Revision/Correction: the first US spy noirs
Posted by Dan Hodges on 7/13/2019, 10:46 pm
Edited by Dan Hodges on 7/14/2019, 1:58 am
I’ve learned recently that what I’d long thought was the first US spy noir, Blockade, released in June 1938, is instead the third.
Some algorithm caused a film, International Settlement, to appear in my YouTube offerings. Released in February 1938, directed by Eugene Forde, lensed by Lucien Andriot, and starring (among others) Delores del Rio, George Sanders and (the fabulous) June Lang, it briefly replaced Blockade as my designated first US spy noir. The 20th. Century Fox dvd is so sparklingly fresh, it seems as if the film were shot years later, such as in the early 40s.
By several strange quirks, I got a dvd of The General Died at Dawn from a company in Lyon, France – but the dubbing is only in German and the booklet is in German, too. What’s interesting is that the case, in large letters, says “Film Noir.” That’s correct; furthermore, as it was released in October 1936, I now consider this to be the first US spy noir.
There’s more to say about the General Died at Dawn, which was directed by Lewis Milestone, lensed by Victor Milner, starring Gary Cooper and the first of the two queens of spy films/spy noirs, Madeleine Carroll (the second being Valerie Hobson). Until seeing this film, I’d claimed that the first femme fatale in all of film noir (from France, the UK and the US) is played by Dita Parlo in Under Secret Orders, a British spy nor released in December 1937. (Don disagrees, but his entry for the first femme fatale doesn’t even come across to me as a femme fatale at all.) You can read about this film and its fascinating history (and my exchange with Don) here:
http://www.filmnoirfile.com/under-secret-orders/
Now I believe that the first femme fatale in all of film noir is played by Madeleine Carroll in The General Died at Dawn. However, she is what I’ve termed a “soft” femme fatale, like Valerie Hobson in The Spy in Black (UK, 1939) and Carla Nillson in International Lady (US, 1941), to name two other spy noirs I discuss in-depth on my website.
On the other hand, Dita Parlo (in this, the British version, not the French version shot at the same time and also starring Parlo) is what I’ve termed a “hard” femme fatale, like Gail Patrick in Quiet Please, Murder (US, 1942), another spy noir I discuss in-depth on my website.
For an explanation of the soft femme fatale vs. hard femme fatale, see my page on International Lady.
http://www.filmnoirfile.com/international-lady/
It seems fitting that the first queen of spy films/spy noirs, Madeleine Carroll, is also the first femme fatale in all of film noir. (This means that I still strongly believe that Don's contention that there is, in 1932, an earlier femme fatale is unjustifiable.)
Here is a extremely brief summary: In The General Died at Dawn, Carroll's father (Porter Hall) whines that because he is dying, he wants money to return to America for his final "six months." Browbeaten and guilt-tripped, Carrol obeys her father's wishes and seduces Gary Cooper into taking a train (which would be dangerous) instead of a plane (which would be much safer). What is the difference? On the train he is vulnerable to being robbed of a belt that holds a lot of money raised from Chinese peasants to buy guns and ammunition to repel a warlord, General Yang (Akim Tamiroff), who is oppressing (and killing) them. Carroll understands that when Yang boards the train, he will not only take away the money belt from Cooper but also kill him. Nursing a hatred of Carroll (since losing the money means he failed the peasants who had raised it), Cooper manages to escape from Tamiroff and his soldiers and goes after Carroll to recover the belt. Carroll, meanwhile, despairs of her role in helping her father. By the end of the film, Yang and her father are dead, and Carroll and Cooper have reconciled and are romantically coupled.
Re: Revision/Correction: the first US spy noirs
Posted by Don Malcolm on 7/15/2019, 7:27 am, in reply to "Revision/Correction: the first US spy noirs"
Dan, it’s always good for you to continue the search for the origins of spy noir (though I am waiting for you to deal with even earlier films in order to clarify these definitions--most prominently Lang’s SPIONE--in order that you might eventually recognize that spy films are one of several triggers for noir, but not the key trigger). This is because, as I see it, your long-standing antipathy to the hardboiled aspects of noir compel you to devise an alternative “creation myth” that attempts to downplay the role of the detective in general, thus throwing the baby out with the bath water in favor of films (“spy noirs”) which are long on treachery but short on either crime, corruption or alienation.
It strikes me as odd after all the years of railing against the femme fatale as a defining premise in noir you would be so tenacious in trying to locate it in films where such female characters are permitted more latitude for treachery primarily by the conventions of the sub-genre, but it appears to be needed in order to establish what is a tenuous and incomplete thesis concerning the development of film noir. The “peril-inducing character” need not be a femme fatale, as a look at Siodmak’s INQUEST or Duvivier’s MOON OVER MOROCCO (both 1931) demonstrate. But female treachery and sexual manipulation quickly become a template the next year in NUIT DU CARREFOUR and AU NOM DE LA LOI, and while this manipulation is not as overt (overstated?) as it would later become, it is clearly present. As for Vincendeau, her description of Winfried is ridiculous—she is clearly a sexual predator, not merely a tramp. And LA TETE D’UN HOMME does not rise or fall in terms of its “noirness” due to the female shrew but because of the spectacularly overwrought character arc of the villain (Valery Inkijinoff, egged on by Duvivier to act out a psychotic break that makes Peter Lorre in M seem like a simpering weasel by comparison).
The ultimate problem with spy noir is that it leads to its own sub-genre that is less “noir” than what emerges in the 40s and that peels off into a dynamic that is long on intrigue but short on alienation or corruption--specifically personal corruption or what Mike Keaney calls “character disintegration.” Spy noir does a fine job of sharpening the tools of treachery but it lacks an actual psychological component to make it credible beyond its manipulation of the narrative (plot elements). It can utilize oppressive physical space, but it cannot really convey a pervasively oppressive atmosphere, which develops in the woman-in-peril and haunted character sub-genres. As noted before, it’s a fine addition to our overall knowledge of the sub-genres that contribute to the spread of noir in the 30s but it is not the primary catalyst for it and it diverges from the seminal direction--towards alienation--that noir coalesces around in the 40s.
Re: Revision/Correction: the first US spy noirs
Posted by Dan Hodges on 7/15/2019, 10:49 pm, in reply to "Re: Revision/Correction: the first US spy noirs"
Edited by Dan Hodges on 7/16/2019, 12:01 am
Don: You and I are traveling down very different tracks/methodologies regarding my work.
I don't say spy noirs trigger noir. I say that it's the historical context of WWII (which starts before Pearl Harbor) that, if you will, triggers noir. And because of this historical context, it's appropriate that spy noirs precede crime noirs in the UK and the US in the early years of film noir in those two countries.
Consequently, I don't care about German or French films -- they don't pertain to what concerns me.
You cannot produce any evidence that I've railed against the femme fatale. My criticism, going back to the war noir essay I wrote in 1987 and published years later in Film Noir Reader 4, is aimed at those who've only focused on this female character in noir and ignored the woman in distress.
For example, I emphasized that criticism against your interpretation of Repeat Performance so long ago. At that time, your noir-o-meter, shamefully from my viewpoint, but predictably given your creation's exemplary representation of the hardboiled paradigm, didn't even have an entry for the woman in distress!
My website carefully shows that the term has to be woman in distress because the dictionary links both psychological plight as well as physical plight with distress. Your use of peril, similar with Eddie's use of jeopardy, cannot be accurately used because each of these words, according to the dictionary, only pertains to physical plight.
My website not only has detailed pages based on my own invention of terms (soft and hard) for the femme fatale in film noir, I uniquely periodize the femme fatale in spy noirs vs. crime noirs, and I uniquely demonstrate that the femme fatale is, before becoming a post-war "slacker" in crime noir, she was a job-holder in spy noir. If my table shows that there are more film noirs with a woman in distress than a femme fatale, that isn't evidence of my railing against the femme fatale, it's clearly to substantiate my contention of the significance of the woman in distress.
I have no concern with such concepts at character disintegration, or alienation or corruption -- since my only concerns are to show the significance of the historical context for the emergence of film noirs in the UK and US being spy noirs rather than crime noirs; the extent of the filmography of spy noirs in the UK and US; and how spy noirs provide more evidence that film noir neither derives from hardboiled literature nor from emigres directors and cinematographers.
i don't have "antipathy to the hardboiled aspects of noir"; I have opposed, now for 32 years, the framing of film noir in terms of a "hardboiled paradigm." For example, I carried out that opposition, at length, via my critique of your noir-o-meter assessment of Repeat Performance. My home page doesn't give evidence of my antipathy to hardboiled aspects of noir. Instead, in example after example, I indicate how the "tenets" that can be associated with the hardboiled paradigm inaccurately represent actual film noir. That is, for each tenet that I cite, I then claim that I "challenge" it on my website because that tenet is "incorrect."
Regarding our different tracks/methodologies, I can't imagine what can justify your reference to my devising an alternative "creation myth," when the basis of my contention about the significance of spy noirs for the origins of film noir in the UK and US derives from the historical context in which spy noirs (plus so many other non-noir spy films) were released in those two countries during the WWII "era," mid-1930s to shortly after the end of WWII. Spy noirs are not triggered by anything you assert; they are triggered by what I emphasize -- both in lengthy text and scholarly footnotes -- and what you ignore.
Re: Revision/Correction: the first US spy noirs
Posted by Don Malcolm on 7/16/2019, 9:11 am, in reply to "Re: Revision/Correction: the first US spy noirs"
Dan, you continue to try to dismiss my ideas out of hand by citing fifteen-year old versions of methods that were revised in order to accommodate concepts that expanded the sub-structural notion of noir to include its roots in melodrama. This was all done before you discovered 75 or so “spy noirs” and have convinced yourself that they are the path to the noir that is recognized by those whom you decry for creating the “hardboiled paradigm”—a useful corrective if not taken too far afield, as unfortunately you have done by the way you have compartmentalized your latest researches. To not be concerned with the French and German films in the early 30s and the influence of Expressionism on pre-“spy noir” films is to deliberately omit key portions of the actual history to suit your version of the “facts.”
Peril, danger, distress do not have to be parsed with the level of “precision“ you are imposing unless one is looking for a way to dismiss out of hand a series of films that don’t fit the historical model you created. And that is what you have done here, and you’ve admitted as such in your response.
WWII imposed a series of pressures on noir as it had evolved in the previous decade--without rehashing what happened in France (significant and clearly still barely on anyone’s radar, much less properly understood), it produced a series of home front “propaganda noirs” in America alongside the wide-ranging use of mystery & thriller source novels. These do demonstrate a set of different characteristics that you’ve done a good job of exploring--until the recent need to create an artificial separation in the femme fatale with the twisted logic concerning Brigid O’Shaughnessy, which is a variation on your earlier attempts to characterize hybridized noirs such as PITFALL as “women’s noirs” when in fact they are compounds/mashups of the two competing narrative approaches. To create a chronology with “transitions” to post-WWII with its more formulaic use of the character archetypes, it becomes necessary to “downgrade” any evidence of examples that contradict the method, which (predictably) means that the femme fatale must first appear in “spy noir” even though this is clearly not the case. (It is also telling that your formal analysis, such as it is, comes to an end in 1944, leaving 20+ years of additional development and variation mostly unexamined: the VERTIGO discussion focuses on plot mechanics and not the psychological understructure of the source material—the French team of Boileau/Narcejac, already a sensation in France several years prior to the Hitchcock version of their novel.)
Simenon and Hammett predate all of this, and are central in defining what follows into the flow of dark film, and each creates dangerous, duplicitous ladies who use feminine wiles and sexual attraction for their own ends. The serial killer, the charismatic villain, the colonialist despot, the great man brought down by tragic flaws or circumstance--these all coalesce into European noir in the early thirties and are far more central to the overall development of noir than the spy subgenre. The rise in “murder culture” that Bordwell explores (more cogently on his web page than in REINVENTING HOLLYWOOD, however...) dovetails into the “woman in distress” film along with the “uncanny noir/horror” hybrid in the non-period films of Val Lewton and the hysterical undercurrents found in occupied France in its development of the “provincial gothic.” The noir-o-meter was revamped to capture the range of difference that can be quantified with such a method, but you continue to hammer at a fifteen-year old version of it rather than actually come to grips with it. Now you try to lump me in with Eddie (!!) when you clearly know better than that.
I think the problem is that, for you, character is essentially plot, and the inability or unwillingness to examine these separately leaves no other path for describing how noir characters have their own reckoning with the dark forces that operate upon them, much of which comes from within, from an accumulated past, from mischance that untethers them, from obsession or madness or from three or four of the most relevant “seven deadly sins.” These all linger into the noir we see across the world in the fifties and sixties, whereas the spy thriller becomes laden with spectacle and more overt sex, with villains who are cunning but mostly cardboard. See the sickness in the face of Hossein in LE VAMPIRE DE DÜSSELDORF (1965) or the spiraling manic-depression brought on by revenge-fueled PTSD in the sad eyes of Bruno Cremer in OBJECTIF 500 MILLIONS (the anti-heist noir from 1966) and the difference in approach and direction is palpable.
But such perspectives are dismissible (along with entire portions of the noir element method itself) because of a fixation on “owning” the origin narrative for noir. The problem with origin myths is that they assume the form they are describing is somehow static and does not undergo change as it’s used by its practitioners. This goes a long way toward explaining your ongoing hostility to the concepts and definitions in the noir-o-meter’s elements and why you persist in using a fifteen-year old version of it in your “discussion” of it.
I hope you will write a book that makes the spy/war noir research more accessible to the public. It’s uses are more limited than you think, but it is stlll useful. But I ask you again to quit trying to debunk my methods with outdated examples—it is intellectually less than honest to continue to do so, particularly given how many times you’ve already been called out for it.
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