensified interactions with the environment as “killscapes.” Killscapes are defined as settings and interiors that are instrumental to the violence enacted within action scenes. The surroundings are designed to facilitate the spectacular action before being integrated into how these action sequences play out. For filmmakers and their characters, killscapes function as elaborately constructed playgrounds of 284

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mayhem in which banal, everyday objects, buildings, and interiors are creatively repurposed for destructive ends. Such environments are not only designed differently from non-action-oriented surroundings but also shot and edited differently. These environments need to be rendered credible within the diegesis of the film, and the narrative and cinematic treatment of killscapes falls into three distinct categories: 1) the “set-up,” 2) the operationalization of the environment in the action, and 3) the aftermath of action. The distribution of these phases over the course of the narrative is flexible and varying over different degrees of “décor intensity.”23 Charles Affron and Mirella Jona Affron offer a typology of degrees in which a film’s décor plays a function in narrative developments. In regard to this typology, killscapes can be mostly read as “punctuating” décors that are used as a visual touchstone serving the narrative ambitions of the filmmaker. These designs accentuate important information and thus assist in the understanding of the plot, but the sets go beyond the mere denotative because they are “intermittently opaque” in the sense that their function can be turned on and off at any given time in the plot. Killscapes can therefore feature within the context of a specific sequence of a film or throughout its entire run time.24 When approaching space and action from the viewpoint of cognitive fi lm theory, the design of killscapes can be largely understood through the spectator’s narrative comprehension. According to Bordwell, the spectator is an active information seeker who constantly forms hypotheses about the unfolding of events and readjusts these expectations with every new bit of information.25 As King hints, the enjoyment that spectators receive from these action scenes is partly related to the anticipation established before the action develops.26 This anticipation is less a case of the calm before the storm but more the accumulation of tensions and conceived expectations before an outburst of action. Knowing that violent confrontation is bound to take place sooner or later is one of the pleasures of the action genre, and viewers literate in the genre have plenty of time to assess when the suspense will tip over into action, and to predict how the timing will affect the course of the action sequence to come. Standoff situations, to name one narrative scenario, are a common generic trope, and filmmakers put great effort into devising the obstacles that the hero will face and the possible tools he can use to his advantage. Killscapes thus function on several levels: they construct mental maps, interconnect a series of devices and environmental components, and elicit emotions through form. These three components are discussed below, using contemporary examples.

Maps and menaces Directors, production designers, cinematographers, and editors are conscious of the perception of space that they are creating for viewers. By providing clues to spectators in order to heighten their anticipation of the relationships between characters and environments, filmmakers engage with cognitive processes relating to spatial perceptions. Wollen argues that in understanding narrative progress, viewers create a “mental map.”27 285

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By way of constructive editing, viewers can imagine an internal room or building layout on the basis of what they have learned so far about the space plus what they are being shown. In regard to action sequences, the alternation between interiors and environments, and having characters interact with them, greatly helps viewer engagement during lengthy action sequences since it keeps the spectator alert and in suspense. Killscapes offer a physical environment and, through the cognitive processes of mental assessment and association, a supplementary mental layout of a specific space as well as the obstacles that litter the hero’s path. By showing viewers where the action will take place, what threats and obstacles the hero might encounter, and what routes he can take to his destination, viewers engage with the imminent action by constantly assessing the situation presented to them. A major action scene in John Wick (2014) is set in a New York nightclub owned by the Russian mafia. Apart from the information that the protagonist Wick (played by Keanu Reeves) is trying to eliminate a targeted villain hiding in the night club, little additional narrative context is needed to understand the scene. Before the action sequence is initiated, however, there is a short moment of spatial exposition by way of conversations on headphones among members of the security guards protecting the villain. The exposition shot of this “set-up,” or establishing sequence, shows us, as viewers, the main dance hall in the nightclub, and immediately communicates several variables that Wick will be confronted with on his mission. A rave party is taking place and therefore Wick might possibly blend in with the crowd. A crowd, however, means that any violence would need to be enacted discretely or risk witnesses, mass panic, or both. We also learn that the nightclub is heavily guarded. A group of security guards emerges from the kitchen connected to the nightclub, and the head of security checks up with his men posted at several locations within the building (the VIP room, balcony, and basement). When each security man replies, a cut is made to his location, thus familiarizing the viewer with each space and the number of enemies guarding it. When the camera reaches the basement, a key piece of information is revealed: Wick’s target is attending a private pool party. Each location is characterized by its visual style—cold gray for the VIP room, blue hues for the basement, and stroboscopic effects for the dancehall and balcony—and this helps to distinguish the different floors of the building. In the next scene, an additional part of the building is revealed when four men enter the nightclub through a secret side entrance leading to the basement level which viewers recognize because of its visual style. Viewers, especially genre-literate ones, can now anticipate that the action scene might not be about Wick reaching his target but possibly about someone escaping from the building (perhaps finding a route upwards from the basement). During the “set-up,” viewers learn that the building has three floors and are acquainted with four locations, each posing its own set of variables and challenges, such as dark corners in the basement and crowds in the dancehall. Through editing, the filmmakers construct a mental map of the ways the locations connect, thus helping viewers understand the environments in which the forthcoming action sequence will be played out. To some extent viewers can position themselves geographically in the building, and 286

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know that room A leads to room B, and that room B is situated below or above room C. When Wick finds his target, the action sequence commences. The second generic phase is underway. Wick chases his target through the building in an ascending order, from the basement to the dancehall and on to the VIP room and, finally, the balcony. Every location within the sequence has its own specifications with regard to interior design and spatial organization. The basement scenario is characterized by close-quarter combat and a high degree of environmental interaction because of its many corners and plateaus as part of the bathhouse architecture. The dancehall allows a different type of action. When Wick navigates his way through the crowd overt action is avoided or discretely done. By contrast, in the VIP room the villain and hero shoot at each other while finding a degree of cover behind the large columns. The final balcony location adds an extra dimension to the spectacular “gun-fu” action. Anxiety levels here rise because the balcony is a narrow space through which Wick has to progress linearly, facing the additional threat of falling one floor down to the dancehall. Contemporary action-genre filmmakers tend to end an action sequence with a montage of shots reprising the havoc wreaked upon the interiors. This is exemplified by a sequence set in Wick’s house when a “cleaner” comes to dispose of the enemy bodies and we are granted an overview of the consequences that the battle has wreaked on its surroundings.

Reading the room Reading action-film killscapes involves reading interior spaces wherein an action sequence takes place and which interact with the objects within them. Whether in the context of confrontation or evasion, killscapes are presented as spaces of both crisis and opportunity filled with objects that viewers have been given visual clues about earlier in the film. In The Equalizer (2013), the spatial consciousness of viewers, together with genre literacy, is heightened by giving the hitman, Robert McCall (played by Denzel Washington) a form of heightened perception. Before several of the action scenes, McCall’s sensory experiences and tactical insights into the possibilities offered by the environment are evoked as the camera scans the room in slow motion and highlights objects that are full of potential for use during the anticipated action. Filmmakers seldom make false promises when vesting visual attention to objects, and The Equalizer features a series of disconnected props that will play a part in the action to come. In the first major action sequence, McCall finds himself in the seemingly ordinary office space of a Russian mobster. Upon his entering the room, the large number of security personnel and weapons signals that the odds are not in his favor. When the film switches to his point of view, however, viewers grasp how McCall perceives this space. In extreme closeup we see not only the gangsters situated in the room but also the soft spots in the villain’s security structures, together with objects that might help McCall achieve his goals. Viewers see images of a knife, vodka bottle, shot glass, and corkscrew as well as the villain’s weapons, signaling that these objects might play a part in the action sequence that follows. When anticipation escalates into action, the violence in the sequence plays 287

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out along the lines of what was communicated before. During the action McCall repurposes the observed objects as lethal weapons to get the upper hand on his foes by lodging the shot glasses into the eye socket of one opponent and utilizing several other objects to dispatch the remaining villains. In contrast to the Equalizer, where spatial awareness is linked to a distinct visual style, Machete (2010) integrates the anticipation of action with moments of dialogue while referencing objects in a similar way. During a dialogue-heavy scene that takes place before a house ambush action sequence, for example, the camera continuously cuts, in a seemingly random manner, to objects in the house that will later feature in the action sequence. When Luz (Michelle Rodríguez) prepares to make an egg, the film cuts to a close-up of her hand getting an egg from the carton. Instead of focusing on the action, a corkscrew is foregrounded in the shot and kept in focus during and after Luz has grabbed the egg. This emphasis on an object that has nothing to do with the action taking place is intended to arouse interest and anticipation within the viewer as to the role this object will take. When the action scene erupts some moments later, our suspicions are confirmed and Machete (played by Danny Trejo) picks up the corkscrew to stab a villain with lethal precision. This effect is played out several times throughout the film as Machete wields increasingly absurd weapons, such as a thermometer and garden utensils. During another ambush sequence, the film self-referentially pokes fun at this dynamic by letting its heroes exceed the expectations of the viewer regarding the lethality of certain objects. Despite the presence of fire weapons in the environment, the characters resort to using high heels, a painting, and an artistically-shaped paperweight in battle. By putting these mundane objects to whimsical yet devastating effect, Machete self-referentially pokes fun at how in killscapes everything can and will be used as a weapon. Films such as The Equalizer and Machete thus rewrite ordinary spatial and material dynamics and the role of standard props that therein become weapons of destruction. The treatment of interiors in “set-ups” function as action-oriented objects of attention. Through editing, attention is vested in everyday and more extraordinary objects to cue their importance for later narrative developments. Furthermore, close-ups of villains, often surrounding the hero or blocking possible entrances and exits, help viewers assess the odds of the hero surviving. In killscapes even the villains become elements of interiors; strategically positioned within the décor, they help frame spaces as menacing (see Figure 14.1). Entries and exits also contribute to how the action is understood. Action films have a logic of their own regarding the function of doors, windows, and walls. While they conventionally mark the boundaries of exterior and interior and raise expectations about things and people being revealed and concealed, these films feature heroes making highly inventive entrances and exits. Locked doors pose no threat to killscape heroes/ heroines. The question is not will a hero enter a specific setting but rather how. Scenes in which villains await the hero at the other side of a locked door are bountiful and help generate suspense as to whether the hero will survive an ambush of which he might or might not be aware. In a particular indoor scene in Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016, Zack Snyder), for example, a troupe of bad guys all point their guns towards the windows in anticipation of Batman’s arrival only to have the caped crusader enter 288

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Figure 14.1 Machete’s object of attention. Machete, directed by Robert Rodriguez. © 20th Century Fox 2010. All rights reserved.

through the floorboards. This is another example of how interiors are recontextualized through generic structures. The viewer’s relationship to the unfolding action is both cognitive and emotional, and both before and during action sequences the environments encourage viewers to think and feel together with the protagonist. Part of what makes these sequences tick are the semi-sensory experiences that allow a viewer to relate to the hero. A common narrative construct that adds tension has the hero and villain fight and grasp for a weapon that is just out of reach. Such moments make the spatial distances between objects and bodies palpable and involve the spectator at an affective/effective level in the setting and objects therein.

Crimes of passion The final aspect of killscapes discussed here focuses on relations between interior design and the expression of the interior emotions of fictional characters. Killscapes are often stylized in a way that conveys the emotional state of the hero, as evident in the hyperexpressive use of color. After movement, arguably color most strongly attracts viewers’ attention, thus action sequence settings are often characterized visually by a vibrant color palette, most commonly deep red and purple. In the apartment trashing scene in Atomic Blonde (2017, David Leitch), for example, they add to the highly charged mood of emotional aggression and hostility, while the saturated nature of the color seems to absorb and thus soften some of the violence. The stylistic excess thus achieved intensifies the human emotions on screen. Such use of color in action films is comparable to how 289

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Hollywood melodramas use it to express the inner turmoil and upheavals experienced by the characters.28 Another killscape strategy to heighten emotional intensity in action scenes involves turning the close quarters of the action film into a place of hyper-stylization detached from the visual logic of the rest of the film. In this aesthetic register, expressive colors, uncommon camera angles, distinctive musical cues, and other stylistic shifts provide a fitting visualization of the intrusive nature of action within the narrative. Such aesthetic transformation serves to soften the transition from non-action into action and to provide another dimension to the unfolding spectacle on screen. Skyfall’s (2012, Sam Mendes) Shanghai tower fight sequence provides just such a component to a generically-scripted action scene by partially obscuring both hero and villain through the electric blue light of a neon billboard. The hyper-stylized design can also accentuate the physical and environmental damage that is being enacted. In MI: Fallout (2018, Christopher McQuarrie), for example, strong bold lighting and the pure white palette of the bathroom of a Parisian nightclub accentuate the havoc wreaked and blood spilled. The externalization of characters’ internal passions is further displayed through the use of environmental forces in action scenes. Natural elements are put to work by pitting heroes and villains against each other in settings of extreme desolation or impending disaster. Adding acute elemental intrusions such as raging fire, rising water levels, or approaching whirlwinds to the threats the hero has to deal with heightens both the challenges faced by the hero and the metaphors for his struggle. Common extreme hazards such as fiery blazes are usually kept for the finale in which hero and villain fight. Quantum of Solace (2008, Marc Forster) pits James Bond against the chief villain while the surroundings literally go up in flames. As the fight intensifies, the set and décor crumbles spectacularly around them, leading to new interactions between men and their surroundings in ways that evoke the characters’ emotional states. Fire here heightens the emotional tensions, offers an almost literal manifestation for the anger and hate that engulf the combatants, and provides an extra component to the action. Films such as Cobra (1986, George P. Cosmatos), Die Hard 2 (1990, Renny Harlin), Shooter (2007, Antoine Fuqua), Ninja Assassin (2009, James McTeigue), and London Has Fallen (2016, Babak Najafi) all integrate fire into their crescendos and add to the drama by making it not only a threat to the hero but also a weapon he can utilize. More minimal settings can also express emotions. In action scenes the hero’s state of isolation and despair is often evoked by placing them in empty rooms or desolate spaces such as deserts or mountains. The MI: Fallout action finale takes place on top of an isolated rock plateau in Kashmir, the desolation of which is stressed through aerial wide shots. Similar effects are accomplished through isolated surroundings, such as Bond’s abandoned family manor in Scotland at the end of Skyfall. Such settings not only provide filmmakers with opportunities to portray enormous amounts of destruction without fear of civilian casualties but also endow action scenes with a degree of intimacy, not least because they serve as close-quarter fighting arenas detached from the outside world. 290

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In killscapes the type of action commonly changes along with the setting. Gunplay, car chases, and physically remote types of violence are abandoned in favor of hand-tohand combat that adds greater physical intensity to the action scenes. Symbolism is also present: the thematic arcs of both MI: Fallout and Skyfall relate to the construction of heroic legacies and the burden of past mistakes. In the latter, Bond returns to his childhood estate and confronts the ghosts of his past. In the former, the referencing is more intertextual: the cliff location is an overt homage to the opening scene of Mission Impossible 2 (2000, John Woo), and is designed to interact with the franchise’s own mythology (see Figure 14.2). A final way in which setting contributes to heightened emotional intensity is the expression of psychological power relations through character staging and positioning. Attaining the upper hand is synonymous with characters literally struggling to occupy higher ground—to relocate vertically. Films such as Die Hard, The Raid (2011, Gareth Evans), and Dredd (2012, Pete Travis) use these spatial dynamics as a framework for structuring narrative progress. Upward movement drives the story’s development because the hero has to reach a high floor of a building in order to fight the villain. Ascension signals progress and any setback in the hero’s quest is accompanied by a literal drop. Feelings of powerlessness and frustration on the part of the hero are expressed by positioning the villain in ways that he is withheld from the hero’s vengeful grasp. In the middle of the action finale of Specter (2015, Sam Mendes), Bond thinks he has finally captured his nemesis Blofeld and fires his gun, only to find Blofeld unharmed. It is revealed (by using an architectural quadrature) that Blofeld appeared to stand before him while actually hiding behind a wall of bulletproof glass. Such clever scenarios featuring high-tech special effects are plentiful in the action-film genre and are used to externalize

Figure 14.2 MI: Fallout’s isolated arenas. Mission Impossible: Fallout, directed by Christopher McQuarrie. © Paramount Pictures 2018. All rights reserved. 291

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Figure 14.3 Close-quarters combat in Atomic Blonde, directed by David Leitch. © Focus Features 2017. All rights reserved. and maximize the action hero’s frustrations. So close, yet seemingly always out of reach, the villain often taunts the hero at the end of a second act action sequence in order to raise the dramatic stakes. By way of mise-en-scène and cinematographic distortions, filmmakers structure space so as to make the action both anticipated and desired by the spectator, establish a sense of threat, and contribute to the perception that violence is a warranted course of action. Prior to the initiation of the action sequence, filmmakers communicate a sense of entrapment in order to heighten tension and establish a situation through which the hero can only escape by using violence. This is achieved primarily through placing heroes in enclosed settings and ambush situations. Atomic Blonde, for example, showcases this in several sequences by making its heroine escape from increasingly claustrophobic situations: a narrow staircase, an apartment ambush, a moving car. While progress in the larger narrative framework of the film often relates to rising to higher grounds, individual action scenes are all about creating space. They often start with a close-quarter fight for survival between the hero attempting to escape and a group of villains trying to stop him. To evoke feelings of confinement and hopelessness, filmmakers utilize a rapid succession of close-ups of the actors, while putting villains in tight formations and cramming the spaces with objects. By intensifying the level of threat, the violence enacted by the hero can more easily be read as an act of self-defense. In this manner, strategies of editing, character positioning, and expressive set design are utilized to legitimize the violent actions taking place at the hands of the film’s protagonist (see Figure 14.3).

Conclusion This chapter has shown that killscapes deliver greater narrative coherence and heightened affective intensity to action sequences within the US action-movie genre. In doing so it offers a better understanding than previously available of the formal characteristics 292

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defining these moments and the cognitive processes they engage with. By outlining and analyzing the characteristics of killscapes and the various roles that interiors and settings play in US action films, this chapter shows that, as Jones attests, “settings in which action takes place are not unimportant containers but vital motivators that shape this action,” and how action is spatially organized and visually communicated.29 By playing with generic conventions and spatial and material dynamics, filmmakers engage the spectator more intensely in moments of violent action by setting up expectations and subsequently confirming or subverting them. The concept of a killscape encourages the consideration of action sequences as multilayered, dynamic, and defining components of action movies, and adds to our understanding of action sequences.

Notes 1. Barry Langford, Film Genre: Hollywood and Beyond (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), 233. 2. Eric Lichtenfeld, Action Speaks Louder: Violence, Spectacle, and the American Action Movie (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2007); Lisa Purse, Contemporary Action Cinema (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011); Yvonne Tasker, The Hollywood Action and Adventure Film (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2015). 3. Thomas Sobchack, “Interiors: The Space of Melodrama,” in Paul Loukides and Linda K. Fuller (eds.), Beyond the Stars: Locales in American popular film, 261–78 (Madison, WI: Popular Press, 1993); Andrew Higson, “Re-presenting the National Past: Nostalgia and Pastiche in the Heritage Film,” in Lester Friedman (ed.), Fires Were Started: British Cinema and Thatcherism, 2nd edn., 91–109 (New York: Wallflower Press, 2007). 4. Tom Conley, “Stages of Film Noir,” Theatre Journal 39, no. 3 (October 1987): 347–63; Charles Shiro Tashiro, Pretty Pictures: Production Design and the History of Film (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998); Elisabeth Bronfen, Home in Hollywood: The Imaginary Geography of Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004). 5. Ewa Lajer-Burcharth and Beate Söntgen, Interiors and Interiority (Berlin and Boston: de Gruyter, 2016). 6. Vincent LoBrutto, The Filmmaker’s Guide to Production Design (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., 2002); Jane Barnwell, Production Design: Architects of the Screen (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004). 7. Geoff King, Spectacular Narratives: Hollywood in the Age of the Blockbuster (London: I.B. Tauris, 2000); David Bordwell, The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006); Wanda Strauven (ed.), The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006); Scott Higgins, “Suspenseful Situations: Melodramatic Narrative and the Contemporary Action Film,” Cinema Journal 47, no. 2 (Winter 2008): 74–96; Harvey O’Brien, Action Movies: The Cinema of Striking Back (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 1. 8. Richard Dyer, “Action!” in José Arroyo (ed.), Action/Spectacle Cinema: A Sight and Sound Reader, 17–20 (London: British Film Institute, 2000). 9. King, Spectacular Narratives, 35. 10. O’Brien, Action Movies, 11.

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Screen Interiors 11. Jill Forbes, “Pierrot le fou and Post-New Wave French Cinema,” in Will Higbee and Sarah Leahy (eds.), Studies in French Cinema: UK Perspectives, 1985–2010, 137 (Bristol: Intellect Ltd., 2011). 12. Nick Jones, Hollywood Action Films and Spatial Theory (London: Routledge, 2015), 145. 13. Jones, Hollywood Action Films, 2. 14. Lisa Purse, “Digital Heroes in Contemporary Hollywood: Exertion, Identification, and the Virtual Action Body,” Film Criticism 32, no. 1 (September 2007), 5–25. 15. Jones, Hollywood Action Films, 1–2. 16. Jones, Hollywood Action Films, 85. 17. Jones, Hollywood Action Films, 154. 18. Purse, Contemporary Action Cinema, 63. 19. Tim Bergfelder, Sue Harris, and Sarah Street, Film Architecture and the Transnational Imagination: Set Design in 1930s European Cinema (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2007), 27. 20. Bordwell, The Way Hollywood Tells It, 119. 21. O’Brien, Action Movies, 11. 22. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 19. 23. Charles Affron and Mirella Jona Affron, Sets in Motion: Art Direction and Film Narrative (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995), 82. 24. Affron and Affron, Sets in Motion, 51. 25. David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film (London: Routledge, 1985). 26. King, Spectacular Narratives, 71. 27. Peter Wollen, Paris Hollywood: Writings on Film (New York: Verso, 2002), 12. 28. Thomas Elsaesser, “Tales of Sound and Fury,” in Marcia Landy (ed.), Imitations of Life: A Reader on Film & Television Melodrama, 68–91 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991). 29. Jones, Hollywood Action Films, 145.

Bibliography Affron, Charles and Mirella Jona Affron. Sets in Motion: Art Direction and Film Narrative. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995. Barnwell, Jane. Production Design: Architects of the Screen. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Translated by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982. Bergfelder, Tim, Sue Harris, and Sarah Street. Film Architecture and the Transnational Imagination: Set Design in 1930s European Cinema. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2007/2010. Bordwell, David. Narration in the Fiction Film. London: Routledge, 1985. Bordwell, David. The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies. Berkeley : University of California Press, 2006. Bronfen, Elisabeth. Home in Hollywood: The Imaginary Geography of Cinema. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.

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Designed to Destroy Conley, Tom. “Stages of Film Noir.” Theatre Journal 39, no. 3 (October 1987): 347–63. Dyer, Richard. “Action!” In José Arroyo (ed.), Action/Spectacle Cinema, 17–21. London: British Film Institute, 2000. Elsaesser, Thomas. “Tales of Sound and Fury.” In Marcia Landy (ed.), Imitations of Life: A Reader on Film & Television Melodrama, 68–92. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991. Forbes, Jill. “Pierrot le fou and Post-New Wave French Cinema.” In Will Higbee and Sarah Leahy (eds.), Studies in French Cinema: UK Perspectives, 1985–2010, 27–41. Bristol: Intellect Books, 2011. Higgins, Scott. “Suspenseful Situations: Melodramatic Narrative and the Contemporary Action Film.” Cinema Journal 47, no. 2 (Winter 2008): 74–96. Higson, Andrew. “Re-presenting the National Past: Nostalgia and Pastiche in the Heritage Film.” In Lester Friedman (ed.), Fires Were Started: British Cinema and Thatcherism, 2nd edition, 91–109. New York: Wallflower Press, 2007. Jones, Nick. Hollywood Action Films and Spatial Theory. London: Routledge, 2015. King, Geoff. Spectacular Narratives: Hollywood in the Age of the Blockbuster. London: I.B. Tauris, 2000. Lajer-Burcharth, Ewa and Beate Söntgen. Interiors and Interiority. Berlin and Boston: de Gruyter, 2016. Langford, Barry. Film Genre: Hollywood and Beyond. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005. Lichtenfeld, Eric. Action Speaks Louder: Violence, Spectacle, and the American Action Movie. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2007. LoBrutto, Vincent. The Filmmaker’s Guide to Production Design. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., 2002. O’Brien, Harvey. Action Movies: The Cinema of Striking Back. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012. Purse, Lisa. “Digital Heroes in Contemporary Hollywood: Exertion, Identification, and the Virtual Action Body.” Film Criticism 32, no. 1 (September 2007): 5–25. Purse, Lisa. Contemporary Action Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011. Sobchack, Tom. “Interiors: The Space of Melodrama.” In Paul Loukides and Linda K. Fuller (eds.), Beyond the Stars: Locales in American Popular Film, 261–78. Madison, WI: Popular Press, 1990. Strauven, Wanda (ed.). The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006. Tashiro, Charles Shiro. Pretty Pictures: Production Design and the History Film. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998. Tasker, Yvonne. The Hollywood Action and Adventure Film. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2015. Whitehead, Jean. Creating Interior Atmosphere: Mise-en-scène and Interior Design. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017. Wollen, Peter. Paris Hollywood: Writings on Film. New York: Verso, 2002.

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PART 6 LIVING IN OUTER SPACE: SCI-FI INTERIORS

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CHAPTER 15 VISIONS OF HOME: NOSTALGIA AND MOBILITY, PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE, IN SERENITY ’S DOMESTIC SPACESHIP INTERIOR Sorcha O’Brien

This chapter considers the layering of past, present, and future in the domestic interiors of the spaceship Serenity depicted in two linked productions from the early 2000s: Joss Whedon’s television series Firefly (2002), and its sequel feature film Serenity (2005). Whedon considered both of these to be “space Westerns,” a rare mixture of genres that layers aspects of the Western, including a consideration of the past, onto the future of science fiction, while seeking to provide insightful commentary on the present.1 Any film in this hybrid genre is complicated by the history of both genres in cinema and television, where the weight of filmic representation often brings to the viewing experience its own set of associations that tend to idealize both the past and a variety of versions of the future. While there has been quite a lot written about the narrative, characterization, and fan activity surrounding the series, this chapter focuses on the communal living spaces of the spaceship Serenity, which constitute the chief diegetic domestic environment for the principal characters, as well as the main sets for both the television series and the feature film.2 Drawing upon the work of Svetlana Boym on nostalgia, and referring back to older, more familiar models of domesticity in the United States that express a nostalgic mourning for the past in a dystopian future, this chapter considers how these interiors present a multilayered commentary on the meaning of home in the early twenty-first century, especially in the post-9/11 United States.3

Firefly (2002) and Serenity (2005): plot synopses The main nine characters shared by the television series and the film are the crew members and passengers of the Firefly-class transport spaceship Serenity, eking out a living by doing dodgy deals and avoiding the law on the edges of inhabited space 500 years in the future. The misfit crew of the Serenity includes two former soldiers from the losing side of the war against “the Alliance,” an amalgamation of the two surviving Earth superpowers, the United States and China. Earth itself is long gone, and humanity has spread to numerous “civilized” “inner planets,” as well as the “outer planets,” which remain in various stages of terraforming and are mostly similar in terrain to the American Wild West. The narrative arc of both the television series and the film is driven by three things: a variety of illegal jobs taken on by the crew, mostly smuggling; the influence of a group 299

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of passengers taken on by the crew of the ship in the first episode of the series, particularly River Tam, a child prodigy who has been experimented on by the government and is now on the run with her doctor brother, Simon; and encounters with groups of the mysterious cannibalistic “Reavers.”4 The story of the 2005 film begins after the end of the television series, which was cancelled after one series, and is based on the narrative arc of the planned second series which was intended to delve deeper into River’s conditioning by a secret government laboratory.5 The Serenity spaceship is the main set used throughout both the series and the film, and is the central visual point of continuity between them. Indeed, the director Whedon has referred to the ship as “The 10th Character” in the DVD commentaries.6 In this discussion, I focus on the ship’s communal living spaces as shown in both the television series and the film. Taken together they constitute the main domestic environment for the main cast of characters, and appear repeatedly, particularly throughout the series.7

The future of nostalgia The idea of nostalgia dates back to the nineteenth century, where the idea of being homesick for a place you have left was extended to “a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning” to return to the past.8 Svetlana Boym discusses nostalgia not just in terms of loss and displacement experienced by refugees and émigrés, and the yearning for a lost childhood home, but as “a romance with one’s own fantasy.”9 She positions nostalgia, not just as an individual response to ideas of modern progress and increasingly rapid change, but as a common cultural “meditation on history and passage of time.” She calls this “reflective nostalgia,” where the shattered fragments of memory are reassembled to tell a common cultural narrative about identity through a deferred, impossible homecoming to a place that does not exist anymore.10 This idea was of particular importance during the late twentieth century and into the twenty-first, particularly in the United States after 9/11, where the optimistic visions of the future that circulated in earlier years no longer seemed relevant. Indeed, Boym says that these visions of the future were “discarded like an outmoded spaceship sometime in the 1960s,” left behind due to the realities of economic and social crises.11 One result of this failure of utopian futures was a longing for a supposedly more stable and idyllic past, where abstractions such as “the homeland” were uncomplicated, safe, and not a cause for anxiety.12 Boym positions nostalgia as a cinematic “double exposure or superimposition of two images”—home and abroad, past and present, dream and everyday life—as well as lost and imagined futures wherein both geographies and time periods are layered over each other.13

Science fiction and the Western As the main television and film genre that deals with hypothetical futures, science fiction has a long history of using non-realistic tropes, from aliens and time travel to psychic 300

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communication, in order to explore the boundaries of the possible, from the scientifically theoretical to the fanciful. However, it is the very unlikeliness of these tropes that allows the filmmaker’s imagination a very free rein, not just to extrapolate out from our current knowledge of the universe and practice of science and technology, but also to examine the cultural and political implications of the present. Science fiction works as allegory, where aliens can stand in for fascists to be fought, robots can symbolize fears and anxieties about technology to be played out on a galactic stage, and mutants can represent “coming out” on a more personal scale.14 This allegorical function may occasionally work in a directly prophetic manner, such as author Arthur C. Clarke’s prediction of geosynchronous satellites in 1945, or have a direct influence, such as the impact of the 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Stanley Kubrick) spaceship interiors on Raymond Loewy’s design work on the Skylab space station in the early 1970s.15 However, more often science fiction operates in a cautionary fashion, examining a possible future scenario that is intentionally extrapolated out from the present and using science fiction narratives to explore whether it is a world we, as viewers, would want to live in.16 The need for realism within the diegesis of a film, including space Westerns, means that even when science fiction film and television deal with fantasy and the future, the sets need to be recognizable by the audience. This is most consistently and successfully achieved by projecting the present, or the past, into the future, staging both exteriors and interiors that take the familiar and make them strange. This allows the genre to stage homes and interiors that work across not just space, but time, providing continuity, such as the extrapolation of US military organization and ship design to military spaceships of the future in the rebooted Battlestar Galactica (2004–9) and The Expanse (2015– present). Frederick Jameson describes the nostalgia film as starting in the 1970s with American Graffiti (1973, George Lucas), which depicted growing up in 1960s California.17 US film and television tend to use science fiction to portray possible futures, but a range of genres, including the Western, to portray the past. This also works reflexively within the genres themselves; for example, the original Star Wars film (1977, George Lucas) evoked nostalgia for the science fiction of the 1950s, while depicting desert landscapes on the planet Tatooine that also refer back to the typical setting of the Western.18 The television series Firefly (2002) coincided with the second film in the second Star Wars trilogy (1999, 2002, and 2005, George Lucas) and Serenity came out in the same year as the final film in that trilogy. A key Hollywood genre for the first six decades of the twentieth century, Western films were most popular between the 1930s and the 1960s, and there was a considerable revival of interest in the genre in the 1990s. The early Westerns eulogized the untamed US West, focusing in particular on the frontier, which came to represent the divide between “civilization” on the one hand and the wilderness (or lack of civilization) on the other. The legacy of the Western genre in US film and television includes a vision of the US frontier, as presented by directors such as John Ford and Sam Peckinpah, that came to replace the actual frontier in the national popular imagination.19 While the lived experience of the “American West” may have involved subsistence farming, fur trapping, the building of the railroads, and the telegraph system, a bloody civil war and the 301

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displacement and genocide of Native populations, the romanticizing of the “American West” in literature, film, and other media led to a codified version of it that focused on tropes such as the figure of the independent cowboy, revenge narratives, wagon trains transporting pioneers westward, and desert landscapes. The nostalgia for the American West contributed to a specifically white American mythic past, and the presentation of narratives that provide closure and resolution in a simplified manner to knotty issues about race, class, and gender in the United States.20 In the case of Firefly, both the ship’s captain, Mal, and his second-in-command, Zoë, are exsoldiers from the losing side of a civil war patterned loosely on the American Civil War of 1861–5, which immediately links them to both the historical event itself and its depiction in Western film, from films such as Fort Apache (1948, John Ford) through A Fistful of Dollars (1964, Sergio Leone) to The Hateful Eight (2015, Quentin Tarantino). Both television and film are able to rework genre elements into new narratives, as they operate at the level of visual and narrative allusion, both within the genre itself as well as the original setting.21 For example, a cowboy hat can reference many things, from the traditional headgear of American cattle herders to individual actors closely associated with the genre like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood, and the repetition of genre elements means that every appearance of a cowboy hat brings with it associations with individualism, violence, and particular representations of masculinity.22 Film scholar Christine Sprengler points to the generation of “multiple layers of meaning that enrich the filmic text and the cinematic experience and produce analytical pleasure for the invested spectator.”23 The process of identifying genre tropes further enriches and augments meanings both inside and outside the narrative, all of which contribute to the audience’s understanding and enjoyment.24 It is the combination of the recognizable tropes of the Western with those of science-fiction genres that work so well in Firefly (2002) and Serenity (2005).

Science fiction mobility: American submarines, trailers, and spaceships The domestic interiors in both the Firefly television series and the later film serve as multi-level commentaries on the US home, thus evoking a very specific view of domestic life in space. In contrast to the glossy science fiction future presented in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and the Star Trek series of television programs and films (1966–present), Whedon’s creations share a lot more with the “used future” developed by filmmaker George Lucas for Star Wars: A New Hope (1977), where the Millennium Falcon spaceship was presented as “a dingy Dumpster full of boiler parts, dirty dishes and decomposing upholstery.”25 In addition, the interiors of the International Space Station (ISS), which was first inhabited in November 2000 while Firefly was in development, demonstrate closely packed and seemingly chaotic spaces that are shared by the astronauts and cosmonauts of the participant nations.26 The communal domestic spaces of the Serenity are closer to this messy reality than the Raymond Loewy-designed interiors of NASA’s ill-fated Skylab, which only orbited the Earth for nine months in 1973 and 1974. 302

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Communal activities, whether hacking, practical jokes, or simple communal meals have been noted by space researchers as important for the psychological stability that they offer for a crew separated, not just from their family and friends, but from their entire planet of origin.27 Although the Serenity’s interiors are completely fictional, designed and built as part of the production of a TV series and rebuilt for the film, and primarily representing the narrative demands of the scriptwriters and director rather than any lived reality, they cast light on one vision of what living in space might be like in the future, as imagined shortly after the first USSR–US crew had moved into the ISS in 2000. The role of imagining an appropriate physical environment for filming is the job of the production designer who works in conjunction with the director to find or design a physical location and who designs sets that not only facilitate the material practice of acting and filming, but support the emotional tone and resonance of the narrative.28 Production designer Carey Meyer and his team meticulously worked out the layout of the Serenity spaceship as part of the development process for the TV series, working from thumbnail sketches, through refined drawings, paper and clay models, up to 3D renderings and technical drawings, which were then used to construct two sets at 20th Century-Fox Studios in Los Angeles.29 These sets were then dressed by set decorator David A. Koneff, who sourced the interior furnishings, to create an intentionally cluttered “lived-in” aesthetic.30 The difference from the practice of interior design and architecture, however, is not just in the temporary nature of the construction, but also because the view through the camera lens is the primary concern of the director and cinematographer, and therefore what appears on screen can sometimes bear little resemblance to the layout of the physical set.31 These particular sets are quite unusual in television or film practice in that each one locates an arrangement of interiors in their correct spatial relationship to each other, something which has been commented on by several of the actors in the DVD commentaries as helping them to get into character by imagining the spaceship as a real location.32 Although the fictional ship has the full complement of work areas—a bridge, an engine room, an infirmary, a cargo hold, and cabins for crew and passengers— the domestic spaces of the dining room/lounge on the upper level and the common area on the lower are the two shared rooms not dedicated to work of some sort, and are the focus of this analysis. The design of the interior sets reflects the overall positioning of the characters as a group of individuals making a home on the edges of space, with parallels to the pioneers making a home on the frontier, often in land seen to be “empty” despite the existence of Native Americans.33 The program has been criticized for the token Orientalizing ways in which Chinese culture was featured—the main cast is white, African American, and Latin American, and the only direct references to China are occasional Mandarin advertisements and swear words.34 This cultural power structure is reproduced in the US-influenced set interiors, which are predominantly dressed with Western furniture and furnishings, with occasional Asian elements such as lacquered tableware and chopsticks in the kitchen, and a set of Chinese dragons in the upstairs lounge area, paired with a Native American dreamcatcher (see Figure 15.1).35 303

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Figure 15.1 The kitchen and lounge areas of the Serenity spaceship, showing the yellow interior with decorative paintwork, metal infrastructure, and aircraft galley storage unit. It also shows the Chinese dragons and Native American dreamcatcher in the lounge area, and the initial configuration of chairs around the kitchen table in the pilot episode. “Firefly” © 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation 2002–3. All rights reserved.

The interior of the spaceship follows a long tradition of moving vehicles constructed primarily from metal, and Meyer intentionally based the interior structure of the ship on submarine design, including structural elements such as airlocks instead of doors between rooms, as well as expanses of uncovered metal. Elements of aircraft design are also used to reinforce this set of associations with long-distance travel, including a large standard aircraft galley storage unit in the kitchen area (see Figure 15.1).36 Nonetheless, it is the submarine that provides the underlying structure of both spaceship and set. The set of interlinked rooms allows for long takes following characters through the whole length of the ship, reminiscent of submarine films going back to Das Boot (1981, Wolfgang Petersen).37 Although the set dressing is civilian, as are the crew, it is possible to see the echo of Mal and Zoë’s military service in the structure of the Serenity spaceship. The sets also reference mobile homes, also known as trailers, that formed a living space for increasing numbers of people in the United States from the 1930s onwards. This was a transitional object somewhere between a car and a house, which was constructed using aircraft technology and construction methods, with aluminum sheets fixed over shaped ribs and wraparound windows, and in the postwar era it offered both housing for low-income families and a recreational vehicle for the better off.38 Many of the interior furnishings were similar to those in static domestic residences, particularly curtains, valances, and Venetian blinds, often using simple patterns such as gingham, associated with the myth of the Western frontier.39 The physical layout of the Serenity demonstrates these echoes between the trailer and the fictional future spaceship. One 304

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Figure 15.2 The downstairs common area in the film Serenity (2005), furnished with yellow modern furniture and rya rugs. Serenity, directed by Joss Whedon. © Universal Pictures 2005. All rights reserved.

particular type of mobile home popular in the mid-1950s was the bi-level trailer, which provided extra space by stacking rooms on two levels, with stairs to the upper rooms.40 This layout is not dissimilar to that of the Serenity, which is also constructed with a metal structure on two levels, with similar staircases up to the kitchen, bridge, and engine room from the passenger quarters, infirmary, and common area (see Figure 15.2, where the camera is poised on the staircase down to the common area). Although much of the practical mobility has been lost from the later immobilization of many mobile homes in trailer parks, the symbolic mobility of the trailer has lingered. It stands for the idea of mobility and the freedom to move, even if you never actually do so. The static mobile home has not occupied a valued place in the American imaginary for some decades now, as many people consider both trailers and residents as poor, disposable failures, generally kept going in a cycle of recycling and repair of parts.41 Trailer parks epitomize the dark side of the “American Dream,” where both the trailer and its inhabitants are considered to be metaphorical trash, a by-product of American technological success.42 Dina Smith argues that “The fifties trailer, perhaps this century’s most modern and most obsolete object, speaks of the wonders of modernity (speed, travel, technology, future) as well as its failures (poverty, dislocation, homelessness).”43 The Serenity and her “trailer trash” crew embody both these polarities, as the vehicle and its residents speed between inhabited planets and moons in their spaceship, but rely on smuggling, conning, swindling, and occasionally theft to bring in sufficient money to live on.44

Domesticity: Westerns and California Modern In comparison to the metallic mobile origins of the Serenity spacecraft itself, the interior decoration of the spaceship plays with the layering of references to different versions of 305

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the American home. The director Whedon desired a “homely atmosphere” in the ship, and production designer Corey Meyer used color to mark the different interior functions, with the communal areas of the ship painted in warm, earthy shades of yellow and brown (see Figures 15.1 and 15.3).45 Furthermore, a repeated flower pattern is painted on the exposed columns and bulkheads in the kitchen, which domesticates and softens the cold metal structure in the absence of furnishing fabrics such as curtains. This decorative element is supposed to have been carried out by Kaylee, the earthy “prairie girl” engineer character, emphasizing an association between interior decoration and women.46 The wall stenciling is similar to that used in domestic interiors, from the colonial period to the early nineteenth century, as a cheap alternative to wallpaper and wallpaper borders.47 This visual reference to early American decorating styles works to re-emphasize the “American” nature of the space. This works in conjunction with “Western” genre elements in the series, from horses to saloon bars and bordellos, as well as narrative elements such as the train robbery (one episode is called “The Train Job”) and the class divide between “society” and roughnecks (another episode, “Shindig,” centers on Mal and Kaylee’s incongruous attendance at a society party).48 Whedon acknowledges his cinematographic debt to the numerous Westerns directed by John Ford, as well as later revisionist Westerns such as Heaven’s Gate (1980, Michael Cimino).49 This is particularly notable in Ford’s careful composition of every shot, particularly long exterior shots of desert landscapes, as well as interior chiaroscuro lighting.50 This form of lighting is used in the interior kitchen scenes in The Searchers (1956, John Ford), where family life is continually framed around a long wooden table

Figure 15.3 The lounge area off the kitchen is being used by the characters for a card game, with a set of mismatched armchairs, including two brown Barcelona chairs, from the episode “Ariel.” Firefly © 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation 2002–3. All rights reserved.

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surrounded by mismatched chairs, repeatedly used as a location for significant group discussions.51 These influences can be seen in meal scenes in the Serenity’s kitchen, where the focus is on a different type of family coming together over a meal: firstly as part of the ritual welcoming of new passengers to the ship, and then as a celebration of group bonds developed through adversity. The director and design team did not make any visual reference to the small perch-style eating currently used in the ISS, partly because of the budget constraints involved in replicating zero gravity on camera, but chose rather to feature Firefly’s large wooden table and thus make a direct visual link back to the domestic interior of eating spaces in Western genre films. Set decorator David Koneff ’s dressing of the eating area includes a mix of traditional wooden kitchen chairs around the table, mixed with mid-twentieth-century-style tubular metal cantilevered and pedestal chairs (see Figure 15.1).52 The redressing of the kitchen area set took place when sets were taken down and reconstructed, firstly between the pilot and the series, and again between the series and the film. The configuration of chairs changes throughout the series and the film, and some are replaced, thus implying a constant practice of scavenging for furnishings. This changing configuration of furniture works to reinforce the poor, marginal status of the crew and the desperate strategies adopted by the engineer Kaylee in order to keep the ship running.53 It gives material form to Whedon’s desire to construct a cluttered “homely” interior, in line with his idea that “People on the edge of space accumulate as many things as they can that make them feel as though they’re at home.”54 His position that such a “homely” interior consisted of accumulated clutter ties in with Judy Attfield’s ideas about “wild things,” where assemblages of objects in the home operate as a symbolic system, ordering domestic life and representing the inhabitants’ view of the world, in this case that of the characters.55 The battered cantilevered metal chairs mixed in with other chairs around the kitchen table form the basis of another layer of mimetic allusion within Firefly, which is taken up in the open plan lounge area situated off the kitchen (see Figure 15.1). This area is furnished with a mix of well-used leather club chairs, which also change position and combination from pilot to series to film. Notably, these chairs include two brown “Barcelona” chairs (see Figure 15.3), which were designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in the 1920s, put into mass production in the United States by Knoll in 1953, and regarded as high-profile mid-century modern pieces.56 In her discussion of postwar California Modern interiors, Pat Kirkham has noted the use of mismatched armchairs and sofas placed in an informal arrangement, often around a coffee table, as characteristic of a “studied informality” within the home.57 A feature of California Modern, Kirkham also highlights the way in which space flowed between different areas within the home, with each demarcated by different types of furniture and furnishings, including area rugs. The sheltered living space off the Serenity’s kitchen evokes the coziness and informality of the conversation and relaxation alcove in the Eames House (1945–49, Charles and Ray Eames) in Pacific Palisades, California, both in its relationship to the main space marked out by floor coverings, as well as its comfortable furniture.58 This informal “Mid-Century Modern” sensibility is continued in the downstairs lounge of the spaceship, which is both the main circulation space on the lower deck and 307

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also a place where characters relax. It is furnished with yellow furniture, again placed informally in conversation groups (see Figure 15.2). In the television series, this furniture included a rather collapsed Maralunga sofa and armchairs, designed by Vico Magistretti in 1973. In keeping with the idea of scavenged furniture, these are replaced in the film by a similar Kingston sofa and armchair set, designed in 1967 by William Plunkett.59 The cold metallic wall grids of the spaceship are offset by the warmth of the bright yellow upholstery and floors covered in blue and orange rya rugs. These brightly patterned Finnish rugs were common floor coverings in Scandinavia from the late nineteenth century, and were imported into the United States in large numbers in the mid-twentieth century alongside Scandinavian modern furniture, again emphasizing a “modern” mid-century visual sensibility made material within the common areas.60 It is not a coincidence that these layers of visual allusion suggest a looser, more ad hoc domestic Modernism of the mid-twentieth century, an area of design in which there was a huge interest at the time the series and film were made.61 The optimism for the future experienced in the postwar United States has been widely discussed, both in political and design terms, and it is a period characterized by “self-mythologising,” partly in response to significant anxieties about the Cold War.62 There is an imprecision evident in more recent nostalgia for the postwar period, which bleeds over from the chronological decade of the 1950s into what Frederic Jameson calls the Barthesian myth of “Fiftiesness.”63 In the case of Firefly, visual references to the mid-century United States seem to blur into a mass of yellow and chrome furniture that includes pieces designed from the 1920s to the early 1970s. Bevan calls this “boomer nostalgia,” referring to the postwar period (from 1945 to the 1970s) which holds significant nostalgic power for the generation of “baby boomers” who were born and grew up during that period.64 This use of furniture and furnishings to evoke nostalgia operates at one level within the story, and at another for the audience, who read the symbolism differently from the characters, who have lost the meaning of their cultural references to California and the American Western along with the expired “Earth That Was.” The design team worked to interpret the director’s original ideas about the television series as a space Western, and added more layers of references to the narrative about home and domesticity, as the visual references to submarines, trailers, the American West, and postwar modern design work together to root the narrative in a palimpsest of US domestic interiors. Firefly makes visual and narrative allusions to both the twentieth-century Western genre and to the Western United States in the late nineteenth century, operating as “restorative nostalgia,” whereby symbols of home are reconstructed by people who are feeling destabilized in order to feel in control of matters.65 Again, this operates on two levels, where the crew of the Serenity diegetically furnish their home with ever-changing second-hand clutter in order to feel less adrift in hostile space, but also for the viewer, where the deliberate archaism of the Western mise-en-scène in Firefly resonates for an early twenty-first-century American audience worried about the roots and stability of its nationhood.

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Conclusion The combination of genre tropes from both Westerns and science fiction, such as the frontier kitchen and the submarine interior, by the Firefly production team led to an idiosyncratic mix of references for a television series and film set in the future. The main set may have been designed as a mobile metal interior, but the mix of furnishing styles discussed above reflects the synthesis of narratives, which mix Western plots such as the train robbery with science-fiction tropes about an augmented human escaping a totalitarian government.66 Reusing and reworking familiar elements with particular sets of associations and meanings of “home,” the production team combined them in a bricolage that mingles visual references to spaceships and submarines with references to domesticity in the United States from nineteenth-century frontier homes and landscapes to 1950s Westerns, as intended by the director. However, it is the further inclusion of visual references to postwar modern furniture and interiors, and the mobile home, that reveals the mimetic power of production design to combine visual references to create and augment meaning by adding another layer to Whedon’s original premise. These additional references to other iconic types of American domestic interiors add more layers to the messages about family and home via stories about a nomadic crew who become, and see themselves as, a family and continue to gather around a kitchen table for dinner. On the one hand, the Serenity set harks back to both nineteenth- and twentiethcentury US models of home, especially as filtered through a Hollywood lens, while on the other hand, it emphasizes the idea of mobility and mobile environments that take that home “on the road.” It is this layering of past, present, and future that supports the vision of home that Firefly presented in the first years of the twenty-first century. It may be scruffy and ad hoc, but it reveals layers that look to the past of the “American West” and the Western, as well as that of the mid-twentieth century. However, that past also contains references to a shiny imagined future that never happened, as the mid-century certainties of space exploration and spaceship design faded and were cancelled. The 1950s idea of home as a safe, secure haven from anxieties about the Cold War became less stable through the late twentieth century, especially in the early twenty-first century after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The latter caused a ramping up of geopolitical tension, and the future viewed from the United States in 2002, when the television series was released, seemed full of anxieties without much hope of a positive future to counterbalance them, hence the turn to mythologized pasts. The very mobility of the Serenity is presented as a survival strategy, where the efforts of the crew are focused on “keeping flying,” no matter how ramshackle the craft or dysfunctional the crew. At the same time, the associations of mobility in relation to the home allow a complex play of nostalgia to work through both the television series and film. The layering of mythologies into the set design and dressing work to reinforce the longing for home amongst both characters and audience. However, as the object of nostalgia is by definition unobtainable, the idea of a terrestrial home is rejected by the narrative, bringing attention

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back around to the domestic interior of the spaceship itself, which becomes home in the same way that the crew and passengers become family.

Notes 1. Frederick Blichert, “ ‘Better Worlds’: Western Heroes and the Civilized ‘Verse,’ ” in Frederick Blichert (ed.), Joss Whedon’s Big Damn Movie: Essays on Serenity, 70–2 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2018); John Wills, “Firefly and the Space Western: Frontier Fiction on Fast Forward,” in Michael Goodrum and Phillip Smith (eds.), Firefly Revisited: Essays on Joss Whedon’s Classic Series, 1–18 (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015). Films such as Westworld (1973) and Outland (1981) share the “space Western” label, as does the recent television remake of Westworld (2016–present) and the Star Wars spin-off series The Mandalorian (2019–present), but they do not directly introduce Western aesthetic elements into spaceship design or interiors. 2. Jane Espenson and Glenn Yeffeth (eds.), Finding Serenity: Anti-Heroes, Lost Shepherds and Space Hookers in Joss Whedon’s Firefly (Dallas: BenBella Books, 2004); Rhonda V. Wilcox and Tanya R. Cochran (eds.), Investigating Firefly and Serenity: Science Fiction on the Frontier (London: I.B. Tauris, 2008); Jane Espenson and Leah Wilson (eds.), Serenity Found: More Unauthorized Essays in Joss Whedon’s Firefly Universe (Dallas: BenBella Publications, 2007). In order to avoid confusion, I will refer to the spaceship as the Serenity, to the first episode of the Firefly (2002) television series as “Serenity” and the eponymous film as Serenity (2005). 3. Sharon Sutherland and Sarah Swan, “ ‘The Alliance Isn’t Some Evil Empire’: Dystopia in Joss Whedon’s Firefly/Serenity,” in Rhonda V. Wilcox and Tanya R. Cochran (eds.), Investigating Firefly and Serenity: Science Fiction on the Frontier, 96 (London: I.B. Tauris, 2008). 4. Joss Whedon, “Serenity,” in Firefly (California: Fox, 2002); Serenity (California: Universal Pictures, 2005). Subsequent creations within the Firefly universe include a series of comics (2005–17) and a 2013 board game Firefly: The Game. The Reavers are introduced initially as superstition, but are encountered in the third episode, “Bushwhacked,” as a nomadic group of psychotic killers who hijack other spaceships and kill everyone on board, apart from one survivor, who goes mad from the experience and becomes a Reaver himself. 5. Firefly (2002) originally aired on Fox Network in the United States, which had commissioned the pilot and first series. The series was cancelled after only eleven of fourteen episodes had aired, several of which had been shown out of order, making the plot difficult to follow. While ratings had been low, the television series developed a devoted fan following, whose campaigns in support of the series were instrumental in acquiring a DVD release, and then the 2005 feature film from Universal Studios. Neva Chonin, “When Fox Canceled ‘Firefly,’ It Ignited an Internet Fan Base Whose Burning Desire for More Led to ‘Serenity,’ ” SF Gate, June 8, 2005, https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/When-Fox-canceled-Firefly-it-ignitedan-2628890.php. 6. Joss Whedon, “Serenity: The 10th Character” (California: Fox, 2003). 7. The interiors of the Serenity appear in every single episode of the television series, with six of the fourteen episodes taking place largely on board the space ship. The film shows less of the ship interior, but would be familiar to viewers who had seen the series—the film was very popular with Firefly fans, but did not do well at the box office otherwise. Garth Franklin, “Review: ‘Serenity,’ ” Dark Horizons, September 30, 2005, http://www.darkhorizons.com/ review-serenity/. 8. “Nostalgia,” Merriam Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nostalgia.

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Visions of Home 9. Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001), xiii. 10. Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, 27, 61. 11. Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, xii. 12. Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, 65. 13. Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, xiii. 14. A number of science-fiction allegories have represented fascists as aliens, including the original miniseries V (1984–5), the reoccurring Daleks of Doctor Who (1963–89, 2005–present), the Empire in the Star Wars film series (1977–2019), etc. The most common expression of the fear of technology remains the Borg from Star Trek (1989–2003), with their mantra of “You will be assimilated,” and the intolerance of mutants in the X-Men films has been compared to both homophobia and racism—see P. Andrew Miller, “Mutants, Metaphor, and Marginalism: What X-Actly Do the X-Men Stand For?,” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 13, no. 3 (2003): 282–90. 15. Stanley Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey (California: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1968); Arthur C. Clarke, “Extra-Terrestrial Relays—Can Rocket Stations Give World-Wide Radio Coverage?,” Wireless World 51, no. 10 (1945); NASA, “Skylab: America’s First Space Station,” NASA , May 14, 2018, https://www.nasa.gov/feature/skylab-america-s-first-space-station; Matt Novak, “Raymond Loewy’s NASA Designs Are the Space Future That Never Was,” Gizmodo, October 13, 2014, https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/raymond-loewys-nasa-designs-are-the-spacefuture-that-n-1645668220. 16. For example, the television series Colony (2016–18), which depicts Los Angeles living under military occupation by unseen aliens facilitated by the human authorities, was intentionally developed as a metaphor for Nazi-occupied Paris, as well as current occupations such as Afghanistan and Iraq. Chris Cabin, “Carlton Cuse Talks Origins of Colony, World War II Influence, and Tone,” Collider, May 21, 2015, https://collider.com/carlton-cuse-talks-colonyworld-war-2-influence-tone/. 17. Fredric Jameson, “Postmodernism and Consumer Society,” in Hal Foster (ed.), The AntiAesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, 116–18 (Port Townsend, WA: Bay Press, 1983). 18. Vera Dika, Recycled Culture in Contemporary Art and Film: The Uses of Nostalgia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 10–11, 215–19. 19. Carl Abbott, Imagined Frontiers: Contemporary America and Beyond (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015). 20. Michael Coyne, The Crowded Prairie: American National Identity in the Hollywood Western (London: I.B. Tauris, 1997), 5, 190; Patrick McGee, From Shane to Kill Bill: Rethinking the Western (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), xiv. 21. Noel Carroll, “The Future of Allusion: Hollywood in the Seventies (and Beyond),” October 20 (1982): 52. 22. This set of meanings is mobilized more recently with the science fiction Western television series Westworld (2016–present), where the guests are given a choice of wearing a white or black hat on entering the Westworld theme park. 23. Christine Sprengler, Screening Nostalgia: Populuxe Props and Technicolor Aesthetics in Contemporary American Film (New York: Berghahn Books, 2009), 2. 24. The current Star Wars series The Mandalorian (2019–present) references both previous Star Wars films and a number of Western tropes, including a bounty hunter explicitly compared to Clint Eastwood. Anthony Breznican, “The Mandalorian is Described as Clint Eastwood in Star Wars,” Entertainment Weekly, April 14, 2019, https://ew.com/tv/2019/04/14/themandalorian-star-wars-celebration/.

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Screen Interiors 25. John Powers, “Star Wars: A New Heap,” Triple Canopy 4 (2008), http://canopycanopycanopy. com/4/star_wars__a_new_heap. 26. “First Crew Starts Living and Working on the International Space Station,” European Space Agency, October 31, 2000, https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_ Exploration/International_Space_Station/First_crew_starts_living_and_working_on_the_ International_Space_Station. 27. Regina Peldszus et al., “The Perfect Boring Situation—Addressing the Experience of Monotony During Crewed Deep Space Missions through Habitability Design,” Acta Astronautica 94 (2014): 262–76. 28. Jane Barnwell, Production Design: Architects of the Screen (London: Wallflower Press, 2003), 21. 29. “Serenity Vehicles Cutaways and History,” Dork Review, February 6, 2015, http:// thedorkreview.blogspot.com/2015/02/serenity-vehicles-cutaways-and-history.html; Carey Meyer, “Firefly—Fox,” Carey Meyer, 2020, https://www.careymeyer.me/Firefly-FOX. 30. Stephanie Argy, “Space Cowboys: Director of Photography David Boyd Brings an Old West Aesthetic to Firefly, a Fox Sci-Fi Series Set in Deep Space, Page 2,” American Cinematographer, February 2003, https://theasc.com/magazine/feb03/firefly/page2.html. 31. Barnwell, Production Design, 19–20. 32. Argy, “Space Cowboys.” 33. Jes Battis, “Captain Tightpants: Firefly and the Science Fiction Canon,” Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies 7, no. 1 (2008), http://www.whedonstudies.tv/ uploads/2/6/2/8/26288593/battis_slayage_7.1.pdf. The Reavers occupy the position of the Native American in both the television series and film, a problematic that is explored elsewhere, including Agnes B. Curry, “ ‘We Don’t Say “Indian” ’: On the Paradoxical Construction of the Reavers,” Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies 7, no. 1 (2008), https://www.whedonstudies.tv/uploads/2/6/2/8/26288593/curry_slayage_7.1.pdf; J. Douglas Rabb and J. Michael Richardson, “Reavers and Redskins: Creating the Frontier Savage,” in Rhonda V. Wilcox and Tanya R. Cochran (eds.), Investigating Firefly and Serenity: Science Fiction on the Frontier, 127–38 (London: I.B. Tauris, 2008). 34. Battis, “Captain Tightpants”; Rebecca M. Brown, “Orientalism in Firefly and Serenity,” Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies 7, no. 1 (2008), http://www.whedonstudies. tv/uploads/2/6/2/8/26288593/brown_slayage_7.1.pdf. In contrast to Cold War American science fiction, which presented allegories of various levels of subtlety about USSR opposition, the changed geopolitical situation of the early 2000s presented China as the surviving “Other” superpower of the future. 35. Margaret Sleeboom, “The Power of National Symbols: The Credibility of a Dragon’s Efficacy,” Nations and Nationalism 8, no. 3 (2002): 299–313. The Native American dreamcatcher is itself an artifact specific to one tribe, the Ojibwe, which became seen as a pan-Indian symbol in the 1960s and 1970s. Native Languages of the Americas, “Native American Dream Catchers,” 2009, http://www.native-languages.org/dreamcatchers.htm. 36. Argy, “Space Cowboys”; Lee Stringer, “Firefly Archives: Pics and CGI Renders from the Joss Whedon TV Series Firefly 2002–2003,” Flickr, January 16, 2010, https://www.flickr.com/ photos/lee_stringer/sets/72157623219903652/with/4277971451/. 37. Wolfgang Petersen, Das Boot (The Boat) (West Germany: Neue Constantin Film, 1981). 38. Carol J. Burns, “A Manufactured Housing Studio: Home/on the Highway,” Journal of Architectural Education 55, no. 1 (2001): 53; Dina Smith, “Lost Trailer Utopias: The Long, Long Trailer (1954) and Fifties America,” Utopian Studies 14, no. 1 (2003): 121; Allan D. Wallis,

312

Visions of Home Wheel Estate: The Rise and Decline of the Mobile Home (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 26, 110. 39. Smith, “Lost Trailer Utopias,” 113; Wallis, Wheel Estate, 140–1. 40. Burns, “A Manufactured Housing Studio,” 54. 41. Tom Geoghegan, “Why Do So Many Americans Live in Mobile Homes?,” BBC News, September 24, 2013, http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24135022; Smith, “Lost Trailer Utopias,” 128. 42. Smith, “Lost Trailer Utopias,” 129. 43. Smith, “Lost Trailer Utopias,” 130. 44. Battis, “Captain Tightpants.” Nine of the fourteen episodes of Firefly involve the crew in illegal activities such as smuggling and theft, mostly for a network of external clients. 45. Argy, “Space Cowboys”; Whedon, “Serenity: The 10th Character.” 46. Despite Kaylee’s stereotypically masculine job, her lack of formal training and instinctual style of work combine with her unrestrained (hetero)sexuality and love of “shiny” things and decoration to position her as an “intuitive” woman, interested in decoration and dress. Maggie Burns, “Mars Needs Women: How a Dress, a Cake, and a Goofy Hat Will Save Science Fiction,” in Jane Espenson and Leah Wilson (eds.), Serenity Found: More Unauthorized Essays on Joss Whedon’s Firefly Universe, 18–20 (Dallas, TX: Benbella Books). 47. James Thomas Wollon Jr., “Review: ‘Early American Cut & Use Stencils’, ‘Victorian Cut & Use Stencils’, ‘Pennsylvania Dutch Cut & Use Stencils,’ ” Bulletin of the Association for Preservation Technology 9, no. 4 (1977): 89; Janet Waring, Early American Stencils on Walls and Furniture (Toronto: General Publishing Company, 1968). 48. Joss Whedon, “The Train Job,” in Firefly (California: Fox, 2002); “Shindig,” in Firefly (California: Fox, 2002). 49. Argy, “Space Cowboys.”; J. P. Telotte, “Serenity, Cinematisation and the Perils of Adaptation,” Science Fiction Film and Television 1, no. 1 (2008): 69–72. 50. Ephraim Katz, “John Ford,” in Ephraim Katz (ed.), The Film Encyclopedia, 490 (New York: Harper Collins, 2005). 51. Michael Glover Smith, “John Ford and the Cinematic Meal,” White City Cinema, June 30, 2011, https://whitecitycinema.com/2011/06/30/; Linda Jean Jencson, “ ‘Aiming to Misbehave’: Role Modeling Political-Economic Conditions and Political Action in the Serenityverse,” Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies 7, no. 1 (2008), http://www.whedonstudies. tv/uploads/2/6/2/8/26288593/jencson_slayage_7.1.pdf; John Ford, The Searchers (California: Warner Bros., 1956). 52. Janet Tamaro, “Meet My Crew—Week 5,” Tumblr, July 9, 2013, http://janettamaro.tumblr.com/ post/55041271378/meet-my-crew-week-5. 53. “Used Future: Serenity,” Ouno Design, September 29, 2009, http://ounodesign. com/2009/09/29/used-future-serenity/; Joss Whedon, “Out of Gas,” in Firefly (California: Fox, 2002). The episode “Out of Gas” centers on the failure of Serenity’s life support systems due to an engine part that breaks in deep space, without any spares on board, due to lack of money. 54. Whedon in Stephanie Argy, “Space Cowboys.” 55. Judy Attfield, Wild Things: The Material Culture of Everyday Life (Abingdon: Berg, 2000), 149–53. 56. Stringer, “Firefly Archives”; “Barcelona Chair,” Knoll, 2020, https://www.knoll.com/product/ barcelona-chair.

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Screen Interiors 57. Pat Kirkham, “At Home with California Modern, 1945–65,” in Wendy Kaplan (ed.), Living in a Modern Way: California Design 1930–1965, 160 (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2011). 58. Kirkham, “At Home with California Modern,” 70. 59. “Kingston Sofa by William Plunkett,” Twenty Twenty One, 2014, https://twentytwentyone.com/ product/twentytwentyone-productions-william-plunkett-kingston-sofa; Cassina, “Maralunga Sofa,” Cassina, 2015, https://www.cassina.com/en/maralunga; Stringer, “Firefly Archives” 60. “Rya Rugs,” Ouno Design, October 15, 2008, http://ounodesign.com/2008/10/05/rya-rugs/; Kirkham, “At Home with California Modern,” 167. 61. Wendy Kaplan (ed.) Living in a Modern Way: California Design 1930–1965 (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2011), 28, 32. 62. Sprengler, Screening Nostalgia, 6; Sean Topham, Where’s My Space Age? The Rise and Fall of Futuristic Design (Munich: Prestel Verlag, 2003). 63. Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991), 279–80. 64. Alex Bevan, The Aesthetics of Nostalgia TV: Production Design and the Boomer Era (New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2019), 6. 65. Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, 49. 66. Whedon, “The Train Job.” As mentioned earlier, the character River Tam is on the run from the government when introduced in the first episode and is slowly revealed throughout the series and film to be a gifted individual whose brain was augmented through unethical government experiments and possesses near-psychic abilities.

Bibliography 2001: A Space Odyssey. Directed by Stanley Kubrick. California: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1968. Film. Abbott, Carl. Imagined Frontiers: Contemporary America and Beyond. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015. Argy, Stephanie. “Space Cowboys: Director of Photography David Boyd Brings an Old West Aesthetic to Firefly, a Fox Sci-Fi Series Set in Deep Space.” American Cinematographer, February 2003, https://theasc.com/magazine/feb03/firefly/index.html. Argy, Stephanie. “Space Cowboys: Director of Photography David Boyd Brings an Old West Aesthetic to Firefly, a Fox Sci-Fi Series Set in Deep Space, Page 2.” American Cinematographer, February 2003, https://theasc.com/magazine/feb03/firefly/page2.html. Attfield, Judy. Wild Things: The Material Culture of Everyday Life. Abingdon: Berg, 2000. Barnwell, Jane. Production Design: Architects of the Screen. London: Wallflower Press, 2003. Battis, Jes. “Captain Tightpants: Firefly and the Science Fiction Canon.” Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies 7, no. 1 (2008), http://www.whedonstudies.tv/ uploads/2/6/2/8/26288593/battis_slayage_7.1.pdf. Bevan, Alex. The Aesthetics of Nostalgia TV: Production Design and the Boomer Era. New York: Bloomsbury, 2019. Blichert, Frederick. “ ‘Better Worlds’: Western Heroes and the Civilized ‘Verse.’ ” In Frederick Blichert (ed.), Joss Whedon’s Big Damn Movie: Essays on Serenity, 69–79. Jefferson, NC : McFarland & Company, 2018. Boym, Svetlana. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books, 2001.

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Visions of Home Breznican, Anthony. “The Mandalorian is Described as Clint Eastwood in Star Wars.” Entertainment Weekly, April 14, 2019, https://ew.com/tv/2019/04/14/the-mandalorian-starwars-celebration/. Brown, Rebecca M. “Orientalism in Firefly and Serenity.” Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies 7, no. 1 (2008), http://www.whedonstudies.tv/ uploads/2/6/2/8/26288593/brown_slayage_7.1.pdf. Burns, Carol J. “A Manufactured Housing Studio: Home on the Highway.” Journal of Architectural Education 55, no. 1 (2001): 51–7. Burns, Maggie. “Mars Needs Women: How a Dress, a Cake, and a Goofy Hat Will Save Science Fiction.” In Jane Espenson and Leah Wilson (eds.), Serenity Found: More Unauthorized Essays on Joss Whedon’s Firefly Universe, 15–25. Dallas: Benbella Books, 2007. Cabin, Chris. “Carlton Cuse Talks Origins of Colony, World War II Influence, and Tone.” Collider, May 21, 2015, https://collider.com/carlton-cuse-talks-colony-world-war-2-influence-tone/. Carroll, Nöel. “The Future of Allusion: Hollywood in the Seventies (and Beyond).” October 20 (1982): 51–81. Cassina. “Maralunga Sofa.” Cassina, 2015, https://www.cassina.com/en/maralunga. Chonin, Neva. “When Fox Canceled ‘Firefly,’ It Ignited an Internet Fan Base Whose Burning Desire for More Led to ‘Serenity.’ ” SF Gate, June 8, 2005, https://www.sfgate.com/ entertainment/article/When-Fox-canceled-Firefly-it-ignited-an-2628890.php. Clarke, Arthur C. “Extra-Terrestrial Relays—Can Rocket Stations Give World-Wide Radio Coverage?” Wireless World 51, no. 10 (1945): 305–8. Coyne, Michael. The Crowded Prairie: American National Identity in the Hollywood Western. London: I.B. Tauris, 1997. Curry, Agnes B. “ ‘We Don’t Say “Indian” ’: On the Paradoxical Construction of the Reavers.” Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies 7, no. 1 (2008), https://www. whedonstudies.tv/uploads/2/6/2/8/26288593/curry_slayage_7.1.pdf. Das Boot (The Boat). Directed by Wolfgang Petersen, 1981. West Germany: Neue Constantin Film. Film. Dika, Vera. Recycled Culture in Contemporary Art and Film: The Uses of Nostalgia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Dork Review. “Serenity Vehicles Cutaways and History.” Dork Review, February 6, 2015, http:// thedorkreview.blogspot.com/2015/02/serenity-vehicles-cutaways-and-history.html. ESA . “First Crew Starts Living and Working on the International Space Station.” European Space Agency, October 31, 2000, https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_ Exploration/International_Space_Station/First_crew_starts_living_and_working_on_the_ International_Space_Station. Espenson, Jane and Leah Wilson (eds.). Serenity Found: More Unauthorized Essays in Joss Whedon’s Firefly Universe. Dallas: BenBella Publications, 2007. Espenson, Jane and Glenn Yeffeth (eds.). Finding Serenity: Anti-Heroes, Lost Shepherds and Space Hookers in Joss Whedon’s Firefly. Dallas: BenBella Books, 2004. Firefly. “The Train Job,” Episode 2. Directed by Joss Whedon. Written by Joss Whedon and Tim Minear. Fox Network, September 20, 2002. Firefly. “Out of Gas,” Episode 8. Directed by Joss Whedon. Written by Tim Minear. Fox Network, October 25, 2002. Firefly. “Shindig,” Episode 4. Directed by Joss Whedon. Written by Jane Espenson. Fox Network, November 1, 2002. Firefly. “Serenity,” Episode 1. Directed by Joss Whedon. Written by Joss Whedon. Fox Network, December 20, 2002. Firefly. “Serenity: The 10th Character.” Directed by Joss Whedon. DVD Extra. December 9, 2003. Franklin, Garth. “Review: ‘Serenity.’ ” Dark Horizons, September 30, 2005, http://www. darkhorizons.com/review-serenity/. 315

Screen Interiors Geoghegan, Tom. “Why Do So Many Americans Live in Mobile Homes?” BBC News, September 24, 2013, http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24135022. Jameson, Fredric. “Postmodernism and Consumer Society.” In Hal Foster (ed.), The AntiAesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, 111–25. Port Townsend, WA : Bay Press, 1983. Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham, NC : Duke University Press, 1991. Jencson, Linda Jean. “ ‘Aiming to Misbehave’: Role Modeling Political-Economic Conditions and Political Action in the Serenityverse.” Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies 7, no. 1 (2008), http://www.whedonstudies.tv/uploads/2/6/2/8/26288593/jencson_ slayage_7.1.pdf. Kaplan, Wendy (ed.). Living in a Modern Way: Californian Design 1930–1965. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2011. Katz, Ephraim. “John Ford.” In Ephraim Katz (ed.), The Film Encyclopedia, 490. New York: Harper Collins. Kirkham, Pat. “At Home with California Modern, 1945–65.” In Wendy Kaplan (ed.), Living in a Modern Way: Californian Design 1930–1965, 147–77. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2011. Knoll. “Barcelona Chair.” Knoll, 2020, https://www.knoll.com/product/barcelona-chair. McGee, Patrick. From Shane to Kill Bill: Rethinking the Western. Malden, MA : Blackwell Publishing, 2007. Merriam Webster. “Nostalgia.” Merriam Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ nostalgia. Meyer, Carey. “Firefly — Fox.” Carey Meyer, 2020, https://www.careymeyer.me/Firefly-FOX . Miller, P. Andrew. “Mutants, Metaphor, and Marginalism: What X-Actly Do the X-Men Stand For?” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 13, no. 3 (2003): 282–90. NASA . “Skylab: America’s First Space Station.” NASA , May 14, 2018, https://www.nasa.gov/ feature/skylab-america-s-first-space-station. Native Languages of the Americas. “Native American Dream Catchers.” 2009, http://www. native-languages.org/dreamcatchers.htm. Novak, Matt. “Raymond Loewy’s NASA Designs Are the Space Future That Never Was.” Gizmodo, October 13, 2014, https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/raymond-loewys-nasa-designsare-the-space-future-that-n-1645668220. Ouno Design. “Rya Rugs.” Ouno Design, October 15, 2008, http://ounodesign.com/2008/10/05/ rya-rugs/. Ouno Design. “Used Future: Serenity.” Ouno Design, September 29, 2009, http://ounodesign. com/2009/09/29/used-future-serenity/. Peldszus, Regina, Hilary Dalke, Stephen Pretlove, and Chris Welch. “The Perfect Boring Situation — Addressing the Experience of Monotony During Crewed Deep Space Missions through Habitability Design.” Acta Astronautica 94 (May 2013): 262–76. Powers, John. “Star Wars: A New Heap.” Triple Canopy 4 (November–December 2008), http:// canopycanopycanopy.com/4/star_wars__a_new_heap. Rabb, J. Douglas and J. Michael Richardson. “Reavers and Redskins: Creating the Frontier Savage.” In Rhonda V. Wilcox and Tanya R. Cochran (eds.), Investigating Firefly and Serenity: Science Fiction on the Frontier, 127–38. London: I.B. Tauris. The Searchers. Directed by John Ford. California: Warner Bros., 1956. Film. Serenity. Directed by Josh Whedon. USA : Universal Pictures, 2005. Film. Sleeboom, Margaret. “The Power of National Symbols: The Credibility of a Dragon’s Efficacy.” Nations and Nationalism 8, no. 3 (2002): 299–313. Smith, Dina. “Lost Trailer Utopias: The Long, Long Trailer (1954) and Fifties America.” Utopian Studies 14, no. 1 (2003): 112–31.

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Visions of Home Smith, Michael Glover. “John Ford and the Cinematic Meal.” White City Cinema, June 30, 2011, https://whitecitycinema.com/2011/06/30/. Sprengler, Christine. Screening Nostalgia: Populuxe Props and Technicolor Aesthetics in Contemporary American Film. New York: Berghahn Books, 2009. Stringer, Lee. “Firefly Archives: Pics and CGI Renders from the Joss Whedon TV Series Firefly 2002–2003.” Flickr, January 16, 2010, https://www.flickr.com/photos/lee_stringer/ sets/72157623219903652/with/4277971451/. Sutherland, Sharon and Sarah Swan. “ ‘The Alliance Isn’t Some Evil Empire’: Dystopia in Joss Whedon’s Firefly/Serenity.” In Rhonda V. Wilcox and Tanya R. Cochran (eds.), Investigating Firefly and Serenity: Science Fiction on the Frontier, 90–100. London: I.B. Tauris, 2008. Tamaro, Janet. “Meet My Crew — Week 5.” Tumblr, July 9, 2013, http://janettamaro.tumblr.com/ post/55041271378/meet-my-crew-week-5. Telotte, J. P. “Serenity, Cinematisation and the Perils of Adaptation.” Science Fiction Film and Television 1, no. 1 (2008): 67–80. Topham, Sean. Where’s My Space Age? The Rise and Fall of Futuristic Design. Munich: Prestel Verlag, 2003. Twentytwentyone. “Kingston Sofa by William Plunkett.” Twenty Twenty One, 2014, Accessed January, 28, 2020. https://twentytwentyone.com/product/twentytwentyone-productionswilliam-plunkett-kingston-sofa. Wallis, Allan D. Wheel Estate: The Rise and Decline of the Mobile Home. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Waring, Janet. Early American Stencils on Walls and Furniture. Toronto: General Publishing Company, 1968. Wilcox, Rhonda V. and Tanya R. Cochran (eds.). Investigating Firefly and Serenity: Science Fiction on the Frontier. London: I.B. Tauris, 2008. Wills, John. “Firefly and the Space Western: Frontier Fiction on Fast Forward.” In Michael Goodrum and Phillip Smith (eds.), Firefly Revisited: Essays on Joss Whedon’s Classic Series, 1–18. London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. Wollon Jr., James Thomas. “Review: ‘Early American Cut & Use Stencils,’ ‘Victorian Cut & Use Stencils,’ ‘Pennsylvania Dutch Cut & Use Stencils.’ ” Bulletin of the Association for Preservation Technology 9, no. 4 (1977): 88–9.

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CHAPTER 16 COSMIC HETEROTOPIA: BANALITY AND DISJUNCTION IN THE INTERIORS OF PASSENGERS 2016 Ersi Ioannidou

The recent Hollywood blockbuster Passengers (2016, Mortem Tyldum) transplants the barren technologically sustained capsular urban-scale interiors of the cruise ship to outer space, thus putting forward a rather unexpected approach to designing a spaceship: it stops imagining how interiors will look in the future and proposes the possibility of reusing and exporting existing Earth interiors in outer space. This approach creates an obvious aesthetic disjunction between the exterior of the starship—perfectly futuristic and unique—and its interior—a mélange of quotations somehow banal in their familiarity—and offers a depiction of the spaceship as direct descendant of the cruise ship: a heterotopic space for consumerism and escapism. Michel Foucault defines “heterotopia” as “a placeless place,” a sort of place “simultaneously mythic and real.”1 Foucault considers ships as an example of heterotopia par excellence; he writes that “the boat is a floating piece of space, a place without a place, that exists by itself, that is closed in on itself, and at the same time is given over to the infinity of the sea . . . The ship is the heterotopia par excellence.”2 Foucault’s definition could be applied to any spaceship in science-fiction films. However, when the production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas imagines the interior of Avalon as that of a cruise ship, he inadvertently exports to outer space a particular kind of terrestrial spaces; the kind of spaces that Marc Augé famously defined as “non-places.”3 “Non-place,” Augé states, can be defined only in a negative way; if place is where identity, relations, and history are expressed, “non-place” is the space where none of the above is expressed.4 “Non-places” constitute heterotopias that resist domestication. Vast and sparsely populated, the interior of starship Avalon is a main character of the film. It constantly occupies and frequently dominates the screen and is visually celebrated with shots that accentuate its symmetries and asymmetries, sensuous curves, patterned surfaces, and cleverly integrated lighting sources. Its role in the film is ambiguous and changeable. It is originally depicted as an “interplanetary Noah’s Ark,”5 a protective structure transporting 5,000 hibernating colonists from Earth to the new world of Homestead II; en route, an accidental malfunction wakes up one of the passengers ninety years too early. Its original positive image changes as it is revealed to be a sleek, visually cold environment, responding mechanically to its passenger’s movements and needs, ignorant of his plight. Without being deliberately malevolent, the perennially spotless and lifeless interior creates a sense of claustrophobia and confinement; it becomes a trap 319

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from which the hero has no hope of escape. The plot of the film could be read as the quest of the sole awakened passenger to fight against the desperation brought about by the experience of pure “non-place.”

The sublime versus the banal In the opening scene of Passengers, starship Avalon cruises silently through the expanse of the universe. A common opening scene of science-fiction films, it aims to communicate to the viewers the sublime experience of outer space. This is, of course, the tame sublime of popular, commercial entertainment. This artificial infinity, produced by technological means, seeks to present “the exaltation, the danger, the difficulty, the immensity, and the otherness”6 of outer space. The broad vista of infinite—and thus incomprehensible— outer space illustrates vividly the precarious position of the starship and at the same time enhances the sense of the human achievement that is space travel. Equally, although miniscule in comparison to its infinite surroundings, the starship seeks to amaze us by its size, shape, and mastery of technology. The camera zooms in to examine its complex structure and dwells on its dark metallic surfaces punctuated with dots of light. The opening sequence continues to reveal aspects of a dark interior that in crepuscular lighting appears equally as technological and otherworldly as the exterior. These first scenes work as a backdrop for facts concerning the starship and its voyage. Avalon heads towards the colony world of Homestead II; on autopilot, it accommodates 258 crew and 5,000 passengers in hibernation. The sleeping humans allude to the Ark’s religious symbolism that presents the starship as a technological object with transcendental qualities. It presents to the spectator what David E. Nye calls the technological sublime.7 As expected, starship Avalon soon comes into danger. It is hit by a rain of meteorites. It deploys its protective shield and auto-fixes all parts affected—with one exception: a hibernation capsule malfunctions and wakes the man in it, ninety years too early into a 120-year journey. Jim (Chris Pratt), our hero, originally excited to meet his fellow passengers, soon realizes that he is alone. His exploration of the starship reveals a series of interiors that simulate those of cruise ships and shopping malls: atmospherically lit, technologically enhanced, wipe-clean spaces of entertainment and leisure with their backstage spaces of storage and machinery that sustain the all-enclosed interior (see Figure 16.1). If this is in the future, it seems awfully familiar—even banal. “Banal” and “banality” can be considered “patronizing” terms. I use them here to describe an interior that does not reflect the extraordinary circumstances of future space travel and does not meet the viewer’s expectations from a science-fiction film to at least present a reinterpretation of everyday earthly activities and reimagine the spaces that accommodate them; if not, as expected from the science-fiction genre, “to show things that do not exist, things which are highly speculative, which astonish us by the very fact of their visual realization on the screen since they have no counterparts in the world outside the theater”;8 thus creating a “sense of wonder” that derives from “a new way of seeing.”9 320

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Figure 16.1 The Grand Concourse, Passengers, directed by Mortem Tyldum. © Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., LSC Film Corporation, Village Roadshow Films Global Inc. and Wanda Culture Holding Co. Limited 2016. All rights reserved.

This banality can be excused as a narrative device. First, it enhances the contrast between the claustrophobic but safe interior and the infinite, wondrous but hostile exterior and lulls the viewer into a sense of familiarity and security, so when danger strikes the shock is more acute. Second, the banality of the interior seeks to indicate that the journey to another planet is now commonplace; it does not anymore require the “machine-like” interiors of a space exploration mission, but those of a cruise liner in which the passengers can enjoy the experience of a multi-story shopping mall and a variety of themed restaurants. Furthermore, the choice for banality is justified by the plot. In Passengers, the human exodus from Earth is represented as an orderly and commercially profitable venture. According to the script, the owner of the starship, Homestead, is a company that transports people from Earth to the colony world of Homestead II. The company’s aim is for passengers to pay as much money as possible in the four months that they are awake and contained within the interior of the starship, arriving in the new world already in debt. So, if the interior resembles a shopping mall or a cruise ship, it is exactly because it functions on the same principles: to capture its visitors within a technologically controlled urban-scale interior and inspire them to consume. In interviews, Dyas stressed that his main concern was originality: “Part of my job is making sure I don’t copy anybody else.”10 He admitted that this proved particularly challenging when designing a spaceship: “For this film we were looking to basically design a spaceship that we haven’t seen before. There’s an extraordinary history of science fiction spaceships that we can look at, everything from the Starship Enterprise to the Millennium Falcon . . . It’s a daunting task to try and come up with something completely new but that was the goal.”11 To ensure the originality of the exterior, Dyas started by creating an 80-foot-long collage of all spaceships presented in films. He observed that there were two main kinds: the circular, which rotates to create gravity, and the monolithic, 321

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which presents itself as a great mass in which gravity just exists. He was working on how he could combine the two when inspiration struck: he saw the pods of a sycamore tree falling. The final design consists of three curvilinear blades spinning around a central core, their movement creating gravity through centrifugal force. Linear elements accommodating zero-gravity elevators connect the three blades to the core.

Disjunction and plurality The same ambition for originality drives the design of the interior; however, the approach is different. Dyas observed that spaceships in film are aesthetically coherent; a singular aesthetic permeates the interior and coordinates the interior to the exterior. So, inspired by the design of ocean liners and cruise ships, he decided for plurality and disjunction.12 Carolyn Giardina in The Hollywood Reporter notes, “A description of the movie’s spaceship Avalon might sound like a grand Las Vegas hotel.”13 Its interior consists of a grand central concourse (see Figure 16.1) and, off it, retail and hospitality spaces such as a cafeteria, a bar, and a variety of themed restaurants. Passengers can also make use of a swimming pool, a spa, sport courts, a gaming arcade, and an observation deck. It accommodates 5,000 guests in rooms of various sizes—comfort and luxury depending on class—215 crew cabins, an infirmary, and expansive storage spaces. However, Dyas was very clear that a Las Vegas hotel was not what he was aiming for: There were a lot of people who wanted this spaceship to look like, literally, Las Vegas. I fought that very aggressively, because I didn’t think the architects of this ship, the Avalon, would have said, “Let’s make this look like Las Vegas!” They would have wanted an arresting, calming and nurturing environment for these people who have just woken up from a 120-year flight. There is an austerity to it.14 While Dyas rejected the aesthetic trappings of Las Vegas, he embraced its multidimensional referencing. He drew from a rich compendium of precedents outside the science-fiction genre, including the paintings of Edward Hopper; the designs of Richard Rogers, Norman Foster, and Santiago Calatrava; and a wide range of design styles from “Art Deco” to French Neoclassicism.15 Key sources of inspiration were Frank Lloyd Wright and Japanese architecture—which Dyas also used as references for the sets of Inception (2010, Christopher Nolan). Dyas explained, “These are wonderful styles of architecture . . . [that] lend themselves very well when you are trying to tell a story that is of a futuristic nature, and you want to immerse the audience in something that looks futuristic, but perhaps not so outlandish that you’re taken out of the film.”16 Fellow production designers of science-fiction films seem to agree; most famously, in Blade Runner (1982, Ridley Scott), Ennis House (1924) by Frank Lloyd Wright is used as the location of Deckard’s apartment. The central space of the interior is the Grand Concourse (see Figure 16.1). Conceived as a futuristic shopping center, its overall spatial arrangement with a central atrium 322

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surrounded by flowing, curvilinear corridors on multiple levels is vaguely reminiscent of the central atrium of the Guggenheim Museum in New York (Frank Lloyd Wright, 1956) or Marin County Civic Center (Frank Lloyd Wright, 1957). But equally, and more appropriately, it resembles later interpretations of these atriums such as Jon Jerde’s Kanyon shopping mall in Istanbul (2006), with its undulating curvilinear multi-story retail spaces looking into a “canyon”—or even, as a reviewer commented, the Mall of America (Jon Jerde 1992).17 Reminiscent of a cruise liner exterior with its grey color palette and battleship parapets, the space is grand and at the same time austere. Off the Central Concourse, but in sharp contrast to its austere grandeur and cool color palette, the bar is a warm intimate space with red, brown, and gold colors and a variety of textures (see Figure 16.2). Set decorator Gene Serdena described its interior as a “marriage of historical styles—art deco, prairie school, disco—and occasional nods to classic cinema.”18 References from 1930s New York “Art Deco,” Frank Lloyd Wright, and The Shining (1980, Stanley Kubrick) come together to create “a huge jewelry box”19 of a space rich in strong geometrical patterns and decorative elements, including an intarsia frieze depicting the spaceship itself. A similar approach to combining a multiplicity of references is used for the design of the observation deck. Its basic spatial arrangement with elliptic parallel fins creating a cave-like canopy is based on the Zebar in Shangai (3Gatti, 2006–8), which was previously used by Serdena in the film Her (2013, Spike Jonze). The elliptical geometry of the fins is

Figure 16.2 The Bar, Passengers, directed by Mortem Tyldum. © Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., LSC Film Corporation, Village Roadshow Films Global Inc. and Wanda Culture Holding Co. Limited 2016. All rights reserved. 323

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repeated on the floor to create the steps of an amphitheater with a Japanese rock garden in the center. This is a space to observe the magnificent view of outer space through a sizable window and to relax and meditate while looking out onto the universe.20 A collection of asteroids on display reassures the passengers that what appears untamable has been tamed. But the proudest achievement of Dyas and his team was the design of the Vienna Suite (see Figure 16.3). Dyas claimed that he did more than fifty sketches before arriving at what could be considered a fitting design proposition.21 The final design brings together a number of unacknowledged references and borrowings. Its overall two-story arrangement follows examples of luxury suites of cruise liners such as the Duplex Suite on Queen Mary II (maiden voyage 2004) with its sweeping staircase and a huge window looking out.22 The design of the key feature of the bed recalls the floating bed designed by Zaha Hadid for Puerta America Madrid Hotel (2005). The ribbed staircase recreates a type featured repeatedly on “best staircases” lists on websites such as Dezeen; yet, the exact reference is difficult to pinpoint as very similar staircases have been designed by Heatherwick Studio for the Longchamp Store in New York (2008); Zaha Hadid for the ZH Gallery (London Design Festival, 2012); and Arquitectura en Movimiento Workshop for an apartment in Mumbai (2014). The curvilinear geometry of the bed and the staircase is reflected in pieces of furniture in the suite such as Marc Newson’s Wood Chair (Cappellini, 1988) and Warren Platner’s Platner Coffee Table (Knoll, 1966). The suite’s size and luxurious furnishings contrast with the compact cabin that Jim is originally allocated

Figure 16.3 The Vienna Suite, Passengers, directed by Mortem Tyldum. © Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., LSC Film Corporation, Village Roadshow Films Global Inc. and Wanda Culture Holding Co. Limited 2016. All rights reserved.

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as a passenger on a discount ticket. Jim’s cabin interior is rectilinear in geometry with a grey-green color palette and hard, flat wipe-clean surfaces. An influence could be the interior of a capsule in Nagakin Capsule Tower (Kisho Kurokawa, 1972), but equally it might have been informed by a captain’s cabin in a submarine or a basic cabin in sciencefiction starships such as the Antares in Defying Gravity (TV series, 2009). Despite Dyas’s claim of adhocism—defined by Charles Jencks as “using an available system in a new way to solve a problem quickly and efficiently”23—the clear aesthetic division between the Vienna Suite and the basic cabin characterizes the design of the interior overall. Service and budget travel spaces, including the cafeteria, crew quarters, bridge, infirmary, and all kinds of corridors and storage spaces, are particularly austere with angular geometries and a cool color palette of green-grays. They refer clearly to past science-fiction interiors with an aesthetic that corresponds to the exterior of the spaceship. The immensity, repetition, and standardization of elements and furnishings, and the utilitarian character of these spaces, come into contrast with the intimacy, warmth, and variety of color and textures in spaces of entertainment and luxury travel such as the themed restaurants, the bar, and the Vienna Suite. This aesthetic division follows a class commentary that the film’s plot never fully embraces, the film’s director Morgan Tyldum explaining, “I wanted to evoke the big immigrant ships that went between Europe and the New World during the time of the big immigrations, when Europeans came to America and Canada. We used elements of a big cruise ship, with the upper class and lower class and the luxury parts.”24 Furthermore, the spaces associated with luxury travel seem to refer to design and architectural styles in the film’s past, while (or whereas) the utilitarian spaces seem to correspond to the film’s present. This is a design strategy used in contemporary cruise liners such as Queen Mary II, with interiors partly inspired by Eltham Palace.25 In Screening Space, Vivian Sobchack writes that if in the 1950s the science-fiction genre flourished “as a symbolic representation of the new intersection of science, technology, and multi-national capitalism,”26 from the 1970s onwards “the films of the genre . . . dramatize the familiarity of multinational capitalism, and represent its totalized domestication, commodification, and pervasion of worldly space in visualizations that valorize the cluttered abundance of consumer culture.” As a result, science fiction films of this period display an “incapacity to imagine a future.”27 Passengers illustrates this point. Its interiors represent the expansion of capitalism—or “globalization”—in outer space by recreating not only the type of spaces that are considered consumerist interiors par excellence, but replicating through them the structure of society and the power relations present therein. Put together by a “heap of fragments,” they express a “fetishization of consumer culture.”28 Passengers’ interiors fit well into the current context in which space becomes the next exclusive destination for the intrepid traveler. According to George T. Whitesides, CEO of Virgin Galactic, commercial space travel marks “the dawn of the second space age.”29 And John Spencer, founder and president of the Space Tourism Society, describes some possibilities for the future of space tourism: “An imagined voyage into the future of space experiences includes high-class orbital super yachts, orbital cruise ships and lunar resorts 325

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and spas.”30 This potential use of outer space for commercial and tourist activities is not new either in reality or in film. Already in 1967, Barron Hilton, Chairman of the US company Hilton Hotels, declared at the American Astronautical Society Conference, “The method of getting a Hilton into orbit, or placed on the moon, though beyond our knowledge—is not beyond our imagination or ambition.”31 He also cheekily referred to Stanley Kubrick’s upcoming film: “I should advise you . . . that an Orbiter Hilton is already in existence. It’s known as ‘Hilton Space Station Number Five’ and you’ll be seeing it next fall in a motion picture called ‘2001—A Space Odyssey.’ ”32 Driven by the same ambition as Hilton, recent ventures of commercial spaceflight mark, as Martin Parker and David Bell note, “the democratization of space for the masses. Space is being opened up once more, by a new kind of frontiersman, the entrepreneurial astronaut.”33 At the same time, these ventures plan to colonize outer space, vividly described by Stevphen Shukaitis as “a terrain of possibility that operates as an outside to the world as is,”34 with hotel chains, leisure parks, and large retail outlets. The utopian dream of escaping our earthbound existence is thus summarily replaced by heterotopias of perfect organization mirroring the society they left behind.35 Starship Avalon is one such heterotopia.

A cosmic heterotopia Writers such as Anne Wealleans, Jonathan R. Rankin, and Francis L. Collins use “heterotopia” as a useful term to discuss the design of the interiors of cruise ships and their workings. Wealleans writes that “the ship remains a supreme example of Foucault’s concept of heterotopia; whether it be ocean liner or cruise ship, the spaces within are regulated spaces of illusion and exclusion.”36 It provides “a perfect representation of how people should be organized.”37 In the cruise ship, as Rankin and Collins note, the stability of this heterotopia depends on two main actors: the human occupants and the ocean. Spaceship interiors operate on similar terms. The role of people in heterotopic space is as cogs of the mechanism they create. Rankin and Collins explain that the heterotopia of the cruise ship is stabilized by “the combination of staff and passenger interventions and material-imaginative connections to other times and places.”38 In Passengers, the smooth functioning of the interior depends on the actions of one individual. Jim, alone and with his future plans thwarted, strives to maintain the meaning of the interior by enacting his everyday life—he wakes up in his cabin, eats his breakfasts in the canteen, has a drink at the bar and so on. More importantly, he is driven by pre-existing social rules to occupy these spaces in such a way. Even when he commits a crime by breaking into the most luxurious suite, it is to consume and experience all of the starship’s luxuries when he realizes that he can do so without the consequence of repaying the accrued debt. His behavior is plausible—even understandable—in the context of pre-existing social rules and values. The Vienna Suite and the Mexican restaurant are invested with a meaning and a set of operating rules derived from their terrestrial counterparts; this meaning is not questioned by the exceptional circumstances in which the hero finds himself. 326

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The meaning of these places is gradually lost to our hero as the social context that reinforces it does not exist—there is no conscious human being on board. It is not surprising that Jim soon tires of maintaining this heterotopia alone: he lets himself go, failing to wash or shave, eats in bed without cleaning up, and ends up wandering the ship naked—a desperate castaway within a well-stocked spaceship. What first appeared as a perfectly organized space of consumption, leisure, and entertainment deteriorates from a heterotopia—a “place without a place”—to a “non-place” in pure form. On Earth, Augé admits, “non-places” never exist in pure form.39 First, individuals have the ability to attribute symbolic values to the most standardized of objects or locations. Second, the local context with its particular social, cultural, and political practices infiltrates the interiors of “non-places,” providing opportunities to express and create identity, relations, and history.40 Transplant these interiors to outer space and one would expect that they become “non-places” in pure form. After all, place, as Marcel Mauss suggests, is associated with “the idea of a culture localized in time and space.”41 In outer space, the lack of cultural context spatially and the absence of a circadian timeframe create the perfect conditions for pure placeless-ness.Yet Avalon’s interior would have provided opportunities to express identity, relations, and history, if it was occupied by 5,257 conscious fellow passengers and crew and nearing its destination. Instead, the alienating experience of pure “non-places” is further intensified by the lack of any possibility for human interaction and the unbridgeable distance both from Earth and Homestead II. These two facts void the journey of any purpose and annul any opportunities to express identity and create relations. The only comforting presence within the spaceship is an android barman offering pre-loaded snippets of advice. The resulting experience is—in Augé’s words— “solitary individuality combined with non-human mediation,”42 an experience which brings our hero to an existential crisis. Maintaining the routine that ensures the smooth functioning of the interior would have been easier for Jim if he had had some company to share it with. And this is exactly what Jim does: he acquires some company. Like Adam playing God, he wakes up a beautiful fellow passenger named Aurora (Jennifer Lawrence). Jim and Aurora work hard to stabilize the interior of the spaceship as a heterotopia. Their relationship follows a typical arc of a contemporary filmic romance: getting to know each other, going on an official date, having sex, and moving in together. During their courtship, the couple makes good use of all opportunities for entertainment and leisure: observation deck, dance floor, basketball court, bar, cinema, restaurants—purposefully created for their growing relationship in mind.43 Jim finally gets the girl when he offers to her the exhilarating experience of a spacewalk. Stepping out of the confines of the interior into the infinity of the exterior creates the thrilling tension of experiencing danger when knowing you are safe. In addition, the acknowledgement of the extraordinary but hostile exterior makes the everyday comforts of the interior more life-affirming. As Rankin and Collins suggest, “For the cruise ship passenger, cruising across the engine of decay becomes a triumph over nature and death—an attraction which only enhances the sense of order and vitality within the ship as a seemingly safe interior space to the oceans radical exteriority.” Yet, they warn, “This balance is fraught with tensions however, not 327

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least due to the uncontrollable movements of the ocean, which literally disrupt the stability of the cruise ship.”44 In starship Avalon—very much like in a cruise ship—the hospitability of the interior depends also on the uncontrollable agency of the exterior. While making up and breaking up, our heroes ignore the signs of the effects that the uncontrollable agency of outer space has on the interior. The asteroid collision in the opening sequence has caused a cascade of minor but cumulative damage that the spaceship’s systems increasingly struggle to correct. The interior of the starship is constantly and gradually deteriorating and, as a result, acts in an increasingly erratic way: the servicing mini-robots malfunction; the breakfast machine spews a cascade of cereals; the android bartender repeatedly hits his head on the bar counter. These events eventually culminate in a spectacular sequence of loss of gravity. Outer space’s disruptive capacity has transformative effects upon the interior and the boundedness of the starship. As a result of this disruption, our heroes are forced to descend from the sleek surroundings of the central concourse to the tough technological interiors of the bridge to the overheated engine room and eventually venture outside into the hostile exterior; each step stripping a layer of what constructs the interior and bringing them towards what ultimately keeps them alive. The interior is revealed for what it is: a thin decorative skin that veils the passengers’ dependence on technology, distracts their feeling of claustrophobia, and frames the surrounding hostile external environment as a magnificent view. It constructs an entertaining mélange of fictions to distract its inhabitants from a turbulent reality. At the final scene, eighty-eight years into the future, the reawakened crew enters the central concourse to be met with an unexpected spectacle: the concourse has been taken over by “nature.” The surprise for the crew—and for viewers—is created by the fact that this nature is “out-of-place.” First, nature is commonly understood as opposed to what is artificially produced—that is, in contrast with the man-made, sleek, clean surfaces and geometries of the starship interior—and thus as “other.”45 Furthermore, this “otherness” is enhanced by the apparent absurdity of the spectacle: “nature” does not fly in outer space; “nature” is Earth-bound. Yet, already in 1726, Jonathan Swift in his proto-science-fiction novel Gulliver’s Travels imagines a flying island and more recently Silent Running (1972, Douglas Trumbull) depicts a cluster of greenhouses on a space freighter speeding away to protect Earth’s flora from extinction. More importantly, the presence of nature within an urban interior flying in outer space seems to be the logical conclusion to a long process of creating “interiors, such as glasshouses, winter gardens, exhibition buildings, department stores, grand hotels, offices, shopping malls and people’s palaces that conserve a ‘bounty’ of greenery.”46 All these interiors, as Mark Pimlott notes, create “a captive, interiorized Eden.”47 In this context, nature is as far removed as possible from its definition as hostile wilderness. A closer look of this last scene verifies that. This interiorized nature is neither wild nor destructive. Quite the opposite, it is an idyll: a garden complete with wooden cabin, a brook, running chickens, and flying birds. Nature, here, is disruptive in a benign way. It has not taken over the interior of the spaceship, as it first appeared; the roots of trees and plants have not caused cracks in the interior finishes and the running water has not interfered 328

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with its technologically advanced machinery. It occupies the interior in a way that humanizes it. During their years living on the starship, Jim and Aurora use “nature”—in the form of dirt, water, plants, and animals—to appropriate the interior and create “a condition of apparent freedom”; a feeling of liberation of the oppressive claustrophobic spaceship and its sleek designed interior in the same way that in the past the greenhouse created “a feeling of liberation from streets and buildings, traffic, pollution and inclement weather.”48 For Jim and Aurora, nature represents the means to reclaim the overtly commodified sterile interior and start operating outside of the strict routine imposed by its artificial time-space milieu. They introduce in it new “material-imaginative connections to other times and places.”49 They thus manage to create a new kind of heterotopia. A garden, as Foucault notes, is “perhaps the oldest example of these heterotopias that take the form of contradictory sites . . . The garden is the smallest parcel of the world and then it is the totality of the world.”50 By introducing “nature” within the urban interior of the spaceship, our heroes create “an idealized, bucolic, pre-urban or ‘original’ world.”51 They create “a fiction of the Garden”—and of course the biblical references are obvious here.

Conclusion Passengers is a flawed Hollywood blockbuster that had moderate success at the box office, a science-fiction film despised by science-fiction fans and heavily criticized for its antifeminist plot and unsatisfying ending. Yet, as scholars of science-fiction film note, the genre “even in the most sublimely trashy examples . . . deals with issues considered to be of importance to the society in which it has been produced.”52 This is true, of course, of any artifact. But, as Sobchack suggests, “It assumes particular significance . . . in relation to a genre whose expressed imagination would transcend its historical limitations.”53 Passengers is no exception. Geoff King and Tanya Krzywinska note that contemporary Hollywood science fiction is often accused of having few, if any, new ideas, merely an endless recycling of the past.54 Yet, the most thoughtful and innovative examples of the genre use this “recycling” to create new worlds.55 They appropriate design references in a way that creates a sense that we are in the future quoting the past. In Passengers the interiors remain firmly in our present. This makes the contrast between the interior and the exterior of the starship somehow jarring. Yet this juxtaposition between the overly familiar interior and the more radical vision of the exterior has its precedents in earlier transplantations of Earth environments to outer space. One surprising example is NASA’s illustrations of space colonies drawn in the 1970s that reveal an equally banal future: the colonies have the shape of a highly technological rotating donut filled with expanses of American suburbia. These illustrations are meant to be reassuring: they promise the fulfillment of the American Dream in outer space. This is not a very different proposition to the one presented in the scenario of Passengers. NASA’s colonies and the interiors of Avalon present heterotopias of perfect organization mirroring the society they left behind. 329

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This wholesale transplantation of terrestrial interiors to outer space confirms Jean Baudrillard’s provocative declaration that “We can no longer imagine any other universe.”56 He supports this claim by writing, “Witness this two-bedroom/kitchen/ shower put into orbit, raised to a spatial power (one could say) with the most recent lunar module . . . it is the end of metaphysics, the end of the phantasm, the end of science fiction.”57 He goes on to forecast that “In this way, science fiction would no longer be a romantic expansion with all the freedom and naiveté that the charm of discovery gave it, but, quite the contrary, it would evolve implosively, in the very image of our current conception of the universe.”58 Passengers’ interiors illustrate Baudrillard’s prediction and thus unwittingly articulate a critique of the potential transplantation of one of the representative spaces of consumer society par excellence—the giant cruise ship—to outer space. In this light, the film can be read as a cautionary tale. Jim and Aurora—and all hibernating passengers in the starship—take an enormous risk to make a new start. Yet, there is nothing new in the life created in starship Avalon or Homestead II, but a mere replication of life on Earth in our present. The familiarity of the interiors, instead of being reassuring both for the viewers and the heroes as intended, is worrying as it expresses an impossibility of imagining something new. By illustrating the prospect of the future human colonization of outer space as a replication of the social, political, economic, and cultural structures of Earth, Passengers’ interiors reflect our current anguish in view of our incapacity to imagine an alternative future.

Notes 1. Michel Foucault and Jay Miskowiec, “Of Other Spaces,” Diacritics 16, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 24. 2. Foucault and Miskowiec, “Of Other Spaces,” 27. 3. Marc Augé, Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity, trans. John Howe (1995; repr. London and New York: Verso, 2008). 4. Augé, Non-Places, 63. 5. A term used by Jaques Siclier and Andre S. Labarthe, Images de la Science Fiction (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1958), 62, quoted in Vivian Sobchack, Screening Space: The American Science Fiction Film (New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Rutgers University Press, 2004), 69. 6. David E. Nye, American Technological Sublime (Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press, 1994), 290. 7. Nye, American Technological Sublime. 8. Sobchack, Screening Space, 91. 9. Scott Bukatman, “The Artificial Infinite: On Special Effects and the Sublime,” in Annette Kuhn (ed.), Alien Zone II, 254 (London and New York: Verso, 1999). 10. Elizabeth Stinson, “ ‘Passengers’ Elegant Starship is Almost as Pretty as its Stars,” Wired, December 18, 2016, https://www.wired.com/2016/12/seeds-inspired-swooping-starshippassengers/. 11. John Davison, “PASSENGERS: An Interview with Guy Hendrix Dyas,” Computers in Entertainment, https://cie.acm.org/articles/passengers-interview-guy-hendrix-dyas/.

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Cosmic Heterotopia 12. Rod Pyle, “Interstellar Glitz: Designing the ‘Passengers’ Starship, Inside and Out,” Space, December 5, 2016, https://www.space.com/34909-passengers-movie-starship-design-qanda. html. 13. Carolyn Giardina, “How ‘Passengers’ Production Designer Brought the Film’s Vegas-Inspired Spaceship to the Big Screen,” Hollywood Reporter, January 9, 2018, https://www. hollywoodreporter.com/behind-screen/how-passengers-production-designer-brought-filmsvegas-inspired-spaceship-big-screen-960334. 14. Matt Grobar, “How ‘Passengers’ Production Designer Guy Hendrix Dyas Prepped A BigBudget Sci-Fi Universe In Ten Weeks,” February 17, 2017, https://deadline.com/2017/02/ passengers-oscars-guy-hendrix-dyas-production-design-interview-1201905434/. 15. Elizabeth Stamp, “The Out-of-This-World Set Designs of Passengers,” Architectural Digest, December 15, 2016, https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/passengers-set-design. 16. Grobar, “How ‘Passengers’ Production Designer Guy Hendrix Dyas Prepped A Big-Budget Sci-Fi Universe In Ten Weeks.” 17. Pyle, “Interstellar Glitz.” 18. Paula Benson, “The Art-Deco-meets-Sci-Fi wall coverings in Passengers spaceship bar,” Film and Furniture, December 23, 2016, https://filmandfurniture.com/2016/12/wall-coveringspassengers-spaceship-bar/. 19. Pyle, “Interstellar Glitz.” 20. Stamp, “The Out-of-This-World Set Designs of Passengers.” 21. Stamp, “The Out-of-This-World Set Designs of Passengers.” 22. An illustration of the Duplex Suite in QMII is provided in Philip Dawson, The Liner: Retrospective and Renaissance (London: Conway Maritime Press: 2005), 232. 23. Charles Jencks and Nathan Silver, Adhocism: The Case for Improvisation (Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press, 2013), vii. 24. Corey S. Powell, “Shhhh . . . the Real Stars of ‘Passengers’ are a Robot and a Spaceship,’ ” Discover Magazine, December 23, 2016, http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/ outthere/2016/12/23/real-star-of-passengers-is-ai/#.W03KtC2ZPdR. 25. Dawson, The Liner, 223. 26. Sobchack, Screening Space, 299. 27. Sobchack, Screening Space, 301. 28. Sobchack, Screening Space, 301. 29. George T. Whitesides quoted in James Day, “Space: The Private Frontier,” Metro, September 5, 2014, 40. 30. John Spencer quoted in Katie Amey, “Orbital cruise ships, $300million moon tours . . . and cosmic martini glasses so you don’t lose your drink: How travel companies are gearing up for a tourism boom in SPACE,” Mail Online, April 28, 2015, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/ travel_news/article-3057420/Is-future-space-tourism.html. 31. Barron Hilton, “Hotels in Space,” American Astronautical Society Conference Proceedings, Preprint AAS, 1967, 67–126, https://www.panix.com/~kingdon/space/hilton.html. 32. Hilton, “Hotels in Space,” 67–126. 33. Martin Parker and David Bell, “Introduction: Making Space,” in Martin Parker and David Bell (eds.), Space Travel and Culture from Apollo to Space Tourism, 3 (Malden, MA: WileyBlackwell/ Sociological Review, 2009).

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Screen Interiors 34. Stevphen Shukaitis, “Space is the (Non)Place: Martians, Marxists, and the Outer Space of Radical Imagination,” in Martin Parker and David Bell (eds.), Space Travel and Culture from Apollo to Space Tourism, 99 (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell/ Sociological Review, 2009). 35. Foucault and Miskowiec, “Of Other Spaces,”27. 36. Anne Wealleans, Designing Liners: A History of Interior Design Afloat (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 137. 37. Wealleans, Designing Liners, 2. 38. Jonathan R. Rankin and Francis L. Collins, “Enclosing Difference and Disruption: Assemblage, Heterotopia and the Cruise Ship,” Social & Cultural Geography 18, no. 2 (2017): 239. 39. Augé, Non-Places, viii. 40. Augé writes that “These places have at least three characteristics in common. They want to be . . . places of identity, of relations and of history.” Augé, Non-Places, 43 41. Augé, Non-Places, 28. 42. Augé, Non-Places, 96. 43. Dyas explains, “I also had to conceptualize things for the couple to do as their relationship grew.” Dyas quoted in Giardina, “How ‘Passengers’ Production Designer Brought the Film’s Vegas-Inspired Spaceship to the Big Screen.” 44. Rankin and Collins, “Enclosing Difference and Disruption,” 239. 45. Kate Soper, What is Nature? Culture, Politics and the Non-Human (Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1995), 15. 46. Mark Pimlott, The Public Interior as Idea and Project (Heijningen: Jap Sam Books, 2016), 17. 47. Pimlott, The Public Interior, 35. 48. Pimlott, The Public Interior, 39. 49. Rankin and Collins, “Enclosing Difference and Disruption,” 239. 50. Foucault and Miskowiec, “Of Other Spaces,” 25–6. 51. Pimlott, The Public Interior, 44. 52. Sobchack, Screening Space, 302; Geoff King and Tanya Krzywinska, Science Fiction Cinema: From Outerspace to Cyberspace (London: Wallflower, 2000), 1–2. 53. Sobchack, Screening Space, 302. 54. King and Krzywinska, Science Fiction Cinema, 55. 55. Giuliana Bruno, “Ramble City: Postmodernism and Blade Runner,” in Annette Kuhn (ed.), Alien Zone: Cultural Theory and Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema, 183–95 (London and New York: Verso, 1990). 56. Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), 123. 57. Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 124. 58. Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 124.

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CONTRIBUTORS

Alexandra Brown is an architect and senior lecturer in the Department of Architecture at Monash University. She holds a Ph.D. in architectural history and theory. Her research explores twentieth-century and contemporary art–architecture relationships, as well as architecture and radicality from the 1960s onwards. Marilyn Cohen, Ph.D., teaches at Parsons School of Design (The New School, New York), in the M.A. History of Design and Curatorial Studies program and in the M.A. Fashion Studies program. She teaches and writes about design, popular culture, material culture, movies, and fashion, with chapters in such books as Fashion Crimes (2019), Film, Fashion, and the 1960s (2017), The Routledge Companion to Design Studies (2016), and Performance, Fashion and the Modern Interior from the Victorians to Today (2011). Barry Curtis is Associate Director of Doctoral Programmes at the University of the Arts, London. He is Professor Emeritus of Visual Culture at Middlesex University and has been a Fellow of the London Consortium and a Tutor at the Royal College of Art. He currently teaches at the Marangoni Institute and has written on film, design, and cultural theory. Imma Forino, Ph.D., is an architect, Professor of Interior Architecture and Exhibition Design, and a member of the Board of Ph.D. Program in Architectural, Urban and Interior Design at the Politecnico di Milano. She is editor of the journal Op. cit. (IT) and of the book series “ii inclusive interiors,” as well as a member of the advisory board of the journals ARK (IT), AR-Architecture, Research (SLV), and Res Mobilis (ES), and of the book series “DiAP print” and “Libri Pergamini.” Her publications include Uffici: Interni arredi oggetti (2011; winner Premio Biella Letteratura e Industria 2012 for essays); L’interno nell’interno: Una fenomenologia dell’arredamento (2001); Eames, Design Totale (2002); George Nelson, Thinking (2004); La cucina: Storia culturale di un luogo domestico (2019); the article and essay (with M. Bassanelli) “Une inquiétante étrangeté: Ambiances domestiques italiennes entre art et architecture d’ intérieur,” FACES 75 (2019); and “Die Despotie des Büros: Innenräume und Einrichtungen 1880–1960,” in Gianenrico Bernasconi and Stefan Nellen (eds.), Das Büro (2019). Christine Geraghty is Honorary Professorial Fellow at the University of Glasgow. She has published extensively on film and television with a particular interest in fiction and form. Her books include Women and Soap Opera (1991), British Cinema in the Fifties: Gender, Genre and the “New Look” (2000), Now a Major Motion Picture: Film Adaptations of Literature and Drama (2008), and Bleak House (Palgrave/BFI, 2012). Her work on adaptations has specifically examined the adaptation of space and place. Christine is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of British Cinema and Television and the 335

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advisory boards of a number of other journals, including Adaptation, Critical Studies in Television, and Screen. Ersi Ioannidou, Ph.D., is Senior Lecturer in Interior Design and Post Graduate Research Student Director for the Design School at Kingston School of Art, Kingston University. Her research deals with the machine as design paradigm in twentieth-century domestic architecture. Ersi’s recent work reflects her fascination with space travel; real and fictional space interiors; utopian domestic architecture of the 1960s and 1970s; and interiors in science-fiction film. Current projects include the use of Frank Lloyd Wright’s work in science-fiction films and the role of recording technologies in Martin Pawley’s Time House. Pat Kirkham, Ph.D., is Professor of Design History, Kingston University; Professor Emerita, Bard Graduate Center; and Associate Research Fellow, Cinema and Television History Research Centre, De Montfort University. She has written widely on design, film, and gender. Her many publications include Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design (2011); The Gendered Object (1996); You Tarzan: Masculinity, Movies and Men and Me Jane: Masculinity, Movies, and Women (1993 and 1995, with Janet Thumim); A View from the Interior: Women, Feminism and Design (1989, with Judy Attfield); Structures of Feeling: Women’s Experiences in Film and Television Production (2020, with Vicky Ball and Laraine Porter); and Charles and Ray Eames and Hollywood: Design, Film, and Friendships (forthcoming). Maria Korolkova, D.Phil., studied at Lomonosov Moscow State University in Russia and at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge in England. She teaches, writes, and curates on miscommunication, visual culture, intermediality, film, and urban and media theory. She is the current Head of Media Studies at the School of Design, University of Greenwich, where she also leads the M.A. in Media and Creative Cultures and co-leads Advanced Urban, a center for interdisciplinary urban research. Her recent publications include the co-edited collection (with Timothy Barker) Miscommunications: Errors, Mistakes, Media (2021). Sarah A. Lichtman, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of Design History at Parsons School of Design (The New School, New York), where she directs the Master of Arts program in the History of Design and Curatorial Studies, offered in affiliation with Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York. She is co-editor (with Harriet Atkinson and Verity Clarkson) of Exhibitions as Transnational Exchange: Art and Design, Borders and Boundaries Since 1945 (forthcoming) and (with Jilly Traganou) of Design, Displacement, and Migration (forthcoming). She has published widely on design and gender, and her subjects range from Cold War fallout shelters to Anne Frank. Lichtman is a member of the Journal of Design History editorial board and currently serves as the book reviews editor. Sorcha O’Brien is a design historian interested in technology and identity, in both physical and digital forms. She completed her AHRC-funded Ph.D. dissertation on the representation of electrical technology in 1920s Ireland at the University of Brighton, 336

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which was published as Powering the Nation in 2017 by Irish Academic Press. She has taught design history at IADT, Dun Laoghaire, and Kingston University, London, and currently at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. She was an AHRC Leadership Fellow from 2016 to 2019, looking at women’s experiences of rural electrification in midcentury rural Ireland, and she curated the Kitchen Power exhibition at the National Museum of Ireland – Country Life. With a background in industrial and digital design, she is interested in technology and identity both at home and at work, critical design, and the creation of online and filmic worlds, as well as the pedagogy involved in using digital technology in design education. Patrick O’ Neill is a senior lecturer in film and media studies at Kingston University, London, where he has worked since 2005, and has also taught film at Roehampton University and Regent’s University in London. He completed his Ph.D. in 2016, which focused on the 1980s Hollywood teen genre. He continues to write and research about youth in film in broader terms, with a particular focus on youth and crime in American, European, and world cinemas, from a sociological perspective. Other interests include US independent film, contemporary Hollywood and British cinema, and quality American television. Eleanor Rees received her Ph.D. in 2020 from University College London (UCL), where she wrote her thesis on the role of set designers in late imperial and early Soviet cinema in the silent era. Her research has been funded by the Wolfson Foundation and the Design History Society. Her book Designing Russian Cinema: The Artist and the Material Environment in Russian Film, 1907–1932 is forthcoming from Bloomsbury Academic. Shax Riegler is the executive editor of Architectural Digest and Ph.D. candidate at the Bard Graduate Center in New York City. He is currently writing his dissertation on the life and work of Mario Praz. Timothy M. Rohan, Ph.D., is a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His research focuses upon architecture and design from the mid-twentieth century to the present. He is the author of The Architecture of Paul Rudolph (2014) and he edited the volume Reassessing Rudolph (2017). Timothy has published articles in edited volumes and journals such as Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (JSAH) and Art in America about subjects ranging from Brutalism to disco architecture. He is working on a new book about late twentieth-century Manhattan residential interiors and the concept of lifestyle. Lennart Soberon works as a doctoral researcher and teaching assistant for the faculty of Communication Sciences at Ghent University, Belgium, where he is a member of the Centre for Cinema and Media Studies (CIMS). His research deals with the representation of contemporary conflicts in cinema and focuses on the construction of enemy images in American action films. Apart from working on themes of vilification and “othering,” Lennart has also published on the themes of genre, political economy, and national trauma. Andrew Stephenson, Ph.D., is a writer and independent scholar whose research focuses on British art and modernism from c. 1880 to the 1960s. His recent publications include 337

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essays on “Arcadia and Soho” in Tate Britain’s Queer British Art 1861–1967 exhibition catalogue (2017) and on Henry Scott Tuke’s male nudes for the publication edited by Cicely Robinson (2020) to accompany the Watts Gallery’s exhibition on the artist in Spring 2021. Andrew is currently researching two essays for the John Singer Sargent and Fashion exhibition planned for Tate Britain and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 2022–3. Rebecca C. Tuite is a fashion historian and doctoral candidate at the Bard Graduate Center in New York City, working towards her Ph.D. in Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture. She is the author of 1950s in Vogue: The Jessica Daves Years, 1952–1962 (2019) and Seven Sisters Style: The All-American Preppy Look (2014). Adam Vaughan is an Associate Lecturer in the School of Media, Arts and Technology at Solent University and a Visiting Tutor at Arts University Bournemouth. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Southampton in 2018. His research interests include the performance of identity in documentary film, queer cinema, and the political implications of personal identity in LGBTQ+ cinema. Adam is currently working on the monograph based upon his Ph.D. thesis titled “Performative Identity in Contemporary Biographical Documentary.” Kirsty Volz is a lecturer in architecture at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. Her research on interior design and architecture has been published in the IDEA Journal, TEXT Journal, Lilith: A Feminist History, and the International Journal of Interior Architecture and Spatial Design.

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INDEX

Page numbers in italics refer to figures. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, dir. Kubrick) 301, 326 abject bodily functions 269–70 Academy Award(s) 1, 3, 145 Oscar 3, 169, 250 action films see killscapes in action films Adams, Eddie, General Nguyễn Ngo. c Loan Executing Nguyễn Văn Lém in Saigon, 1 February 1968 137–8, 137 Adams, Ken 10 adhocism 326 Affron, Charles and Mirella Jona 285 Sets in Motion: Art Direction and Film Narrative (1995) 5, 7, 190 AIDS 249, 250–1 Albers, Josef 131 Albrecht, Donald, Designing Dreams: Modern Architecture in the Movies (1986) 8 Aldrich, Robert Killing of Sister George, The (1968, dir. Aldrich) club 225, 226–7, 228, 234–6, 235 homosexual characters 228, 233 plot 233 pub 225, 228, 233–4 All the Right Moves (1983, dir. Chapman) 88, 94 Allen, Woody Annie Hall (1977) 134 Interiors (1978) 135 Manhattan (1979) 134 Stardust Memories (1980) 125, 135–8, 137 ambiguities 17, 220 American Dream 20, 305, 329 American Graffiti (1973, dir. Lucas) 301 “American-ness” in I Love Lucy (1951–7) 53, 56, 58 American styles, in spaceships 304–6, 305–10 Ames, Preston 2 Andrews, Eleanor, S. Hockenhull and F. PheasantKelly, Spaces of the Cinematic Home (2016) 11–12 angry young men 208 Animal House (1978, dir. Landis) 87 Annie Hall (1977, dir. Allen) 134 Apartment, The (1960, dir. Wilder) 169–81 bachelor apartment 175–6 corporate context 172–3

elevator 176–7 framing 170–1 keys 175, 180 kitchen 178–80, 179 mirrors 177–8, 178 objets petits a(utres) 171–2 office interiors 173–5, 175 plot 169–70 apartment(s) 11–14, 16, 31–38, 50–61, 108–9, 125–38, 146–50, 155–7, 169–81, 190, 194–5, 197–8, 289, 292, 322, 324 see also Apartment, The; Back Street; Bed and Sofa; Child of the Big City; Conversation Piece; Designing Woman; Girl with a Hatbox, The; I Love Lucy; John and Mary; Stardust Memories Archipelago (2010, dir. Hogg) 75 architect(s) 2, 9, 99, 129, 136, 154, 189, 322 architectural close-ups 268 architecture 1, 7, 9–12, 18, 2032, 119, 126, 128, 136, 138, 153, 170, 189, 227, 259, 262–75, 282, 287, 303, 322 Buchsbaum, Alan 136 Le Corbusier 36, 38 Gwathmey, Charles 136 Arnaz, Desi 49–50, 58, 59 Arnheim, Rudolph, Film as Kunst (1932) 6 Aronofsky, Darren, mother! (2017) 261, 266–70, 268–9, 273, 274, 275 “Art Deco” 8, 136, 152, 322–3 art director(s) 3, 4, 6–8, 12, 136, 148, 157, 170, 181 art, film as 5–6 art-horror 263–5 Art Moderne 50, 152 Art Nouveau 119, 196 artworks 131, 149, 156 see also paintings; sculptures Arvatov, Boris 39, 40 Asendorf, Christoph 198 Aspesi, Natalia 115 Astruc, Alexandre 6 Atomic Blonde (2017, dir. Leitch) 289, 292, 292 Attfield, Judy 307 attics 193–4 see also lofts

339

Index audiences, relationships with in action films 284, 285–7, 288–9 atmosphere, creation of 34–5 defamiliarization of 42 distancing of 80, 84 drawing in of 60, 61, 96 homosexuality, identifying of 226, 227, 242 and the Lacanian gaze 171 lesbianism, revealed to 227, 235, 236 Minimalism and 127, 131 reactions of 114, 115 science fiction films 20, 301, 302, 308, 322 women’s films 144–5 Augé, Marc 319, 327 avant-gardism 5–6, 31–2, 37 Ayala, Rizo 58 Bachelard, Gaston 188–9 Back Street (1961, dir. Miller) 143, 145, 146–7, 148, 153, 154, 156–7 Bakhtin, Mikhail 91 balconies 287 Bandini, Baldo 7 Ball, Lucille 49–50 banality 320–1 Bandini, Baldo and Glauco Viazzi, Ragionamenti sulla scenografia (1945) 7 Barnet, Boris, Girl with a Hatbox, The (1927) 36–40, 38, 43 Barnwell, Jane 11, 246 bars 323, 323 see also clubs; pubs Barsacq, Léon Caligari’s Cabinet and Other Grand Illusions (1976) 7 Décor de Film (1970) 7 basements 193, 195, 265–6 Bass, Saul 4, 5, 23 n.21 Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016, dir. Snyder) 288–9 Baudrillard, Jean 330 Bauer, Evgenii 190 Child of the Big City (1914, Bauer) 194–8 Twilight of a Woman’s Soul (1913) 190–4, 191, 193 beauty, idea of 262–3 Bed and Sofa (1927, dir. Room) 32–6, 34, 43 bedrooms early Russian 191, 191 I Love Lucy (1951–7) 53 Servant, The (1963) 217 Soviet fiction cinema 39–40, 42 teen films 88, 92–5, 101 beds 324, 324 Bell, David 326 Bellissima (1951, dir. Visconti) 111

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Benjamin, Walter 34, 35, 36, 38, 131, 188, 198–9, 284 Bennett, Ward 125, 128–30, 129 Benshoff, Harry M. 244 Benson-Allott, Caetlin 264–5 Bergfelder, Tim, S. Harris and S. Street 284 Film Architecture and the Transnational Imagination (2007) 7 Berliet, Jimmy 6 Bernstein, Jonathan 87 Bersani, Leo 245–6, 247, 251–2 Bevan, Alex 308 bikers 230, 231, 232–3 Billy Liar (1963, dir. Schlesinger) 208 Blade Runner (1982, dir. Scott) 322 Bleiman, Mikhail 40–1 blood 249, 269 bodily functions 269–70 Bogarde, Dirk 208, 209, 211–12, 215 Bond films 290, 291 books 131 Bordwell, David 96, 284, 285 Botha, Marc 126–7 bourgeois excess 33, 34, 35, 36, 38 Boym, Svetlana 300 Breakfast Club, The (1984, dir. Hughes) 95, 96 Brekhus, Wayne H. 241 Brickman, Paul, Risky Business (1983) 90–1, 91 Brik, Osip 37 Bristol, Howard 145, 157 Britain in the 1960s 207 Brooks, Roy 210 Brott, Simone 268, 270 Brownlow, Kevin Hollywood: The Pioneers (1979) 8 Parade’s Gone By . . ., The (1968) 8 Buchli, Victor 32, 38, 39 Burke, Edmund 262–3 Cage, Nicholas 93 Calvera, Anna 111 camera movement 60, 192, 211 “camera-pen” 6 Canby, Vincent 115, 119, 131 Caravaggio (1986, dir. Jarman) 241–2, 245–7, 248, 249, 250, 251–2 Cardullo, Bert 247 carnivalesque 91 Carrick, Edward, Art and Design in the British Film (1948) 6–7, 23–4 n.33 Carroll, Noël, The Philosophy of Horror, or, Paradoxes of the Heart, 263–4 catalogs 57 Caughie, John 74 Cavendish, Philip 35, 36, 194 cellars see basements

Index chairs 151–2, 151–2, 218, 306, 307 Chapman, Michael, All the Right Moves (1983) 88, 94 Child of the Big City (1914, dir. Bauer) 194–8 Choate, Chris 50 Christie, Ian 5 city symphonies 187 Clair, René, Entr’acte (1924) 6 Clarke, Bob, Porky’s (1981) 97 Clarke, David B., Cinematic City, The (1997) 10 class 11–15, 17, 49, 46, 61, 73–9, 81, 84, 89–93, 97, 134, 136, 198, 207, 210, 212, 217, 220, 230, 241, 251, 302, 306, 322 country houses 75–6, 77, 78, 79, 82 I Love Lucy (1951–7) 49, 51, 56, 57, 59, 60, 62 managerial class 172 middle class 61, 62, 82, 93, 94, 97, 134, 136, 138, 171, 228, 232, 233 Minimalism and 136 ruling class 79 Servant, The (1963) 208, 209, 212, 222 in teen films 90, 97 upper-middle class 82, 134, working class 17, 88, 90, 94, 97, 111, 169, 209, 214, 216, 225, 228, 230–3 Clayton, Jack, Innocents, The (1961) 74, 75–8 clothes see costumes clubs 225, 226, 227, 228, 234–6, 235, 286–7 Coleman, Charles 4 collectors 15 see also Conversation Piece Collins, Francis L. 326, 327–8 colonies 329 color(s) 147–9 black and white, use of by Jarman 244–5 contrasting 195, 323 earthy shades 304, 306, 306 and emotional states 289–90 neutrals 148 pink 93, 96–7, 147 white 90, 125, 127, 136, 152 Comaroff, Joshua and Ong Ker-Shing, Horror in Architecture (2013) 262, 274 comfort 13, 16, 31, 36, 39, 43, 60, 82, 150, 188, 208, 219, 322, 327 comfortable 13, 33, 50, 53,. 90, 107, 260, 307 discomfort 35, 40 in Soviet fiction cinema see Soviet fiction cinema, comfort in uncomfortable 16, 190, 260 coming out 243 commercial space tourism 325–6 commercial spaces 12, 17–18, 225–37 confined spaces 34–5, 41 Conservative politics 79 Constructivism 6, 7, 31

costume(s) 55, 58, 73–4, 78, 96–7, 112, 144–5, 148–9, 155, 157, 233, 242, 244–5, 250–2 designer(s) 3, 9, 111, 148, 245 consultant(s) 3–5 consumer culture 89, 99, 132, 210, 325 Conversation Piece (1974, dir. Visconti) 107–20 apartments, contrasting 109–11, 110, 114 art, attitudes towards 110 conversation pieces 108–9, 117 flashbacks 119 opening sequence 107–8, 108 paintings 116–18 Professor and Visconti, parallels between 118–19 Professor, identification of 115–18, 116 realism of Visconti 111, 112, 114 reception of 114–15, 119 sets 113–14 statues 120 Visconti, background of 111–12 world outside 118 conversation pieces 108–9, 117 cooking 130, 134, 179, 179 Coolidge, Martha, Valley Girl (1983) 92–3, 98–9 corporations 172–3 corridors 77, 80 Cosmatos, George P., Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) 283 costume(s) 55, 58, 73, 74, 78, 96, 97, 112, 149, 155, 157, 233, 242, 244, 250–2 colors 148–9, 195 design(er)(s) 3, 9, 111, 144, 148, 245 Edward II (1991) 251 in teen films 96, 97 working-class 111 costume drama 250 couches Firefly (2002) 308 I Love Lucy (1951–7) 52, 53, 54, 54–6, 55, 61 Country (1981, dir. Eyre) 74–5, 78–81 country houses 14, 73–84 Archipelago (2010) 81–4, 84 class 75–6, 77, 78, 79, 82 Country (1981) 78–81 distancing of viewers 80 heritage film genre 73–4 Innocents, The (1961) 74, 75–8 patriarchy, failure of 77, 78, 82 space, use of 73, 76–7, 79–81, 82, 83–4, 84 Coutard, Raoul 6 cowboy films 301–2 credit and demarcation 4 Creed, Barbara 269–70 criminals, homosexuals as 229, 248 Crowd, The (1928, dir. Vidor) 173–4, 183 n. 24 Cruise, Tom 90, 94

341

Index cruise ships 20–1 as heterotopias 319, 326 inside/outside opposition 327–8 interiors 321, 322, 323–4, 324, 325, 330 “Cuban-ness” in I Love Lucy (1951–7) 58, 59 Cultural Studies 1, 9, 11 curated home 14–16 curated spaces 107, 108, 130–1, 155–7 curtains 35, 191–2, 191, 195 D’Amico, Caterina 114 D’Amico, Suso Cecchi 115, 119 dancing 197 Das Kabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920, dir. Weine) 189 Daves, Jessica 145, 147, 150, 151 De Stijl 6 death 12, 18, 19, 118, 180, 191, 194–5, 198, 213, 241, 249, 251, 260, 269 and destruction 12, 19 and loss 12 deathbed 195, 248 decorative details 38–9 see also artworks; objects; paintings; sculptures defamiliarization 42 definitions 2–5 department store 58, 143, 155, 328 design consultants 4 Designing Woman (1957, dir. Minnelli) art in 156 colors 148–50, 149 fashion and 145 fashion show 153 functioning decoration 157 identities 146 Parisian style 152 plot 143 Shoji screens 155 destruction 89–90, 97, 283 Deutch, Howard, Pretty in Pink (1986) 90, 96 Devils, The (1971, dir. Russell) 244–5 Diamond, I. A. L. 170, 174 Die Hard (1988, dir. McTiernan) 283 director-writers 6 directors Aldrich, Robert 225, 227, 234–5 Allen, Woody 15, 125, 127, 134–8 Aronofsky, Darren 18, 259, 266–70, 275 Astruc, Alexandre 6 Barnet, Boris 13, 32, 36–40 Bauer, Evgenii 16–17, 187, 190–9 Brickman, Paul 87, 91 Chapman, James 88, 94 Clair, René 6 Clarke, Arthur C. 301 Clayton, Jack 74–8 Coolidge, Martha 92–3, 98–9

342

Cosmatos, George P. 283, 290 Donen, Stanley 15, 143, 151 Eisenstein, Sergei 6, 190, 208 Eyre, Richard 75, 78–9 Fleming, Victor 64 Foley, James 97 Ford, John 301–2, 306 Forster, Marc 290 Fuqua, Antoine 18, 281, 290 Furie, Sidney J. 17, 225, 230 Godard, Jean-Luc 6, 132 Hanson, Curtis 9, 94 Heckerling, Amy 97 Hitchcock, Alfred 18, 265, 267 Hogg, Joanna 75, 81–2, 84 Hughes, John 87, 93, 95 Hunter, Ross 145, 153, 156 Jarman, Derek 18, 241–253 Kozlovskii, Sergei 37 Kubrick, Stanley 18, 20, 261, 267, 301, 323, 326 Landis, John 87 Leitch, David 289, 292 Losey, Joseph 207–20 Lucas, George 301–2 McQuarrie, Christopher 280, 290–1 McTiernan, John 281, 283 Mendes, Sam 18, 290–1 Miller, David 143 Polanski, Roman 128 Reardon, Basil 225 Robbins, Jerome 4 Rodriguez, Robert 18, 281, 288–9 Room, Abram 13, 32–4, 43 Russell, Ken 244–5 Schlesinger, John 125, 208 Scorsese, Martin 125, 137 Scott, Ridley 9, 265 Snyder, Zack 288–9 Stahelski, Chad 18, 281 Trumbull, Douglas 328 Tyldum, Mortem 319, 322–5 Vidor, King 9, 113, 155, 173–4 Visconti, Luchino 15, 107–20 Wallace, Richard 3 Weine, Robert 189 Whedon, Joss 20, 299–310 Wilder, Billy 4, 16, 169–81 Wise, Robert 18, 261 Yates, Peter 15, 125, 127–8, 130–2, 134 Dodd, Philip 9 domestic guidebooks 38 domestic interiors 12, 13 see also apartments see also bedrooms see also country houses see also curated interiors

Index see also furnishings see also interior design see also interior decoration see also Minimalism see also teen films I Love Lucy (1951–7) 49, 50–1, 52, 53–6, 54–6, 60 and metaphors 190 Soviet 33–5, 34, 37, 38–9, 38, 41–2 in spaceships 304–6, 305–10 domesticity, destabilized 273–4 Donen, Stanley Funny Face (1957) art in 156 characters 144 colors 147, 148 French styles 151–2, 151–2, 153 plot 143 doors 196, 214, 288 doorsien (view through) 192, 193 Douglas, Kirk 4 Downton Abbey (2010–15) 74 dream sequences 133, 195 D’Urso, Joe 130, 133 Dutch art tradition 192, 193 Dutoit, Ulysse 245–6, 247, 251–2 Dyas, Guy Hendrix 319, 321–2, 324 Dyer, Richard 282 Eames, Charles and Ray 4, 156, 307 early cinema 8, 10, 16, 187–9 see also silent films Eastwood, Clint 302 Ebert, Roger 130 Eder, Richard 115 Edward II (1991, Lucas Jarman) 241–2, 245, 247–8, 249–51 Eecke, Christophe van 245 eggs 132 elevators 176–7 Elsaesser, Thomas 190 empty interiors see vacant interiors enclosed spaces 34–5, 41 Enei, Evgenii 41 Entr’acte (1924, dir. Clair) 6 entrapment 191–2, 267, 292, 292 entries and exits 288–9 environmental forces 290 Equalizer, The (2014, dir. Fuqua) 287–8 Ermler, Fridrikh, Fragment of an Empire (1929) 40–3 ethnicity 53, 56, 58, 59 Everson, William K., American Silent Film (1978) 8 excess 33, 34, 35, 36, 38 exhibitions 8 Expressionism 6–8 Eyre, Richard, Country (1981) 74–5, 78–81

Faber, Michel, Under the Skin (2000) 260 familiarity, in spaceships 301, 309, 321, 329–30 Farrow, Mia 128, 133 fashion business 145–6 fashion designers 15–16, 143–58 characters 146–7 color and coordination 147–9, 149 curated spaces 155–7 fashion and interior design 144–6, 159 n.12, 160 n.28 modern women and designs 154–5 Paris, influence of 150–3, 151–2 fashion films 144 Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982, dir. Heckerling) 97–8, 99–100 femininity 54, 96–9, 196, 273 Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986, dir. Hughes) 95 film noir 208 films as art 5–6 fire 53, 219, 261, 288, 290 Firefly (2002, dir. Whedon) interiors 302–10, 304–6 plot 299–300, 310 n.5 as space Western 20, 301, 302 fireplaces 53, 54, 108, 111, 156 Firmat, Pérez 59 Fischer, Lucy 2 Art Direction and Production Design (2015) 10 Fiske, John 100 flashbacks 119, 135 Fleming, Victor, Gone With the Wind (1939) 3 floors and horror 18, 259–75 basements 265–6 destabilized domesticity 273–4 horror in architecture 262–5, 274 mother! (2017) 261, 266–70, 268–9, 273, 274, 275 Under the Skin (2013) 260–1, 270–3, 271, 274–5 flowers 176–7, 209, 216 focus in heritage films 73, 76, 80 in John and Mary (1969) 130 in Soviet fiction cinema 39 in teen films 93, 96, 98, 99 Fogarty, Anne, Wife Dressing: The Art of Being a Well-Dressed Wife (1959) 147–8 Foley, James, Reckless (1984) 97 Forbes, Jill 282 forces of nature 290 Ford, John, Searchers, The (1956) 306–7 Forster, Marc, Quantum of Solace (2008) 290 Foucault, Michel 174, 319, 329 Fox, James 208 Fragment of an Empire (1929, dir. Ermler) 40–3

343

Index framing and interiors 16–17 Conversation Piece (1974) 117 in early Russian films 187–99 approaches to cinematic interiors 189–90 basements and attics 193–4, 195 camera movement 192 characters, movement of 194 culture in Russia 189 curtains 191–2, 191, 195 dream sequence 195 Dutch art tradition 192, 193 Evgenii Bauer 190 grilles and screens 198 identities 188–9 interiors 188 liminality 190–1, 195–6 metaphors 190, 195 modernity 187–8 sets and narrative 190, 196–7 tango dancing 197 vibration of the soul 198 in heritage films 73, 80 and identity 171 in Soviet fiction cinema 39 in teen films 93, 96–7, 99 Fraterrigo, Elizabeth 154 Frayling, Christopher 10, 75, 77 French fashion 150–3 French “New Wave” 6, 132, 208 French Provincial (style) 143, 150–2, 151–2, 153 Funny Face (1957, dir. Donen) art in 156 characters 144 colors 147, 148 French styles 151–2, 151–2, 153 plot 143 Fuqua, Antoine, Equalizer, The (2014) 287–8 Furie, Sidney J. Leather Boys, The (1964) biker gang 231, 233 gay culture 227 pub 230–2 setting 225, 228 furnishings 56–8 colors 148–9 Conversation Piece (1974) 107, 108, 109–10, 110, 114 Country (1981) 81 French Provincial style 150–2, 151–2, 153 functioning decoration 157 I Love Lucy (1951–7) 60–1 Period Modern style 154–5 Servant, The (1963) 215 teen bedrooms 93, 94 furniture see chairs; couches; tables Fuss, Diana 243

344

Garber, Jenny 93 Garbuglia, Mario 113–14 gardens 329 Gardner, David 248 Garner, Stanton 80 Gateways Club, Chelsea 225, 226–7, 228, 234–6, 235 gay heroes 248 gender 11–17, 19, 56, 60, 73–5, 84, 88, 92–101, 134, 146, 153, 241–2, 273, 302 transgender 241 gendered furniture 154 gendered spaces country houses 81 I Love Lucy (1951–7) 52–3, 54–5, 58 teenage bedrooms 92, 93–5, 97 General Nguyễn Ngo. c Loan Executing Nguyễn Văn Lém in Saigon, 1 February 1968 (Adams) 137–8, 137 gentrification 210, 214 Giardina, Carolyn 322 Gibbons, Cedric 10 Gibbs, John 100 Giber, Grigorii 33 Gilliatt, Penelope 210–11 Gilloch, Graeme 196 Girl with a Hatbox, The (1927, dir. Barnet) 36–40, 38, 43 Glazer, Jonathan, Under the Skin (2013) 260–1, 270–3, 271, 274–5 Godard, Jean-Luc 6 Weekend (1968) 132 Goffman, Erving 242 Golitzen, Alexander 4, 157 Gone With the Wind (1939, dir. Fleming) 3 González-Palacios, Alvar 116 Goss, Jon 99 Gothic buildings 267 Gothic horror 261 Gould, Jack 60 Grace, Henry 144, 145, 146, 148, 155, 157 Graffy, Julian 35 Grande, Maurizio 173 Grant, Barry Keith 87 Griffin, Sean 244 Griffiths, Trevor 78, 79, 80 grilles 198 Gutner, Howard 10 Hagener, Malte 190 Hall, G. Stanley 89 Hankin, Kelly 234 Hanson, Curtis, Losin’ It (1983) 94 Harrigan, Fionnuala, Filmcraft: Production Design (2013) 10 haunted houses 261 Hawkins, Joan 261, 264

Index Heckerling, Amy, Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) 97–8, 99–100 Heisner, Beverly Hollywood Art (1990) 8 Production Design in the Contemporary Film (1997) 8 Hepburn, Audrey 143 heritage 14, 58, 74–6, 78–9, 80, 82, 84 Cuban 58 film genre 73, 74, 78–9, 84 heterotopias 319, 326–9 Hicks, David 214 high schools 88, 95–8 Higson, Andrew 73 Hill, John 74, 79 Hilton, Barron 326 historicism/historicist 7–9 historical films 245, 250 HIV 249 Hobbs, Christopher 245, 246, 247 Hoffman, Dustin 128, 130, 131 Hogg, Joanna, Archipelago (2010) 75 Hollander, Martha 192 Holly Bush Pub, Hampstead 225, 228, 233 Hollywood 7–8, 13–14, 50, 51, 53, 57, 87–101, 124, 133–4, 136, 144, 145–6, 151–2, 157–8, 171, 225, 228, 233–4, 281–2, 290 homelessness 36–7 homoerotic(ism) 17, 18, 219–20, 233 homosexuality 17, 130, 207, 209, 225–37, 241–53 gay culture, later development of 236–7 geography of 225–6 identity of LGBTQ+ people 241, 242–3, 244, 248 imprisonment of homosexuals 248–9 inside/outside opposition 241, 242, 243, 253 and John and Mary (1969) 130 men 17, 130, 207, 209 paintings in film 246–7 in pubs 225, 226, 227, 228–9, 231–2, 233–4 queer interiors 244 in The Servant (1963) 209, 220 spaces of 17, 227–8 women 17 see also gay see also lesbian see also LGBTQ+ horror 1, 18–19, 128, 244, 259–275 art 18 in architecture 261, 262–5, 274 basements 265–6 destabilized domesticity 273–4 floors mother! (2017) 261, 266–70, 268–9, 273, 274, 275

Under the Skin (2013) 260–1, 270–3, 271, 274–5 gothic 261 psychological 1, 18 science-fiction 1, 18, 244 hotels 321, 322, 326 houses 11–12, 13–14, 88–92, 91 see also country houses; haunted houses; I Love Lucy; mansions Houston, Penelope 76 Hughes, John Breakfast Club, The (1984) 95, 96 Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) 95 Sixteen Candles (1984) 89–90, 93 humor, vulgar 97–8, 100 Hunter, Alison 156, 163 n.87 Hunter, Ross 145, 153 Hunter, Tim, River’s Edge (1986) 92 Huttner, Lee Benjamin 249, 250 I Love Lucy (1951–7) 13–14, 49–62 ethnicity and identity 53, 56, 58, 59 living rooms 50–1, 52, 53–6, 54–6, 60 marriage depicted in 49–50, 51, 58, 61 pilot episode 50, 51 premise of 49 sets 51–3, 60 identity and framing 171, 188–9 I Love Lucy (1951–7) 53, 56, 58, 59 LGBTQ+ people 241, 242–3, 244, 248 objects and 37, 146, 172 individual details 37–8 individualism 35, 97 Innocents, The (1961, dir. Clayton) 74, 75–8 inside/outside opposition 241, 242, 243, 253 instability 35 interior decoration 14, 16, 49, 53, 62, 143, 147, 149, 153, 214, 305–6 interior decorator(s) 2, 21, 146, 153 interior design 16, 129–30, 143–6, 148, 150–1, 154, 158, 188, 210, 227, 234, 241, 287, 289, 303 industry 145–6 interior designer(s) 129, 134–5 Interiors (1978, dir. Allen) 135 International Space Station (ISS) 302 inventiveness, and use of objects 39 items see objects Iutkevich, Sergei 33 Jacobsen, Arne 218 James, Henry, Turn of the Screw, The (1898) 74, 75 Jameson, Frederic 301, 308 Japanese Shoji screens 155

345

Index Jarman, Derek 241–53 AIDS and 249, 251–2 anachronisms, use of 250 background of 18, 243 Caravaggio (1986) 241–2, 245–7, 248, 249, 250, 251–2 design and 245 Devils, The (1971, dir. Russell) 244–5 Edward II (1991) 241–2, 245, 247–8, 249–51 gay experience of 241 Jencks, Charles 325 Jerde, Jon 323 John and Mary (1969, dir. Yates) 125, 127–34, 131 John Wick (2014, dir. Stahelski) 286–7 Jones, Gerard 49 Jones, Nick 282–3, 293 Judd, Donald, Untitled (1969) 127 Junge, Alfred 7 Kael, Pauline 117, 119, 135 Kant, Immanuel 262 Keeler, Christine 218 Kennedy, Jacqueline Bouvier 161 n.55 Kettering, Karen 32 keys 180 Khlebnikov, Velimir 189 Killing of Sister George, The (1968, dir. Aldrich) club 225, 226–7, 228, 234–6, 235 homosexual characters 228, 233 plot 233 pub 225, 228, 233–4 killscapes in action films 18, 281–93 construction of killscapes 284–5 emotional states 289–92, 291–2 entries and exits 288–9 maps and menaces 285–7 objects 287–8 space in action films 282–4 King, Geoff 282, 285, 329 King, Stephen 266 Kirkham, Pat 307 kitchens Apartment, The (1960) 178–80, 179 Firefly (2002) 304, 307 I Love Lucy (1951–7) 52, 53 Soviet fiction cinema 35, 41 Knoll International 154, 306, 307 Kolomarov, V. 42 Koneff, David A. 303, 307 Korda, Vincent 7 Kozlovskii, Sergei 37 Krzywinska, Tanya 329 Kubrick, Stanley 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) 301, 326 Shining, The (1980) 267, 323 Spartacus (1960) 4 Kul’tura odin (Culture One) 189

346

labyrinths 267 Lacan, Jacques 170, 171–2 Lajer-Burcharth, Ewa 282 Lamster, Mark, Architecture and Film (2000) 9 Lancaster, Burt 119 Landay, Lori 60 Landis, John, Animal House (1978) 87 Lanza Tomasi, Gioacchino 112 Lasch, Christopher 135 Lawrence, Jennifer 20, 259, 261, 266, 268–75 Le Corbusier 36, 38 Leather Boys, The (1964, dir. Furie) 17, 225–37 biker gang 231, 233 class 225, 228, 230, 232–3 gay culture 227 pub 230–2 setting 225, 228 Léger, Fernand 37–8 Leitch, David, Atomic Blonde (2017) 289, 292, 292 Lemmon, Jack 16, 169 Leningrad see St. Petersburg, Russia Leopard, The (1963, dir. Visconti) 111, 112 lesbianism 17, 18, 225–6, 226–7, 233, 234–6 Leven, Boris 4, 5, 23 n.21 Lewis, George H. 98 LGBTQ+ 18, 241–53 liberation 89–90 libraries 95–6 light and dark, contrast of 192, 195 lighting 35, 41, 80–1, 213, 219, 247, 306 liminality 190–1, 195–6 Lindop, Samantha 260, 271 Lindsay, John 126 Lissitzky, El 36 living rooms Firefly (2002) 304–6, 307–8 I Love Lucy (1951–7) 50–1, 52, 53–6, 54–6, 60 Soviet fiction cinema 37, 42 LoBrutto, Vincent, By Design: Interviews with Film Production Designers (1991) 9 Locke, Richard 112 lodgers 32, 37 lofts 133 see also attics London 225, 226, 227–8 Losey, Joseph 208, 214 Servant, The (1963) 207–20 Losin’ It (1983, dir. Hanson) 94 Louis, Jean 145, 148 lounges see living rooms Lubitsch, Ernst 178 Lucas, George American Graffiti (1973) 301 Star Wars (1977) 301, 302 Lukhmanov, Nikolai 43 Lukic, Marko 273

Index MacDonald, Richard 210 Machete (2010, dir. Rodriguez) 288, 289 Magistretti, Vico 308 Makatura, Elaine 4, 5, 23 n.21 malls see shopping malls Maltby, Richard 87 managerial culture 172–3 Mandelbaum, Howard and Eric Myers, Screen Deco (1985) 8 Manhattan (1979, dir. Allen) 134 Manon, Hugh S. 171 mansions 266–8 Manvell, Roger 6 Marling, Karal Ann 150 marriages 49–50, 51, 58, 61 Martin, Sandy 234–5 Martin, Scott 265 material culture 15, 39, 49, 61–2, 107–20 Material Culture Studies 9 Maugham, Robin 208–9 Servant, The (1948) 209 Mauss, Marcel 327 maze(s) 40, 267–8 McQuarrie, Christopher, MI: Fallout (2018) 290, 291, 291 McRobbie, Angela 93 McTiernan, John, Die Hard (1988) 283 Medioli, Enrico 113, 115, 119 memories 42–3, 119, 133 Mendes, Sam Skyfall (2012) 290, 291 Spectre (2015) 291 mental maps 281, 285, 286 Menzies, William Cameron 3 merchandise 61 Messina, Philip 267–8 MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer) 3, 10 MI: Fallout (2018, dir. McQuarrie) 290, 291, 291 Mid-Century Modernism 6, 10, 37, 50, 131 Midnight Cowboy (1969, dir. Schlesinger) 130, 133 Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig 307 Miller, David, Back Street (1961) 143, 145, 146–7, 148, 153, 154, 156–7 Mills, Charles Wright 172 Milner, Murray 96 Minimalism 15, 126–7 Interiors (1978) 135 John and Mary (1969) 127–8, 130–4, 131 Stardust Memories (1980) 135–8, 137 Ward Bennett 128–30, 129 Minnelli, Vincente Designing Woman (1957) art in 156 colors 148–50, 149 fashion and 145 fashion show 153

functioning decoration 157 identities 146 Parisian style 152 plot 143 Shoji screens 155 mirrors, use of 92, 93–4, 177–8, 178, 214–15, 217, 218 mise-en-scène 74, 89, 93–5, 101, 181, 197, 210, 213, 219, 250, 282, 294, 292, 308 mobile homes 304–5 Modernism/Modernists 6, 10, 37, 50, 131, 187 modernity 16, 154, 187–9, 207 monsters 264 Montgomery, Charlotte 60 Montgomery, Michael 98, 99 Morley, Rachel 43, 197 Mortimer, John 128, 130 Moscow, Russia 33, 36–7, 189 mother! (2017, dir. Aronofsky) 261, 266–70, 268–9, 273, 274, 275 Murray, Simon 74 Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA), Designed for Film: The Hollywood Art Director (1978) 8, 50, 175 namelessness 127–8, 130 narcissism 98–9, 125, 134, 135 nature 328–9 neighbors 59–60 Nesbitt, Kate 263 Neumann, Dietrich, Film Architecture: Set Designs from Metropolis to Blade Runner (1996) 9 “New Wave,” French 6, 132, 208 New York, USA 126, 128, 134–5, 138, 181 nightclubs see clubs non-places 319, 327 nostalgia 20, 79, 300, 301, 302, 308 Nye, David E. 320 objects in action films 284, 287–8, 289 anachronisms 250–1 and confrontation 216 in curated spaces 155–7 and ethnicity 58 and memory 42–3 movement of 34, 36 possession of 132 presence of 12 and resourcefulness 39–40 symbolic importance of 132 and values 39, 59, 61 see also artworks objets petits a(utres) 16, 170, 171–2, 174–80, 178–9 O’Brien, Harvey 282, 284

347

Index Odom, William 92 office interiors 173–5, 175, 177, 180 office workers 172–3 Oppenheimer, Jess 57 Orientalism 303 O’Rourke, Chris 227, 236 Page, Geraldine 135 paintings Back Street (1961) 156–7 Caravaggio (1986) 246–7 Conversation Piece (1974) 108, 108, 110, 116–18 I Love Lucy (1951–7) 53, 54, 56 John and Mary (1969) 131 Pandzic, Maya 273 Papernyi, Vladimir 189 Paramount Pictures 151, 152, 268 parental values 89–90 Paris, France 150–3 Parker, Martin 326 Parkes, James 249, 251 parties 89–90, 133 Passengers (2016, dir. Tyldum) 319–30 plot 319–20 patriarchy, failure of 77, 78, 82 Payne, Alina 37 Period Modern style 154–5 Phillips, William H. 96 photographic consultants 4 photomurals 136–7, 138 pianos 58–9 Pickersgill, Sean 268 pictorial consultants 4 Pimlott, Mark 328 Pinter, Harold 209–10, 213 Platner, Warren 324 Playboy penthouse furnishings 154 Plunkett, William 308 politics 79, 126, 133 Poole, Mike 78 Pordenone, Italy 8, 190 see also Silent Film Festival, Pordenone, Italy Porky’s (1981, dir. Clarke) 97 positioning of characters 35, 83, 193, 196, 252, 286–7, 291 post-Minimalism 135 postmodern 9, 10, 263, 274 Powell, Dilys 208 practitioners, writing by 7 Pratt, Christopher 20 Praz, Mario 108, 115–18, 116 pre-sound cinema 8 see also Bauer, Evgenii; Soviet Fiction cinema Presdee, Mike 100 Pretty in Pink (1986, dir. Deutch) 90, 96

348

prints see paintings privacy 188 production consultants 4 production design(ers) 2–12, 20, 107, 113, 128, 136, 213, 244–6, 282, 285, 303, 306, 309, 319, 322 Profumo, John 218 psychological states 40–1 publications, relevant 5–12 pubs 225, 226, 227, 228–9, 231–2, 233–4 Purse, Lisa 283 Quantum of Solace (2008, dir. Forster) 290 Queen Mary II 324–5 queer film 244 queer interiors 244 queerness 17–18 see also homosexuality quiet horror 261 Quinlan, Hannah and Rosie Hastings, UK Gay Bar Directory (2015–6) 237 Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985, dir. Cosmatos) 283 Ramírez, Juan Antonio, La arquitectura en el cine: Hollywood, la Edad de Oro (1984) 7 Rankin, Jonathan R. 326, 327–8 Rappaport, Mark 119 Reagan era 14, 87, 89–90, 95, 98, 99, 101 realism 33, 37, 111, 112 Reardon, Basil, Victim (1961) 209, 225, 227–8, 228–9, 229–30 rebellion, teenage 89–90, 97 Reckless (1984, dir. Foley) 97 record players 176 Reed, Christopher 227 Relph, Michael 230 Renoir, Jean 111 resourcefulness, and use of objects 39 revivals 8, 301 Colonial 53, 56 Gothic 267 Rococo 53, 119 Rhodes, John David, Spectacle of Property: The House in American Film (2017) 11 Rice, Charles 188 Ringwald, Molly 90, 93, 95 Risky Business (1983, dir. Brickman) 90–1, 91 River’s Edge (1986, dir. Hunter) 92 Robinson, Hubbell 50 Roche, David 271 Rococo Revival 53, 119 Rodchenko, Aleksandr 37 Rodriguez, Robert, Machete (2010) 288, 289 Room, Abram Bed and Sofa (1927) 32–6, 34, 43 Traitor, The (1926) 33

Index Rosemary’s Baby (1968, dir. Roman Polanski) 126, 128 rugs 305, 308 Russell, Ken, Devils, The (1971) 244–5 Russian films see Bauer, Evgenii; Soviet fiction cinema Rybczynski, Witold 188 Saarinen, Eero 154 Salisbury Public House, Covent Garden 225, 229 Sampson, Anthony 207 scandal(s) 207, 211, 218, 227, 236 Schleier, Merrill, Skyscraper Cinema (2009) 11 Schlesinger, John Billy Liar (1963) 208 Midnight Cowboy (1969) 130, 133 schools 88, 95–8 science fiction and the Western 300–2 space Western 300–2 science fiction interiors 19–20 see also spaceships Scorsese, Martin 125, 137 Scott, Ridley, Blade Runner (1982) 322 Scream Queen 18–19 science fiction 1, 18–20, 244, 260, 264, 299, 300–5, 319–25, 328–30, 336 and the Western 300–2 screens 35, 155, 198 sculptures 120, 127, 149, 154–5, 156 Searchers, The (1956, dir. Ford) 306–7 security in action films 283 Selznick, David O. 3 Sennett, Robert S., Setting the Scene: The Great Hollywood Art Directors (1994) 5, 8 Senso (1954, dir. Visconti) 112 Serdena, Gene 323 Serenity (2005, dir. Whedon) 299–300 see also Firefly Servant, The (1963, dir. Losey) 207–20 ambiguity of sexual politics 220 background to 207–8 bedrooms 217 casting of Dirk Bogarde 209 class, issues of 208, 209, 212, 222 confrontations and objects 216, 217, 218 house, contested environment of 211, 212 house, transformation of 210–11, 213, 214–16 lighting 219 novel 209 perversity 220 script 213–14 servant, character of 213 sets 210, 211 staircase 210, 211, 217, 220 set design, history of 5, 7–8 set designers 2, 113, 190

set dressers 3 set design(s) 2–10, 12, 16–17, 33, 35, 37–8, 41, 50, 111, 113, 136, 144, 146, 148, 152–3, 155, 157, 187–99, 210, 225, 242, 244–6, 249–50, 267, 281, 284, 292, 308–9 sets Apartment, The (1960) 174, 175, 180, 181 Caravaggio (1986) 245–6, 249 Conversation Piece (1974) 113–14 country houses 76, 82, 83 Edward II (1991) 245, 249 of Evgenii Bauer 190–7 fashion films 145, 148, 155–6 Firefly (2002) 303–4, 304–6 I Love Lucy (1951–7) 51–3, 60 Killing of Sister George, The (1968) 228 Minimalist 125–6, 138 Servant, The (1963) 210, 211 Soviet fiction cinema 33, 37, 41 sewing 40, 43 sexual crimes 138 Shining, The (1980, dir. Kubrick) 267, 323 ships 319 see also spaceships Shklovskii, Viktor 32, 39 Shoji screens 155 shopping malls on spaceships 320, 321, 321, 322–3 in teen movies 88, 98–100, 101 shower scene 39, 97–8, 101 Shukaitis, Stevphen 326 silent films 8 see also Bauer, Evgenii; Soviet Fiction cinema Silent Film Festival, Pordenone, Italy 8, 190 Silent Running (1972, dir. Trumbull) 328 Simon, Al 52 sitcom 13, 49, 57, 62 Sixteen Candles (1984, dir. Hughes) 89–90, 93 Skyfall (2012, dir. Mendes) 290, 291 Skylab 302 skyscraper(s) 9, 11, 169 Slocombe, Douglas 213, 214 Smith, Dina 305 Snyder, Zack, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) 288–9 Sobchack, Vivian 325, 329 social alienation 35 socialist politics 79 Society of Motion Picture Interior Decorators (SMPID) 2 sofas see couches Solomon, Robert C. 264, 265 Söntgen, Beate 282 Sorensen, Abigail 273

349

Index Soviet fiction cinema, comfort in 13, 31–43 material and memory: Fragment of an Empire (1929) 40–3 material excess: Bed and Sofa (1927) 32–6, 34 material intelligence: The Girl with a Hatbox (1927) 36–40, 38 Soviet lifestyle 33 space action films, use of 283 architectural 259 country houses, use of 73, 76–7, 79–81, 82, 83–4, 84 space Westerns 299, 301 spaceships 19–20, 299–310, 319–30 designs of 321–2 domesticity in 304–6, 305–10 as heterotopias 326–9 interiors 302–5, 304–5, 322–6, 323–4 nostalgia 300 plots of Firefly and Serenity 299–300 science fiction and the Western 300–2 sublime and banal 320–1, 321 Sparke, Penny 188 Spartacus (1960, dir. Kubrick) 4 Spectre (2015, dir. Mendes) 291 Spencer, John 325–6 Spirit of St. Louis, The (1957, dir. Wilder) 4 Sprengler, Christine 302 St. Petersburg, Russia 41 Stahelski, Chad, John Wick (2014) 286–7 staircases country houses 77–8 Servant, The (1963) 210, 211, 217, 220 Soviet fiction cinema 34–5 spaceships 324, 324 Star Wars (1977, dir. Lucas) 301, 302 Stardust Memories (1980, dir. Allen) 125, 135–8, 137 statues 120 see also sculptures stigma symbols 242 sublime 262–3, 320 submarines 304 suitcases 36 suites 324–5, 324 surfaces 259 see also floors and horror Swift, Jonathan, Gulliver’s Travels (1726) 328 Sylbert, Richard 10 tables 55, 55, 60, 157 tango 197 Tashiro, Charles, Pretty Pictures: Production Design and the History Film (1998) 9, 245 taste 15, 42, 611, 73, 80, 111, 117–18, 131–2, 134, 136, 143, 147, 150, 152, 155–7, 175, 179, 210, 214–15, 226, 233, 263

350

good 15, 111, 136, 145, 162 bad 137 Taxi Driver (1976, dir. Scorsese) 125–6, 134, 137–8 technological sublime 320 teen films 14, 87–101 class in 90, 97 costumes in 96, 97 focus in 93, 96, 98, 99 high schools 88, 95–8 homes 88–92, 91 shopping malls 88, 98–100, 101 teenage bedrooms 88, 92–5, 97, 101 transgressive behavior in 89–90, 91, 94, 97, 98, 100, 101 teenage behavior 89–90, 91, 97 television 1–3, 8, 11–16, 19–20, 49–52, 55, 59–60, 73–6, 78, 81–2, 148, 175, 207, 215, 228, 233, 242, 299–303, 308–9 BBC Television 14 Granada Television 76 Thames Television 8 television set(s) 12, 176 tennis racquet 179, 179 terminology 2–5 theater 50, 59–60, 78, 96, 101, 111, 145, 177, 181, 208, 228, 242–47, 320 Thompson, Kristen 96 Tidal Basin Tavern, Canning Town 225, 231–2 Tonetti, Claretta Micheletti 120 topophilia 188 Tosi, Piero 111 tourism, space 325–6 Townsend, Sylvia 10 trailers 304–5 Traitor, The (1926, dir. Room) 33 transgressive behavior, in teen films 89–90, 91, 94, 97, 98, 100, 101 transnational studies 7 Trauner, Alexandre 170–1, 174, 181 Tredy, Dennis 75 Tret´iakov, Sergei 39, 42 trompe l’oeil 109, 111, 156 Trumbull, Douglas, Silent Running (1972) 328 Twilight of a Woman’s Soul (1913, dir. Bauer) 190–4, 191, 193 Tyldum, Morten 325 Passengers (2016) 319–30, 321, 323–4 UK Gay Bar Directory (2015–6, Quinlan and Hastings) 237 Under the Skin (2000, Faber) 260 Under the Skin (2013, dir. Glazer) 260–1, 270–3, 271, 274–5 Unwin, Simon, Analysing Architecture 259 upward movement 291 urban alienation 125

Index urban porosity 198–9 Urban Studies 9–11 vacant interiors 38, 271, 290 Valley Girl (1983, dir. Coolidge) 92–3, 98–9 Viazzi, Ginaco 7 vibration of the soul 198 Victim (1961, dir. Reardon) 209, 225, 227–8, 228–9, 229–30 Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Art of Hollywood: Fifty Years of Art Direction, The (1979) 8 Victorian houses 267 Vidal, Belén 73–4 Vidler, Anthony 189 Vidor, King, Crowd, The (1928) 173–4, 183 n. 24 Vietnam War 137, 137 viewers see audiences, relationships with Visconti, Luchino 111–12 Bellissima (1951) 111 Conversation Piece (1974) 107–11, 108, 110, 112–20 Leopard, The (1963) 111, 112 Senso (1954) 112 visual consultants 4 voids 265 Vreeland, Diana 144, 147 vulgar humor 97–8, 100 Walker, Alexander 208 Wallace, Richard, Young in Heart (1938) 3 Warner Brothers 4, 91 Wayne, John 302 Wealleans, Anne 326 weapons 287–8 Weekend (1968, dir. Godard) 132 Weine, Robert, Das Kabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920) 189 Wells, George 145 West, American 20, 54, 302, 3089 see also space Western West Side Story (1961, dirs. Wise and Robbins) 4, 5, 23 n.21 Westerns 301–2

Whedon, Joss 299–310 Firefly (2002) interiors 302–10, 304–6 plot 299–300, 310 n.5 as space Western 301, 302 Serenity (2005) 299–300 Wheeler, Lyle 3 Whitesides, George T. 325 Whitlock, Cathy, Design on Film: A Century of Hollywood Art Direction (2010) 10 Whyte, William 173 Widdis, Emma 32, 37, 38, 39, 43 Wilder, Billy Apartment, The (1960) 169–81 Spirit of St. Louis, The (1957) 4 Williams, Raymond 6 Willis, Gordon 136 windows 35, 36, 54, 55, 55 Wise, Robert and Jerome Robbins, West Side Story (1961) 4, 5, 23 n.21 Wojcik, Pamela Robertson, Apartment Plot, The (2010) 11 Wollen, Peter 285–6 women, oppression of 273, 275 women, roles of fashion professionals 144, 145 homemakers 51, 56, 134 interior decorators 21 n.4 women’s films 144–5 Women’s Journal (Zhenskii zhurnal) 31 Woolfe, Maxine 235 World War Two 3, 6–7, 13, 20, 78, 92, 118, 135, 150, 172 Wright, Frank Lloyd 322–3 Wyver, John 78 Yates, Peter, John and Mary (1969) 125, 127–34, 131 Young in Heart (1938, dir. Wallace) 3 Zebar, Shangai (2006–8, 3Gatti Architecture Studio) 323 Zoffany, Johann, John, Fourteenth Lord Willoughby de Broke, and His Family (c. 1766) 117

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