Renewing the American Narrative

Series Editor Sam B. Girgus Nashville, TN, USA Sam B. Girgus Generations of Jewish Directors and the Struggle for America’s Soul

Wyler, Lumet, and Spielberg Sam B. Girgus Nashville, TN, USA

ISSN 2524-8332 ISSN 2524-8340 (electronic) Renewing the American Narrative ISBN 978-3-030-76030-4 ISBN 978-3-030-76031-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76031-1

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This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland To Judith Ann Elizabeth Scot-Smith Girgus Our daughters Katya, Meighan, and Jennifer Our grandchildren Arielle Gianni, Zachary Isaac, Mia, and Max Our son-in-law Ali Vafa And in loving memory of Jeff Arrington Acknowledgments

I would like to thank John Belton for his brilliant reading of my manu- script and his compelling suggestions for improving the structure and organization of the work. I cannot overstate my appreciation for his gen- erosity and kindness. I also wish to thank other colleagues and friends in flm studies, American studies, and modern thought for their support over the years. These include Tom Schatz, Lester Friedman, Jerry Christensen, Richard Kearney, Cynthia Lucia, Jennifer Smyth, Susan Mizruchi, Laura Mulvey, Dudley Andrew, Sarah Cooper, Lucy Fischer, David Desser, Peter Bailey, J. Douglas Macready, Magda Zaborowska, Thadious Davis, Leah Marcus, Colleen Glenn, Rebecca Bell-Metereau, Kelli Fuery, J. Aaron Simmons, Joanna Rapf, Brian Bergen-Aurand, Tina Chanter, Kathryn Hearst, Murray Pomerance, Ina Rae Hark, and Anne Kern. Many friends have been strong sources of encouragement especially including Trey Harwell and Beverly Moran as well as Willie and Christina Geist, Fabiani Duarte, Brian and Judy Jones, Martha Matzke, J. Delayne Ryms, Sir Charles and Fiona Walker, Peter Dale and the A-team Alyson and Audrey, Henry Hill Perot, Katie McCall, Nadia Khromchenko Sikorsky, Phil Burnham and Michele McDonagh, Nicole Crane, and Melanie Faulkner Shepard. Michael McCallister continues to be indispensable for his friendship and his technical assistance to my work. For more than 50 years in more than ten books, the names of students who have worked with me at the University of New Mexico, the University of Alabama, the University of Oregon, and Vanderbilt University as well as other international universities have highlighted my acknowledgments for being invaluable sources of support, inspiration, and friendship. In

vii viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS addition to those already mentioned above, other former students have remained close and in touch over the years while many other people con- tinue to provide great support and encouragement through their friendship. These include Allen Weitsman, Murray Littlejohn, Emma Noyes, Peter Burke, Laiba Fatima, Chang Kyu Jung, Carol Beverly, Tommy Haraway and family, Ashley Peak, Cole Jackson, Adam Rabinowitz and family, Claire Hagney, Vojislava Filipcevic Cordes, Natalie Perry, Mark Pickett, Brian Hollis, Ray Boucher, Isabel Turley, Rachel Young, Patrick McNamara, Mary Dachille, Ean Pfeiffer, Jen Graham O’Brien, Molly Moreau, Eddie Michaels, Cindy Lyle, Brittwick and Chuck Strottman, Mary Beth Meador, Emily Mathewson, Alison Barnes, Ashley Hedgecock Durbin, Eddie O’Neil, Stephanie Wallen, Ginia McPhearson, Karen Stenard, Shirley Bolles, Shayna Humphrey, Tosha Brennan, Rory and Posey McTurk, Reg Ankrom, Dieter Schulz, Kathy Conkwright, Michael Kreyling, Peter White, Nikki McKinnis, Chris and Meagan Nebel, Colleen Weatherford, Katie Ferguson, Stephanie Page Hoskins, Rachel Hodorowicz Hitt, Oliver Luckett, Charles Gaston, Amity Wang, George Miller, Timothy Cox, Lara Casey, Harriet Bloom-Wilson, Kristi and Bob Albrecht, Chad Gervich, Ben Scott, Leigh and Peter Zimmerman, Robert Mack, Janis May, Sandra Bohn, Neale Adams, Claire Darling, Meredith Griffth, Courtney Bolton, Kristi Sands, Kelly Haun, Jacqui Leitzes, Christa Sutphin Olson, Katrina Markoff, Tracy Tosh Lane, April Yanicelli, Dru Warner, Monica Perry, Scott Evans, Hilton Keith, Christian Long, Carol Burke, Jamie Mauldin, Leya Edelstein Kaufman, Margo and Dayna Goltz, Alexa Simon, Beth Sturgeon Northrup, Catherine Prater, Jane Dorsey Taylor, Evan Garlock, Hayley Danner, Julie Sharbutt, Natalie Rose, Kenyon Glenn, Natalie Neptune, Avi Ginzburg, Liindsay Brockway, Amy Lynn Kelly, “K.G.” Gildea, Beach von Oesen, Dr. Jennifer Giordano, John Bryant, Cliff Richmond, Daniel Dufournaud (York University, Canada), Keyvan Manaf (University of New South Wales), Sharon Thompsonowak, Agnieska and Ola Supel, Zsuzsa Nemeth, Carol and Keith Hagan, Camille Holt, Monica Osborne, Jill Peters Fuller, Robyn Harris, Katy Scrogin, Christian Long, Anthony Wilson, Dean Masullo, Hal Roseman, the Bomboys, Rich and Tonja Solnik, Brooke Lyle, Frankie, Spencer, and baby Hollemon, Risa Arnold, Marguerite Cooper Lloyd and her staff Charlie, Megan, and Zondra, Anna Kristine Dewan, Cynthia Sullivan Allen, Chad Given, Ruth Banes, Steve Ladd, Robert and Marguerite Jones, Emily Blackledge, Randall Draughon, Sterling and Debra Gittens, Jennifer Cox, the Gene and Ellen Winter family, Stuart ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix

Sosniak, and Audrey Shapiro. Chancellor Nicholas Zeppos, Gordon Gee, and Jon Meacham deserve considerable gratitude and appreciation for their leadership in positioning Vanderbilt in the ongoing struggle for democracy during these strange times. I cherish the relationship with the Joel Jones family, Cammie Nichols, Joci Strauss, and Rochelle Mann, as well as the friendship of two of the children of Ham and Arlette Hill, Sonnie and Bill. I would like to thank the editors at Palgrave Macmillan for their support for this project and the new series on Renewing the American Narrative, beginning with Shaun Vigil and Megan Laddusaw and continu- ing with the current leadership of Camille Davies and the editorial team of Arun Prasath, Divya Anish, Jack Heeney, and Petra Treiber as well as Meagan Simpson. More than a year of pandemic separation from our daughters, grandchildren, and other family members has left us with a heightened sense of awe and thankfulness for the blessings of family and love as the core of our lives. Such forced separation accentuated how much we care for what we were missing. After so many have lost so much during these times of uncertainty and challenge, our own loss of Jeff Arrington leaves an open tear in our hearts that can be healed only with renewed and strengthened love and support for each other. Tensions and anxiety related to covid family separation were exacerbated by a political climate that grew steadily more divisive and ominous. We found ourselves living through a period of extraordinary dan- ger for liberal democracy that generated the wish to be together not only as a family but also to come together as part of a greater movement to protect and advance a meaningful and hopeful democratic culture. The three directors in this study maintain and perpetuate such a tradition of articulating the ethical imperative to strengthen liberal democracy. The directors contribute to the historic discourse and struggle for America’s soul. With these and many other thoughts in mind, I wish to once again express my love and thanks for the help and support of our daughters, Katya, Meighan, and Jennifer, our son-in-law Ali, our amazing grandchildren Arielle Gianni and Zachary Isaac Arrington, and Mia and Max Vafa. I also wish to note how so much of immeasurable value has been added to our lives by the families of Negi Darsses and Danny Vafa. I save my great- est thanks and appreciation for Scottie who continues after more than 56 years to give our lives purpose and meaning with her love, brilliance, wisdom, warmth, humor, kindness, and her profound example of how to treat others. She opens minds and hearts to all that makes life worthwhile. Praise for Generations of Jewish Directors and the Struggle for America’s Soul

“Another of Sam Girgus’s brilliant contributions to our understanding of Hollywood as not just a cultural force but a moral and ethical one as well. Generation to Generation assesses three consummate auteurs in wholly original terms, pondering how a classical, post-classical and contemporary American flm- maker has re-examined and renewed the American Covenant of liberal democracy, extending a tradition of Jewish intellectuals and artists dating back to the nation’s founding.” —Thomas Schatz, The University of Texas at Austin, author of The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era and Boom and Bust: American Cinema in the 1940s Contents

1 Introduction: Jewish Directors and the “New Covenant”— Wyler, Lumet, and Spielberg 1 The New Covenant, the American Jeremiad, and the American Soul 4 Jewish Modernism and the American Story: A Shared “Mission” to the World 8 Levinas, Ethical Transcendence, and the New Covenant 12 William Wyler 14 Sidney Lumet 25 Steven Spielberg 35 The New Covenant Today: David Brooks 44

Part I William Wyler’s America 57

2 Bogart to Bogart: A Changing America from Dead End to The Desperate Hours 59 Escape from the Past: Prejudice, Persecution, and Pogroms 59 Wyler’s Two Bogarts: American Gangsters 64 “Baby Face” and Big Brother: The American Family in Crisis 77

3 Wyler: Surveying the Changing American Scene 93 The War Years: Fighting for Liberal Democracy 93 Love, Gender, and Sexuality 104

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Ben-Hur in the Time of Trump: A Brief Note 113 The Liberal Challenge: African-Americans and the American Soul 114

Part II Sidney Lumet: Conscience and Democracy 119

4 Jew Grit: The New York Frontier and the Making of a Moralist 121 The Lower East Side 121 Conscience of the City: Serpico 128 Martyrdom 134 Hippie Cop of the Counter Culture 139

5 Filming “The Crisis of American Civic Liberalism” 153 The Virulence of Mediated Madness: Network 153 Daniel I: A New York Epic from the Lower East Side to the Bronx 163 Daniel 2: The Existential and Ethical Imperative: Love and Death in America 168

Part III Steven Spielberg: Reform, Redemption, and Films of American Renewal 185

6 Spielberg, America’s Soul, and the New Covenant 187 Seeker: The Journey of Steven Spielberg 187 Schindler’s List I: The Holocaust and Democracy at Home 192 Schindler’s List II: The Face of Redemption: A Moral and Ethical Awakening 195

7 American Renewal and Democracy: Battling Slavery, Racism, and Fascism 211 Amistad and Lincoln 211 Saving Private Ryan 221 Coda: The Post 232 Contents xv

8 Epilogue: The Jeremiad, the Myth of America, and the New Covenant 237 Rebuilding the City on a Hill 237 The Ethical and Existential Imperative 244

Index 261 List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Walter Huston as Sam Dodsworth seriously wonders about his new identity and changes in his life after ending his work as a prominent industrialist in Dodsworth 15 Fig. 1.2 In a famous shot that illustrates Wyler’s use of deep-focus and depth-of-feld shots, Fredric March observes Dana Andrews making a crucial phone call in The Best Years of Our Lives 24 Fig. 2.1 Humphrey Bogart in existential turmoil in Dead End after he was rejected “twice in one day” by his mother and an old girlfriend 79 Fig. 2.2 Fredric March and Humphrey Bogart confront each other in a struggle of male authority and dominance in The Desperate Hours 86 Fig. 4.1 Al Pacino as a “hippie cop,” an identity of considerable complexity and confict for him over conscience in Serpico 129 Fig. 5.1 Faye Dunaway and William Holden in Network represent different generations and different sets of values regarding society and mass media 155 Fig. 6.1 Liam Neeson as Schindler gains insight into the ethical imperative and comes to see the face of the other in Schindler’s List 196 Fig. 7.1 With arms extended Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln achieves a kind of transcendence while also immersed in the people as he delivers his Second Inaugural Address in Lincoln 219 Fig. 7.2 Tom Hanks as Captain Miller in Saving Private Ryan leads his men played by Barry Pepper, Jeremy Davis, and Tom Sizemore as he expresses the personal and ethical diffculties of their morally complex mission 223

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