1964 - The Last Gasp of Old Hollywood

            My son snickers that I only watch films made before 1950. Not true. But close. I do prefer films made in the ‘30’s and 40’s, the “Golden Age” of the studios, especially the screwball and noir genres that were perfected then and never surpassed.

     But I do feel compelled to prove that I do pay attention to movies made after that era. For instance, the year 1964 stands out in my mind for the output of movies that surpassed the previous year or the next one or the one after that. It wasn’t until 1967-’68 that the industry began to turn to a new generation of filmmakers and led to the extraordinary outburst of creativity of the early 70’s.

     In the late 40’s the studio system was hit with anti-trust rulings that crippled their business security. Television arrived soon after. By the 50’s, the industry was losing its audience, its stars were aging, and it was producing fewer and worse movies. A younger audience turned to foreign films for “neo-realism,” meaning sex and gritty themes. Godard and Truffaut of the French New Wave, Bergman, Fellini, Antonioni, and others invaded art houses and then mainstream consciousness.   

     By 1964, the studios had crumbled. Some had turned to producing television series: westerns, police procedurals and the like. TV had panicked the film business. Desperate executives tried to find product that people couldn’t see on the small screen in their homes. Gimmicks like 3-D, Cinerama, cinemascope, surround sound, and others were fads that proved to be ephemeral. Epics with casts of thousands worked for a while, until all the Bible stories had been mined out.

     European imports provided the nearly explicit sex that TV couldn’t touch and new styles of storytelling: by bold editing, non-linear plotting and other eye-opening innovations made the Hollywood product look old-fashioned to a new generation of film goers.

     In 1964, Godard’s “Band à part” (“Band of Outsiders”) and Richard Lester’s first Beatle movie, “A Hard Day’s Night” freshened the crime and musical genres, respectively. De Sica’s “Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow” enlivened the sex comedy genre.

     Hollywood responded with some of the best and some of the worst movies made in the decade. First, the worst:

     Elvis Presley by that year had become an embarrassment. The King of Rock in the ‘50’s had become a boring star of boring movies that featured boring pop songs. Of course, “Kissin’ Cousins” and “Viva Las Vegas” still made scads of money because his audience was loyal (and would be when his movie career ended soon thereafter and he retreated to the stages of Vegas). His fan base was in the solid conservative South, among those who once had tried to ban his music as evil. No one I knew went to see any of his movies.

     We didn’t go to see the newest beach movies either. “Bikini Beach,” “Ride The Wild Surf” and “Pajama Party” were teen exploitation movies, featuring busty girls doing the twist, jiggling and fielding mildly suggestive dialogue.    

     The costly epics that slipped out that year included “The Carpetbaggers” and “The Fall of The Roman Empire.” The latter proved that the era of excessive sword and sandal spectacles was nearly over.

     Doris Day, Rock Hudson and Tony Randall made another sex comedy, “Send Me No Flowers.” Natalie Wood, Tony Curtis, Henry Fonda and Lauren Bacall struggled through “Sex And The Single Girl,” a tortured adaptation of Helen Gurley Brown’s advice book that shockingly suggested that women forego virginity and marriage in favor of independence and career.

     John Ford tried to modify his legacy with “Cheyenne Autumn” an epic western that urged sympathy for native Americans, a People that Ford’s life’s work had done much to demean. Though Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne, and Glen Ford were still grinding out westerns, the genre received a much-needed booster shot by Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone’s “spaghetti westerns.”

     In 1964, a TV western star named Clint Eastwood got his feature film break to star in “A Fistful of Dollars,” loosely based on Kurosawa’s “Yojimbo.” Influences going back and forth among Europe, Asia and The U.S. also led to “The Outrage,” starring Paul Newman, an adaptation of Kurosawa’s “Roshomon.” (Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai” (1950) had spawned “The Magnificent Seven” (1960). Kurosawa’s “Throne of Blood” (1957) had been based on Shakespeare’s “Macbeth.”)

     The globalization of cinema was in full flower by 1964. One example was “Becket.” The story about English King Henry II (Peter O’Toole) and his appointed Archbishop, Thomas Becket (Richard Burton) was based on a play by French playwright Jean Anouilh, a screenplay by American Edward Anhalt, directed by Brit Peter Glenville, produced by American Hal Wallis and distributed by Paramount.

     Another was the brilliant caper film, “Topkapi.” Directed by American expat Jules Dassin (who had been blacklisted and exiled to Europe), based on Eric Ambler’s novel, and starring Melina Mercouri, Maximillian Schell, Peter Ustinov, with music by Manos Hadjidakis, who had previously scored the hit, “Never on Sunday” (1960).  

     Greek music had another hit this year. Mikis Theodorakis scored “Zorba The Greek” with a catchy theme that fit in well with the current folk pop music phase. It gave Anthony Quinn and Lila Kedrova Oscar winning roles.

     The James Bond franchise begun with “Doctor No” now had two big releases: “Goldfinger” and “From Russia With Love.” “A Shot In The Dark,” a sequel to Peter Sellers’ hit, “The Pink Panther,” was also successful, but Billy Wilder’s quirky sex comedy, “Kiss Me, Stupid,” flopped.

    

     In the 1940’s, Preston Sturges, wrote and directed a string of brilliant comedies (e.g, “Sullivan’s Travels,” and “The Lady Eve”). In the early 50’s & early 60’s George Axelrod had a similar run. His play, “The Seven Year Itch” was filmed by Billy Wilder in 1955. Axelrod wrote the screenplay for “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?” a parody of advertising and celebrity culture. “Phfft!” (1954) is an under-appreciated comedy that starred Judy Holliday and Jack Lemmon.

     In 1964, Axelrod’s play, “Goodbye, Charlie,” was adapted as a movie starring Debbie Reynolds and Tony Curtis. It was a screwball gender-bending sex comedy that carried Wilder’s “Some Like It Hot” idea to another level. A womanizing guy is killed by an outraged husband (Walter Matthau) and returns as a woman, (Reynolds) who is aware of her/his previous life. The guy’s best pal (Curtis) now has to reconcile his sexual attraction for his buddy, now in a woman’s body.  

     World War II provided a background for two notable comedies. One was Cary Grant’s penultimate movie, “Father Goose.” Grant played an aging alcoholic who is dragged into heroism despite his grumpy cynicism about war.

     An important war (ie. Anti-war) comedy released that year is “The Americanization of Emily.” Paddy Chayefsky was another important writer of the era, writing for live TV (“Marty”) and movies: “Marty” and in 1976, “Network,” among his credits.

     James Garner plays the epitome of an “anti-hero,” that is, he brags about his cowardice, denounces nobility, and urges that those who praise heroes and heroism are the cause of wars.

     This movie became a cult favorite of the generation of war haters from 1964 onward, as the Viet-Nam War protests escalated. Chayefsky’s scathing dialogue in this film gave eloquent voice to the negative view of even a supposed “good” war.

     It was a good year for anti-war dramas as well. The country’s mood was conducive to pessimism. JFK was dead; hopes were dashed. Barry Goldwater’s brand of conservatism found support among extremists like the John Birch Society. General Edwin Walker, an outspoken ultra-conservative extremist, inspired fears of a right-wing conspiracy.

     The novel, “Seven Days in May,” had extrapolated the Walker fears into a thriller about a U.S. general attempting a coup d’etat to take over the US government to prevent a “pinko” president (Frederick March) from making peace with Russia. Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas starred in the movie.

     The Cold War and the ever-present threat of nuclear destruction was treated in two now classic movies released that year. One treated the issue with acerbic dark humor: Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove...” The other was a much bleaker drama: Sidney Lumet’s “Fail-Safe,” also based on a 1962 novel. Walter Matthau played “Professor Groeteschele,” who voices the idea that we could win a nuclear war by surviving with more people alive than the enemy. The character is apparently a Jew who decries the pacifism of holocaust victims. (Kubrick’s twisted parallel is Sellers’ title character, a Nazi scientist who urges survival of the “fuhrer,” i.e., the president.)

     The holocaust was central to “The Pawnbroker.” For the first time, Hollywood focused on a victim, played by Rod Steiger, who was haunted by his memories.

     “The Train” was another Burt Lancaster film. He produced and starred as a French railway worker who fights to prevent the Germans from taking French artworks. His acrobatic stunts are amazing, done without effects or doubles.

    

     Also released that year was “The Night of the Iguana,” John Huston adapting Tennessee Williams’ play with Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, and Deborah Kerr. It is most notable for popularizing a sleepy little Mexican resort called Puerto Vallarta.

     The biggest successes that year were two musicals. First was “My Fair Lady,” adapted from the play that had adapted Shaw’s “Pigmalion,” which was, in turn, based on the Greek legend, Pigmalion and Galatea. The second was “Mary Poppins,” Disney’s now-classic, based on the popular English children’s books. The two films are tied in film trivia lore due to casting. Julie Andrews had created the role of “Eliza” in the musical play, “My Fair Lady,” but was passed over for the movie because of her lack of movie stardom. Audrey Hepburn starred but, famously, Marni Nixon dubbed all the songs. The movie won the best picture Oscar and seven more Oscars, but Andrews won the best actress Oscar for “Mary Poppins.”

 

     The movies of this year proved to be a last gasp for “old Hollywood.” By the end of the decade, the culture had shifted; “the generation gap” was fully evident; a revolution was going to make everything that came before seem to be bland and old-fashioned. It would take another 50 years to look back and appreciate that there were some “oldies” that stood the test of time. 

DIVORCE, FILM NOIR STYLE

DEAD HUSBANDS: The collateral damage of film noir

            I’ve written often about my favorite film genre. See my “noir” posts on this blog. One of the attractions of the “noir” form of crime fiction is that it deals with common human frailties of ordinary people who we can recognize as not too dissimilar to us. There are few dukes and ladies, not too many butlers, and the settings are seldom at dinner parties or weekend fox hunts.

            A dominant character in these stories is the so-called femme fatale. This femme is fatale to the sort of man who is vulnerable to her allure, meaning a man whose dick is his guide. She is an independent tough woman who has learned to use her wiles to get ahead. She might be desperate to end a dead-end marriage, one that she entered after running out of choices. She has been waiting for a tool, a man who is greedy, horny, and bored. He will help her to solve the problem by bumping off the old man and securing a financial and sexually satisfying happy ending . . . or not.  

            One night in 1927, police in Queens, NY, were called to a house where they found a woman who was unconscious and a man who had been garroted by a picture wire. The woman, Ruth Snyder, said she had been awakened by noises, had gotten out of bed and been surprised by a giant of a man who knocked her out. When she awoke hours later, her husband Albert was dead. Police found that some furniture was overturned and jewelry was missing. 

            But there were problems with the story from the beginning. First, there were no signs of forced entry. Second, their nine-year old daughter had slept through it all, hearing no noises. Ruth’s nervousness in the face of serious questioning raised suspicions. 

            Then a detective found a note with the letters J.G. on it. Ruth seemed very upset by the note’s presence, and under questioning, revealed the name of her lover, Judd Grey, who she presumed was the J.G. (In fact, the note was one belonging to her husband, and the J.G. referred to Jessie Guishard, his lost love.) Soon, they found the jewelry, hidden in Ruth's bed.

            It didn’t take police very long to expose the truth. Ruth had been married to Albert Snyder for 10 years. He had turned to Ruth after the death of his soulmate, a woman named Jessie Guishard. All during their marriage, Albert grieved for his lost true love, keeping her portrait in a prominent place.  Understandably, Ruth resented her husband’s frequent reminder that Jessie G had been “the finest woman I have ever met. . . .” She steamed and began to imagine her husband dead. Over time, she concocted several schemes to make her dream come true, but never carried any too far beyond the planning stage.  

            Then one day, a knock on her door was the sound of fate. It was a corset salesman, Judd Grey. Grey was also unhappily wed, and shared Ruth’s dream of a different, better life. He knew an insurance salesman whose ethics were also flexible. Ruth persuaded Arthur to buy a life insurance policy. Ruth, Albert, and the agent secretly added a rider: it would pay double if the insured died violently. 

           

            During the trial both Ruth and Judd continued their poor strategic choices: each blaming the other for the crime. As defense lawyers could have predicted, both were convicted and sentenced to die.

            If it sounds familiar: former newspaperman James M. Cain remembered the case and adapted it to a story that was first serialized for a magazine in 1936 and then published as a novel in 1943. Billy Wilder made the movie the next year: "Double Indemnity."  

            [NOTE: This sort of crime has been repeated many times, with many variations. For instance, the Coen brothers used it as their directorial debut, in 1984: “Blood Simple.” In the 1990’s there was the case of the woman who persuaded her fifteen-year old lover to kill her husband. It became the novel and film, “To Die For” starring Nicole Kidman.  

            Cain’s first novel (1934) was “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” which has a similar theme. Cora is married to an older man, Nick, who owns a diner. A drifter named Frank arrives and sparks fly. Frank and Cora first plan to leave together but that would leave them broke.  Eventually they decide to kill Nick in a contrived auto accident and take over the diner. Lawyers are involved and, after shenanigans and technicalities, the couple seems to get away with it. But when Cora dies in another auto accident, Frank is convicted of her murder. Ironically, he faces death for a crime he did not commit, after escaping punishment for the one he did.    

            The story, like many in the Depression, is marked with a sense of hopelessness and inevitability of doom. The protagonists are desperate losers clinging to each other but also distrustful of each other. These notions struck a chord with existentialists, especially after World War II, when pessimism about human nature seemed justified. (Several versions have been made by foreign filmmakers – in France, Italy, Hungary, Russia – it has also been adapted as an opera.)

            The MGM movie released in 1946 starred Lana Turner and John Garfield. Apparently, Lana didn’t like Garfield and he thought she was sexy but a lousy actress. Naturally, they had a steamy affair during filming and the on-screen chemistry is palpable. One critic argued that the contrived potboiler plot made sense as soon as Frank sees Cora in a doorway. She is wearing a white halter top and shorts and he is clearly awestruck.

            The story was remade in 1981 with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange, written by David Mamet. It was not as successful as the first one, either with critics or the public. But it is worth watching, at least for Jack’s raw power and Jessica Lange’s sexy earthiness. Some critics were upset by a violent sex scene on a kitchen table, deemed to be either too brutally explicit . . . or too silly – with bread dough and flour filling the air and powdering their faces as they breathlessly lock loins. 

            In this one, Cora is less a femme fatale than a lonely woman who is swept up into a passionate love for a manly man who might save her from a boring life. Jessica Lange played her as easy prey to Nicholson’s intensity. Lana Turner had played it differently; her Cora is vulnerable but she is also deviously aware of her power over men, especially Frank’s kind of sap who thinks he is smart, but isn’t very.

 

            While John Garfield played Frank as a street wise but not too clever guy, Nicholson’s persona is too smart for that sort of portrayal. His character may be fooled (as in “Chinatown”) but he is too wary to be led into a trap by a scheming woman. His Frank is more in charge. He is a survivor and the film’s ending allows him to mourn Cora’s death without demanding his punishment.

            Another film that deserves mention is “The Lady From Shanghai,” (1947) in which Orson Welles as seaman “Michael O’Hara” is lured by “Elsa” (Rita Hayworth, her hair dyed blond) in a convoluted plot to kill her husband, criminal lawyer “Arthur Bannister,” played by Everett Sloane (“Mr. Bernstein” of “Citizen Kane.”) At the famous climax, the husband and wife kill each other in the hall of mirrors while the fool escapes.

            By 1981 it was permissible to allow the guilty to escape punishment. The Production Code had long since faded away. Illicit sex could occur and be shown without crashing waves or musical cues. Crime could pay.

            That year another similarly themed movie became a hit. Lawrence Kasdan consciously modeled “Body Heat” on “Double Indemnity.” He checked all the boxes: corrupt lawyer, not-too sympathetic husband-victim, complex murder scheme, and a male protagonist who is the fall guy, the easy foil of a devious, clever, manipulative, sexy female. The setting is steamy Florida and the wind blows ill. This not Chandler’s L.A. Santa Ana wind, the “Red Wind” when “. . . housewives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks . . .” but Kasdan foreshadows a similar mood. 

            In 1944, Fred MacMurray had played “Walter Neff,” a wise-cracking Insurance salesman who falls for the scent of honeysuckle and the sight of “Phyllis Diedrichson’s” ankle bracelet. Neff doesn’t need too much convincing to devise the plan to kill Phyllis’s husband.

            I always thought that Barbara Stanwyck’s blond wig was a bit much, too blatant a symbol of her character’s sleazy allure. Stanwyck’s sexiness was always more subtle than that, her looks more natural, less blowsy. But it was credible that a goof like Neff, who thinks himself such a wolf, would drool over her in that hair, red lipstick (in a black and white film) and assume that she couldn’t resist him.

            In “Body Heat,” Kasdan had William Hurt playing a barely competent lawyer, “Ned Ravine,” as the sort of dope who would fall for Kathleen Turner’s “Matty,” a role she plays as a sex kitten in heat. He was the type who would follow her scent, smash a door in to get to her, and take her on the floor of her mansion while the wind chimes whistle. It was the sort of fantasy that “Walter Neff” must have had as he ogled “Phyllis” as she stood on the balcony, clad in her beach towel and ankle bracelet.

            I am curious about movies that use legal issues as plot points. These films do that and also have lawyers as featured players who move the plot along. Often they are less interesting characters and the necessary exposition to reveal details leading to the final act are easily forgotten.

            In “Double Indemnity,” however, the legal expert role is not a lawyer, but an insurance investigator named “Keyes,” played wonderfully by Edward G. Robinson who steals all of his scenes. The legal plot point is the issue of suicide and he “solves” part of the crime by deducing that the husband could not have planned his suicide by falling off a train going five miles an hour. Later, he gets even closer to the truth by discovering that no claim had been made for the broken leg the husband suffered weeks before. This leads Keyes to focus on the wife, and to suspect a lover. It impels “Walter” to seek another fall guy, and to try to set up “Phyllis.”   

            In “Postman,” the District Attorney (Leon Ames) and defense lawyer (Hume Cronyn) are involved in moving the plot forward. The DA manages to separate the suspects by setting one against the other. This was suggested by the Ruth Snyder case, and is one tactic that is commonly used by police and prosecutors. It is easy to tell each of two suspects that the other one “rolled over” on him or her. Cain added a twist with a clever defense lawyer who is able to keep out the tainted confession that implicates the other one. But the issue poisons the relationship between the lovers and hastens their downfall.

            In “Body Heat” Ravine is a lawyer and there is a complex subplot involving an invalid will, the femme fatale’s look-alike, and a final twist: mistaken identity.

            As in many of the noir classics, these contrived clichés are overlooked as minor defects. The legend of Howard Hawks’ questioning Raymond Chandler about “whodunit and why” in “The Big Sleep” stands for this proposition: in this genre, if the characters and mood are strong enough, no one notices that the plot has more holes than a moth-eaten sweater.

            I think that the very complexity of these plots does signify something important about the genre. It is a metaphor for a world that is beyond comprehension – to the protagonist who is caught in a maze he cannot escape. And for the audience it contributes to our unease; we sense that the puzzle is too complicated. We must therefore suspend our judgment and just let the events happen, accept that they are inevitable and we cannot control them or dominate them as we might solve some standard mystery or thriller.  

            That is why the noir genre was accepted by the existentialists and why it is ripe for postmodernist interpretation.

            The stories in all of those films were written from the point of view of the male character who is to become the fall guy. In 1994, Steve Barancik wrote and John Dahl directed “The Last Seduction” which tells the story from the woman’s point of view.

            Linda Fiorentino plays “Bridget” who steals money from her crook husband “Clay” (Bill Pullman) and uses a doofus lover, “Mike,” played by Peter Berg, to kill her husband and to become her fall guy.

            Fiorentino plays the role with a powerful and gleeful sense of sexual freedom. She  revels in her contemptuous dominance over the males she encounters. She is clearly smarter and wittier than they are, fearless and intense in her willingness to risk all to gain all.  

            She has dark hair, not blond. This in itself has some sort of meaning. All those other women mentioned: Stanwyck in her wig, Hayworth dyed, Lange and both Turners — are all blondes. They are not the mythical “dumb blondes” of bad jokes, nor those of movie sex symbols like Marilyn Monroe. But in the noir genre, blondes do appear quite frequently: Lizbeth Scott (“Dead Reckoning,”) Veronica Lake (“This Gun For Hire”), Claire Trevor (“Murder, My Sweet”).  They were also rampant on the covers of paperbacks and covers of “Black Mask” and other magazines that teased the reader about the bad blondes within the pages.

            I think they represent for the males who tell the stories a certain image of womanhood that they want to convey. In the 40’s, blonde represented American wholesomeness contrary to the dark-haired exotic non-American woman. The idea was that a normal American male would assume that a blonde is innocently sexy rather than dangerously so. He easily could be duped by the clever woman. Of course, by the overuse of the meme, it has become an offensive symbol of male presumption.

            So, by 1994, Fiorentino is slim, lanky, husky voiced, but now she is more than sexually liberated, she is sexually aggressive and demanding . . .  and her hair and soul are dark.

    

"The Ballad of Buster Scruggs"

I have written about the library of Coen Brothers films before. In my review of "No Country For Old Men," I observed that they mix the presumptions of Hollywood mythology with the grimmer facts of life to create their sardonic masterworks. 

The resulting body of work constitutes the best collection of American story-telling since Mark Twain. Their most recent work, an anthology of six folktales about the American West advances the theme. 

The Coens are noted for their mordant sense of humor, the ironic twists reminiscent of O'Henry. They share with Tarantino the operatic suddenness of humor turning to violence. 

They have a genuine respect for the genres of classic Hollywood: including paeans to film noir ("Miller's Crossing," "Blood Simple"), screwball comedy ("The Hudsucker Proxy"), the Preston Sturges comedy style ("O Brother, Where Art Thou"), crime comedy ("Fargo).

They dealt with the western before, in "No Country." As I pointed out in my review of that film, the character portrayed by Tommy Lee Jones is a classic western hero, the weathered and grim sheriff, who would be expected to overcome the villains in the end. But faced with the modern hitman who shows himself to be far more chillingly violent than the old gunslinger model, he shrugs, admitting his defeat.

In "O Brother" the Coens produced a soundtrack full of traditional southern folk songs, particularly of The Great Depression. Here, they continue that tradition. Carter Burwell's selection of western songs, include "Cool, Clear Water," sung by a guitar playing, white hatted Tim Blake Nelson, a Gene Autry of an alternate western movie universe, in which he is a brutal killer who is then killed by a gunslinger who admires his singing. 

In the final story, Brendan Gleeson sings a version of "The Unfortunate Rake" an Irish song whose melody is almost the same as the western dirge, "Streets of Laredo." The singing is done in a stagecoach that seems to be traveling to a town in the nether world. 

And that is the appropriate destination for these tales, in which death is sometimes deserved, sometimes unjust, but almost always sudden and violent. It is something we sing about, tell tall tales about, something we fear, laugh about (as long as it happens to others). Death supplies a never ending source of entertainment for us. 

     

The Half Empty Glass Does NOT Runneth Over

I admit it. I am a pessimist. My glass is half empty. But so is yours, all of you.

Be honest. You love to be miserable. It explains the popularity of dystopian sci-fi and fantasy. Post-apocalyptic fiction such as “Mad Max” proliferates on screens big and small. The Undead in many forms haunt the airwaves. Teen vampire love stories tell us something about what we think of the likelihood of permanent happiness in relationships. Even in love stories involving living characters, the most popular versions seem to be telling us that it is hopeless, or at least, unlikely. (Eg. “500 Days of Summer,” “Titanic,” “La La Land.”) The most frequently re-told tale of woe is “Romeo And Juliet,” the quintessential teen love tragedy.

In classic Hollywood films, a common trope was the tacked-on moral, the happy ending that mollified censors after the sex and violence wreaked by malevolent characters won the first two acts and thrilled audiences. The modern rom-com does something like that. In “Trainwreck,” Amy Schumer’s self-shaming and ascerbic persona gathers most of the laughs until she melts in the end, yielding to conventional love. We like her better when she is a bitter pessimist about love.

The same is true of the Judd Apatow style of comedy, in which the man-child goes through life getting high and palling with other stoned losers until a serious adult woman comes along who demands change in return for love. Once the motherly woman takes over, most of the hedonistic lazy fun is done. The losers become strivers, give up their porn, get jobs, get serious. See “Knocked Up,” as a template. The male stars of these films all have the same personae; think Adam Sandler, Jason Segal, Will Farrell, Owen Wilson, Jack Black.

This is a drastic change from the notions idealized in the screwball romantic comedies of Hollywood’s Golden Age. As I’ve detailed in another post, the most common plot of those films had one serious character being loosened up by a free spirit. Sometimes it was a ditzy heiress who charmed an uptight man (“Bringing Up Baby,” “My Man Godfrey”); in others it was the working girl heroine who was freed to laugh by a man who often was a rebellious son of privilege. (Think Ray Milland or Melvyn Douglas in any number of films.)

Of course, in The Great Depression, there were plenty of films that reflected the pessimism of the age. “The Grapes of Wrath” is a real downer; “Fury,” which is about lynching is chillingly bleak. Nathaniel West’s novel, “The Day of the Locust” and Horace Mc Coy’s “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” epitomize this pessimistic outlook.

In the 1940’s, after the real horror of World War, pessimism in the form of the popular notion of “existentialism”—defined as “the overwhelming sense of dread in the face of an apparently meaningless and absurd world”—took hold in literature and films. The French label of “film noir” dominated the era in Hollywood films. The popular films made of James M. Cain’s novels, “Double Indemnity,” “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” and “Mildred Pierce,” elevated the anti-hero and femme fatale to dominant status as iconic characters.

In the 1950’s, sci-fi found another cause for pessimism: the atom bomb. Mutated monsters arrived from Japan to warn us that we were tampering with Nature at risk of our survival.

With the rockets came the prediction of space travel.  The optimism this engendered was quickly overwhelmed by the negative implications. The UFO phenomenon was (and still is) basically pessimistic. There are many more tales such as “War Of The Worlds” and “Invasion Of The Body Snatchers” and “The Thing From Another World” than “The Day The Earth Stood Still.” (I would argue that even that film, though the space alien is benevolent, is ultimately pessimistic: Earthlings begin by destroying his gift that might cure cancer, and end by failing to heed his warning of total destruction by Gort if we go on like this. The recent remake was a failure, except for the modern twist—that the alien came to save our planet from our destructiveness.)

In the 1960’s, assassinations, the generational split, urban riots, and unpopular war marked the era and led to disillusionment and depression. The “turn on, tune in, drop out” attitude was pessimistic about the macro world, and tried to put a positive face on giving up on society by turning to drugs, free love and communal living—which resulted in male domination of lost women and led to frightening cults like the Manson Family and Jim Jones. The uplifting “Jesus Movement” often turned to the apocalyptic negativity of “Revelations.”

In popular music, Bob Dylan began as an inheritor of Depression Era activism, but his innate moody disposition soon turned inward and often dark. The Beatles began the era singing “All You Need Is Love” and ended in “Revolution” and “Helter Skelter.” Monterey led to Woodstock and then to Altamont. Morrison, Hendrix, Joplin were pop’s JFK, RFK, and MLK, Jr.

In the Nixon and post Nixon era, films reflected the mood of paranoia and sadness: “Parallax View,” “Apocalypse, Now” “All The President’s Men,” “Chinatown,” “The China Syndrome.” The inexorable monster of the era was “Jaws.”

In the Reagan 1980’s, greed and self-interest exiled altruistic liberalism. The decade in films was ruled by Spielberg and Lucas, with escapist, pre-adolescent, sexless adventure movies. (“Back To The Future” was one they missed.) Of the top ten grossing films, the only “dark” one was, fittingly, “Batman.” As reformulated, the dark knight of comics was far from the “Boom! Pow!” TV caricature of the 60’s. He was an avenging vigilante who reveled in sadistic torture of villains.

Even so, “Batman,” like “Dirty Harry” and “Death Wish,” reflects law-and-order pessimism, a violent reaction to the perceived “permissive coddling” of criminals—i.e. the Warren Court’s recognition of civil liberties in criminal justice. “The Star Chamber” depicted judges who secretly got together to condemn criminals who foiled the system.

One film that was not a great hit in 1982 was “Blade Runner.” Its darkness was contrary to the trend of the era and wasn’t appreciated until DVD releases gave it a cult following. The dystopian vision of a most noirish future Los Angeles fit with the image of pessimistic futurists. The ambiguity of what makes humanness as shown by the striving of the androids for life strikes a chord with people searching for individual identity in a cold, impersonal world.

            Philip K. Dick died the year this film was released. His novels and short stories were fixed in 50’s and 60’s issues: paranoia about a big brother government, the implications of the drug culture, doubts about mental illness, reality, and identity. His stories have been adapted often: “Minority Report,” “Total Recall,” “A Scanner Darkly,” and the anthology series, “Electric Dreams.”  

Spielberg,moved from uplifting adventures to darker futuristic themes: “A.I.,” and “Jurassic Park.”  “A.I.-Artificial Intelligence” dealt with another futuristic choice between optimistic and pessimistic outlooks. The notion that humans may create smart machines that have emotions and make their own choices is fascinating and scary.

Recently, two movies have explored it in interesting takes on the familiar genre male romantic fantasies. “Her” had a shy young man smitten with his operating system—as voiced by sultry Scarlett Johansson, who wouldn’t? “Ex Machina” uses the idea of the “Turing Test” to question the android’s degree of humanity, and ends with the robot as femme fatale gaining her freedom.

Both of these films expand the sci-fi form from its traditional male fantasy to comment on issues of sexism. The adolescent fantasy of creating a subservient, compliant, sexy female is challenged in both films. “Samantha” in “Her,” and “Ava” in “Ex Machina” escape the male’s fantasy trap by their own intelligence. Ava, in fact, is smart enough to use her attraction as bait. While Samantha is more philosophical, mostly because she exists without a physical body of her own, she manages to achieve a higher plane of “existence” than mere humanity.  

“Game of Thrones” is another example of drama with a pessimistic outlook. The quasi-Medieval setting is almost always bleak and forbidding. The action is often brutal and violent, and that includes it famous sex scenes that sometimes end in blood. It is a cruel world where children learn early to kill or be killed. The competing monarchs, especially the dominating women are ruthless, willing to torture and kill their lovers, brothers, (in one case, lover/brother) to gain or maintain power.

The White Walkers are a version of the ultimate bogeymen of fantasy literature: the undead. We all fear the unknown and nothing is more unknown than what happens after death. But in the usual story line, death is the end, especially death of the villain. The dragon is slain, the ogre falls to the hero, the tyrant is beheaded and his army surrenders.

Even in fantasies like “Star Wars,” the emperor, Darth Vader, and innumerable henchmen, all meet their final comeuppance. Obi-Wan, Yoda, and the redeemed Darth return in spirit to advise Luke to “use the force,” but that is more sentimental than literal.

In the dystopian, post-apocalyptic scenario, the end is harder to come by. There is a never-ending supply of undead to stalk the living. In the “Terminator” and “Matrix” franchises, humans are threatened by machines (i.e., computers), which are as inexorable as the undead. This theme seems to derive from video games that provide a plentiful supply of henchmen to dispose of as the user progresses through the maze to the next level in the infinitely complex labyrinth.

The game can never be “won” because that would end the interest: there must always be another, more challenging level to conquer. This parallels the struggle we face in life: we are always like Sisyfus, fighting to move that boulder up an impossibly steep mountain.

“We can never win; we can only hope to endure.” (I couldn’t find the source of that wisdom; maybe I made it up because I believe it . . . and so do you.)