Surrealism as genre narrative, Part I: Night of the Hunter

I have a love of cult cinema, which will be further explained later on as I get used to this new system. I do think a certain subset exists in cult cinema that I will define as "Surrealistic Noir". These sorts of films are best exemplified by David Lynch, but he is not the only director to have done this.

"Surrealistic Noir" would be defined by a couple of factors, the most dominant of which would be a spiritual or near-supernatural force that is present that defies explanation and has malicious intent. Fate has always had it in for the characters in most noir, but in surrealistic noir pictures it has an active intent as well as living agents. The other main fact would be an abnormal pace to editing - occasionally by design and occasionally by accident or studio intervention - giving the proceedings an odd, dreamlike quality that gets under the viewer's skin and, in the best examples of this sub genre, stays there. We will be looking at three examples for this, and then touching on their influences in more modern works. The first analysis will be of Charles Laughton's The Night of The Hunter.

In The Night of the Hunter, God is a presence, for both good and ill. Harry Powell claims to be a man of faith but seems more like the Devil given form. Rachel Cooper also has a tremendous amount of faith, and it is the clash between those two that makes up the most memorable scene in the film, a standoff between Powell and Rachel as they duet a hymn, Powell walking back and forth along a picket fence like a caged tiger and Cooper sitting in her rocking chair brandishing a shotgun.

Notice the optical illusion here at Mitchum's placement, despite his distance he looks as if he could come through the window at any moment. Also notice Cooper's face, recalling the dead woman earlier in the film and subconsciously putting a feeling of dread in the audience.

Also of note, and backing up the second point of the earlier definition, once the children are fleeing from Powell, they go on a bizarre, dreamlike raft ride through a swamp. There are many, many things here that set the viewer off balance:  an off-tone children's melody plays as the boat drifts past increasingly surrealistic environments. While the environments are natural, the perspective is almost always distorted, giving the viewer a sense that something is VERY wrong here. A theory I've heard is that at this point in the story, the children are dead, and the rest of the film is their symbolic journey through purgatory and ascent into heaven. While I don't believe this theory myself, there's no question something similar is going on, thematically . As shown by the picture on the right, this looks less like the American South and more like something out of German Expressionism, all faint lights and angles and corners and dread.


Next up, we'll be looking at Kiss Me Deadly, a film where an editing disaster accidentally created a surrealist classic. This will be followed up by Carnival of Souls, a very low-budget horror film that nonetheless created many of the visual and aural cues we now associate with this type of picture.

See you next time.

Civilization, Corruption, and Sacrifice: High Noon and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

 Watched both of these over the week and was struck by some similarities. Now, I know High Noon works best as a Mccarthyism allegory so I won't discard that as the primary interpretation. Nonetheless, I feel like there's enough going on in both of these movies to talk about some things that I noticed. This is mostly an exercise to get my analytical thinking back, which my illness is killing me with, so feel free to disagree with me. 

Gary Cooper's Tom Kane, John Wayne's Tom Doniphon, and Jimmy Stewart's Ransom Stoddard, all broken or injured by civilzation in various ways

      What strikes me about High Noon and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is there's definitely an undercurrent of having to effectively kill a violent, old-west archetype in order for the modern age to advance in both films, not just Valance (Noon does this a bit more subtly). The key difference here is that in Valance what happens to Tom Doniphon is a voluntary action (regardless of how horrible his life is afterwards, Tom makes the choice), and what happens to Will Kane has an air of being involuntary, like being offered up as a sacrificial lamb (although Kane chooses to go back to the town at the beginning, he was certainly not expected the result from the townspeople that he recieved).

       But let me clarify one thing -  the modern age here isn't necessarily represented by civility and being safe in these films. If anything, it's represented by a duality of increased technology at the cost of an increase in corruption, unenlightened self-interest, and mob mentality - a veil of civility over a savage environment.

Tom Doniphon's dreams, up in smoke

     In Valance, Ransom Stoddard's success is built on a lie that is perpetuated and continues to be perpetuated, an essentially corrupt action. However, this has brought about the modern age for the town. In order for this continue, to lie will always be there, and because of this, Tom Doniphon - the actual man who shot liberty valance - will remain in disgrace. Granted, his motivations are fairly complex - Doniphon's sacrifice is done both for reasons of love (despite not ending up with Hallie, he wants to spare her the heartbreak of Ransom being shot in the street) and reasons of state (to ensure Statehood for the territory)- but the fact still remains - in order for civilization to advance forward, the stereotypical cowboy archetype has to effectively die.

    In Noon, the townspeople of Hadleyville simply want the problem suppressed, or at the very least moved. They'd rather turn a blind eye to the savagery of the universe.  Additionally, the issue being suppressed for the sake of "civility" comes up again in the famous church conversation scene:

" Now, people up North are thinking about this town - thinking mighty hard, thinking about sending money down here to put up stores and to build factories ... But if they're gonna read about shooting and killing in the streets, what are they gonna think then? I'll tell ya. They're gonna think this is just another wide-open town and everything we worked for will be wiped out.... I don't think we can let that happen. He (Kane) didn't have to come back here today. But for his sake and the sake of this town, I wish he hadn't. Because if he's not here when Miller comes, my hunch is there won't be any trouble, not one bit.... "

 Notice the power lines in the upper left corner, civilization is encroaching

The hypocrisy here is evident - Will Kane's responsible for the peace here, and it is already made clear earlier in the film that Frank Miller will hunt him down no matter where he is. So,  in the minds of the townspeople, which can reasonably be extended to society in this case, in order for trouble to cease, and civilization to march onward, Kane's going to have to die. Once again, the archetype is put in a fatal situation for the sake of progress. It doesn't matter that Kane's had to make sacrifices and put himself at tremendous personal risk, isolating possible friendships and relationships due to the difficult circumstances of his life - civilization marches on, and it would once again be better to suppress the violent truths of the town's peace rather than have the true nature of things shoved in their faces.

Now, Kane does resolve his issue with a little more success than Doniphon, though at great  personal cost to both his belief system and the belief system of his wife, who has to renounce her pacifism to survive the ordeal. Still, you get the feeling at the end that he will become a recluse, as he throws his tin star in the dirt. He's completely disgusted with the town- and thus society - at this point. in Valance, the audience is left to sort out their emotional reaction as the characters do not really achieve catharsis - the last line "Nothing's too good for the man who Shot Liberty Valance" and the reactions of Stoddard and his wife hammer this point home fairly effectively. 

In the end, we are left with the advancement of the modern age. What we take away from this, though - is that the modern age may shy away from blatant displays of savagery and violence, but it is still fundamentally the same society, just sheened over with an appearance of peace. Additionally, the corruption and such inherent here are shown to be instrumental in the founding of a modern society, and inherent to it. 

So, are these films stating then that the old ways are better? Not exactly. What these films are about are struggles, successes and failures against a harsh and unforgiving world. To shine a light on this is not necessarily to hold it up or condemn it - it is what it is. Still, these type of stories are the most resonant, and that's one of the many, many reasons why these films stick out in our collective memory.