The British Trauma Film: Psychoanalysis and Popular British Cinema in the Aftermath of the Second World War
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The British Trauma Film: Psychoanalysis and popular British cinema in the aftermath of the Second World War Adam Plummer Queen Mary University of London Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Statement of Originality I, Adam Plummer, confirm that the research included within this thesis is my own work or that where it has been carried out in collaboration with, or supported by others, that this is duly acknowledged below and my contribution indicated. Previously published material is also acknowledged below. I attest that I have exercised reasonable care to ensure that the work is original, and does not to the best of my knowledge break any UK law, infringe any third party’s copyright or other Intellectual Property Right, or contain any confidential material. I accept that the College has the right to use plagiarism detection software to check the electronic version of the thesis. I confirm that this thesis has not been previously submitted for the award of a degree by this or any other university. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author. Signature: Date: 2 Abstract While the historical influence of psychoanalysis on Hollywood cinema has received considerable attention, the same cannot be said for its influence on British cinema. This thesis assesses the position that psychoanalysis occupies in British cinema in the years immediately following the Second World War. At the outset, I demonstrate how the critical theory of Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault can enable an understanding of the role that psychoanalysis plays in British culture at this time as an historical discourse, and in British cinema as a narrative, a cultural, and an ideological discourse. I then examine the historical psychoanalytic discourses themselves, which are defined as being comprised variously of Freudian, post-Freudian, and neo-Freudian concepts. I categorize these under the headings of trauma and anxiety, sexual difference and gender roles, and the theory of object relations. I employ a critical/psychoanalytic model to analyse five films: Dead of Night, The Seventh Veil, Madonna of the Seven Moons, They Made Me a Fugitive, and Mine Own Executioner. These have been chosen to provide a cross section of the different types of films of the period that were influenced by psychoanalytic concepts. In respect of each film, I examine how psychoanalysis operates in three discreet ways. First, as a narrative and formal structuring mechanism. Second, as a means by which the trauma of the war and the consequent breakdown in social formations can be confronted. Third, as a medium for reproducing the dominant beliefs and practices of the ruling ideology, and reinscribing the pre-war status quo of sexual difference. However, while psychoanalysis is thus revealed as mainly operating in these films as a normative ideological force, it is also found that it is countered by a subversive discursive force that seems to be immanent to the films themselves. 3 Acknowledgements My first thanks must go to my supervisors at Queen Mary, Dr Lucy Bolton and Dr Charles Drazin. They have afforded me encouragement, support, and levels of attention that far exceeded their responsibilities. I am grateful to both of them for their distinct contributions to my thesis, and for their limitless insight and guidance. I am grateful for the award of the Queen Mary Principal’s Studentship that funded me throughout my research. I am also grateful to the Film Studies Department and the School of Languages, Linguistics and Film at Queen Mary, where I have studied, on and off, for the last eight years. I could not have been afforded more opportunities or a friendlier environment in which to work. I would like to thank in particular Dr Libby Saxton, who supervised my early research into trauma in the context of British cinema, and who provided extremely useful comments as my upgrade examiner. I am also thankful to Sharon Bernor, postgraduate administrator at Queen Mary, and to the Queen Mary Research Degrees Office and Doctoral College, for their help and attention throughout my PhD. I am indebted to Dr Lawrence Napper and the Film Studies Department at King’s College London for their support during my MA research; this enabled some of the ideas that became the basis for this project. I am also grateful to Dr Christine English and Dr Jonathan Sklar of the Psychoanalysis Unit at University College London. Without them, and many others in the Unit, the psychoanalytic aspects of this project would have remained tentative and underdeveloped. Thanks must go also to the indefatigable staff of the British Film Institute and the British Library, where much of my research was carried out. Lastly, I could not have undertaken, and far less completed, this project without the unquestioning help, support, encouragement, and generosity of my family as a whole, and of my wife, Anna, and my daughters, Clementine and Eloise, in particular. 4 Contents Introduction 6 The percolation of psychoanalysis within British culture in the first half of the twentieth century, and its place in British cinema in the aftermath of the Second World War Chapter One 36 Psychoanalysis as an historical discourse, a narrative discourse, and as a cultural and ideological discourse Chapter Two 66 Three British psychoanalytic discursive formations of the mid-twentieth century: trauma and anxiety, sexual difference and gender roles, and the theory of object relations Chapter Three 102 ‘The Perpetual Recurrence of the Same Thing’: The compulsion to repeat and the elision, fragmentation, and displacement of war trauma and traumatic neurosis in Dead of Night Chapter Four 134 ‘What Does a Woman Want?’: Childhood trauma, female desire, and female subjectivity in The Seventh Veil and Madonna of the Seven Moons Chapter Five 178 ‘The World is Full of Neurotics’: The traumatized serviceman, the crisis of male subjectivity, and the postwar cultural malaise in They Made Me a Fugitive and Mine Own Executioner Concluding remarks 226 Bibliography 237 Filmography 245 5 Introduction A number of films made in Britain in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War clearly evidence the central role that psychoanalysis had come to play within British culture by the mid-1940s. These films are constructed using Freudian, post- Freudian, and neo-Freudian ideas, and they often feature characters labouring under various forms of psychopathology, psychoanalyst figures, and the psychoanalytic setting. My approach to these films employs both critical theory and psychoanalytic theory. However, no claims are made in this thesis for or against the universal or specific truth of psychoanalysis. Instead, psychoanalysis is proposed as being central to the ambient culture in Britain at this time, and therefore key to a productive reading of these particular films. The psychoanalytic ideas that are particularly influential to these films are informed by three particular strands of psychoanalytic thinking. These are categorized under the headings of trauma and anxiety, sexual difference and gender roles, and the theory of object relations. In the main body of the thesis, I analyse five films that have been chosen to provide a cross section of the different types of films of the period that were influenced by psychoanalytic concepts. My reading of these films is founded on a process of critical and psychoanalytic textual analysis that enables both an effective interpretation of their formal and narrative components, and of their belief systems, opinions, and world-views. These are proposed as shaping these films’ engagement with the trauma and anxiety that afflicted the population during this particularly difficult period of British history. In the Ealing Studios production Dead of Night (Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden, Robert Hamer, 1945), a group of guests who are staying at a country house for the weekend recount their experiences of the supernatural to a psychoanalyst, Dr Van Straaten. One of the group, a confident young woman, Joan 6 Cortland, tells a story that revolves around a gift that she has given some time before to her then fiancé, Peter. The gift turns out to be an ornate Chippendale mirror in which Peter gradually begins to see visions of a room of a much earlier period; this is later revealed to be the scene of its previous owner’s murder of his wife and his subsequent suicide. The previous owner, Francis Etherington, a man of ‘dominating character, arrogant, reckless, handsome and of a violent temper’, has been rendered immobile and thus impotent as a result of a tragic accident. As the story unfolds, Peter becomes increasingly listless as he begins somehow to identify with Francis Etherington’s past traumatic experience. The film is careful to differentiate between the ‘reality’ of the mirror’s reflection as it appears to Joan, and the ‘fantasy’ of Peter’s traumatic visions, but this distinction is called into question in the story’s final sequence. Believing Joan to have been unfaithful to him, Peter attempts to strangle her as they struggle in front of the mirror, and, as she is held in his grasp, Joan too, for a second, sees Peter’s vision, before smashing the mirror and so breaking the spell. In having Joan share Peter’s traumatic vision, Dead of Night challenges the viewer’s presumption of Joan’s ‘normality’ and Peter’s ‘abnormality’, and also any belief that the viewer might hold of a dividing line existing between ideas of reality and fantasy, subjectivity and objectivity, and the internal and external psychical worlds. Dead of Night is one of the five British films of the mid-1940s that I examine in detail in chapters three, four, and five of this thesis.