I Don't Want to Talk About It.
In 1945, Deanna Durbin starred in Lady on a Train, playing a young woman addicted to murder mysteries.
At the end of the film, she and her brand-new husband (a mystery novelist) are off on their honeymoon together. He is anxious to get their wedding night underway (if you get my drift) but she is completely engrossed in his latest novel, and clearly has no intention of putting it down any time soon.
"You know what, darling? This is your finest book," she tells him, adoringly. Most authors love hearing such things from their fan base, but on this occasion, her devotion to his literary prowess is delaying the opening night of their marriage. So, he leans forward and very deliberately says to her, "The man with the green hat did it."
"Oh, Wayne," she says, annoyed. "Now you've just spoiled the whole book."
Of course she then realises what's on his mind and all is forgiven, but this little scene represents one of pop culture's earliest mentions of a spoiler.
It was not going to be the last.
Few people in 1945 would have been familiar with the term spoiler in its current definition, but sitting here in the relative comfort of the 21st Century, Fear of Spoilers has become one of the foundational pillars of the internet itself. Fans obsessively trawl social media feeds, discussion groups and fan sites for every morsel of information they can lay their hands on, but they also live each moment in abject fear of being accidentally exposed to... a spoiler.
But there are spoilers and there are Spoilers.
Deanna Durbin was simply worried about the identity of the killer in the murder mystery she was reading, but in the last few decades, we have witnessed what can best be described as "spoiler drift."
In the modern world, everything seems to be a potential spoiler. Not just the "Who" in a whodunnit, but each and every plot twist, casting choice, narrative arc or wardrobe decision. Modern film critics are finding it difficult to write their reviews because anything they might say about a film will be considered a potential spoiler by their angry readers.
In 2021, the New York Times reached a minor spoiler milestone when it published an article in its business section about the fitness company Peloton.
Peloton had just featured (negatively) in the shocking and spectacular season opener of a high profile television series (a major character had suffered a fatal heart attack while working out on his Peloton) and the Times ran an article assessing the financial impact this (fictional) death was having on the company. The article was about Peloton's quarterly stock performance (it wasn't an entertainment piece; it was in the Business section) but the paper felt obliged to publish a "spoiler alert" before launching into its analysis of Peloton's market solvency.
Historically, this pathological fear of spoilers is without precedent. Theatre audiences attending performances of Hamlet generally know in advance what's going to happen. Very few people are taken by surprise when the Titanic sinks, and if you don't want to see any spoilers for Oedipus Rex then I would strongly advise against a career in psychoanalysis.
So, do spoilers actually "spoil" anything? Is Romeo and Juliet more exciting if we genuinely don't know in advance whether those sweet kids are going to live happily ever after? And would it affect our response to the New Testament if we didn't know in advance about the scene where Jesus gets nailed to that cross?
It should also be said that all of these potential spoilers relate to plot twists. A good drama is a lot more than simply "what happens next" and there are other aspects of good story-telling that can be genuinely more effective if an audience gets to experience them fresh.
All of this is to say that while I never worry too much about plot spoilers, there are certain elements of film-making (and this week's film specifically) that I will refrain from talking about.
Let me repeat that, for emphasis.
I'm not going to talk about it.
The next three films I plan to show all relate to the Cold War in various ways, although The Thief is the only one of those three that is explicitly a "Cold War" film. (You'll see what I mean in due course...)
Released in 1952, The Thief tells the story of Dr. Allan Fields (Ray Milland) a physicist working for the US Atomic Energy Commission in Washington DC, who is secretly passing classified documents to The Enemy.
Much of the film concerns itself with the minutiae of the spy network: secret, unpatriotic agents, outwardly indistinguishable from ordinary red-blooded Americans, who are working to undermine the integrity and security of The Greatest Nation on Earth.
In that sense, The Thief is a prime example of Cold War paranoia, and represents exactly the sort of domestic espionage that the US Government believed was going on all around them all the time. 1952 was when anti-Communist investigations were at their most aggressive, and it was also smack in the middle of the "Julius and Ethel Rosenberg" affair (they were convicted of espionage in 1951 and executed for treason in 1953).
But The Thief is not like other anti-Communist propaganda films of the era (which is why I'm showing it as part of a "Genre Fluid" series).
For a start, the film looks gorgeous. Filmed almost entirely on location, much of it was shot using "guerrilla film-making" techniques (unobtrusive cameras in real-world environments, often without permission from the authorities) and it makes effective use of a number of noteworthy and photogenic landmarks such as the Library of Congress in Washington and the Empire State Building in New York.
But this isn't simply one more "Red Scare" paranoia picture. Produced by the writer/director team of Clarence Greene and Russell Rouse, The Thief was released at a time when the Hollywood blacklist was at its worst: destroying careers and ruining lives. An entire generation of writers, directors and actors were being silenced by out-of-control paranoia and hysteria, and The Thief is as much about that as it is about any genuine subversive activity.
There were a lot of things you could not talk about in 1950s Hollywood, and The Thief is at its most eloquent in what it does not say.
You will see what I mean when we screen the film at 7.30 on Thursday, the 10th of October at the Victoria Park Baptist Church.
After that, I won't have to worry about spoilers, and we'll be able to talk about it!
Shhhhh....
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