Film Noir and the Cinema of Paranoia

208 Pages·2005·1.31 MB·english

by  Wheeler Winston Dixon

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‘In Film Noir and the Cinema of Paranoia, Dixon displays a true cinephile’s
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fascination with the gunslingers and femmes fatales of film noir, and
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the dark, uneasy world they inhabit. Wide-ranging and packed with
compelling detail, this work will be an invaluable addition to the
bookshelves of fans, academics and completists alike.’ DDIIxxOONN
Mikita Brottman, Maryland Institute College of Art, author of The
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Solitary Vice II
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‘Wheeler Winston Dixon is the intrepid sleuth of cinema studies, tracking MM FFIILLMM

down film noir in places where most of us never thought to look, seeing NN
through the aliases and disguises – horror noir, western noir, musical noir, OO
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and more – that have kept its infinite variety in the shadows until now. RR
His timely, spirited book is a boon for film scholars, general readers, and A A NNOOIIRR
movie buffs alike.’ NN
David Sterritt, Columbia University DD

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Film Noir and the Cinema of Paranoia is an overview of twentieth- and HH
twenty-first-century noir and fatalist film practice from 1945 onwards. EE
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The book demonstrates the ways in which American cinema has C C
inculcated a climate of fear in our daily lives, as reinforced by television II
in the 1950s, and later by videocassettes, the web, and the Internet, to NENE CCIINNEEMMAA
create the present hypersurveillant atmosphere in which no one can MM
avoid the barrage of images that continually assault our senses. The book AA OOFF

begins with the return of American soldiers from World War II, ‘liberated’ OO A
from war in the Pacific by the newly created atomic bomb. ‘The Bomb’ FF N OO II A
A N
will come to rule American consciousness through much of the 1950s PP R A
A R
and 1960s and then, in a newer, more small-scale way, become a fixture AA PP A
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of terrorist hardware in the post-paranoid era of the twenty-first century.
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Film Noir and the Cinema of Paranoia is constructed in six chapters, each NN
highlighting a particular ‘raising of the cinematic stakes’ in the creation of OO
II
a completely immersible universe of images. AA
Wheeler Winston Dixon is the James Ryan Endowed Professor of Film
Studies, Professor of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln and,
with Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Editor-in-Chief of the Quarterly Review of
Film and Video.
ISBN: 978 0 7486 2400 3
Edinburgh University Press
22 George Square,
Edinburgh, EH8 9LF
www.euppublishing.com
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in
Cover Design: Barrie Tullett b
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Cover Image: Diana Dors in J. Lee Thompson’s Yield to the Night (1956) r
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Collection of the author h
Film Noir and the Cinema of Paranoia
For Oyekan Owomoyela,
and all friends loved and lost
Film Noir and the Cinema of
Paranoia
Wheeler Winston Dixon
Edinburgh University Press
© Wheeler Winston Dixon, 2009
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square, Edinburgh
Typeset in 11/13 Ehrhardt
by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and
printed and bound in Great Britain by
Cromwell Press, Trowbridge, Wilts
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7486 2399 0 (hardback)
ISBN 978 0 7486 2400 3 (paperback)
The right of Wheeler Winston Dixon
to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Contents
Acknowledgments vi
Introduction 1
1.The Dream of Return 9
2.The Postwar Bubble 37
3.1950s Death Trip 56
4.The Flip Side of the 1960s 91
5.The Failure of Culture 129
6.Living in Fear 153
Appendix: A Gallery of Classic Noir ‘Heavies’ 170
Works Cited and Consulted 175
Index 186
Acknowledgments
This volume would not have been possible without the help and advice of
numerous colleagues and friends; of the many who contributed, I would
like to single out Dennis Coleman, always an authority on films maudit;
Mikita Brottman and David Sterritt, comrades in arms; Peter Brunette, a
solid source of encouragement and guidance; Stephen Prince, who shares
many of the concerns reflected in this manuscript; Steve Shaviro, whose
writings have long been a source of both wonder and inspiration; Lucy
Fischer, an astute judge of critical writing and a good friend; along with
Patrice Petro, Jean-Pierre Geuens, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Dana Polan,
David Desser, Marcia Landy, Stephen C. Behrendt, Maria Prammagiore,
Valérie Orlando, Michael Downey, Miriam Linna, Billy Miller and a host
of others who contributed, either directly or indirectly, to this project.
Dana Miller, as always, did a superb job in typing the original manuscript
from my customary handwritten draft, and thus earns my undying thanks.
Jennifer Holan provided the index for this volume, and also did a superb
job of correcting the final page proofs; my sincere thanks to her. Through
all of this, Gwendolyn Foster provided an atmosphere of love and patience
that made this work possible, and remains my best friend, staunchest critic,
and constant ally.
While most of this volume is comprised of new material, there are some
sections of this text that have previously appeared in either journals or col-
lections of essays. For permission to use brief portions of these materials
here, the author wishes to thank Yoram Allon and Wallflower Press for per-
mission to reprint ‘House of Strangers: The Family in Film Noir,’ in A
Family Affair: Cinema Calls Home, Wallflower Press; 2008; Leslie Mitchner
and Rutgers University Press for permission to reprint ‘The Endless
Embrace of Hell: Hopelessness and Betrayal in Film Noir,’ in Cinema and
Modernity, Rutgers University Press, 2006, and ‘Night World: New York as
a Noir Universe,’ in City That Never Sleeps: New York and the Filmic
acknowledgments vii
Imagination, Rutgers University Press, 2007; James Peltz and State
University of New York Press for permission to reprint ‘The Eternal
Summer of Harold Pinter and Joseph Losey’s Accident,’ in The Films of
Harold Pinter; ed. Stephen S. Gale, State University of New York Press,
2001, 21–37; and pages 95–107, on the writer Jim Thompson, from my book
Straight: Constructions of Heterosexuality in the Cinema, State University of
New York Press, 2003; Felicia Campbell, editor of the journal Popular
Culture Review, for permission to reprint ‘The Commercial Instinct: New
Elstree Studios and The Danziger Brothers, 1956–1961,’ Popular Culture
Review9.1 (February 1998): 31–43; Robert King, editor, Classic Images, for
permission to reprint ‘The Invisible Man, Secret Agent, and The Prisoner:
Three British Teleseries of the 1950s and 60s,’ from Classic Images 282
(December 1998); Margaret Walsh and the University of Wisconsin Press
for permission to reprint ‘Archetypes of the Heavy in Classical Hollywood
Cinema’ in Beyond the Stars: Stock Characters in American Popular Film,
Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1990; Rolando Caputo and
the editors of Senses of Cinemafor permission to reprint ‘Fast Worker: the
Films of Sam Newfield,’ Senses of Cinema 45 (2007); Lloyd Michaels,
editor of the journal Film Criticism, for permission to reprint ‘A Cinema of
Violence: The Films of D. Ross Lederman,’ Film Criticism 30.3 (Spring,
2006); and finally John Brown and Taylor and Francis, for permission
to reprint my article ‘Hyperconsumption in Reality Television: The
Transformation of the Self Through Televisual Consumerism,’ in Quarterly
Review of Film and Video25.1 (2008). In all cases, these materials have been
substantially altered from their original versions to incorporate new
research, and only brief sections of the essays are used here.
For help in researching this book, it is my pleasure to thank Kristine
Krueger of the Margaret Herrick Library, Fairbanks Center for Motion
Picture Study, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, for her help
in locating information on some of the more obscure titles and production
companies discussed here, as well as Janet Moat, Mandy Rowson and Ian
O’Sullivan of the British Film Institute for their research assistance on the
British noir-influenced films, particularly those produced by the
Danzigers. Todd Geringswald of the Museum of Television and Radio,
New York also provided invaluable assistance. The stills that grace this
volume come from the personal collection of the author. Finally, I wish to
thank the University of Nebraska, Lincoln Department of English for its
support of my work through the years, and especially the chair of the
department, Joy Ritchie.
The work of this volume is simple; it gestures towards an expanded
vision of what constitutes a noir film, and so those readers who expect the
viii film noir and the cinema of paranoia
visual catalogue of tough guys and hard-boiled dames will find them in
these pages, but they will also find a host of other characters, from a variety
of genres. Science fiction noir, horror noir, even musical noir are all present
and accounted for, as well as those films that usually operate on the margins
of cinematic discourse because of inadequate budgeting, distribution,
and/or both. Noir is a state of paranoia, a zone in which nothing seems
stable, no one can be trusted, and the world is a constant battleground.
This book seeks a wider definition of that which we call film noir, follow-
ing in the footsteps of Raymond Durgnat, Paul Schrader, Guy Debord and
other theorists whose fascination with noir led them to path-breaking
insights, of which the concept that noir is not necessarily a genre is perhaps
the most intriguing, and the most mutable. What follows, then, are some
variations on a theme.
‘There ain’t no answer.
There ain’t never going to be an answer.
There never has been an answer.
That’s the answer.’
Gertrude Stein
(as quoted in McFadden 1996: 9)