Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948)

Friday, April 05, 2002  | 

Dir. by Max Ophuls

Images: Ophuls's influence on Kubrick is obvious here. His camera moves constantly, but always slowly and gracefully. It tracks forward and backward, from side to side, through the cramped rooms of Brand's apartment, taking in, with almost novelistic detail, the impressively realized mise-en-scene. An important recurring motif is a dramatic crane shot that appears to float over the stairwell, looking down on Lisa.

• • •

An opening title card situates us in fin-de-siecle Vienna, where we are introduced to Stefan Brand (Louis Jourdan), a graying, but distinguished looking aristocrat, who returns to his apartment late one night to begin preparations for his immediate departure. Brand has chosen to flee Vienna rather than confront the man who would duel him in three hours. His preparations are halted, though, by a letter delivered to him by his mute servant, John (Art Smith). The anonymous letter details the tragic fate of Lisa Berndl (Joan Fontaine) and begins: "By the time you read this letter, I may be dead. . . . If this reaches you, you will know how I became yours when you didn't know who I was or even that I existed." The remainder of the film dramatizes the story contained within Lisa's letter, beginning nearly twenty years earlier, when the then teenage girl first developed her hopeless devotion to the handsome concert pianist who lived in the apartment across from hers.

Letter essentially follows the trajectory of a Thomas Hardy novel: Lisa pines desperately, refuses the proposal of an honorable suitor, and abandons her parents — all sacrifices made to her absurd romantic delusions of a future happiness with Brand. When our hero and heroine are finally united, Ophuls stages it in the trademark style of his day — their faces are pressed together in a close-up; their passion is heightened by a swell of syrupy strings — but a sense of tragedy suffocates the seduction. Once Brand leaves for a brief concert tour, Ophuls elides the nine months of Lisa's pregnancy before cutting again, this time to her comfortable life with her husband, Johann (Marcel Journet), and her young son. However, a chance reunion with Stefan soon precipitates Lisa's ultimate fall, which culminates in the final lines of the letter, a note to Brand added by the nuns who tended Lisa's deathbed.

In reading over what little I could find online, I was surprised to find Letter described as a "classic three-tissue melodrama" and a "lush tearjerker par excellence." I'm almost ashamed to admit my biases against such films, biases that reared their ugly heads at the first glimpse of the 31-year-old Fontaine playing the naïve, pubescent Lisa. But the combination of Ophuls's camerawork and pacing, along with Howard Koch's biting (and decidedly unromantic) script were more than enough to overcome my personal baggage. What few remaining reservations I may have harbored were wiped away during the following exchange between Lisa and Johann, who recognizes that his hopes of happiness have been dashed by Stefan's return:

Lisa: Johann, you don't think I wanted this to happen.
Johann: No. (Pause) What are you going to do?
Lisa: I don't know.
Johann: Lisa, we have a marriage. Perhaps it's not all you once hoped for, but you have a home, and your son, and people who care for you.
Lisa: I know that, Johann. I'd do anything to avoid hurting you, but I can't help it.
Johann: And your son, you think you can avoid hurting him?
Lisa: He won't be harmed. I'll see to that.
Johann: There are such things as honor and decency.
Lisa: I told myself that a hundred times this one evening.
Johann: You talk as though it were out of your hands. It's not Lisa. You have a will, you can do what's right, what's best for you, or you can throw away your life.
Lisa: I've had no will but his, ever.
Johann: That's romantic nonsense.
Lisa: Is it? Johann, I can't help it. I can't. You must believe that.
Johann: What about him? Can't he help himself either?
Lisa: I know now that he needs me as much as I've always needed him.
Johann: Isn't it a little late for him to find out?

Rather than a classic melodrama or lush tearjerker, Letter strikes me as their antithesis: an ironic critique of the romance genre ("nonsense," Johann calls it). As in films like Terrence Malick's Badlands, we are constantly forced to confront the friction between the harsh, indifferent world depicted on screen and the narrator's deluded, socialized justification (or deliberate ignorance) of it. My favorite moment comes near the end when Stefan and Lisa are reunited. She returns to his old apartment, knowing that doing so necessarily sacrifices her marriage. Once inside, though, she finally recognizes how unworthy Stefan has been of her devotion, unmasking him for the pathetic, juvenile rake that he is. And yet, as her voice-over speaks the final lines of the letter, we hear her once again profess her undying love for him. That disconnect between the truth of her brutal experience and the fantasy to which she escapes is just fascinating, and it lends the film the same bleak tenor that characterizes O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh. Actually, Lisa would fit in quite well with the fine folks at Harry's: "The hell with the truth! It's the lie of a pipedream that gives life."

Labels: American, Ophuls

The Man Who Wasn't There (2001)

Sunday, November 18, 2001  | 

Dir. by Joel and Ethan Coen

Images: Another beautifully shot film from Roger Deakins. They obviously enjoyed taking advantage of the opportunities afforded by shooting in B&W: Crane smokes constantly, lighting is often in stark contrast, all trademarks of noir. Favorite images: Crane sitting alone in exact middle of couch, Birdy backlit at the piano, and lawyer Riedenschneider bathed in light streaming in from prison window (a scene straight out of citizen Kane).

• • •

Joel and Ethan Coen have carved out an enviable niche for themselves. Working for nearly two decades now in relative independence from studio interference, they have written, directed, and produced a series of interesting, if not always successful (either commercially or artistically), films. In doing so, they have somehow managed to garner the affection of both the popular press and the Hollywood community, while simultaneously fostering a rabid, cult-like fan following: those who can quote Raising Arizona for any occasion and who laugh a bit too loud at theatrical showings. On more than one occasion I've heard the Coens described as the "saviors" of American film, a moniker that would, I'm sure, inspire quiet, ironic laughter from the men themselves.

In a word, the Coens have become critic-proof: to criticize one of their films is to resign oneself to a place among the "unhip." Which brings me to The Man Who Wasn't There, a film I'm hesitant to describe as a disappointment, if only because, by doing so, I'm setting myself up to the inevitable and tired rebuttals: "The jokes on you. The Coens love to break the rules. They set you up, and you fell for it." Actually, I do get it. I'm just beginning to lose interest. Or, more precisely, the Coens are failing to hold my interest. But more on that later . . .

I'm also hesitant to label The Man a disappointment because so much of it is so good. Billy Bob Thornton is impressive in the title role, playing a barber named Ed Crane whose life is lived in futile routine — a mindless job, a loveless marriage. When he becomes embroiled in a messy murder, involving his wife (Frances McDormand), her lover (James Gandolfini), and a traveling businessman (Jon Polito), it appears that, with the excitement, he might also find some meaning in his life. But in typical noir fashion, the exact opposite occurs. In that sense, the conceit of the film is an interesting one: "Modern Man" (as his lawyer refers to him) fights back, becoming active for the first time in his life. But his action leads only to the destruction of everything he holds dear (if anyone is, in fact, capable of holding anything "dear" in a Coen film). Frank Norris would have loved it.

The problem with The Man is that, perhaps for the first time, the Coens have invested a character with genuine pathos, but seem to have done so (much to my own personal annoyance) only in the interest of later undercutting it with their typical brand of cynical Nihilism. As a pure character study of Ed Crane, the film flirts with honesty and sincerity, which gives certain scenes a quiet grace unlike anything seen in earlier Coen films. For instance, at a Christmas party, Ed discovers a teen-age girl playing Beethoven at the piano. It's a beautiful scene. Ed is obviously drawn to both the girl — her potential and innocence — and to the music, which seems to offer him some glimpse of beauty.

But such things — truth, beauty, innocence — don't exist in the Coen's world, and any sad sap who believes that they do (like Ed Crane or me, for instance) is just being set up for ridicule. The relationship between Ed and the girl eventually becomes another Coen punchline: the two end up in a car accident after the "innocent" girl leans over to give Ed a blow job. I guess the joke worked. Several others in the theater laughed (a few too loudly).

The Coens seem to have stepped into an interesting trap here. Never before have any of their films tried so hard to be about something — and, honestly, by the time Tony Shaloub's lawyer began his speech about "the more you look at something the less chance there is of it making sense" I was just shaking my head — but, ultimately, The Man Who Wasn't There is only about meaninglessness: the meaninglessness of our lives, the meaninglessness of our loves, and the meaninglessness of this film. I might be willing to buy it all if the Coens hadn't offered glimpses of something much greater. But, in the end, their cynicism and this film just feel hollow.

Labels: American, Coen

Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

Tuesday, April 25, 2000  | 

Dir. by Stanley Kubrick

Images: The following was written for a graduate seminar on James Joyce and W.B. Yeats. Please forgive my incessant psycho-babble. I think it actually serves a very legitimate reading of this confounding film.

See Also: Paths of Glory | Full Metal Jacket

• • •

Sally: You're Bill . . . the Bill? You're the doctor who was here last night?

Bill: Well, I suppose I am.

As Garry Leonard has recently noted, a Lacanian reading of James Joyce's "The Dead" would describe Gabriel Conroy's interactions with Lily, Molly Ivors, and Gretta as three attempts by the protagonist to "confirm the fictional unity of his masculine subjectivity." His after-dinner speech, then, serves as an attempted "seduction of the Other" (Lacan's phrase), a linguistic ploy by which Gabriel confirms his own identity by "seducing the audience into authenticating it for him." While he is able to carefully avoid significant fragmentation during his early encounters with Lily and Miss Ivors, Gabriel is finally forced — through Gretta's admission of her love for Michael Furey — to confront the outwardly-constructed fiction of his unified subjectivity (Leonard, 289-90). For Lacan, Gabriel's epiphany is, in Joyce's words, that inevitable dissolution of his "own identity . . . into a grey impalpable world" (224-25).

In Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's novella, Traumnovelle (1926), Dr. Bill Harford experiences a similar dissolution, though the film essentially reverses the basic plot structure of Joyce's story, thereby turning its focus on the terrifying consequences of that epiphany rather than its preludes (and giving us, in effect, a glimpse of the proverbial "morning after" that has intrigued readers of "The Dead" for decades). Bill's wife, Alice, confesses in the opening act that, while on vacation, she had fantasized about abandoning her family in exchange for even one night with a naval officer who was staying in their hotel. "I was ready to give up everything," Alice tells her disbelieving husband. "You, Helena [their daughter], my whole fucking future. Everything" (49). The admission explodes Bill's imagined subjectivity, sending him on a dizzying odyssey through the streets of New York, where he encounters a string of Others, both women and men, with whom he attempts to recapture the unity that has suddenly become lost to him.

His search is necessarily in vain, however, as is evidenced by the film's conclusion. Bill's decision to "tell [Alice] everything" and Alice's desire to "fuck . . . as soon as possible" are desperate, and ultimately unsatisfying, attempts to mask Bill's permanently split subjectivity behind established ideological structures and jouissance. His inevitable lack of satisfaction, I will argue, is likewise experienced by the film viewer, who is presented with a story that steadfastly refuses to tie together its many loose ends. In fact, in his attempts to force "progression [and] effective closure" on the source material, Kubrick's co-writer, Frederick Raphael, instead further exposes the futility of such an endeavor (Raphael, 119). Sean Murphy's conclusion concerning Gabriel Conroy and "The Dead" can, I think, be likewise applied to Bill Harford and Eyes Wide Shut: "[He] will never achieve the unity that the linear narrative supposedly achieves at the end; he can never illuminate the entire beginning and middle of his consciousness via some epiphany because his subjectivity is forever split" (471).

Kubrick and Schnitzler

In 1970, Joseph Gelmis asked Stanley Kubrick why he wished to make a film about Napoleon. Fresh from his recent success with 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), the filmmaker claimed to have found in the French leader a subject that spoke to his own fascination with history and strategy, while remaining "oddly contemporary — the responsibilities and abuses of power, the dynamics of social revolution, the relation of the individual to the state, war, milatirism, etc." Kubrick's Napoleon project never came to fruition. However, his answer to Gelmis's question reveals that more than thirty years ago, the seed for Kubrick's final film had already taken root. Napoleon's life, he continued, "has been described as an epic poem of action. His sex life was of Arthur Schnitzler" (29). Kubrick's obsession with Schnitzler's short novel, Traumnovelle, was fairly well-known by those who had closely followed his career. In his recent memoir, Eyes Wide Open, Frederick Raphael recounts how his editor, Stanley Baron, and the director, Stanley Donen, both correctly guessed the source material after learning that Raphael had been hired to write for Kubrick. Donen, according to Raphael, "knew that Kubrick had been trying to 'lick' the Schnitzler" since at least 1972.

Set in fin-de-siecle Vienna, Traumnovelle tells the story of a young doctor, Fridolin, and his wife, Albertine, who, while attending a masked ball, are separately propositioned by strangers. The couple returns home to enjoy an unusually amorous evening, but both wake feeling troubled by the events of the previous night. "Those trivial encounters," Schnitzler writes, "became magically and painfully interfused the treacherous illusion of missed opportunities. . . . both felt the need for mild revenge" (177). After putting their daughter to bed, Fridolin and Albertine discuss the ball and other past indiscretions: Albertine admits her lust for an officer she had noticed while vacationing on the Danish coast; Fridolin describes his brief encounter with a "young girl of no more than fifteen, her loose, flaxen hair falling over her shoulders and on one side across her tender breast" (180). Though guilty only in mind and not in body, both are disturbed by the other's admissions. They agree, with measured assurance, to tell each other of their true feelings in the future.

Fridolin is then called away to the home of a dying patient, thus beginning the odyssey that serves as the central narrative device of both Traumnovelle and Eyes Wide Shut. His voyage leads him through a dream-like world of sexual fantasy in which he plays an increasingly active role. At each stop along the journey — his patient's home, a young prostitute's apartment, a costume shop, and a large country manor — Fridolin escapes without physically betraying his wife, this despite the unusually forward advances from the young women he meets along the way. The temptation, however, intensifies as he travels through increasingly unfamiliar territory. His final destination is a masked orgy, where he is exposed as an interloper and threatened with physical harm. But Fridolin is saved — or "redeemed" — by a mysterious woman who had earlier warned him of the danger. She is ushered from the room, while he is placed in a carriage and sent away.

Fridolin returns home to discover his wife lying still in bed, "her half-open lips distressingly contorted by the play of shadows: it was a face unknown to Fridolin" (237). When he bends down to touch her, Albertine explodes in a fit of dream-induced laughter. She wakes to describe the details of the dream, a dream in which she makes love to the Danish officer while Fridolin is crucified, accompanied by the sound of his wife's mocking laughter. He determines then to discover the identity of the mysterious woman from the orgy, so as to "get even" with Albertine, "who had revealed herself through her dream for what she really was, faithless, cruel and treacherous, and whom at that point he thought he hated more profoundly than he had ever loved her" (247). His search, however, is fruitless. The next day he retraces his route from the night before, but discovers only greater ambiguities, the result of which is his gradual dissolution. "He felt helpless and inept and everything seemed to be slipping from his grasp," Schnitzler writes; "everything was becoming increasingly unreal, even his home, his wife, his child, his profession, his very identity as he trudged on mechanically through the evening streets, turning things over in his mind" (263).

When Fridolin does finally return home, he finds on his pillow the mask that had, on the previous evening, concealed his identity at the orgy. The terrifying sight provokes "loud, heart-rending sobs" from the doctor and forces him to confess "everything" to his wife (280). After listening quietly to his story, Albertine suggests that they be grateful for having "safely emerged from these adventures — both from the real ones and from those we dreamed about." They then doze off together, sleeping dreamlessly until the morning, when they are woken by "a triumphant sunbeam coming in between the curtains, and a child's gay laughter from the adjacent room" (281).

The "happy" ending of Traumnovelle, however, is problematized by the sentiments expressed in Fridolin's and Albertine's final lines. "Neither the reality of a single night, nor even of a person's entire life can be equated with the full truth about his innermost being," she says. To which, he replies, "And no dream is altogether a dream." Their reconciliation is tempered by their barely-suppressed awareness of the tenuous nature of their relationship: "Never enquire into the future," Albertine whispers (281). They have each witnessed a frightening glimpse of the other, but have chosen — for the sake of their marriage and as a means of coping with the struggles of daily life — to ignore it. As Martin Swales says of the scene, "There is no solution — only a gratefully accepted working arrangement which is of necessity tentative and reticent in the certainties it offers" (147).

It is precisely that unsatisfying ambiguity, I would conjecture, that so fascinated Stanley Kubrick for nearly three decades. Each of his films — from his first feature, Fear and Desire (1953), an ambitious but almost laughably failed attempt to examine the two greatest motivating forces in human nature, to Full Metal Jacket (1987) — dissects socially constructed dichotomies, blurring the boundaries between good and evil, hero and villain, love and hate, fantasy and reality, us and them. Traumnovelle offered Kubrick the opportunity to observe the human animal in its most intimately guarded environment: the marriage bed. He had broached the subject in several earlier films, including Lolita (1962), Barry Lyndon (1975), and The Shining (1980), but none provided a suitably engaging subject for an extended study. Traumnovelle, however, would allow Kubrick to investigate the complex dynamics of "married sex," as Raphael describes it, sex that is equal parts passion and domesticity — "the naked woman at the refrigerator door as she remembers to put the chicken away before she goes to bed" (43). Schnitzler's novel negotiates that border zone where selflessness, responsibility, and commitment meet narcissism, fantasy, and desire, the product of which is a mutually reaffirming masquerade: Fridolin and Albertine ultimately return to the comfortable roles of husband/father and wife/mother, denying all that would jeopardize their performances. Or, as Leonard has noted, "one performs masques because the alternative is to have no sense of destiny at all; one wears masks to keep intact the illusion that behind them one has a real face that must be protected" (5). Traumnovelle and Eyes Wide Shut rip away those masks, and force both the characters and the readers/viewers to confront the unsettling consequences of doing so.

Lacan's Split Consciousness

Of course, Kubrick may also have been so taken by Traumnovelle because its plot turns on "one hell of a scene."1 Like Gretta's in "The Dead," Albertine's confession provokes the story's epiphanic moment.2 Fridolin is horrified by his wife's secret nature, but only as it affects the fictional unity of his own subjectivity. Disoriented by his own sudden fragmentation, Fridolin is forced to begin his journey of attempted recovery. It is a moment best explained in Lacanian terms. Jacques Lacan's brand of post-Freudian psychoanalysis problematizes consciousness by claiming that the subject is decentered and self-alienated. Instead of being whole, as Freud posits, Lacan's ego is torn in two, inciting a life-long dance of deception. Leonard explains:

The subject is split between a narcissistic, objectlike total being (moi) and a speaking subject (je) who tries to validate this (fictional) unity of being by seducing the objective world (the Other) into declaring it authentic. Thus the moi is inherently paranoid because its existence is dependent upon, and solicitous of, outside validation. The je is controlled more than it can afford to realize because the moi exerts constant pressure upon the je to complete the moi's story of self-sufficient autonomy. Beyond this split subject is the Real subject of the unconscious that cannot be represented in imagery or signified in language. It is the remainder (as well as the reminder) of the lack-in-being that the moi is intended to paper over with fantasies of autonomy that constitute what it perceives as reality. (6)

Thus, only when the je fails in its task of linguistic seduction is the subject able to glimpse "the terrifying fact that the moi, the subject's truth, which it desires to serve, is fiction" (7).

The complex series of steps in this dance is best illustrated in the masculine/ feminine relationship. For Lacan, "the Phallus" is an imagined signifier that supposedly bestows unity upon the masculine subject: he is "all" because he has designated the feminine subject as "not all." But while the penis is a biological fact, the Phallus is merely an ideological construct born of psychic necessity. "The sexual relation," Leonard writes, "consists of two interrelated gender myths: the myth of psychic unity and coherence that is the masculine subject and the corresponding myth of the feminine subject as the site of the otherness and absence that guarantees the supposedly self-evident unity of man" (9). Woman, as Lacan has famously formulated, is a "symptom" for the man: "what constitutes the symptom — that something which dallies with the unconscious — is that one believes in it. . . . in the life of a man, a woman is something he believes in" (168). Lacan designates this construct — this fictional woman all men must "believe in" in order to maintain their supposed unity — as "The Woman," for the feminine subject can never be "an absolute category and guarantor of fantasy (exactly The Woman)" (Rose, 48).

Again, "The Dead" serves as a fitting example. Gabriel Conroy confidently presents himself as one who knows all that he needs to know: he is highly opinionated and imagines himself the intellectual superior of all at the party. Yet his unease is repeatedly illustrated throughout the story, as he bumbles his way through social interactions, first with Lily, then with Molly Ivors and Gretta. With Lily, for instance, Gabriel strikes the familiar pose of master/teacher to her servant/student. They engage briefly in what Leonard calls "mutually affirming dialogue" — they discuss the weather as she removes his overcoat — until he casually asks her about marriage (296). It is a mistake, a very adult question for The Woman he has constructed as a servant/child. Her world-weary answer — "The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you" — interrupts their well-rehearsed performance and threatens his imagined subjective unity. His je attempts to seduce her once more, but with little affect. "Just . . . here's a little . . ." he stammers, as he thrusts a coin into her hand. In order to stave off further fragmentation, Gabriel escapes, "almost trotting the stairs and waving his hand to her in deprecation" (178).

Upon escaping from Lily (and later, from Miss Ivors), Gabriel finds comfort from fine-tuning his after-dinner speech, the ideal platform for the je to seduce Others into authenticating his subjective unity. But the speech is of little use when he and Gretta return to their hotel room that evening. Before leaving the party, Gabriel had paused briefly to observe his wife, who appeared lost in reverie while listening to a song. "At last she turned towards them and Gabriel saw that there was colour on her cheeks and her eyes were shining. A sudden tide of joy went leaping out of his heart" (213). That joy quickly fades, however, when Gretta reveals to her husband that it was Michael Furey, a former love, who had inspired that reverie and not Gabriel. "What is it that women want? Lacan's answer to Freud's most famous question is that they simply want; and the man's desire, what he wants, is to be what he imagines they want, hence the first question" (Leonard, 303). Gabriel's epiphany is that he is not what Gretta desires. The Woman he has constructed as "his wife" disintegrates, revealing the fiction of the role he has been performing. The story ends as he catches a horrifying glimpse of "the pitious fatuable fellow" in the mirror and is seized by a "vague terror," before "fading out into a grey impalpable world" (222, 225).

Eyes Wide Shut

Raphael claims that, when adapting Traumnovelle for the screen, he was repeatedly encouraged by Kubrick to "just follow Arthur [Schnitzler]. . . . Track Arthur. He knows how to tell a story" (105, 91). Eyes Wide Shut remains remarkably faithful to the source material; the most significant change is its movement from turn of the century Vienna to contemporary New York. Though the move was widely criticized in the popular press — many of whom claimed that the sexual moralizing of the film seemed better suited for the Victorian era — it fits Kubrick's modus operandi. Except for his work as a "hired gun" on Spartacus (1960), Kubrick spent his entire career in relative independence, having established himself early on as a filmmaker whose work sparked critical interest, while coming in under budget and turning a profit. The consummate businessman, Kubrick knew that a contemporary vehicle with marquee stars — whom he found in husband and wife, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman — guaranteed significant opening week box office returns.

Of course, Kubrick's decision to adapt Traumnovelle to a contemporary setting was made for more than purely commercial reasons. Like Gabriel Conroy and the other protagonists of Dubliners, Bill Harford is "a central everyman character" (Walzl, 18). Raphael claims, in fact, that Kubrick envisioned his hero as "Harrison Fordish" (hence the name change from Fridolin), and forbade any reference to the Jewish elements in Schnitzler's story (59). Harford, like his counterparts in Traumnovelle and "The Dead," is refused a past; his condition is (we are led to believe) timeless. He is essentially Man, Husband, Father, Doctor, a position which nicely serves the central psychological question of the film: How can the masculine subject survive when all that defines it is revealed to be fiction?

The opening frames of Eyes Wide Shut firmly establish Harford's position in the ideal masculine role. He is young, attractive, and highly successful; his status is reflected by everything with which he surrounds himself, including his beautiful wife and child, and their ridiculously opulent apartment "on Central Park West." The first image, in fact, is of his wife, Alice, slipping her flawless body out of a black evening dress. As they prepare to attend a Christmas party, both act as if performing a well-rehearsed domestic ritual. She applies the final strokes of make-up and asks him how she looks. He replies mechanically: "You always look beautiful" (6). Lacan would explain the meaninglessness of their conversation and the performativeness of their routine as a defense mechanism, a means by which each avoids confronting his or her own identity confusion. As Leonard says of the guests at the Morkans' party in "The Dead," "Much of what they say to one another in conversation is compulsively banal precisely because what they cannot know is so alarming. . . . Conversation is dangerous, as Gabriel learns, because it is always an attempted seduction of the Other, and one's sense of self may be subverted as easily as it may be confirmed" (291).

Bill Harford is made painfully aware of this danger (and its consequences) when, on the following evening, he and Alice confront each other about their behavior at the Christmas party. As in Traumnovelle, both Bill and Alice had been separately propositioned by strangers before returning home to make love. In what has become the film's signature image, Kubrick shows us only Bill's and Alice's foreplay: she stands naked before their bedroom mirror, while he approaches from behind and begins to kiss her. As the camera follows in a slow zoom, Bill closes his eyes. But Alice raises hers to the mirror, looking away from her husband as if her thoughts are with someone else. When they discuss the party 24 hours later, Bill is shocked to discover what we already know: like Gabriel Conroy, Bill has been guilty of misinterpreting his wife's desires.

Their conversation begins as the age-old and cliche-ridden debate concerning male and female sexuality. As Alice bluntly puts it, "Millions of years of evolution, right? Right? Men have to stick it in every place they can, but for women . . . women it is just about security and commitment and whatever the fuck . . . else" (46). For Bill, this simple formulation is perfectly acceptable — "A little oversimplified, Alice, but yes, something like that," he says. However, the tenor of their argument changes considerably when Alice begins to deconstruct those preconceptions. When Alice asks accusingly, "And why haven't you ever been jealous about me?" his je attempts to paper over the frightening ramifications of her question by systematically describing the role of The Woman that he has written for her.

Bill: Well, I don't know, Alice. Maybe because you're my wife, maybe because you're the mother of my child and I know you would never be unfaithful to me.
Alice: You are very, very sure of yourself, aren't you?
Bill: No, I'm sure of you. (my italics, 47-48)

His attempted seduction of the Other fails miserably, though. Alice falls to the floor in a fit of laughter and begins the confession that completely dismantles his imagined subjective unity. By the time she finishes her soliloquy, Bill's je has been silenced. He sits on the bed completely motionless, staring at "[his] wife . . . the mother of [his] child" as if she were a stranger.

Bill's nocturnal odyssey through the streets of New York can be best described as a series of failed attempts by the protagonist to seduce the Other and to recapture the subjective unity that has been revealed by Alice's confession to be fiction. In each instance, he slips on a familiar role only to discover that it is inappropriate and/or ineffective. His first stop, for instance, is at the home of a recently deceased patient. He is greeted by the patient's daughter, Marion, and quickly establishes himself as the "consoling doctor" to her "grieving loved one" by first offering his condolences — "I'm sorry . . . I'm so sorry" — then, in a strangely rehearsed gesture, by placing his hand on the deceased's forehead (53). But his words and gestures are lost on Marion, whose conflicted emotions are the product of her love for Harford rather than, as he incorrectly assumes, the sudden loss of her father. When she kisses him, Harford again stares ahead, motionless. The scene paradoxically serves as both a reinforcement and a refutation of his masculine subjectivity. Marion's desire for Harford should authenticate his identity, but it fails to do so because she simultaneously exposes his failure, represented both by the presence of the body of the patient he was unable to save and by his "misdiagnosis" of Marion's concern. This becomes a recurring theme throughout the film, as Harford repeatedly wields his Medical Board card and assures people, "I'm a doctor," only to then fail in his attempts to comfort or save them.

Harford's masculine subjectivity is further assaulted when he leaves Marion's apartment. While walking through Greenwich Village, he is accosted by a group of male college students who, based on his appearance, accuse him of being a homosexual. The scene is echoed later in the film when a gay desk clerk flirts with him. As if to prove his possession of the Phallus, Harford then follows a young prostitute home, goaded on by her none-too-subtle offer to "come inside with me" (63). However, the scene — along with another that takes place soon after in the costume shop — serves only to further expose Harford's continued failure in his attempts to recapture the fictional unity of his subjectivity. The events of the evening have rendered his je powerless, leaving him able to do little more than simply repeat the language that circulates around him. For instance, when the prostitute, Domino, asks him, "What do you wanna do?" he is unable to answer, instead placing himself totally "in [her] hands" (65). After they are interrupted by a phone call from Alice, Domino asks, "Do you have to go?" to which he is able only to respond by echoing her question, "Do I have to go? I think I do" (69). In Lacanian terms, Harford's continued failure is inevitable. Leonard writes:

One is never so happy as when one is the triumphant hero of one's own story, nor so desolate as when one is the suddenly vanquished hero of the other story that this same triumphant narrative left untold . . . Lacan posits that some degree of suffering might be alleviated in the human condition, but the ego itself is necessarily incurable because it papers over a lack-in-being that can be exposed or denied-but never satiated. Any sort of cure that a character in Joyce's fiction imagines undergoing merely serves as a prelude for the next identity crisis. (7-8)

It is interesting to note that Leonard supports this claim by referring to Stephen Dedalus's temporary victories in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. His first visit to a prostitute, which marks the end of section two and presages his religious conversion in section three, is remarkably similar to Harford's experience with Domino. While, in the film, they do not physically consummate a sexual relationship, Harford is able to symbolically complete the exchange by paying her the agreed upon amount. The small victory, however, is necessarily temporary, as he is soon back on the streets, obsessing over Alice's imagined affair with the Naval Officer, and confronting even greater danger.

As in Traumnovelle, the final stop of Harford's odyssey is at a mysterious masked orgy. Kubrick turns the scene into an oddly gothic ritual, more grotesque than erotic. The pivotal moment of the scene occurs when Harford is singled out as an interloper and forced to remove his mask while the other participants look on. He, like Fridolin, is then threatened with physical harm before being "redeemed" by a Mysterious Woman who had earlier warned him of danger. Schnitzler writes of the scene, "It seemed to him a thousand times worse to stand there as the only one unmasked amid a host of masks, than to suddenly stand naked among those fully dressed" (228). "The pain of shame," Michael Sperber writes, "and the inability of the ego's defenses (typically, avoidance and denial) to neutralize it, explain its frequent conversion to guilt" (63). Harford's odyssey has led him to a terrifying awareness of his own fragmentation. As she is led away and he is placed in a taxi, The Mysterious Woman has, in a sense, temporarily redeemed Harford by converting his shame into the guilt that motivates his actions for the remainder of the film.

Kubrick deviates most notably from Schnitzler's blueprint in the final act of Eyes Wide Shut, in which Harford retraces the steps of his odyssey in hopes of uncovering the identity of the Mysterious Woman. Raphael claims that he and the director often argued about how (or if) they should lend more cohesion to the story. Raphael writes:

I remained convinced that there had, for instance, to be a link between the scene at the party at the beginning of the movie and the orgy and its consequences. Otherwise there would be a catenation of events, but neither progression nor effective closure. . . . Stanley jeered at my appetite for plotted neatness, but I returned to the charge. (119)

Eyes Wide Shut includes only two significant scenes that do not exist in any form in Traumnovelle: the first occurs at the pivotal Christmas party, when Bill is ushered upstairs to find the party's host, Ziegler, standing over a naked, overdosed prostitute; the second comes near the end of the film, when Ziegler calls Bill back to his home, ostensibly to "cut the bullshit" and to reveal "what happened last night," thereby tying up the story's many loose ends. The latter scene, in particular, has been the subject of considerable debate, both for its pacing (many critics have even postulated that Kubrick would have trimmed the scene had he lived) and for the unsatisfying solutions it provides. Michael Herr, Kubrick's screenwriting collaborator on Full Metal Jacket, has written, "I don't even know what [the scene's] supposed to be about, unless, as I suspect, it's really just about the red pool table" (270).

The pool table scene, for Lacan, is about the impossibility of ever truly discovering the cohesion and closure that we desire to fix on our personal narratives. In "Passing Boldly into That Other World of (W)Holes: Narrativity and Subjectivity in James Joyce's 'The Dead,'" Sean Murphy defines the "masculine narrative" as the typical, linear narrative that moves toward an end in order to transform "the reader in some way, namely by illuminating the beginning and the middle and thereby unveiling the 'truth' or 'meaning' inherent in the chains of signification constituting the story" (466). Murphy argues that readers of "The Dead" have forced a cohesion on Joyce's story where none exists. "Because critics desire to symbolize their own lack," Murphy writes:

they fall prey to Joyce's seductive yet subversive use of the linear narrative paradigm in their readings of Gabriel and of the supposed epiphanic end of "The Dead." Joyce's text is seductive because it allows the reader to indulge in the fetishistic split between knowing and believing in unity and subversive because he does not provide an end, does not adhere to the law of linearity that demands an illuminative moment that makes sense of (totalizes) the fragmented discourse that precedes it. (469)

Murphy claims that the masculine narrative paradigm became popularized in the nineteenth century realistic novel and remains "the norm," despite the invention of alternative forms by writers such as Joyce (466). Nowhere has the linear narrative maintained its grip more firmly than in the classical Hollywood cinema. In a 1987 interview, Kubrick told Jack Kroll that he wanted to "explode the narrative structure of movies," a feat he finally accomplishes, with astonishing subtlety, in Eyes Wide Shut. The final line of the film (the other significant deviation from Traumnovelle) is ultimately unsatisfying, like the pool table scene, because it subverts our conditioned behavior as film viewers. Taught to expect pat answers and firm conclusions — particularly in an"erotic thriller," as Warner Brothers marketed Eyes Wide Shut — Alice's desire to "fuck" is jarring. We are left with considerable questions concerning both the happenings and consequences of Bill's odyssey and the future of his and Alice's relationship, questions that, despite Raphael's best efforts, cannot be resolved. For Lacan, this ending is inevitable. Terrified by their brief glimpses of truth, Bill and Alice retreat to the familiar roles of husband/father and wife/mother so as to disguise their unity behind ideological masks. When they do fuck, it will simply be a return of jouissance, Lacan's term for the pleasure we find in enjoying our symptoms. But that pleasure will necessarily be short-lived and unsatisfying. Like Gabriel Conroy, Bill Harford "will never achieve the unity that the linear narrative supposedly achieves at the end; he can never illuminate the entire beginning and middle of his consciousness via some epiphany because his subjectivity is forever split" (Murphy, 471).

— Presented at Florida State Film & Literature Conference
January, 2001

Footnotes

1. Raphael recounts how Kubrick asked him if he thought a movie could be found in Caesar's Gallic Wars. Kubrick says, "We wouldn't have to change a thing. That's one hell of a scene, so all we'd have to do is kinda . . . do it up to that point and then . . . get to the end" (76). [return]

2. Comparisons between Joyce and Schnitzler (or Joyce and Kubrick, for that matter) are purely conjectural. Richard Ellman informs us that Joyce's Trieste library of 1920 included a 1906 edition of Schnitzler's Lieutenant Gustl (126), and Richard Brown speculates that Joyce would have been interested in Schnitzler's narrative experimentation, as well as the theatrical scandal that surrounded La Ronde (150). Likewise, Swales comments on the stylistic affinities shared by both men (91). It is almost certain that Kubrick would have been familiar with "The Dead." He was widely regarded as a voracious reader and researcher. He tells Gelmis, for instance, that in preparing Napoleon, he had read "several hundred books" and seen "every film that was ever made on the subject" (30). It is highly likely, then, that while preparing A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick would have read everything written by his collaborator, Anthony Burgess, including Here Comes Everybody, which includes a brief analysis of "The Dead." Kubrick's own interests in narrative experimentation would also have inevitably led him to Joyce's fiction. [return]

Works Cited

Brown, Richard. James Joyce and Sexuality. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985.

Ellman, Richard. The Consciousness of Joyce. Toronto: Oxford UP, 1977.

Gelmis, Joseph. "Interview with Stanley Kubrick." The Film Director as Superstar. Garden City: Doubleday, 1970. Rpt. in Perspectives on Stanley Kubrick. Ed. Mario Falsetto. New York: Hall, 1996. 26-47.

Herr, Michael. "Completely Miss Kubrick." Vanity Fair Apr. 2000. 260-72.

Joyce, James. Dubliners. New York: Penguin, 1992.

Kroll, Jack. "Interview with Stanley Kubrick." Newsweek 29 June 1987.

Kubrick, Stanley, and Frederick Raphael. Eyes Wide Shut: A Screenplay. New York: Warner, 1999.

Lacan, Jacques. Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the Ecole Freudienne. Trans. Jacqueline Rose. New York: Norton, 1982.

Leonard, Garry. Reading Dubliners Again: A Lacanian Perspective. Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1993.

Murphy, Sean P. "Passing Boldly into That Other World of (W)Holes: Narrativity and Subjectivity in James Joyce's 'The Dead.'" Studies in Short Fiction 32.3 (1995): 463-74.

Raphael, Frederick. Eyes Wide Open: A Memoir of Stanley Kubrick. New York: Ballantine, 1999.

Rose, Jacqueline. "Introduction." Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the Ecole Freudienne. Jacques Lacan. Trans. Jacqueline Rose. New York: Norton, 1982.

Sperber, Michael, M.D. "Shame and James Joyce's 'The Dead.'" Literature and Psychology 37.1 (1991): 62-71.

Swales, Martin. Arthur Schnitzler: A Critical Study. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1971.

Walzl, Florence L. "Gabriel and Michael: The Conclusion of 'The Dead.'" James Joyce Quarterly 4.1 (1966): 17-31

Labels: American, Kubrick

Attack! (1956)

Thursday, April 20, 2000  | 

Dir. by Robert Aldrich

Note: The following was written for a graduate seminar on Cold War military history. It examines the confluence of social, political, and economic events that allowed the financing and production of such an ambivalent anti-war film in Eisenhower America. For a thorough formal analysis of the film itself, see: The Films and Career of Robert Aldrich by Edwin T. Arnold and Eugene L. Miller (Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1986)

• • •

"Grinding at You Head-On Like a Ten-Ton Tank": Attack! and the Changing Face of the Military in Independent Films of the Late-1950s

On the cover of the December 9, 1957 issue of Time magazine, Vice President Richard Nixon stares directly into the camera eye. He's framed in a medium close-up, his hair neatly groomed, his mouth turned in a slight smile. Published only days after President Eisenhower's stroke — the third significant health crisis of his term, following a heart attack in 1955 and a bout with ileitis the following year — the cover photo is apparently intended to arouse public confidence in the man who would be king. However, as would be the case throughout Nixon's career, the Time portrait betrays his unease in the spotlight. His shoulders are rounded, causing his neck to disappear into the rumpled collar of his suit jacket, and despite his recent weight loss (achieved "by grace of careful calorie counting," the feature article alliteratively informs us), his often-caricatured jowls and small eyes are lost in dark shadows.

The photo seems oddly representative of American culture in the late-1950s, a nebulous era sandwiched between the more clearly-compartmentalized McCarthyian hysteria of Eisenhower's first term and the social unrest of the Kennedy/Johnson years. After his decisive victory over Adlai Stevenson in 1956, a victory that collected votes from such disparate, traditionally liberal-leaning figures as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Jack Kerouac, Eisenhower stood metaphorically like a flagpole around which the vast majority of Americans proudly congregated. But by the midpoint of his second term, Ike's power position, and the consensus it represented, had begun to show its first signs of weakness. Those rifts in the "consensus of the liberal ideology," as Godfrey Hodgson has usefully described it, would, of course, be more violently exposed in the following decade. As Stephen J. Whitfield writes in The Culture of the Cold War, "After 1956, when the Federal Bureau of Prisons closed the detention camps that had been set up six years earlier, [J. Edgar] Hoover complained about the 'growing public complacency toward the threat of subversion.'" In a series of landmark cases in 1956 and 1957, the Supreme Court likewise reflected changing public attitudes by gradually stripping the Smith Act of its power and by "giving civil liberties greater weight on the scales of justice." By the end of the Eisenhower administration, Premiere Khrushchev had walked on American soil and the Civil Rights movement had taken shape in the South. That cover photo of Nixon, intended to portray confidence and strength, instead reveals (at least in hindsight) the slow birth of public ambivalence toward a changing world, and more particularly, toward America's role as the moral, social, and political leader within that world.

Given the tumultuous social environment surrounding that week in December 1957, it is little surprise then that within the pages of that same issue of Time — surrounded by advertisements for Allied Chemical, Convair, Carter's Knit Boxers, and General Electric that all proudly assert their affiliation with "America's hidden line of defense" — two new American war films inspire notably different responses from a staff reviewer. The first, Gordon Douglas's Bombers B-52, is called a "$1,400,000 want ad for Air Force technicians-the ground crews needed to keep 'em flying in the Strategic Air Command." Starring Karl Malden, Natalie Wood, and Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., Bombers B-52 is a typical service film of the era: a major studio release (in this case, Warner Brothers) presented in CinemaScope and featuring equal helpings of romance and action. The reviewer acknowledges the public fascination with such films, noting, "SAC being what it is, a powerful discouragement to missile warfare, audiences might be prepared by recent headlines to take the picture seriously," but he or she ultimately concludes that the film "is all pretty silly in an amiable way." Other reviewers agreed. Influential New York Times critic Bosley Crowther called it "nice," but was more impressed by Malden's performance than by the film's cliché-ridden promotion of America's Department of Defense.

The other war film reviewed in that issue of Time, however, elicited a much more heated response. The reviewer claims, "[Stanley Kubrick's] Paths of Glory made 20 years ago, might have found a sympathetic audience in a passionately pacifist period, might even have been greeted as a minor masterpiece. Made today, it leaves the spectator often confused and dumb, like a moving speech in a dead language." Based on Humphrey Cobb's best-selling 1935 novel of the same name, Paths of Glory tells of a failed attempt by a French squadron to take an important German position during World War I. Kirk Douglas stars as a noble sergeant forced to watch his men die due to the incompetence of power-hungry senior military officials. Paths of Glory is like the anti-Bombers B-52; it is explicitly anti-war, anti-military, and anti-'service film.' Shot on location in black and white, and eschewing easy sentimentality for detached realism, Paths of Glory exemplifies a new breed of war film, a breed willing to move beyond the simplistic assessment: "War is hell!" Instead, Kubrick and other vanguard filmmakers such as Robert Aldrich — whose Attack! played in American movie houses more than a year before Paths of Glory — fought for independence from studio and government interference in order to question more firmly-rooted beliefs, particularly the unquestioned support of the growing 'Military Industrial Complex' and its leaders.

A study of Hollywood's changing and often tumultuous relationship with Washington, relying on careful analysis of Attack! as a case study, reveals that this period of transition was difficult for both the filmmakers and their audience. Comfortable codes of cinematic narrative and characterization were thrown off in lieu of a new, highly confrontational and morally ambiguous aesthetic. It would take more than a decade, and the flowering of America's "Hollywood Renaissance," before audiences would grow accustomed
to those new codes. The Time reviewer seems to have been aware that he or she was witnessing the first shots of a large-scale assault, concluding, "[Paths of Glory]'s only real mistake: it attacks an unfashionable devil."

The Washington/Hollywood Connection

The history of cooperation between Hollywood studios and the War Department/ Department of Defense is almost as old as the history of American cinema itself. In 1911, only fifteen years after Thomas Edison's first moving pictures were exhibited in New York City, D.W. Griffith employed engineers from West Point as technical advisors on his Civil War epic, Birth of a Nation. The film amazed audiences with its large-scale, realistic battle sequences, and set a standard for spectacle against which all contemporary war and historical films were judged. As Lawrence Suid notes in Guts and Glory: Great American War Movies, "Virtually all American films about war and the military followed the pattern established from the earliest days of the industry, showing only the glamorous side of combat — the excitement, the adventure, the camaraderie. Battle was not always shown as pleasant, but the films made it clear that pain was necessary for ultimate victory."

While this war film formula continued to solidify, a notable change in the cultural climate had occurred by 1924, when King Vidor, a young Hollywood director, set out to make the first war movie told from the soldier's perspective. Again, seeking historical accuracy and cinematic spectacle, Hollywood turned to Washington, this time requesting from the Army "two hundred trucks, three to four thousand men, a hundred planes, and other equipment." Made during the isolationist years between the wars, The Big Parade — very much like Lewis Milestone's adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front released five years later — was a huge success with audiences and critics alike, this despite its complex representation of man and war. The film's protagonist, John Gilbert, is shipped to the western front where he loses a leg and watches his two best friends die. Ultimately, The Big Parade questions accepted notions of heroism and imagines war as a deeply flawed and very human endeavor. Vidor himself viewed war as "a mixed-up sentiment," and did little to overtly support or denounce it. That the War Department would so enthusiastically support such a production dramatically distinguishes the pacifistic 1920s and 1930s from the two decades that would follow.

Like every other facet of American life, the course of Hollywood film history was dramatically altered by the events of December 7, 1941. The three months preceding Pearl Harbor had seen the opening of an investigation by the Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce into the production of "propaganda" films by the major Hollywood studios. Senators Champ Clark (D-MO) and Gerald Nye (R-ND), along with other leading isolationists, accused the studios of attempting to hasten America's involvement in World War II by producing "preparedness" films such as Dive Bomber (1941), Sergeant York (1941), and Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939). A similar charge was leveled against Charlie Chaplin, whose The Great Dictator (1940) was later deemed "prematurely anti-fascist" by Senator D. W. Clark (D-ID). Although such noted figures as the Warner brothers did eventually testify in Washington, the investigation proved to be little more than political posturing and was abruptly abandoned when America entered the war.

Like much of the general population, Hollywood also immediately enlisted in the war effort, producing great numbers of service films for popular consumption. The studios, of course, were more than willing to take advantage of the explosive levels of public interest in modern combat (and the box office revenue it created), but the War Department also became keenly aware of how the cinema might be used for its own purposes. A symbiotic relationship quickly developed and by the end of 1942 several films based on actual events and made with the assistance of the armed services were released to a public brimming with patriotism and clamoring for swift and decisive victory.

Criticized only months earlier for its propagandist pictures, Hollywood churned them out with impressive regularity for the remainder of the war. The earliest examples looked to the South Pacific for inspiration. Wake Island, Air Force, and Bataan, all released in late-1942 or early-1943, showed the Marines, Air Force, and Army respectively in their heroic efforts against the 'Japs' following the setbacks at Pearl Harbor, Wake Island, and the Philippines. As Suid points out, these early films helped establish what would quickly become the standard service film format. A "crusty old sergeant" serves as a father-figure to a heterogeneous pack of raw recruits. The brave young men fight nobly — and often die even more so — against insurmountable odds, all in hopes of returning to their faithful women "back home." Of course, each film also features spectacular battle sequences, often made with the assistance of the service that the film was promoting. The collective message of the films, quite simply, is that America was in for a good, hard fight, but that through perseverance and bravery, American democracy would inevitably triumph over the depraved, Godless forces of fascism and Jap-treachery.

When that inevitable triumph did finally come, Hollywood, like the rest of the country, turned its attention briefly to the transition to peace-time life in films such as Best Years of Our Lives (1946) and Till the End of Time (1946). For a few years, combat films no longer translated automatically into box office gold. While a few war pictures were released between 1946 and 1948, it wasn't until the ignition of the Cold War that the American public began to reexamine World War II and its effects on the global landscape. Certain events between 1947 and 1951, however, made that reexamination compulsory. The trial of Alger Hiss and the arrests of Klaus Fuchs in England and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in the United States made Communist infiltration an ever-present threat. Mao Tse Tung's victory in China, the Soviet Union's detonation of an atomic bomb, and the outbreak of the Korean War threatened America's dominance of global politics. And Joseph McCarthy's anticommunist histrionics inspired a national case of hysterical xenophobia.

Again, Hollywood studios were called up for action, this time against an enemy that could not be so clearly defined and in a war that could not be so easily won. The late-1940s and 1950s saw a re-birth of the service film genre. Studio scenarists returned to the landmark victories of World War II and found fresh content in Korea. John Wayne, through his performance in Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), came to personify both the modern Marine — "the anti-intellectual doer in contrast to the thinker" — and the patriotic 'Star' who stood out in Hollywood, "the greatest hotbed of subversive activities in the United States."

Studio heads looked to epic scale and modern technology to pull audiences back into the theaters. Weekly movie attendance had reached its all-time peak in 1946, when an average of 90 million tickets were sold each week. Through the influence of several social, political, and technological factors, that number had been cut in half by 1954. Following the early example set by Griffith and Vidor, filmmakers used visual and, now, aural spectacle to attract ticket-buyers. Films were promoted for the very things against which television could not compete: new widescreen, color formats such as CinemaScope, VistaVision, and Cinerama; explosive, stereophonic soundtracks; gimmicky effects like 3-D; and epic scale possible only with equally epic budgets. The Department of Defense was more than willing to aid in the cause, offering complete cooperation to films like Strategic Air Command (1955), an unapologetically pro-military film starring World War II hero Jimmy Stewart and showcasing the latest technology in America's most powerful deterrent to outward threat. The film's premiere was even attended by top brass and several prominent Congressmen.

But by Eisenhower's second term, film reviewers, and, to a lesser extent, film-goers were beginning to become jaded by the onslaught of formulaic service films, films that were growing increasingly exploitative of combat situations for the telling of trite love stories and increasingly bland in their representations of war. In his review of 20th Century Fox's D-Day, the Sixth of June (1956), Bosley Crowther writes, "But if they think they're kidding the public into believing that this is the way World War II was — wistful love in cozy London apartments and a quick little scramble up a cliff, in CinemaScope and color, not to forget stereophonic sound — then they'd better watch the box office figures on this one." These sentiments are echoed nearly a year later in his review of Universal's Battle Hymn: "It follows religiously the line of mingled piety and pugnacity laid down for standard, idealistic service films. What's more, it has Rock Hudson playing the big hero role. Wrap them up and what have you got? The popular thing." Although it would take more than a decade before Hollywood would fully emerge from the shadows of the Pentagon and the Capitol building, new voices in the film community soon found independent outlets for their less popular opinions, and, in doing so, helped to change the face of the military in the movies.

Independent Production and the Re-Birth of United Artists

In 1947 the House Committee on Un-American Activities paid an official visit to Hollywood at the bequest of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, a group that included such notable personalities as John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Walt Disney, and Adolphe Menjou. The visit sparked a highly flammable relationship that would leave long-lasting scars on the film community. Those most visibly wounded by the 'Red Scare' hysteria were those who saw their careers destroyed (at least temporarily) by the blacklisting — the Dalton Trumbos, Abraham Polonskys, and John Howard Lawsons of the industry. But perhaps more damaging on a larger scale was the total silencing of even Roosevelt-era liberalism, let alone progressive ideology, in the subject matter of studio films. The Battle Hymns of the late-1950s are vapid, two-dimensional melodramas compared to many of the war films of the 1930s, but the studios were left with few alternatives. Whitfield writes:

Because strongly ideological films were considered unlikely to attract the masses anyway, the studios apparently reasoned that anti-Communist pictures might mollify the American Legion and the right-wingers in Congress without losing too much money. . . . Movies of the era were not permitted to locate the motivations for turning toward Communism in economic or social conditions, since themes of class and race, injustice, and impoverishment contradicted the complacent ideology of the 1950s.

It would take a major restructuring of the Hollywood studio system, and the first rifts in the consensus of the liberal ideology, before filmmakers would be able, really for the first time, to fully address the complexities of Cold War American society.

The same combination of factors that led to the dramatic drop in weekly box office attendance between 1946 and 1954 also caused the studios to shift their main mode of film production. Janet Staiger refers to the shift as one from the "Producer-Unit System" to the "Package-Unit System." The Producer-Unit System became established in the early-1930s and contributed to what is generally considered the "Golden Age" of Hollywood. Within that system, each studio clearly compartmentalized the division of labor, creating separate departments for cinematography, art, costuming, etc., and signing "talent" (actors, actresses, directors) to long-term contracts. The power rested firmly in the hands of the studio heads, often to the financial and creative detriment of the filmmakers and actors.

The shift to the Package-Unit System is significant within this discussion because it allowed, among other things, the diffusion of independent film production. Whereas under the Producer-Unit System, projects were born, approved, financed, scripted, and produced all within the walls of a single studio, the Package-Unit System allowed independent producers to develop a property, to raise independent financing, and to assemble on their own terms both the talent and the technicians. The assemblage is short-lived, intended to produce only the one film. The result of the shift was a major restructuring of the Hollywood hierarchy and the disappearance of the self-contained studio. The system as it exists today is, in fact, very little changed from that of forty years ago. As Tino Balio writes, "By 1970, the transition, with the notable exception of Universal Pictures, had become complete. The majors functioned essentially as bankers supplying financing and landlords renting studio space. Distribution now became the name of the game."

Independent film production was hardly a new phenomenon when the film community shifted to the Package-Unit system in the mid-1950s. Some estimates, for example, claim that as many as one-third of all films produced between 1916 and 1918 were independent productions. Staiger describes the independent production firm as, "a small company with no corporate relationship to a distribution firm. An independent producer might have a contract with a distributor or participate in a distribution alliance, but it neither owned nor was owned by a distribution company." The breakdown in the Producer-Unit System resulted in a greater distribution of wealth, allowing big name stars and filmmakers to collect enough capital, either by means of their own wealth or through investors, to establish personal production companies, thereby guaranteeing greater freedom in developing projects for themselves or for others. As early as 1943, talents such as James Cagney, Hal Wallis, and Joseph Hazen had inked independent deals and by 1947 every major studio except MGM had acknowledged the financial advantages of distributing independently produced films by adding them to their regular schedules.

Leading the move toward independent production and distribution was United Artists, a company founded in 1919 to distribute the films made by its four owners: Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith. Balio explains UA's original business structure: "UA was not expected to generate profits but to function as a service organization that operated at cost. UA could therefore charge a lower distribution fee than the competition and return to the producer a larger share of the film rentals. In other words, a UA producer could enjoy as production profits what otherwise would be distribution profits." The operation ran smoothly throughout the 1920s, but the company then experienced two decades of frustration and financial difficulties, mostly due to the majors' oligopolistic business practices. With ownership of not only important distribution avenues, but also the movie theaters themselves, the majors were able to block out the smaller distributors, eliminating competition.

However, in the early-1950s, thanks in part to both the Supreme Court's ruling against Paramount and the production shift described above, UA saw its star once again on the rise. After taking over the company's struggling business operations in 1951, Arthur Krim and Robert Benjamin planned an aggressive strategy. Balio writes, "in return for distribution rights, UA would offer talent complete production financing, creative control over their work, and a share of the profits. . . . The company and a producer had to agree on the basic ingredients — story, cast, director, and budget — but in the making of the picture, UA would give the producer complete autonomy including the final cut." Other terms included requiring talent to defer much of their salary until the film broke even, allowing producers to work wherever they desired, surrendering ownership of the film to the producers, and abandoning all long-term contracts. The strategy paid off quickly, attracting powerful players who were seeking autonomy and guaranteeing a steady supply of product for UA. By 1955, important Hollywood names Kirk Douglas, Frank Sinatra, John Wayne, Gregory Peck, Bob Hope, Yul Brynner, Robert Mitchum, and Burt Lancaster, along with filmmakers Stanley Kramer, Sam Fuller, Orson Welles, Stanley Kubrick, and Robert Aldrich had all, at least temporarily, joined the UA family.

Robert Aldrich's Attack!

In August 1979, Robert Aldrich delivered a speech to the Director's Guild of America in honor of Lewis Milestone, the famed director of All Quiet on the Western Front. Aldrich had served under Milestone during his apprentice years, working on The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), Arch of Triumph (1948), and The Red Pony (1949). In his speech, Aldrich thanked his mentor for teaching him the most valuable lesson of filmmaking: "The game is power."

The power is for the director to do what he wants to do. To achieve that he needs his own cutter, he needs his cameraman, he needs his own assistant and a strong voice in his choice of writer; a very, very strong voice on who's the actor. He needs the power not to be interfered with and the power to make the movie as he sees it. Milestone had all the tools, but above all, he had the capacity to know when trouble was coming and how to deal with it. And it worked, really worked.

That struggle for power became the hallmark of Aldrich's career. The grandson of prominent Rhode Island Senator Nelson Aldrich (R) and first cousin of New York governor Nelson Rockefeller (R), Aldrich abandoned a likely career in banking or publishing, opting instead to work in Hollywood, where the consistently liberal message of his films would conflict sharply with that of his conservative family. In 1941, Aldrich left the University of Virginia without a degree and took a job at RKO studios. Working for $25 a week as a production clerk — "the lowest job in existence on a sound stage" — Aldrich took advantage of every opportunity afforded him, learning the film business from the ground up. Over the next twelve years he rose quickly through the ranks, first working exclusively for RKO, then free-lance at other studios. A summary of those apprentice years reads like a "Who's Who of Film Legends." Along with Milestone, Aldrich served under, among others, Jean Renoir (The Southerner, 1945), William Wellman (The Story of G. I. Joe, 1945), Max Ophuls (Caught, 1949), and Charlie Chaplin (Limelight, 1952). Aldrich looked back on those years as a time of education by "assimilation, . . . you try to make yourself a composite of what you like and stay away from the things you didn't like."

From 1946 to 1948, Aldrich worked under contract at Enterprise Productions, an interesting but ultimately failed experiment in independent filmmaking. The experience significantly shaped both Aldrich's view of the film industry and his aesthetic. Enterprise became a gathering place for big name stars, including Ingrid Bergman, John Garfield, Joel McCrea, and Barbara Stanwyck, along with filmmakers such as Milestone and Ophuls, who were seeking a larger share of profits and greater artistic freedom. Arnold and Miller write, "many of the creative people who gathered at the studio shared a liberal philosophy: for them a film could and should do more than entertain. A belief in the essential decency of the 'common man' and a basic distrust of wealth and power were at the heart of many of their pictures." Significantly, it was while at Enterprise that Aldrich befriended Robert Rossen and Abraham Polonsky, two of his many Enterprise associates who would later be called before the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee. Aldrich first worked with both men on Body and Soul (1947), the only hit of the nine films produced by Enterprise. It tells the story of a prize fighter who must choose either the physical safety and economic gain of corruption or the possibility of moral regeneration and the danger that accompanies it. Aldrich later explained to James Powers exactly what he had learned from the film:

Polonsky said in 1945 that to tell that kind of story you need to establish a heroic figure who falls from grace and spends the rest of the picture trying to regain his self-esteem. It doesn't make any difference whether he's successful or not. From the fact that he struggles to regain his opinion of himself, he will prove to be a heroic figure.

John Garfield's Charlie Davis would become the prototype of the Aldrich hero, a character whose struggle for redemption is central to the central conflict of most Aldrich films.

But his experience at Enterprise did more than shape Aldrich's aesthetic. It also taught him the importance of power, business sense, and effective leadership. In an interview conducted during the late-1960s, Aldrich remembered Enterprise as "a brand new departure, the first time I can remember that independent film-makers had all the money they needed." But he realized regretfully how such an opportunity was wasted by poor management. "The studio, in fact, had everything in the world in its favor except one thing," he said. "It didn't have anybody in charge who knew how to make pictures. . . . When, as they inevitably must, people began to realize that the end product wasn't worth all this extra care and concern, the bubble burst and the dreams faded. But I think it will be tried again some day." Aldrich, in fact, spent much of his career trying to recapture the spirit and freedom of Enterprise Productions, eventually investing his sizable profits from The Dirty Dozen (1967) in his own independent studio. However, Aldrich Studios, like its predecessor of two decades earlier, proved another failure, closing after only two years and four films. But during those twenty years between the closing of Enterprise and the launch of Aldrich Studios, Robert Aldrich exercised impressive freedom as an independent producer and director, completing seventeen films, including the acknowledged classics Kiss Me Deadly (1955), Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1963), and The Dirty Dozen.

After cutting his teeth as a director on several New York television dramas and two low-budget features, The Big Leaguer (1953) with Edward G. Robinson and World For Ransom (1954), Aldrich was hired by Ben Hecht and Burt Lancaster, who were independently developing Apache (1954) as a star vehicle for Lancaster. Aside from the obvious opportunities such a high-profile project afforded, Aldrich was also drawn to the story, which, like Body and Soul, centers on an alienated man who suffers for his refusal to compromise to larger social forces. The original script that Aldrich agreed to shoot ended with Massai, the Apache warrior played by Lancaster, returning home where he is shot needlessly in the back by Federal troops. About Massai, Aldrich later said, "I felt he could not possibly be re-accepted or survive, for progress had passed him by. I respected his audacity, courage, and dedication, but the world no longer had a place for his kind." That ending, however, did not sit well with Hecht-Lancaster Productions, who agreed that killing the star would significantly affect the film's box office returns. Aldrich was asked to shoot a compromised ending. Nearly twenty years later, he reflected on the experience with palatable bitterness:

If Burt had stood firm, I think the picture would have been more — "significant" is a pompous word — but I think it would have been more important. It was seriously compromised. You make a picture about one thing, the inevitability of Massai's death. His courage is measured against the inevitable. The whole preceding two hours becomes redundant if at the end he can just walk away.

The compromise, however, would literally pay off. Shot in thirty days on a tight budget, Apache eventually grossed over $6 million. The film's success brought Aldrich international acclaim, but also left him desperate for greater creative control.

After reteaming with Hecht-Lancaster once more on Vera Cruz (1954), Aldrich began his career as an independent. Although Victor Saville is credited as executive producer of Kiss Me Deadly (1955), Aldrich had agreed to direct the Mickey Spillane mystery only if he were allowed "to make the kind of movie [he] wanted and provided [he] could produce it." Both Kiss Me Deadly and The Big Knife (1955) attack McCarthyism, personifying the HUAC witch hunt as Mike Hammer, a "cynical and fascistic private eye," in the former film and as Stanley Hoff, an "incompetent, tyrannical" studio head, in the latter. Although he had been spared McCarthy's wrath himself, several of Aldrich's friends and colleagues were brought under investigation. For Aldrich, McCarthy's fundamental assumption that the ends justified the means was simply terrifying. It was exactly the type of social force under which the Aldrich hero, as typified by Jack Palance's Charlie Castle in The Big Knife, would be destroyed for refusing to compromise.

With the profits from Kiss Me Deadly, Aldrich financed the birth of The Associates and Aldrich, thereby securing his official entrance into the turbulent world of independent film production. A year later, after producing and directing Autumn Leaves (1956) for Columbia Pictures, Aldrich turned his attention to making an "angry" war film. Frustrated by the steady stream of overly simplistic Hollywood service films, he attempted first to purchase the rights to both Irwin Shaw's The Young Lions and Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead. Unable to acquire either, he instead bought Norman Brooks's unsuccessful stage play, Fragile Fox, and took the project to United Artists. UA was a natural fit for Aldrich. The company had distributed both Hecht-Lancaster pictures, as well as Kiss Me Deadly and The Big Knife. UA was also known for its active commitment to its talent, having already waged publicity campaigns for such controversial films as Howard Hawks's The Outlaw (distributed by Howard Hughes in 1943, redistributed by UA in 1946), Charlie Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux (1947) and Limelight (1952), and Otto Preminger's The Moon is Blue (1953). That commitment would be crucial for Aldrich's project to succeed. Fragile Fox, renamed Attack! (1956), is a study of incompetence and corruption in American military leadership, obviously a sensitive issue during the years of the consensus of the liberal ideology. The play ends with the murder of a commanding officer by his men, an ending that Aldrich was determined to keep. Now an independent, and secure in the power he had lacked on Apache, Aldrich was able to do so.

Attack! was budgeted at $750,000, a far cry from the blockbuster budgets of contemporary war spectacles like Strategic Air Command and Away All Boats. Securing even that much financing for such an overtly anti-military, anti-authoritarian film, however, would have been unthinkable even two or three years earlier. The Associates and Aldrich borrowed a large portion of the money from banks, and were advanced the rest by United Artists. This had become standard UA practice under Benjamin and Krim, who bought out original owners Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford in the mid-1950s and reorganized the company with the financial backing of the Walter E. Heller Co., a Chicago financing firm. In Movies and Money: Financing the American Film Industry, Janet Wasko writes, "By 1958, [UA] was arranging financing for approximately 85% of its releases, and that year provided $6 million for production, with $25.7 million guaranteed by the company but procured from others." Their financing strategy guaranteed United Artists a steady flow of product (and the distribution revenue it provided), which by 1956 had become a hot commodity. The major studios had all been forced to scale back production because of the dramatic decrease in box office receipts. UA, on the other hand, emerged from those transition years as a leader, signaling an unprecedented paradigm shift in Hollywood film production.

Aldrich deferred the majority of his salary in lieu of a larger percentage of the film's gross, placing the financial burden squarely on his own shoulders. It was a risky bet. Not only was he working with a small budget and an unknown and potentially inflammatory commodity in Fragile Fox, but, not surprisingly, he was also refused the cooperation of the Defense Department. While the armed services may have been willing to cooperate with Milestone and Vidor in the 1930s, Aldrich was afforded no such luxuries. As he later told Arthur Knight, "The Army saw the script and promptly laid down a policy of no co-operation, which not only meant that I couldn't borrow troops and tanks for my picture — I couldn't even get a look at Signal Corps combat footage." Instead, Attack! was shot in thirty-two days on the back lot of RKO Studios with a small cast and a few pieces of military equipment (including only two tanks) that Aldrich had bought or rented and that he used throughout the film with great economy.

Critical and Public Reception

On August 30, 1956, Representative Melvin Price (D-IL), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, spoke out publicly against the Defense Department for its refusal to cooperate in the making of Attack!. He called the decision a "shameful attempt to impose censorship on a film because it dares to present an officer whose character is marred by the human failings of weakness and cowardice." The Congressman had recently attended a preview of the picture and considered it an "exceptionally fine film." He praised Aldrich for having completed the project without assistance, and disputed the assumption that Attack! might adversely affect a viewer's opinion of the military, pointing out the noble actions of Costa and Woodruff, whom he described as "more representative of the Army than the cowardly captain, who is clearly an exception." Referring to the Pentagon and its self-serving policies, Price concluded his speech, saying, "I hope the American people will not let those responsible for the injustice get away with their attempt to depict all phases of military life through brass-colored glasses."

United Artists and Aldrich quickly capitalized on the controversy. They had originally intended to open Attack! in only a few key cities during late September and early October. However, after learning that 20th Century-Fox would be releasing Richard Fleischer's Between Heaven and Hell (1956), a similarly-themed war film, to saturation bookings on October 11th, UA counter-attacked, switching to a more aggressive release strategy. According to Balio, UA typically based a film's promotion budget on its projected income. Although specific figures are difficult to come by, the promotion budget for Attack! was probably between $200,000 to $300,000. The first print advertisement appeared in The New York Times on September 12th, a full week before the film would open. The teaser features head shots of the cast, their faces arranged geometrically in the shape of a mountain, along with only the name of the film and an announcement of when and where it would be opening. Capitalizing on Price's much-publicized speech, the only other words in the ad read, "A Congressional Statement Of Thursday, August 30th Told The Inside Story!" A similar ad appeared two days later, this time featuring only an extreme close-up of Palance pulling out the pin of a hand grenade with his teeth and the question, "Is This The Most Controversial Picture Of The Year?" The two teasers prepared readers for what would greet them in the "Screen" section of the Sunday edition. It's a fascinating advertisement — twice as large as the teasers and almost entirely textual. It begins:

THIS IS WHAT HELL IS LIKE!

This is a picture that grabs you by the throat and shoves you into the shell-ripping, lood-drenched, screaming heat of war.

Here is the hell behind the glory . . . the real guts and smell of battle! This is the story they didn't tell-of the heroes who stood up under fire, and the few who belly-crawled out!

While pitching Attack! as one of a "handful of great battle pictures," United Artists is also clearly trying to separate it from its contemporaries, sensationalizing the film for its lack of the "candy-coated sentiment" that dilutes their films. The only images accompanying the text are a photograph of Costa's and Cooney's bodies lying on stretchers and an illustration of Costa being chased by a tank. It is also the first of the ads to list the film's credits, along with its tagline, "Attack! . . . the story of the flash-fused, fouled-up company the army called 'Fragile Fox'!" Two more advertisements appeared in The Times, one on Tuesday, the 18th, and another on the 19th, opening day. All five ads exploit the controversy surrounding Attack!, selling it as the "raw naked guts of war grinding at you head-on like a ten-ton tank," and comparing it to All Quiet on the Western Front and the other stories that "none would dare tell."

When Attack! hit theaters, it ran into heavy competition. Three weeks before the film's release, a short article in Variety examined the growing trend toward the production of big screen epics and their impact on the movie exhibition business. Because of their longer running times, films like War and Peace, The Ten Commandments, and Giant were held over for extended engagements, thereby creating a shortage of exhibition outlets and greater box office competition. United Artist's sensationalist promotional campaign for Attack! was obviously intended to pique the interest of New York film-goers — to get them to the theater on opening day for, if no other reason, curiosity alone. The plan worked. On September 19th Attack! opened at the Mayfair Theater on Broadway to impressive box office numbers. By week's end it had taken in more than $32,000, making it the second highest-grossing film in the city. The day after its opening, Bosley Crowther called Attack! a "ruthlessly realistic drama" that "draws a grim and discouraging picture of the behavior of some Army officers in World War II." He praised the film's breathtaking battle sequences and fine ensemble acting, but complained of holes in its premise and faults in its resolution, concluding, "the completion of the drama is so charged with personal anger and hate that the whole situation collapses in a flood of hysteria." Crowther's mixed review, however, did little to discourage attendance. Attack! played at the Mayfair for six weeks, taking in nearly $100,000 in the process.

Attack! opened slowly across the country over the next six weeks and was met by mixed reactions. In general, it was most well-received in East Coast urban centers such as Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., where it played at the Viking and the Columbia respectively for three weeks and collectively earned more than $60,000. But, as the old saying goes, Attack! didn't really "play in Peoria." Typical of its reception is in Denver, Detroit, and Portland, where in all three cities it opened to fairly impressive numbers, before dropping off by 30-40% in its second, and final, week. Reviews were likewise mixed. John McCarten from The New Yorker echoed Crowther's sentiments, criticizing the film for its melodramatic collapse, but then calling it "a damn sight more interesting than most war films, where everybody but the enemy is as noble as an eagle Scout." Philip Hartung in Commonweal also appreciated Aldrich's message more than his presentation of it, writing, "So much carnage piled on carnage gets somewhat ridiculous after a while, and there is a real possibility that many viewers will end by not believing any of this diatribe — even the parts that need saying and are said so well by this good cast." The reviewer for Time faulted Attack! for spending "more time making melodrama than making sense," while a writer at Newsweek praised it for "giving melodrama almost the look of a newsreel."

The unanimously mixed reactions to Attack! seem symptomatic of the culture in which it was released. As the reviewers repeatedly mention, audiences were growing increasingly anxious for a new breed of war film, anxious to critically reconsider their accepted notions of combat and its consequences, but they had yet to be socialized for doing so. Attack! ultimately earned a respectable $2 million and, according to Aldrich, turned a profit. It placed #44 on Variety's list of the "Top Film Grossers" of the year, finishing twenty spots and $1.5 million behind Universal Studio's big-budget service film, Away All Boats. But 1956 was clearly a year in which film-goers were still more interested in widescreen epics and musicals — Guys and Dolls and The King and I finished #1 and #2 respectively — than in uncompromising and morally ambiguous examinations of our military leadership. It's interesting to note that only a decade later, The Dirty Dozen, a violent and subversive film about a squadron of degenerate "heroes" committed to almost certain death by Allied officers, proved to be Aldrich's greatest financial success, earning more than $18 million to become the box office champ of 1967. But by then, independent director and producer Stanley Kubrick had already exposed the ridiculousness of the arms race in his satire, Dr. Strangelove (1964), and Arthur Penn was simultaneously redefining our notions of screen violence in Bonnie and Clyde (1967). In 1956, however, Americans had not yet grown accustomed to the confrontational images of Vietnam as displayed nightly on the evening news. Their eyes were only slowly opening to the dangers buried beneath the consensus of the liberal ideology. Attack! quickened the process, hitting American audiences head-on like a ten-ton tank.

— presented at American Culture Association National Conference
New Orleans, LA, April, 2000

Labels: Aldrich, American

Paths of Glory (1957)

Tuesday, February 01, 2000  | 

Dir. by Stanley Kubrick

Note: The following was written as an exercise in formal analysis for a graduate film seminar.

See Also: Full Metal jacket | Eyes Wide Shut

• • •

On December 18, 1957, David Lean's The Bridge on the River Kwai was released to overwhelming and unanimous praise. Presented in CinemaScope with Stereo sound, the World War II film paints a widescreen portrait of disciplined military leaders waging psychological war amidst the lush backdrop of an Asian jungle. The film would eventually win seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay. One week after Kwai's premiere, Stanley Kubrick's fourth feature-length film, Paths of Glory, found its way into American movie houses. The two films make for an interesting juxtaposition — the first a Columbia Pictures blockbuster of epic proportions, the second an independent production shot in black and white for less than one million dollars. But perhaps what most distinguishes the films from one another is their ultimate depiction of man in war. While the finale of Kwai is certainly not typical of the 1950's war genre, its "madness" exists despite noble, human behavior. It's difficult, for instance, to identify the film's antagonist — Shears, Col. Nicholson, and Col. Saito all do the "right" thing. In The Bridge on the River Kwai, it is war itself that creates madness, not the men who fight or command it. Paths of Glory, on the other hand, shows much less faith in man's ability to retain his humanity amidst the chaos of war. Kubrick's film depicts a military bureaucracy that casually fires on its own men — both with artillery and with executioners' rifles — all in hopes of capturing a few more yards of meaningless ground. New York Times critic Bosley Crowther compared Paths of Glory's depiction of injustice to an exhibit in a medical museum, calling it "grotesque, appalling, nauseating," but also faulted Kubrick for so isolating the viewer from the action that it becomes inconsequential. It is that isolation, however, that removal of simple sentimentality, that makes Paths of Glory such an effective criticism of man's nature during times of war.

Paths of Glory opens like a World War II-era newsreel. As the titles roll, a snare drum introduces a military-style brass band's performance of the "Marseillaise." The credits dissolve into a high-angle extreme long shot of a large courtyard, the title, "France 1916," superimposed upon it. The camera pans slowly to the left to reveal a small unit of armed soldiers that marches in formation past marble sculptures toward a building of baroque opulence. Over these images of violence and extravagance, a non-diegetic narrator describes briefly the history of World War I, concluding, "Successful attacks were measured in hundreds of yards, and paid for in lives by the hundreds of thousands." Kubrick, only 28-years-old during production of the film, had trained first as a still photographer, then as a maker of documentary-style newsreels. The experience taught him great economy. In the opening shot of the film, one that lasts just over 40 seconds, we are not only firmly set within the time and place of the story, but we are also introduced to the two worlds in which that story will take place: the luxurious comfort of High Command where "success" is defined and the terrifying brutality of the trenches where lives are lost.

In a match-on-action cut, we are then placed within the opulent mansion, again looking down on the scene from a high angle long shot. The perspective allows us to see much of a great room that is furnished with ornately carved chairs, elegant tapestries, and Renaissance paintings. The perspective also introduces us to two of the film's main characters, General Broulard (Adolphe Menjou) and General Mireau (Ralph Macready). Here, the men are characterized by the mise-en-scene. Their uniforms are perfectly pressed, the gold buttons and medals shining like the gilded picture frames hanging over their shoulders. They sit in Louis XIV chairs, cross their legs, and begin, like old friends, to discuss High Command's decision to send Mireau's division up against the Ant Hill, a heavily fortified German position. Mireau makes some effort to convince Broulard of the futility of such an assault, but already, only minutes into the film, his words lack conviction. "The life of one of those soldiers," he says grandly, "means more to me than all the stars and decorations and honors in France." Broulard, as unimpressed as we, looks away, fondles his gloves, and responds glibly, "That goes without saying." It comes as little surprise when Mireau, his ego bolstered by potential glory, commits his troops to action.

Much of Paths of Glory's affect is the result of Kubrick's repeated juxtaposition of images from the command post with images from the front line. In its first dramatic change of scene, the film cuts from Mireau's and Broulard's meeting to an extreme long shot of the Ant Hill, the camera lens acting as a surrogate for the typical infantryman's point of view. Then, after a quick cut, we are shown life within the trenches. The refined furnishings of command have been replaced with logs, mud, and a walkway barely wide enough for two men. Over the images we occasionally hear non-diegetic percussion, approximating, at its lowest frequencies, the sounds of exploding mortars. The camera dollies back, constantly remaining just a few yards in front of Mireau as he inspects his troops. It is a shot that serves as a recurring and quite memorable motif throughout the film (and one that reappears often in Kubrick's work, most notably during Sgt. Hartman's bunkhouse speeches in Full Metal Jacket). As Mireau makes his way through the trenches, we are introduced to each of the three soldiers who will ultimately be executed for their cowardice, first Pvt. Ferol (Timothy Carey), then Corp. Paris (Ralph Meeker) and Pvt. Arnaud (Joe Turkel). The first time we see each man, it is from a low angle. Although the scene was shot using only natural light, it appears to be slightly overexposed, reducing contrast, and causing the men to bleed into the mud walls that protect them. Mireau 's enthusiasm ("Are you men ready to kill some Germans?" he repeatedly asks) and his clean uniform set him in stark contrast to those he is about to sacrifice.

The lighting of the film changes dramatically when Mireau steps into the front line headquarters buried within the ground. The room is lit by only a few low-key lights, draping the background in darkness and exposing only select figures in high-contrast illumination. The scene serves the same narrative function as the earlier one at High Command, but this time it is Mireau who carries the orders to attack and Col. Dax (Kirk Douglas) who must be convinced to cooperate. As did Mireau in the first scene, Dax protests, but eventually complies. That, however, is where comparisons between the two men end. Kubrick shoots the scene from a fairly stationary camera position, panning often to follow the actors' movements. Mireau moves constantly ("I never got the habit of sitting," he says), stepping into and out of focus, while Dax remains still, his jaw grinding in the typically stoic Kirk Douglas fashion. When Dax does comply it is with his back turned from the camera and his face hidden by shadows.

"We'll take the Ant Hill," he growls.

Today, Paths of Glory is most often remembered for its chilling recreation of World War I trench warfare. Because of budget constraints, the film was shot on location using nearly 800 German policemen as extras. In Stanley Kubrick: A Biography, Vincent LoBrutto describes how the notoriously detail-minded director spent more than one month preparing the battlefield before shooting the charge on the Ant Hill. "After we'd dug and blasted up the field," LoBrutto quotes Kubrick as saying, "we put a great many little props around — ruined guns scattered in different holes, and bits of soldiers' tunics. You couldn't see them, but you could feel them" (141). The attention to detail lends a disturbing credibility to the scene, a credibility that has rarely been matched in the forty years of war-film-making since. Steven Spielberg's recent assault on Normandy in Saving Private Ryan has deservedly received much attention for its visceral punch. But his film, with its nearly limitless budget and CGI effects, does little to surpass Kubrick's accomplishment.

Harking back to Crowther's response to Paths of Glory, it is especially in these battle scenes (and later, during the executions) that the film refuses to wash its subject in sentimentality. There is no sweeping John Williams score to strategically manipulate the audience. Instead, the only sounds we hear are diegetic — explosions, rifle fire, Dax's whistle, and the screams of the men charging out of the trenches. There is no flag-waving speech given to fire up the troops. Instead, we simply walk through the trenches in Dax's boots. The famous dolly shot returns, this time the camera dollying forward at a quick pace, the faces of the men turning to greet it with looks of fear. There are no close-ups of "Johnny, the Patriotic Hero" breathing his last breath while clutching his mother's photograph. Instead, the charge across the battlefield is filmed almost entirely in long shots, the camera tracking from right to left and following Dax's progress. Only once during the actual assault does the film create a moment of perceptual subjectivity. Dax is first seen waving on his men in a straight-on long shot. Then, as he dives to the ground, the camera zooms into a medium close-up of his face looking off to the left. The film then cuts, using an eye-line-match, to Dax's view of the Ant Hill. It's a rather terrifying view. We first see only the Ant Hill, its distance exaggerated by the wide angle lens. But then, as the camera slowly zooms out, we are forced to watch four of "our" men killed by a single mortar explosion directly in front of us. Again, instead of lingering momentarily on the casualties, the film cuts quickly away to more violence. By the end of the nearly ten-minute scene, after witnessing the disastrously failed assault, the meaninglessness of the death has become a grotesque spectacle.

The dirt, blood, and grit of the battlefield is again contrasted with the opulence of High Command when the scene shifts to the trial of Ferol, Paris, and Arnaud. The sequence begins with an extreme-long, low angle establishing shot that reveals the immense size of the room. The wide-angle lens allows us to see both the checkered marble floor and the forty-foot ceiling, along with a ridiculously oversized landscape that hangs on the back wall. Again, the only sounds we hear are diegetic, in this case, footsteps and voices that reverberate within the great hall. The prisoners enter from the back, escorted by armed guards, and walk in formation toward the camera. The camera then pans slowly to the right, following their movement, before cutting to an extreme-long, high angle shot from the back of the room. A still photograph from this perspective could easily be mistaken for a chess match — the soldiers stand motionless on alternating dark and light tiles — an apt metaphor for the strategic game that is about to be played.

As in the battle scene, we are again forced to observe from a distance throughout the trial. When the prosecution presents its case, Kubrick cuts between two camera positions. The first is from within the jury box. The camera remains stationary, panning when necessary to keep the prosecutor blocked within the center of the frame. We sit behind the jury, our view occasionally even impaired by other jury members' heads. Kubrick then cuts to a wide-angle, medium shot of the defendant. The image is beautifully framed with the other two prisoners always visible over his shoulder. The short focal length, however, slightly distorts the background, making the other prisoners appear to be much further away then they actually are. The effect isolates the defendant, reinforcing the hopelessness of his situation. When Dax does step forward to defend his men, he is framed in a low-angle medium shot — a "hero" shot. The walls behind him are out of focus, drawing all of our attention to the only noble officer we have met. But the inevitable outcome of the trial is implied, again by camera distance, when Dax stands to deliver his closing argument. For the first time in the long sequence, the camera is placed directly behind the three prisoners, tracking from left to right as it follows Dax's movements. The sound of his voice, now reverberating greatly, also serves to reinforce the distance between him and his men. The hero's voice is quite literally lost within the massive structure of High Command. It's significant that we are never allowed to hear the jury's final decision. Instead, in another juxtaposition of Paths of Glory's two worlds, the trial scene simply fades out, then fades directly into a shot of a sergeant delivering orders for the execution.

Fifteen minutes later, we return to the grand courtyard that we first saw in the film's opening image. Now we see it in an extreme long shot, the camera twenty feet off the ground and facing the High Command building. It is another of Kubrick's trademark shots. The camera is centered exactly, and the building and the soldiers standing in front of it are framed in near-perfect symmetry. From a great distance, we see the prisoners emerge from the building and begin their long walk toward us. Perhaps the most disconcerting element of the execution sequence is that it is nearly seven minutes long, approximating real time. The film cuts between the establishing shot and medium shots of each man as he makes his way toward the firing line. Particular attention is paid to Private Ferol. Timothy Carey's performance is unique within 1950's war films. Instead of facing death with bravery and Gary Cooper-stoicism, Carey's Ferol whimpers and moans, incoherently sobbing at times. As he walks with a priest, he clutches at his rosary and cries, "Why do I have to die, Father?" But instead of eliding time, Kubrick dollies back with Ferol, forcing us to watch this man as he walks toward another meaningless death.

The dolly motif returns again as the film cuts to the prisoners' point of view. It's from their perspective that we first see the stakes to which the men will be tied. As the camera leads us up the path, all eyes turn directly toward us. A photographer snaps a shot of the condemned. Then we walk past Broulard and Mireau, who acknowledge us with expressionless faces. Finally, we walk past Dax. The camera tracks past him while simultaneously panning to keep him in frame. He stares into the camera without blinking, his face revealing a mixture of guilt, anger, and pity. All we hear is a diegetic drum roll and Ferol's sobs. When the prisoners finally reach the firing line, they are tied and blind-folded, again without any elision of time. But just as surprising (and affecting) is Kubrick's decision to also not expand time. When we hear "Ready!" Kubrick cuts to a high angle shot of the firing squad, the camera positioned so as to keep the prisoners below the frame. Here, the drum roll stops and the diegetic sound of as a singing bird can be heard. The films then cuts in a match-on-action to a shot from within the firing squad. We see the other executioners around us and the helpless men before us. The rifles fire and the prisoners fall over dead. Again, at the emotional zenith of the film, Kubrick observes his subject from a distance, remaining on the lifeless bodies for only a second before cutting away.

The cut returns us once again to the familiar high angle shot of an interior at High Command. Sitting at the same table in which we first saw them, Broulard and Mireau discuss how "wonderfully" the executed men died. "There's always that chance that one of them will do something that will leave everyone with a bad taste," says Mireau as he bites into a forkful of chicken, apparently unaware of the irony. When Dax arrives, Mireau is brought under investigation for his incompetence, but it is far from the satisfying conclusion of the typical Hollywood variety. Broulard remains in power and Dax is deemed a fool for his concern. The scene brings the film's story full circle — ending in the same room and with the same characters with which it began — and once again reinforces the impotence of honor amidst the bureaucratic power struggles of war.

However, the short sequence at High Command is not the final image of Paths of Glory. Instead, Kubrick added another scene in which Dax is shown returning to his surviving men. Following the sounds of their whistles and cat-calls, he makes his way to a small cafe where the men have gathered. There they watch a beautiful German woman (who would later become Kubrick's wife of forty years) as she sings "La Troeyer Hussar," a German folksong. Her performance brings tears to their eyes.

The addition of the scene is significant for several reasons. First, it concludes the film by putting human faces on the infantrymen who have, until this point, been portrayed almost exclusively as nameless cannon-fodder. However, it is also worth noting that Dax does not ever join the men in their reverie. Instead, Kubrick cuts occasionally to a medium close-up of Dax outside the cafe, lending the shots from within a feeling of perceptual subjectivity. The scene also presents a final portrait of war. Before introducing the singer, the master of ceremonies asks, "What is life without a little diversion?" With Col. Dax's final line, it is obvious that this moment of happiness will indeed be only brief respite. When a sergeant informs him that he has orders to return to the front immediately, Dax responds, "Well give the men a few minutes more." Dax turns toward the camera and once again it dollies back, leading him to his quarters. The final return of the dolly motif, accompanied by the drum roll that opened the film, leaves the viewer acutely aware of how little has changed during the course of Paths of Glory.

Labels: American, Kubrick

Dazed and Confused (1993)

Sunday, August 15, 1999  | 

Dir. by Richard Linklater

Note: This review was written in the summer of 1999 — the peak of the dot.com boom, as you'll recall — and was part of my first online venture, a miserable arts and entertainment 'zine designed for the express purpose of attracting the attention of studios and publishers. I wanted free DVDs and books but got neither. Note the technical jargon at the bottom (I still don't know what a "compression artifact" is) and the Rex Reed-ish quips. I was such a whore. I still love the movie, though. Come now, and join me as we step into the way-back machine.

See Also: Waking Life

• • •

The first time I saw Dazed and Confused was at a midnight showing in one of those bargain cinema and draft houses. My date and I knew we were in for a unique movie-going experience when, midway through the trailers (the trailers!), one of Florida State's finest — a Pi Kappa Alpha, I believe — got up from his front row seat and sprinted toward the exit. He didn't make it, though, choosing instead to stumble and vomit half way to the door. The irony was almost too perfect.

Since its release in 1993, Richard Linklater's coming-of-age film has set longevity records around the country, establishing a Rocky Horror-like presence with continuous weekend engagements. It doesn't surprise me. Dazed and Confused has a lot going for it, and I'm not just talking about the recreational drug use and beer consumption.

It's the last day of school, 1976, in a small Texas town. The Juniors are stepping into their new roles as kings and queens of the school; the 8th graders are getting their first taste of independence (hmm, tastes a lot like Budweiser). In the tradition of American Graffiti, Linklater follows a cross-section of the school population for only one night, listening in on their conversations, some more serious than others, and joining them for an end of the year Beer Bust up at the Moon Tower. Not much happens. There's a fist fight, a game of mailbox baseball, and an unnecessary side plot involving a loyalty oath. A few couples form; others dissolve. Ultimately, the film isn't the least bit concerned with plot, at least not as the term is typically used. Instead, it paints an instantly recognizable portrait of that freedom and those friendships that are only possible when you're seventeen. And it's really fun to watch.

In a portrait like this, the beauty is in the details. Linklater nails them all. There's the obvious period references — the bell-bottoms and iron-on T-shirts, the gooey lip gloss and feathered hair, the muscle cars and Alice Cooper 8-tracks. But that's not why I watch Dazed and Confused so frequently. It's the smaller touches R 12; the "good game" line at the end of Mitch's (Wiley Wiggins) little league game, the tight polyester shorts and worn-out cliches of the football coaches, the convenience store worker who tries a bit too hard to be hip.

And most importantly, it's the large cast of characters, every one of whom, I swear, went to high school with me. For me, everything about Dazed and Confused's depiction of high school culture rings true. There's Randall "Pink" Floyd (Jason London), the high school quarterback who, unlike the jocks depicted in most teen flicks, is also a bright guy and friends with members of the school paper. There's O'Bannion (Oscar boy Ben Affleck), the obnoxious hanger-on who is tolerated by a few but not really liked by anyone. There's Tony (Anthony Rapp), Mike (Adam Goldberg), and Cynthia (Marissa Rabisi), the three friends who spend most of their time bitching about the vacuousness of teen social ritual while wanting desperately to take a greater part in it. Watching them walk into the Beer Bust always unleashes a flood of nostalgia for me, but perhaps I'm revealing a bit too much about myself.

And then there's Slater and Wooderson. I occasionally pop Dazed and Confused into the player just so I can enjoy a few favorite moments with these two. Rory Cochrane plays Slater, that guy in every school who smoked a little too much pot. I knew a guy just like Slater, man . . . what was I saying? . . . I'm convinced that Wooderson is the only reason Matthew McConaughey has a career. Wooderson's the guy who graduated a few years before you, but never quite made it out of the high school social circles. One of my favorite scenes in any film:

Don: What have you been up to?
Wooderson: Some old shit, man. Working for the city.
Don: Working man, huh.
Wooderson: Been thinking about getting back in school though, man.
Don: Back in JC or something like that?
Wooderson: Yeah, man. That's where all the girls are, right?
Don: Yes they are.
Wooderson: But on the other hand, man, I just as soon be working. Keep a little change in my pocket. Rather than spend my time listening to some dipshit who doesn't know what the hell he's talking about anyway.
Don: I know what you're talking about.
Wooderson: Say, you're a freshman right?
Mitch: Yeah.
Wooderson: So tell me, man. How's this year's crop of freshman chicks looking?
Don: Woods, you're really going to end up in jail sometime really soon. I know that for a fact.
Wooderson: No, man, no. Let me tell you. That's what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they