Family Melodramas of the 1940s and 50s - Dissertation Example

 Family Melodramas of the 1940s and 50s In the post war years immediately following World War II, most of the West was in a happy mood. Jobs were aplenty and peace had finally been restored in Europe and Asia after almost a decade of cruel war, in which millions of people had perished and millions more were scarred for life, emotionally and physically. The soldiers returned and immediately started the Baby Boomer generation on both sides of the Atlantic. Yet at the same time there were plenty of reasons to be melancholy. Tojo, Hitler and Mussolini were almost immediately replaced by even more sinister threats. The USSR under Joseph Stalin shut down most of Eastern Europe just after the war and China quickly followed suit with the People’s Revolution in 1949. To compound that, less than five years after World War II ended, the Korean War began. Communism and the real threat of a global nuclear war were everywhere and people were truly frightened. In the USA, there was the Congressional House Un-American Activities committee (HUAC) and many people were accused of being Communist sympathisers. As with the rest of the West, Hollywood was also having its own problems. One was the Baby Boomers. People with infants did not go to movies, so revenues declined. A good many of the actors and executives were called before the HUAC and many were “blacklisted”, some for years (Digital). Not long after the Korean War, television debuted and was yet another reason for theatre goers to stay home. More, European countries such as the UK opted to beef up their own movie industries, so heavy tariffs ensured American movies were rare. According to Digital History above, “the popular family melodramas of the 1940s and 50s reveal a pattern of deeply troubled family relationships”. Marriage was useless, sex was bad and the youth of America were all a bunch of juvenile delinquents. Still, many studios chose to turn out the classic feel good movies that audiences had flocked to in the years preceding World War II. Two of those films were It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) and The Quiet Man (1952). In December 1946, Frank Capra premiered a new movie It’s a Wonderful Life, based upon a short story by Philip Van Doren Stern, The Greatest Gift, which Stern had used as Christmas cards. The film was a commercial disaster, originally grossing US $3.3 million on a budget of $3.7 million. However, the audiences who did see it actually loved it and gave it a 92% approval rating. Even though it was nominated for five Academy Awards, It’s a Wonderful Life did not win any Oscars and lost Best Picture to the war veteran melodrama The Best Years of Our Lives (Top Tenz 2012). Although the Christmas scenes consist of only about fifteen minutes of the entire movie, It’s a Wonderful Life has been a perennial Christmas favourite for years. American television network NBC shows the film once every year and probably many homes in the West have It’s a Wonderful Life in their video libraries. The movie is a dark and brooding work about events leading up to protagonist George Bailey’s probable suicide and over three-quarters of it is told in flashback sequence. The populist theory was prevalent of the era appear throughout the entire movie. Of course George is a great guy, willing to help anybody, anytime, no matter what the cost to himself or those he loves. For instance, the old house where eight Baileys live is the stereotypical haunted mansion, with peeling wallpaper and the staircase falling apart. His car is probably twenty years old. At the same time, he is moving his customers into brand new houses in Bailey Park. He even turns down a job offer from Potter for $20,000 per annum, or $247,991 in 2012 dollars (Dollar Times 2012) so the “crummy little building and loan” can stay open. Yet one can feel the overwhelming despair of George Bailey throughout the movie. The look he gives when, after his father’s death, the Doctor informs him that he has to stay at the building and loan or it will close; shows the gloom of a person who has had his hopes permanently dashed, when Harry returns from college sporting his new wife and a job offer in another city, as George stands alone on the train platform, one can see the utter hopelessness and the final realization that his dreams of tramp steamers, Europe and building skyscrapers are over. He will never leave Bedford Falls. Seemingly though, his family stands by George most of all. Mr. Bailey, the night of his death, tells George “you were born older” and expresses a desire for the two of them to continue to work together. Uncle Billy rescues him from that lonely train platform and his mother steers him toward Mary, sensing his loneliness. Later, Mary does not rail about her lost honeymoon; indeed, she spends that day fixing up the old mansion so it is at least liveable. Even at the end, George hugs his children tightly, realizing what was most important. That was intentional on Capra’s part; for home and family were the hallmarks of post World War II allies. Sullivan (2006) uses Potter’s own words “Sentimental Hogwash” to ask what the meaning of It’s a Wonderful Life actually is. Is it a nostalgic throwback to a simpler America that actually never was, as some more cynical people believed? Actually, the author believes that the after ends of the war, service members, including Capra himself, were disillusioned to the point that “After wartime service, peacetime life seemed insignificant”. Therefore, Capra truly felt the movie had to be in order to show the cobbler or grocer he was still leading a productive life. The director used just about every historical event during the film’s time. Gower’s son died of influenza in the Army in 1919, just after World War I, during an epidemic of Spanish Flu that killed upwards of forty million people worldwide during its two-year run (Stanford). Although It’s a Wonderful Life more or less skims over the Great Depression, the bank run in which George ruins his honeymoon trip is a very good description of the bank failures of the early 1930’s, including the failure of New York’s Bank of the United States, culminating in President Roosevelt himself temporarily closing all banks temporarily (History 2012). Through all of that, the glaring difference between the haves and have nots is obvious. At the very first, when George is a boy, Potter’s elegant carriage is sitting in front of the building and loan. Clarence innocently asks, “Who’s that, a king?” Before he marries, Sam calls George and Mary to talk about investing in a factory to manufacture plastics. George inadvertently tells him the factory in Bedford Falls is available, for “Half the town got thrown out of work when the mill shut”. That is where George probably made his biggest tactical error of the entire movie. Still stinging from Harry’s news about his nuptials, he tells Mary he does not want plastics. Maybe he would have never left Bedford Falls, but the plastics money would have made his family more than comfortable materially. During the bank run, one lady sobs that her husband has been out of work for over two years and she needs money for food. Later, as times evidently get somewhat better in Bedford Falls, George ceremoniously presents the keys to the first new house in Bailey Park to bar owner Martini. Sam again shows up in a chauffeur driven limousine and asks the Baileys to accompany him and his latest girlfriend to Florida. The couple sadly turns away, knowing they can never afford such a trip. The political comments are sparse, especially about World War II, other than Uncle Billy tells Potter “Not all heels were in Germany and Japan”. It did show the vast cooperation by the populace present in Great Britain, Canada and the United States such as rubber drives, women’s sewing bees and Potter in charge of the draft board. Even George did his part as an air warden while his friends served heroically. Poor George did not even get to leave home during the war! North America was cautious of air raids, although it was a personal experience in the UK. Even Pottersville is one of Capra’s political commentaries. It is a world where up is down is good is bad and every business is seemingly owned by Potter. There are few family homes and even his bitter mother owns a boarding house. Bert and Ernie the cab driver are also embittered and different. Martini is inexplicably gone replaced by Nick the bartender and Gower is the “old rummy who spent twenty years in prison for poisoning the kid”. George’s childhood friend Violet (always a “loose” woman) is arrested for prostitution. Yet McGinley (2009) argues that Pottersville may not be too bad for Bedford Falls. The booming bawdiness of Pottersville signifies a great economy, whereas the latter was mostly asleep at the same time on Christmas Eve. He goes on to compare Pottersville with the modern day casino towns, where thee townspeople turn a blind eye to “sin” because the newfound wealth of the city is creating jobs and a tax base. At the centre of this economy in Pottersville is alcohol, a typical argument for a country less than fifteen years removed from Prohibition. Six years later, another movie was to premiere due to the collaboration of another team of famous actor and director with considerably more box office success. Director John Ford and renowned actor John Wayne were famous for their movies concerning the American West of the nineteenth century. The two men collaborated on eighteen motion pictures spanning thirty-five years, over half of which were Westerns. One could really say that Marion Morrison owed the image that was John Wayne to his director, for Ford literally took the man from Morrison the stunt man to John Wayne the legend. Most of those feel good movies were the standard story of good triumphing over evil in the end and are considered classics today, including Stagecoach; She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and two of their best; The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Yet they did several non-Westerns as well, The Expendables (a war movie) and the more likely forgotten about Donovan’s Reef (Levy). However, their biggest non-Western was a “silly little Irish story that would never make me a penny”. Ford had bought the story and had the idea of The Quiet Man for some twenty years and had picked Wayne and Maureen O’Hara for the lead roles as early as the 1940’s. In a 2006 interview (Quinn), O’Hara revealed that Ford was tenacious and had been turned down by Fox, MGM and RKO before Republic Pictures decided to take a chance and film the movie. As a matter of fact, the only way Republic head Herb Yates (with a reputation as obstinate as Ford’s) would agree to The Quiet Man was that Ford, Wayne and O’Hara film a movie to finance that movie. That motion picture turned out to the cinematic blockbuster Rio Grande. Wayne had suggested Republic himself and the quote at the first of this paragraph was what Yates had initially told him. The director and studio head realized an internationally filmed movie would be expensive to make. They were right, production costs were one and a half million dollars, an exorbitant fee at the time. Still, Rio Grande was a hit and John Ford had gotten the approval for to make what he considered his cinematic gem. Production occurred mostly in County Mayo, Ireland in the summer of 1951. Along with his two stars, Ford has assembled an all-star cast of mostly Irish actors (or at least Irish American). That included veterans Barry Fitzgerald and Victor McLaglen as well as Ward Bond, who would later find fame on US television as the star of Wagon Train. Also, Ford made the movie something of a family affair. His brother Francis Ford, an actor and director in his own right, played an old man with comedic relief, who gets out of his deathbed due to events of the movie. John Ford’s son-in-law Ken Curtis, later memorialized as Festus Haggen on Gunsmoke, was cast as the accordion player. Wayne’s four children also had cameo roles during the famous horserace scene (Quiet Man 1952). Politics are discreet but nonetheless there in the movie. Realizing the tinderbox that was and is Northern Ireland and that independent Ireland had only been a Republic for only two years when the movie was filmed, Ford managed to sidestep the issue of politics. Instead, when the Widow queries Sean about his reasons for wanting to by the homestead, he blissfully replies that compared to the “slag heaps of Pittsburgh, Innisfree has always seemed like a slice of heaven”. She curtly replies that her family has remained in Ireland since the Normans and “Innisfree is far from heaven”. This shows Thornton’s lack of knowledge of his country’s history (Adams 2011). The Irish take exception to the American view of their country. Told mostly through folklore from homesick elders (such as Sean’s mother), North Americans have the idyllic idea that the country is a land of green valleys and peace. The fact that most of them left due to poverty and famine is left out (Ryder 2008). In fact Sean’s grandfather died in prison in Australia and his father had perished in a mysterious accident. However, in the same token, the “ugly American” perception is evident in the movie. All of the Irish seem surprised that Thornton is not interested in fishing and does not have a camera. They find his sleeping bag curious and the Widow sarcastically asks Sean if he has intentions of putting a shrine in place at the cottage site. The struggle between violence and peaceful resolution was also evident throughout the movie, as well as the subtle revelations that money is at the heart of it all. After killing his opponent “for lousy money”, Thornton escapes to the fantasized Ireland only to discover violence confronts him there. He also bitterly realizes money is the heart of evil in his new home as well, telling Mary Kate in an argument “Money; is that all you Danaher’s think of?” Seeing Reverend Playfair in desperation, Sean explodes that the victim left behind a wife and kids. An ex-boxer himself, Playfair gently tries to prod the man to fight for what he believes in, saying the fighter’s death was just “one of those things” (Dowling 2008) Another touchy subject was the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Ford realized there was an IRA presence both before and after the revolution and to ignore them altogether would make the historical perspective ridiculous. Therefore, the director quietly placed the Inisfree cell into key roles. For instance Michaeleen speaks of “committing a bit of treason”. When Will bitterly comments, “So the IRA is in on this as well?” the local leader replies “If it were, Red Will Danaher, not a scorched stone 'o your fine house'd be standin'. Actually, there was an “IRA consultant” for the movie named Ernie O’Malley, an old member and Ford knew Michael Collins personally, having met him in 1921 (Gibbons 2002). The religious cooperation evidenced in The Quiet Man is probably not far off the mark. The rural villages are incredibly small and the clergy helping one another in times of need is not unusual. The priest and Reverend Playfair work together in trying to bring Sean and Mary Kate together. It is likewise shown that although Thornton attends Mass on his second day there, he visits the Reverend for marital advice. In addition, his wife tells the normally laidback priest that the couple is not sleeping together. The Father thunders “Woman, Ireland may be a poor country. But we DO NOT make our men sleep in sleeping bags!” Later Playfair’s bishop visit and the reverend is in danger of losing his parish, because he only has three members. The whole town bands together, the priests leading the charge, and “shout like Protestants” when the bishop and Playfair drive by in the film’s last scene (Brereton 2009). In conclusion, The Quiet Man is a refreshing little bit of escapism into a time long gone. Perhaps it never really happened but like It’s a Wonderful Life, it is an entertaining glimpse into the ideal life, much like the episode “Next Stop Willoughby” in Rod Serling’s classic television series The Twilight Zone. On the surface, other than utilizing the same time period, neither movie is alike. Commercial successes aside, The Quiet Man was strictly about Irish in Ireland. Although filmed five years earlier, Capra has It’s a Wonderful Life dealing with the acceptance of many different nationalities and races. For example, Annie, the African American Bailey housekeeper, is not afraid to speak her mind and offer her opinion. Also, Annie and Violet to a lesser extent, are not married (“old maids” in the vernacular of the time) and show the prevailing view of strong women, the closest popular culture could come to women’s liberation at the time. Violence was a prevailing theme of the Ford flick whereas Capra merely touched on the subject by quickly flashing through World War II. One could possibly make the connection to violence as a veiled protest against the Korean War. Ford had been wounded in World War II and his post-war aberration of violence was evident in many of his films. Then again, Hollywood has never protested its home country’s politics too greatly. In 1968, in the midst of anti Viet Nam war protests, the movie industry chose to release The Green Berets, another John Wayne movie that showed the war as a positive thing for America. Mary loved George desperately, from a little girl, whispering such to him in the opening scenes, when they were both pre-teens. While Mary Kate did love Sean; she made her shame quite clear. Stewart had many family members present when Wayne was all alone in the world when he came back to Ireland. Yet the similarities are also evident. Both protagonists had to suffer frequently over money, or the lack of it. Sean had to fight his brother-in-law over 500 pounds and the main plot of Life was Billy’s loss of $8,000. Although Stewart and Wayne are seen praying at one time in their movies, neither man was particularly religious. At the same time, their wives’ faiths were deep. One more point was a customary factor in most Hollywood movies during that time; the good guy might be stepped on many times throughout the feature but in the end he prevailed. Also in the end both heroes realized what they had and that it was important enough to fight for. American Doctor David Bordwell is considered by many to be one of the foremost experts on classic Hollywood cinema. His 1985 book The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 is the premier authority on the genre and offers many common aspects of the movies produced during the classic “Talkie” era. Using David Bordwell’s ideas of Classical Hollywood Cinema Theory, one can look at The Quiet Man and It’s a Wonderful Life further to see if they portray the movie as defined (Washington). First is the narrative and both movies use the concept, what Bordwell calls "pragmatics of narrative phenomena”. For It’s a Wonderful Life, the head angel in heaven, Joseph (unknown whether this is Jesus’ stepfather), narrates more than three-fourths of the movie, as a means to inform guardian angel Clarence why George is contemplating suicide. Until George actually stands on the bridge and Clarence makes his earthly appearance does the movie switch away from the narration. Conversely, Father Lonergan (Ward Bond) serves a dual role on The Quiet Man, both as Catholic parish priest and narrator of the movie (similar to the concept of Fred on A Christmas Carol). Yet the father does not narrate continuously, only in spurts throughout the film, especially at the beginning and end. The most essential protagonist is also visible in both movies and the narrators do an admirable job of the required sympathy for the men, as vital in classic Hollywood cinema. Life’s George Bailey is a man who follows all the rules and one can’t help but sympathize with George. Everybody has tried their best in a certain situation, only to feel that fate, life, etc has destroyed their hopes. Sean Thornton attempts to assimilate himself into a culture that is strange to his own (even though it is his ancestral home) but seems to be rebuffed at every turn, even by his own wife. Bordwell (2007) likewise lists five other traits that most classic films show and these two exhibit at least two. One, discrete part structure, each scene neatly packaged into less than thirty minute sequences, is followed to the letter in Life. Yet The Quiet Man deviates from this theory, in that the climatic fight scene lasts a relatively long time. The two that follow Bordwell’s theories are: I. Goal orientation. What do the characters want to accomplish? The opposite is true for both protagonists. George Bailey wants to rid himself of Bedford Falls and travel the world, a feat he never accomplishes. Meanwhile, Sean Thornton has seen the world and instead wants to settle in a place he thinks of paradise. It isn’t heaven but Innisfree becomes his home and he eventually does get his desires, peace and Mary Kate. II. The double plotline. Two things are happening at the same time and one of them is romance. George loves his girlfriend/wife Mary and battles Henry Potter for his livelihood. Squire Will Danaher is constantly challenging Sean to fight while Sean is trying to romance and marry Mary Kate, the squire’s sister. References: Adams, Sam. (2011) Reconciling the Past in The Quiet Man Available at: < http://www.fipresci.org/undercurrent/issue_0509/quiet_man.htm> Bordwell, David. (2007) Anatomy of the Action Picture, Available at: < http://www.davidbordwell.net/essays/anatomy.php> Brereton, Pat. (2009) Religion and Irish Cinema: A Case Study, Available at: < http://doras.dcu.ie/4499/1/irish_quarterly_review.pdf> Digital History. (2012) Hollywood as History, Available at: < http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/hollywood_history.cfm#newdirections> Dowling, William. (2008) Ireland Imagined in The Quiet Man, Available at: < http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~wcd/quietman.htm> Gibbons, L (2002) The Quiet Man, Cork: University Press Levy, Emmanuel. (2012) John Ford and John Wayne's Peculiar Relationship, Available at: < http://www.emanuellevy.com/comment/john-ford-and-john-waynes-peculiar-relationship-2/> Quinn, Tony. (2006) Maureen O’Hara, Irish Connections, Available at: < http://www.grahamecurtis.com/irishconnectionsmag/archives/v3i1/maureen-ohara.htm> Ryder, Sean. (2008) Representing Ireland: Literary Adaptation and Irish Cinema, Available at: < www.raco.cat/index.php/Bells/article/download/149215> The Quiet Man, (1952). Directed by John Ford. USA: Republic. Dollar Times. (2012) Inflation Calculator, Available at: < http://www.dollartimes.com/calculators/inflation.htm? History Channel. (2012) Bank Run, Available at: < http://www.history.com/topics/bank-run > It’s a Wonderful Life, (1946). Directed by Frank Capra. USA: Republic. McGinley, Brandon. (2009) What's wrong with Pottersville? Available at: < http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2009/12/17/24782/v > Stanford University. (2012) The Influenza Pandemic of 1918, Available at: < http://virus.stanford.edu/uda/> Sullivan, Daniel. (2006) Sentimental Hogwash? On Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, Available at: < http://www.nhinet.org/sullivan18-1&2.pdf > Top Tenz (2012), Top 10 Facts About It’s A Wonderful Life, Available at: < http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-facts-about-its-a-wonderful-life.php> University of Washington. (2007), Classical Hollywood Cinema, Available at: Read More