Black and White; Good and Evil; Right and... Left??

The film noir "era" (for want of a better term) was a particularly juicy period in Hollywood's history; not least because it saw the flourishing of an enormous pool of talent - much of it European.


But noir also lives in that murky grey area between Right and Wrong, at a time when the Hollywood censorship codes made very little allowance for ambiguity. The Hays Office (and their spiritual soulmates, the Legion of Decency) had very restrictive ideas about morality and ethics, which is one of the reasons why "Noir" protagonists always seem to have the primal forces of Reality itself working against them. 


In a very real sense, they inhabit a world that does not permit moral shades of grey.

The censorship of films throughout the Hays Office era was fuelled partly by fear. The Powers That Be were terrified that mainstream American society was constantly under threat from The Other, and eternal vigilance was needed to protect us from them.


The Stranger, which I screened last week, is a very early example of the "Monsters in Suburbia" genre, which was to become a familiar trope of mainstream horror movies in the latter part of the 20th Century.


(The Stranger is actually such an early example that it predates the existence of the Suburbs by almost a decade. But that's Orson Welles for you... always thinking ahead...)

Of course the "Monstrous Other" in The Stranger was an escaped Nazi war criminal pretending to be an ordinary "normal" American. But it wasn't the hidden Nazis who were keeping suburban Americans up at night in the years that followed. If anything, it was the opposite of Nazis.


It was after the war when the American "Suburbs" really began to take shape in earnest. As cities became more diverse (the result of immigration and demographic shifts) many middle-class white families opted to move into the less-populated regions outside the city to raise their children in "safety" (this of course was also the "Baby-Boom" era).

But there was a constant terror that The Other would encroach on their little Havens of Conformity, threatening their lifestyles, if not their lives. And sometimes, of course, The Other actually turned up.


Many politicians have done very well by exploiting those fears, but that's a different discussion.

Hiding in Plain Sight

Just as The Stranger anticipates the Monster in Suburbia trope, this week's film touches on a related trope: the Menace That Looks Just Like Us.


In Hollow Triumph, Paul Henreid plays a brilliant but ruthless criminal who goes into hiding after a brazen robbery goes wrong. By chance, a viable way out is provided for him when he learns that he bears a striking resemblance to a noted psychoanalyst. All except for the scar on his right cheek (or is it on his left cheek...?).


This film was an important one for Paul Henreid for several reasons: first it was a notably dark role for him, and one he had lobbied to play as a break from his typical suave matinee idol persona. But this also marked his first venture into directing (although he doesn't receive screen credit as the director).


It's a fitting film to mark the beginning of his directing career. In 1933 he was blacklisted by the NS-Reichsfilmkammer (Nazi Germany's version of Equity) because his father had been born Jewish. And then in the US, he was blacklisted again because he had spoken out in support of other Hollywood figures who had fallen afoul of the anti-Communist witch hunts. 


So Fear Of The Other was something he understood very well.

In its own way, Hollow Triumph is very much about The Other. Henreid's character (the criminal, not the analyst) is forced to live outside "normal" society, in that nebulous twilight world that noir captures so effectively (and which is exquisitely photographed in this instance by Cinematographer John Alton). When he does enter the mainstream, he must do so as an imposter, because he will always be an Outsider.


And of course, there is only one possible outcome for The Other, in a world dominated by The Legion of Decency and their allies.


We will screen Hollow Triumph at 7.30pm on Thursday, the 20th of February at the Victoria Park Baptist Church.

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