I won’t bore with details of the dissertation proper, but as a reflection on the project, I thought I would offer some film-watching suggestions. When I say that I write on the social problem film, people often ask me what exactly a social problem film is. Well, the definition’s a bit impressionistic (you know one when you see it), but basically in the 1930s and particularly the postwar years, Hollywood made a few cycles of films whose narratives had to do with a larger problem than the individual conflict: racism, adjustment of veterans to civilian life, alcoholism, mental hospitals, prison conditions, etc. Some of these frankly strike most today as aesthetically mediocre, but at the very least they’re of historical interest. Besides, there are a few gems are in the bunch. Here is a sample:
I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932)
The one that started it all, from a cash-strapped Warner Brothers. A “ripped from the headlines” story of chain gang conditions. Some of the plot is annoyingly pat (it seems every WB film from the period involved innocents being framed), but the cinematography proves that harsh lighting wasn’t invented with Citizen Kane, or that graceful tracking movements can’t highlight the horror of the subject matter. The ending is incredible, both striking and understated.
Dead End (1939)
Less interesting for its dated sociological thesis that slum housing creates slum crime than in William Wyler/Greg Tolland’s use of deep space and gorgeous photography that breathes life into a theatre set. Joel McCrea and Sylvia Sidney both carry an expressive quality that carries the tragedy along, too. I used to prefer the neorealist bent of Wyler’s Best Years of Our Lives. But the subtlety of his 30s films grow on you upon each viewing. Like Fugitive, Dead End has just been lovingly issued on DVD.
Gentleman’s Agreement (1947)
The ideal type of the genre, an “expose” of anti-Semitism among the country-club set. Artistically tame, it suffers in comparison to other postwar classics, but there is an attention to location sets and the city environment that speaks to the optimism of the American postwar years. Remarkably for such a ham-handed film, it does capture the logic of cultural oppression pretty well. Though I like Ring Lardner’s quip that the “film’s message is that you should never be mean to a Jew because he may turn out to be a Gentile!”
Magic Town (1947) [VHS only]
A comedy by Robert Riskin, Frank Capra’s writer, about a bellwether town in middle America that perfectly stands in as a statistical sample of American public opinion. Journalists and ne’er-do-wells discover it and in the process wreck the town’s purity.
Give Us This Day a.k.a. Christ in Concrete (1949)
Edward Dmytryk’s adaptation of proletarian novel Christ in Concrete, about an Italian-American bricklayer’s upbringing and life struggles. Part of a series of “films gris” that combined noir style, social relevance, and kitchen-sink-like urban milieus. This is perhaps the most avowedly socialist production Hollywood ever put out, even if the HUAC trials meant its only public showing would be abroad.
Go For Broke! (1951)
An MGM B film about a Japanese-American battalion in WWII, this war film dramatizes the racism they face from their Anglo superiors and other battalions. Interesting for its odd combination of treating the Nisei soldiers (played by the actual infantrymen) with an objectifying, mocking gaze at the same time as its anti-racist discourse subjects that gaze to the knowledge that Hollywood’s way of looking at other races and cultures is wrong.
I Want to Live! (1958)
In part high camp: Susan Hayward chews the scenery in an exploitation film about a tough-talking hooker who gets caught up in a murder frame to end up on death row. Only halfway through the death row scenes, something odd happens - the garish camerawork and editing become meticulous in their exploration of a condemned woman’s last hours. And Hayward actually acts.
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