Re-Imagining the War in British Film, 1945-1955
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RE-IMAGINING THE WAR IN BRITISH FILM, 1945-1955 BY MICHAEL WILLIAM BOYCE A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of English University of Manitoba Winnipeg, Manitoba © April, 2007 ii ABSTRACT In the immediate post-war years, the war is curiously, although not totally, absent in British film, which seem to be occupied with “getting on” with life and offering distraction from the realities of post-war life. It is the time of the celebrated Ealing comedies, such as Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) and The Ladykillers (1955), Dickens adaptations, and the Archers’ most ambitious projects. Critics tend to ignore these films that suppress the presence of the war when drawing connections to the post-war situation. However, the impact of the war is very much present in these films through the types of characters portrayed and common themes of displacement and isolation. In looking at representation of middle-class women and men in British film of the post-war period, I examine the screen personae of Celia Johnson and Deborah Kerr, and Michael Redgrave and Alec Guinness. I look at how, through their various film incarnations, these four actors create screen personae of solid, dependable middle-class men and women, with their accompanying ideals of duty, community responsibility and obligation. I contextualize these identities in hardships of post-war life, using Angus Calder’s The People’s War. Focussing on Carol Reed’s The Third Man (1949) and Jules Dassin’s Night and the City (1951), I re-examine British film noir, suggesting these films reveal British vulnerability and anxieties about their own displacement by America during the so-called “American Occupation” of Britain. In these films, maladjusted, childlike American protagonists disrupt and upset the social stability of the ancient cities – London and Vienna – where they find themselves. The structural damage of these cities creates liminal space iii that allows outsiders like Holly Martins, Harry Lime, and Harry Fabian the room to operate and to disturb. The final chapter speculates on the possible reason for re-casting and adapting the iconic British narrative of Charles Dickens: Great Expectations (1946), Nicholas Nickleby (1947), Oliver Twist (1948) and Scrooge (1951). Drawing connections between the post- war study The Neglected Child and His Family and D.W. Winnicott’s theories on childhood development, I suggest that these narratives consider the problem of neglected children in post-war Britain through the safety of historical and literary distancing. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ……………………………………………………………………… ii Table of Contents ……………………………………………………………. iv Acknowledgements ………………………………………………………….. v Introduction ………………………………………………………………….. 1 Chapter One: The Power of Choice: Celia Johnson and Deborah Kerr Complicating Traditional Female Identity .………………………………….. 8 Chapter Two: Performing the Masculine: Duty, Confinement, and Stiff Upper Lips in the Performances of Michael Redgrave and Alec Guinness …………57 Chapter Three: Towards a Reading of British Film Noir: Expatriates & Ancient Cities in Carol Reed’s The Third Man and Jules Dassin’s Night and the City ……………………………………………………………99 Chapter Four: Adapting Dickens: Orphans, Parents, and Post-War Britain …154 Conclusion …………………………………………………………………...198 Works Cited ………………………………………………………………… 202 v Acknowledgements Anyone who works on a project of this size accumulates a sizeable list of people who deserve thanks and I am no exception. My advisor, Dr. George Toles, has provided advice, guidance, and good humour throughout this project and has encouraged me to engage with these films in new, and I think, exciting ways. I would like to thank Dr. Brenda Austin-Smith for her enthusiasm for this project and for introducing me to the work of Angus Calder in the early stages. Dr. Rory Egan and the external reader, Dr. Maurice Yacowar, provided helpful and insightful comments and questions for which I am very grateful. I would also like to extend my deep appreciation to the faculty of the Department of English for their advice and encouragement throughout my time here– particularly, and in no particular order, Robert Finnegan, Adam Muller, Alison Calder, Warren Cariou, Judith Owens, Pam Perkins, Mark Libin, David Williams, Dennis Cooley, David Arnason, and the much-missed Robin Hoople. I would also like to thank my colleagues at Providence College and William and Catherine Booth College. My friend and UM Press colleague Patricia Sanders deserves special mention for graciously agreeing to edit this manuscript. For their love and support, I wish to thank my family. Finally, and most importantly, I humbly thank my wife, Rachel, who played a patient, unheralded Calloway to my bumbling Holly Martins more times than I care to recall. Her love and support have made this possible. 1 Introduction: Re-imagining the War in British Film, 1945-1955 I can’t imagine myself without a war…the war’s simply come to be a part of one’s self. ~ Elizabeth Bowen The teenaged protagonists of Charles Crichton’s Hue and Cry (1947) spend time in the rubble of the bombed-out buildings in their neighbourhood. It is their refuge from the monotony of home and school. One of the youths does not speak at all; he only mimics the sound of the bombs falling and exploding. These details have nothing to do with the plot of the film, which concerns these young people battling gangsters who are using a popular comic to pass secret messages about their criminal activities. The details are simply present. There is no direct mention of the war in Hue and Cry, yet the evidence of the war pervades the film. The profound and lasting impact of World War II affected both day-to-day life and the national psychology of the people of Great Britain. Despite “winning” the war, the victory was pyrrhic, and the immediate post-war years saw Britain struggle with economic hardships, social uncertainty, and new realities. The German air raids had killed over 60,000 civilians and left widespread and unprecedented infrastructural damage in major cities, especially London. The 827,000 children who had been evacuated from major urban areas needed to be reintegrated into their families. The increased political power given to the working class as a means of securing public support for the costly war upset the stability of the hierarchical class system. The rationing of goods and raw materials, begun 2 during the war, continued, making wartime sacrifices a post-war reality.1 As colonies such as India, Burma, and Ceylon declared their independence, Britain, which had created and sustained an identity as a great colonizer and leader in the world, lost its place of prominence to a former colony, the United States of America. Though contemporary theory has called the idea of a coherent national identity into question, pre-war Britain’s fantasy of such a stable national identity was challenged by the post-war circumstances. I have chosen to focus most of my attention on the films of the decade that followed the war, 1945 to 1955. Although critics have traditionally opted to consider films in categories defined by decades, looking at films of 1940s and 1950s separately, most acknowledge a major shift in attitudes and styles that materializes in the mid- to late 1950s. I have chosen to examine film of the immediate post-war period, before new movements such as the Angry Young Man films and the second generation of war films began. These later movements have been well represented in the critical literature. I sometimes refer to wartime films as a means of contextualizing performances and themes, because I think, for example, that one cannot understand the larger significance of Deborah Kerr’s performance in Black Narcissus (1947) without understanding her roles in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) and Perfect Strangers (1945). In the post-war period, the war is curiously, although not totally, absent in many films. Though children play in bombed-out rubble and the hardships of rationing are referred to, actual mention of the war is rare. Even returning-soldier stories, so popular in post-war American cinema, are largely missing in British film, which seems to be occupied 1 Sometimes the post-war conditions were worse than the wartime conditions, as T.E.B. Clarke indicates, recalling the first screening of Hue and Cry: “The winter was exceptionally cruel – we were being rationed more severely than at any time during the war” (qtd. in Barr, Ealing Studios 94). 3 primarily with “getting on” with life or offering distraction from the realities of post-war life. Critics have tended to focus on a handful of realist films, such as Robert Hamer’s It Always Rains on Sundays (1947), which represent a more realistic post-war life, but this is also the period of the celebrated Ealing comedies, like Hamer’s Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) and Alexander Mackendrick’s The Ladykillers (1955), as well as four excellent adaptations of Dickens’s novels and Powell and Pressburger’s most ambitious projects. Critics tend to ignore these films that suppress the presence of the war when drawing connections to the post-war situation. However muted it may be, the impact of the war is very much present in these films in the types of characters portrayed and the common themes of displacement and isolation. The war seeps into films, styles, and performances in ways that are worth exploring. My first two chapters examine the representation of middle-class women and men in British film of the post-war period. Rather than comparing the ways various studios have represented gender, I have chosen to adopt a “star theory” mode of analysis, which is rarely used in studies of post-war British film. Using the theories of James Naremore, Charles Affron, and Richard Dyer, I trace the progression of the screen personae of four key but under-considered actors: Celia Johnson, Deborah Kerr, Michael Redgrave, and Alec Guinness.