Education in the School of Dreams: Travelogues and Early Nonfiction Film

402 Pages·2013·4.072 MB·English

by  Jennifer Lynn Peterson

Education in thE School of drEamS

JEnnifEr lynn PEtErSon
Education
in thE
School drEamS
of
Travelogues and Early Nonfiction Film
Duke university Press | Durham anD LonDon | 2013
© 2013 Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper ♾
Designed by Heather Hensley
Typeset in Arno Pro by Tseng Information Systems, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Peterson, Jennifer Lynn
Education in the school of dreams : travelogues and
early nonfiction film / Jennifer Lynn Peterson.
p. cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8223-5441-3 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn 978-0-8223-5453-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Travelogues (Motion pictures)—United States—History
and criticism. 2. Nonfiction films—United States—
History and criticism. I. Title.
Pn1995.9.t73P48 2013
070.1′8—dc23 2013005286
Duke University Press gratefully acknowledges the support of
the Kayden Research Grants at the University of Colorado Boulder,
which provided funds toward the publication of this book.
| For ChristoPher

contEntS
PreFaCe ix
aCknowLeDgments xix
introDuCtion The Dreamworld of Cinematic Travel 1
1 | Varieties of Travel Experience: Burton Holmes and the
Travelogue Tradition 23
2 | “The Living Panorama of Nature”: Early Nonfiction and the
American Film Industry 63
3 | “The Five- Cent University”: Educational Films and the
Drive to Uplift the Cinema 101
4 | “Atop of the World in Motion”: Visualizing the Pleasures
of Empire 137
5 | Scenic Films and the Cinematic Picturesque 175
6 | “A Weird and Affecting Beauty”: Watching Travel Films in
the 1910s 207
7 | “The Nation’s First Playground”: Wilderness Modernized
in the American West 235
ePiLogue Reveries of the Solitary Walker 269
notes 277
FiLmograPhy 323
bibLiograPhy 331
inDex 353

PrEfacE
one of the most famous scenes of cinematic travel takes place in Max
Ophüls’s melodrama Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948). The film
is set in Vienna in the early twentieth century, and in the scene, the
film’s young female protagonist, Lisa, is out on her first and only evening
with the famous pianist Stefan Brand, who takes her to an amusement park
modeled after the real Wurstelprater in Vienna’s Wiener Prater park. Lisa is
played by Joan Fontaine, then one of the most important stars at Univer-
sal Pictures, and Stefan is played by Louis Jourdan, a French actor newly
arrived in Hollywood who was being groomed as a European leading man
in the manner of Charles Boyer. The two characters sit in a stationary train
car while a painted landscape panorama passes by the window (fig. P.1). As
Lisa speaks of her father, a crudely painted landscape of Venice scrolls past,
followed by Switzerland: “When my father was alive, we traveled a lot. We
went nearly everywhere. We had wonderful times.” Stefan, the more experi-
enced of the two, leans in, saying, “Perhaps we’ve been to some of the same
places.” As Lisa continues to speak about visiting Rio de Janeiro, we realize
from her facetious tone of voice that her travels resemble the painted back-
drop passing by: they are imaginary. She soon ’fesses up: “Well, there weren’t
any trips. Do you mind? You see, my father had a friend in a travel bureau.
My father worked across the street. He was an assistant superintendent of
municipal waterworks, and he used to bring folders home with him with
pictures on them. We had stacks of them. And in the evening, he would put
on his traveling coat. That’s what he called it. Of course, I was very young.”
In this story of Lisa’s childhood love for her dead father, imaginary travel
serves as a playful escape from the dreariness of everyday life. In the present
tense of the scene between Lisa and Stefan, the imaginary travel of the train