IDB©l3®OY. GENRE, AUTEUR by Robin Wood

Last summer Robin Wood delivered three lectures at the National Film Theatre in London, in conjunction with the publication of his collection of essays, Personal Visions. FILM COMMENT published the first lecture in the November- December issue. The third lecture, "as I wanted to give it," appears below.

"The truth lies not in one dream but in sition. Each can offer insights into differ- cally" need not entail commitment to a many." ent areas of cinema and different aspects system or a cause; it can involve, rather, of a single film. being alive to the opposing pulls, the ten- ach theory of film so far has insisted I have suggested, in these talks, the de- sions, of one's world. on its own particular polarization. sirability for the critic—whose aim should The past two decades have seen a EMontage theory enthrones editing always be to see the work as wholly as number of advances in terms of the as the essential creative act at the ex- possible, as it is—to be able to draw on the opening up of critical possibilities, of pense of other aspects of film; Bazin's discoveries and particular perceptions of areas of relevance, especially with regard Realist theory, seeking to right the bal- each theory, each position, without to Hollywood: the elaboration of auteur ance, merely substitutes its own imbal- committing himself exclusively to any theory in its various manifestations; the ance, downgrading montage and artifice; one. The ideal will not be easy to attain, interest in genre; the interest in ideology. the revolutionary theory centered in Brit- and even the attempt raises all kinds of I want tonight tentatively to explore some ain on Screen (but today very wide- problems, the chief of which is the valid- of the ways in which these disparate ap- spread) rejects—or at any rate seeks to ity of evaluative criteria that are not sup- proaches to Hollywood movies might "deconstruct"—Realist art in favor of the ported by a particular system. From what, interpenetrate, producing the kind of so-called "open text." Auteur theory, in then, do they receive support? No critic, synthetic criticism I have suggested might its heyday, concentrated attention exclu- obviously, can be free from a structure of now be practicable. sively on the fingerprints, thematic or values, nor can he afford to withdraw In order to create a context within stylistic, of the individual artist; recent at- from the struggles and tensions of living which to discuss IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE tempts to discuss the complete "filmic to some position of "aesthetic" contem- and SHADOW OF A DOUBT, I want to at- text" have tended to throw out ideas of plation. Every critic who is worth reading tempt (at risk of obviousness) some defi- personal authorship altogether. Each has been, on the contrary, very much nition of what we mean by American theory has, given its underlying position, caught up in the effort to define values capitalist ideology—or, more specifically, its own validity—the validity being de- beyond purely aesthetic ones (if indeed the values and assumptions so insistently pendent upon, and restricted by, the po- such things exist). Yet to "live histori- embodied in and reinforced by the classi-

46 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1977 cal Hollywood cinema. Pressure of time in a characteristically brilliant article on contemptible form: Hopalong Cassidy, enforces drastic simplification; the fol- Hitchcock's SPELLBOUND, argues that the Andy Hardy comedies. lowing list of components is not intended there even Freudian psychoanalysis be- The Hopalong Cassidy films (from to be exhaustive or profound, but simply comes an instrument of ideological re- which Indians, always a potentially to make conscious, and present to a dis- pression. Above all, this assumption disruptive force in ideological as well as cussion of the films, concepts with which gives us that most striking and persistent dramatic terms, are, in general, signifi- we are all perfectly familiar. of all classical Hollywood phenomena, cantly absent), for example, seem to de- 1. Capitalism, the right of ownership, the Happy Ending: often a mere "emer- pend on two strategies for their perfect private enterprise, personal initiative; the gency exit" (Sirk's phrase) for the spec- ideological security: (a) the strict division settling of the land. tator, a barely plausible pretense that the of characters into good and evil, with no 2. The work ethic: the notion that problems the film has raised are now re- "grays"; (b) Hoppy's sexlessness (he "honest toil" is in itself and for itself mor- solved. (HILDA CRANE offers a suitably never becomes emotionally entangled), ally admirable, this and (1) both validat- blatant example among the hundreds hence the possibility of evading all the ing and reinforcing each other. The moral possible.) wandering/settling tensions on which excellence of work is also bound up with Out of this list emerge logically two aesthetically interesting westerns are the necessary subjugation or sublimation ideal figures, giving us: generally structured. (An intriguing al- of the libido: "the Devil finds work for idle 9. The Ideal Male: the virile adven- ternative: the Ideal American Family of hands." The relationship is beautifully turer, potent, untrammelled man of ac- Roy Rogers/Dale Evans/ Trigger). SHANE epitomized in the zoo-cleaner's song in tion. is especially interesting in this connec- CAT PEOPLE. 10. The Ideal Female: wife and tion. A deliberate attempt to create an "Nothing else to do, mother, perfect companion, endlessly "archetypal" western, it also represents Nothing else to do, dependable, mainstay of hearth and an effort to resolve the major ideological I strayed, went a -courting home. tensions harmoniously. 'cause I'd nothing else to do." Since these combine into an Ideal One of the greatest obstacles to any 3. Marriage (legalized heterosexual Couple of quite staggering incompatibil- fruitful theory of genre has been the ten- monogamy) and family. At once the ity, each has his/her shadow, giving us: dency to treat the genres as discrete. An further validation of (1) and (2)—the 11. The settled husband/father, de- ideological approach might suggest why homestead is built for the Woman, whose pendable but dull. they can't be, however hard they may function is to embody civilized values and 12. The erotic woman (adventuress, appear to try: at best, they represent dif- guarantee their continuance through her gambling lady, saloon "entertainer"), ferent strategies for dealing with the children—and an extension of the own- fascinating but dangerous, liable to betray same ideological tensions. For example, ership principle to personal relationships the hero or turn into a black panther. the small-town movie with a contem- ("My house, my wife, my children") in a porary setting should never be divorced male-dominated society. he most striking fact about this list is from its historical correlative, the West- 4a. Nature as agrarianism; the virgin Tthat it presents an ideology that, far ern. In the classical Hollywood cinema land as Garden of Eden. A concept into from being monolithic, is inherently rid- motifs cross repeatedly from genre to which, in the Western, (3) tends to be- dled with hopeless contradictions and genre, as can be made clear by a few come curiously assimilated (ideology's unresolvable tensions. The work that examples. The home/wandering oppo- function being to "naturalize" cultural as- has been done so far on genre has tended sition that Peter Wollen rightly sees as sumptions): e.g., the treatment of the to take the various genres as "given" and central to Ford is not central only to Ford family in DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK. discrete, and seeks to explicate them, or even to the Western; it structures a 4b. Nature as the wilderness, the in- define them in terms of motifs, etc.; what remarkably large number of American dians, on whose subjugation civilization we need to ask, if genre theory is ever to films covering all genres, from OUT OF is built; hence by extension the libido, of be productive, is less What? than Why? THE PAST to THERE'S NO BUSINESS LIKE which in many westerns the Indians seem We are so used to the genres that the SHOW BUSINESS. The explicit comparison an extension or embodiment (THE peculiarity of the phenomenon itself has of women to cats connects screwball SEARCHERS). been too little noted. The idea I wish to comedy (BRINGING UP BABY), horror film 5. Progress, technology, the city put forward is that the development of (CAT PEOPLE), melodrama (RAMPAGE), and ("New York, New York, it's a wonderful the genres is rooted in the sort of psychological thriller (MARNIE). An town," etc.). ideological contradictions my brief list example that brings us to tonight's spe- 6. Success/wealth. A value of which suggests. One impulse may be the at- cific topic: notice the way in which the Hollywood ideology is also deeply tempt to deny such contradictions by Potent Male Adventurer, when he enters the family circle, immediately displaces ashamed, so that, while hundreds of eliminating one of the opposed terms, or his "shadow," the settled husband/ films play on its allure, very few can allow at least by a process of simplification. father, in both THE SEARCHERS and themselves openly to extol it. Thus its Robert Warshow's seminal essays on SHADOW OF A DOUBT. ideological "shadow" is produced: the gangster hero and the Westerner 7. The Rosebud syndrome. Money (still fruitfully suggestive, despite the Before we attempt to apply these ideas isn't everything; money corrupts; the obvious objection that he took too little to specific films, however, one more poor are happier. A very convenient as- into account) might be adduced here. point needs to be especially emphasized: sumption for capitalist ideology: the more The opposition of gangster film and the presence of ideological tensions in a oppressed you are, the happier you are western is only one of many possibilities. movie, though it may give it an interest (e.g., the singing "darkies" of A DAY AT All the genres can be profitably beyond Hopalong Cassidy, is not in itself THE RACES, etc.). examined in terms of ideological opposi- a reliable evaluative criterion. It seems 8. America as the land where every- tions, forming a complex interlocking probable that artistic value has always one actually is/can be happy; hence the pattern: small-town family comedy/ been dependent on the presence— land where all problems are solvable sophisticated city comedy; city comedy/ somewhere, at some stage—of an indi- within the existing system (which may film noir; film noirl small-town comedy, vidual artist, whatever the function of art need a bit of reform here and there but no etc.. It is probable that a genre is in the particular society, and even when radical change). Subversive systems are ideologically "pure" (i.e. safe) only in its (as with the Chartres cathedral) one no assimilated wherever possible to serve simplest, most archetypal, most aes- longer knows who the individual artists the dominant ideology. Andrew Britton, thetically deprived and intellectually were. It is only through the mediumship

FILM COMMENT 47 of the individual that ideological ten- sions come to particular focus, hence be- come of aesthetic as well as sociological interest. It can perhaps be argued that works are of especial interest when (a) the defined particularities of an auteur interact with specific ideological tensions and (b) the film is fed from more than one generic source. The same basic ideological tensions operate in both IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE and SHADOW OF A DOUBT: they furnish further reminders that the home/wandering antimony is by no means the exclusive preserve of the Western. Bedford Falls and Santa Rosa can be seen as the fron- IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE. Above: Small-town bucolic. Below: Small-town film noir. tier town seventy or so years on; they embody the development of the civiliza- tion whose establishment was celebrated around the same time by Ford in MY DARLING CLEMENTINE. With this relation- ship to the Western in the background (but in Capra's film made succinctly explicit), the central tension in both films can be described in terms of genre: the disturbing influx of film noir into the world of small-town domestic comedy. (It is a tension clearly present in CLEMEN- TINE as well: the opposition between the daytime and night-time Tombstones). The strong contrast the two films pre- sent testifies to the decisive effect of the intervention of a clearly defined artistic personality in an ideological-generic structure. Both films have as a central ideological project the reaffirmation of family and small-town values which the This tension is developed through the vitation to a barefoot ramble over the action has called into question. In Cap- extended sequence in which George is hills in the moonlight; the good-time gal ra's film this reaffirmation is magnifi- manipulated into marrying Mary. His offers no more solution to the hero's cently convincing (but with full ac- brother's return home with a wife and a wanderlust than the wife-mother figure. knowledgment of the suppressions on new job traps George into staying in So back to Mary, whom he brings to which it depends and, consequently, of Bedford Falls to take over the family the window by beating a stick aggres- its precariousness); in Hitchcock's it is business. With the homecoming cele- sively against the fence of the neat, en- completely hollow. The very different brations continuing inside the house in closed front garden—a beautifully pre- emotional effect of the films—the satis- the background, George sits disconso- cise expression of his ambivalent state of fying catharsis and emotional fullness of lately on the front porch: we hear a train mind, desire to attract Mary's attention the Capra, the "bitter taste" (on which whistle, off-screen, to which he warring with bitter resentment of his so many have commented) of the Hitch- reacts. His mother (the indispensable growing entrapment in domesticity. cock—is very deeply rooted not only Beulah Bondi) comes out and begins Mary was expecting him; his mother in our response to two opposed di- "suggesting" that he visit Mary; he ap- phoned her, knowing that George rectorial personalities but in our own pears to make off toward her, screen would end up at her house. Two ideo- ideological structuring. right, physically pointed in her direction logical premises combine here: the no- by his mother, then reappears and walks tion that the "good" mother always away past Beulah Bondi in the opposite ne of the main ideological and knows, precisely and with absolute cer- direction. Othematic tensions of IT'S A WONDER- titude, the working of her son's mind; FUL LIFE is beautifully encapsulated in the This leads him, with perfect and the notion that the female principle scene in which George Bailey (James ideological/generic logic, to Violet is central to the continuity of civilization, Stewart) and Mary (Donna Reed) smash (Gloria Grahame). The Violet/Mary op- that the "weaker sex" is compensated windows in a derelict house as a preface position is an archetypally clear render- with a sacred rightness. to making wishes. George's wish is that ing of that central Hollywood female op- Indoors, Mary shows George a car- he shall get the money to leave Bedford position that crosses all generic boun- toon she has drawn: George, in cowboy Falls, which he sees as humdrum and daries—as with Susan (Katharine Hep- denims, lassoing the moon. The moment constricting, and travel about the world; burn) and Alice (Virginia Walker) in is rich in contradictory connotations. It Mary's (not expressed in words, but in BRINGING UP BABY, Irena (Simone Simon) explicitly evokes the Western, and the its subsequent fulfillment—confirming and Alice (Jane Randolph) in CAT PEOPLE, figure of the adventurer-hero to which her belief that wishes don't come true if Chihuahua (Linda Darnell) and George aspires. Earlier, it was for Mary you speak them) is that she and George Clementine (Cathy Downs) in MY DARL- that George wanted to "lasso the will marry, settle down and raise a fami- ING CLEMENTINE, Debby (Gloria moon," the adventurer's exploits moti- ly, in the same derelict house, a ruined Grahame) and Katie (Jocelyn Brando) in vated by a desire to make happy the shell which marriage-and-family re- THE BIG HEAT. But Violet (in front of an woman who will finally entrap him in stores to life. amused audience) rejects his poetic in- domesticity. From Mary's point of view,

48 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1977 the picture is at once affectionate (ac- recognizes explicitly that behind every again, ideological and generic determin- knowledging the hero's aspirations), Bedford Falls lurks a Pottersville, and ants are crucial. mocking (reducing them to caricature), implicitly that within every George The kind of "synthetic" analysis I have and possessive (reducing George to an Bailey lurks THE SEARCHERS' Ethan Ed- suggested (going beyond an interest in image she creates and holds within her wards. Potter, tempting George, is given the individual auteur) reveals IT'S A hands). the devil's insights into his suppressed WONDERFUL LIFE as a far more potentially The most overtly presented of the desires. His remark, "You once called subversive film than has been generally film's structural oppositions is that be- me a warped, frustrated old man—now recognized, but its subversive elements tween the two faces of Capitalism, be- you're a warped, frustrated young man," are, in the end, successfully contained. nign and malignant: on the one hand, is amply supported by the evidence the In SHADOW OF A DOUBT the Hollywood the Baileys (father and son) and their film supplies. What is finally striking ideology I have sketched is shattered be- Building and Loan Company, its busi- about the film's affirmation is the ex- yond convincing recuperation. One can, ness practice based on a sense of human treme precariousness of its basis; and however, trace through the film its at- needs and a belief in human goodness; Potter survives, without remorse, his tempts to impose itself and render things on the other, Potter (Lionel Barrymore), crime unexposed and unpunished. It "safe." What is in jeopardy is above all described explicitly as a spider, moti- may well be Capra's masterpiece, but it is the Family—but, given the Family's vated by greed, egotism and miserliness, more than that. Like all the greatest central ideological significance, once that with no faith in human nature. Potter American films—fed by a complex is in jeopardy, everything is. The small belongs to a very deeply rooted tradi- generic tradition and, beyond that, by town (still rooted in the agrarian dream, tion. He derives most obviously from the fears and aspirations of a whole in ideals of the virgin land as a garden of Dickens' Scrooge (the film is set at culture—it at once transcends its director innocence) and the united happy family Christmas)—a Scrooge disturbingly and would be inconceivable without are regarded as the real sound heart of unrepentant and irredeemable—but his him. American civilization; the ideological more distant antecedents are in the ogres project is to acknowledge the existence of sickness and evil but preserve the of fairy tales. HADOW OF A DOUBT has always been family from their contamination. The opposition gives us not only two Samong the most popular of Hitch- attitudes to money and property but two cock's middle-period films, with critics A number of strategies can be dis- father-images (Bailey Sr. and Potter), and public alike, but it has been per- cerned here: the attempt to insist on a each of whom gives his name to the land ceived in very different, almost diametri- separation of Uncle Charlie from Santa (Bailey Park, in small-town Bedford cally opposed ways. On its appearance it Rosa; his death at the end of the film, as Falls, and Pottersville, the town's dark was greeted by British critics as the film the definitive purging of evil; the pro- alternative). Most interestingly, the two marking Hitchcock's coming-to-terms duction of the young detective (the figures (American choices, American with America; his British films were healthy, wholesome, small-town male) tendencies) find their vivid ideological praised for their humor and "social criti- as a marriage partner for young Charlie, extensions in Hollywood genres: the cism" as much as for their suspense, and that the Family may be perpetuated; happy, sunny world of small town com- the early American films (notably RE- above all, the attribution of Uncle Char- edy (Bedford Falls is seen mostly in the BECCA and SUSPICION) seemed like at- lie's sexual pathology to a childhood ac- daytime), the world of film noir, the dark tempts artificially to reconstruct England cident, as a means of exonerating the underside of Hollywood ideology. in Hollywood. In SHADOW, Hitchcock Family of the charge of producing a Pottersville—the vision of the town as (with the aid of Thornton Wilder and monster (a possibility the American it would have been if George had never Sally Benson) at last brought to Ameri- popular cinema, with the contemporary existed, shown him by his guardian can middle-class society the shrewd overturning of traditional values, can angel (Henry Travers)—is just as "real" satirical, affectionate gaze previously now envisage—e.g., IT'S ALIVE!). bestowed on British. A later generation (or no more stylized) than Bedford Falls. The famous opening, with its parallel of French critics (notably Rohmer and The iconography of small-town comedy introductions of Uncle Charlie and Chabrol in their Hitchcock book) praised is exchanged, unmistakably, for that of Young Charlie, insists on the city and the the film for very different reasons, estab- film noir, with police sirens, shooting in small town as opposed, sickness and evil lishing its strict formalism (Truffaut's the streets, darkness, vicious dives, al- being of the city. As with Bedford Falls/ "un film fonde sur le chiffre 2") and see- coholism, burlesque shows, strip clubs, Pottersville, the film draws lavishly on ing it as one of the keys to a consistent the glitter and shadows of noir lighting. the iconography of usually discrete Catholic interpretation of Hitchcock, a George's mother, embittered and genres. Six shots (with all movement rigorous working-out of themes of malevolent, runs a seedy boarding- and direction—the bridges, the panning, Original Sin, the loss of innocence, the house; the good-time gal/wife-mother the editing—consistently rightward) Fallen World, the exchange (or inter- opposition, translated into noir terms, leading up to the first interior of Uncle changeability) of guilt. The French noted becomes an opposition of prostitute and Charlie's room give us urban technolo- the family comedy beloved of British cri- repressed spinster-librarian. The towns gy, wreckage both human (the down- tics, if at all, as a mildly annoying dis- emerge as equally valid images of and-outs) and material (the dumped cars traction. America—validated by their generic by the sign "No Dumping Allowed"), familiarity. That both these views correspond to children playing in the street, the number 13 on the lodging-house door. Beside SHADOW OF A DOUBT, IT'S A important elements in the film and Six shots (movement and direction con- WONDERFUL LIFE manages a convincing throw light on certain aspects of it is be- and moving affirmation of the values yond doubt; both, however, now appear sistently left) leading to the first interior (and value) of bourgeois family life. Yet false and partial, dependent upon the of Young Charlie's room give us sunny what is revealed, when disaster releases abstracting of elements from the whole. streets with no street-games (Santa Rosa George's suppressed tensions, is the in- If the film is, in a sense, completely evidently has parks), an orderly town tensity of his resentment of the family dominated by Hitchcock (nothing in it is with a smiling, paternal policeman pre- and desire to destroy it—and with it, in unmarked by his artistic personality), a siding over traffic and pedestrians. significant relationship, his work (his complete reading would need to see the In Catholic terms, this is the Fallen culminating action is furiously to over- small-town-family elements and the World against a world of apparent pre- throw the drawing-board with his plans Catholic elements as threads weaving lapsarian innocence; but it is just as valid for more small-town houses). The film through a complex fabric in which, to interpret the images, as in IT'S A WON-

FILM COMMENT 49 DERFUL LIFE, in terms of the two faces of low-angle shot of Uncle Charlie's train the mutual responsiveness and affec- American capitalism. Uncle Charlie has rushing toward Santa Rosa, underlining tion, that Capra so beautifully creates in money (the fruits of his crimes and his the effect with an ominous crashing the Bailey families, senior and junior, of aberrant sexuality) littered in disorder chord on the soundtrack. IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, are here almost over table and floor; the Santa Rosa Uncle Charlie is one of the supreme entirely lacking—and this despite the policeman has behind him the Bank of embodiments of the key Hitchcock fig- fact, in itself of great ideological interest, America. The detailed paralleling of ure: ambiguously devil and lost soul. that the treatment of the family in uncle and niece can of course be read as When his train reaches Santa Rosa, the SHADOW OF A DOUBT has generally been comparison as much as contrast, and the image is blackened by its smoke. From perceived (even, one guesses, by Hitch- opposition that of two sides of the same his first appearance, Charlie is associated cock himself) as affectionate. coin. The point is clearest in that crucial, consistently with a cigar (its phallic con- The most striking characteristic of the profoundly disturbing scene where film notations evident from the outset, in the Spencers is the separateness of each noir erupts into Santa Rosa itself: the visit scene with the landlady) and repeatedly member; the recurring point of the cele- to the "Til Two" bar, where Young shown with a wreath of smoke curling brated overlapping dialogue is that no Charlie is confronted with her alter ego around his head (no one else in the film one ever listens to what anyone else is Louise the waitress, her former class- smokes except Joe, the displaced father, saying. Each is locked in a separate fan- mate. The scene equally invites Catholic who has a paternal pipe, usually unlit). tasy world: Emmy in the past, Joe in crime, Anne in books read, apparently, less for pleasure than as a means of amassing knowledge with which she has little emotional contact (though she also believes that everything she reads is "true"). The parents are trapped in a petty materialism (both respond to Young Charlie's dissatisfaction with the assumption that she's talking about money) and reliance on "honest toil" as the means of using up energies. In SHADOW OF A DOUBT the ideological image of the small-town happy family becomes the flimsiest facade. That so many are nonetheless deceived by it tes- tifies only to the strength of the ideo- logy—one of whose functions is of course to inhibit the imagining of radical alternatives. I have argued elsewhere that the key to Hitchcock's films is less suspense than sexuality (or, alternatively, that his "suspense" always carries a sexual charge in ways sometimes obvious, sometimes esoteric); and that sexual re- lationships in his work are inevitably based on power, the obsession-with- A FAMILY TRIANGLE: Uncle (Joseph Cotten), Niece (Teresa Wright), Sister (Patricia Collinge). power/dread-of-impotence being as central to his method as to his thematic. and Marxist commentaries; its force Several incidents (the escape from the In SHADOW OF A DOUBT it is above all sex- arises from the revelation of the policemen at the beginning, the garage uality that cracks apart the family fafade. Fallen-World/ capi talis t-corruption- door slammed as by remote control) in- As far as the Hays code permitted, a and-deprivation at the heart of the vest him with a quasi-supernatural double incest theme runs through the American small town. The close jux- power. Rather than restrict the film to a film: Uncle Charlie and Emmy, Uncle taposition of genres has implications that Catholic reading, it seems logical to con- Charlie and Young Charlie. Necessarily, reach out through the whole generic nect these marks with others: the thread this is expressed through images and structure of the classical Hollywood of superstition that runs through the film motifs, never becoming verbally explicit; cinema. (the number 13; the hat on the bed; "Sing certain of the images depend on a sup- The subversion of ideology within the at table and you'll marry a crazy hus- pressed verbal play for their significance. film is everywhere traceable to Hitch- band"; the irrational dread of the utter- For the reunion of brother and sister, cock's presence, to the skepticism and ance, however innocent, of the forbid- Hitchcock gives us an image (Emmy nihilism that lurk just behind the jocular den words "Merry Widow") and the poised left of screen, arrested in mid- facade of his public image. His Catholi- telepathy motif (the telegrams, the tune movement, Charlie right, under trees cism is in reality the lingering on in his "jumping from head to head")—the and sunshine) that iconographically work of the darker aspects of Catholic whole Hitchcockian sense of life at the evokes the reunion of lovers (Charlie mythology: Hell without Heaven. The mercy of terrible, unpredictable forces wants to see Emmy again as she was traces are clear enough. Young Charlie that have to be kept down. when she was "the prettiest girl on the wants a "miracle"; she thinks of her The Hitchcockian dread of repressed block"). And Emmy's breakdown, in uncle as the "one who can save us" (and forces is characteristically accompanied front of her embarrassed friends and her mother immediately asks, "What do by a sense of the emptiness of the surface neighbors, at the news of Charlie's im- you mean, save us?"); when she finds his world that represses them, and this cru- minent departure, is eloquent. As for telegram, in the very act of sending hers, cially affects the presentation in SHADOW uncle and niece, they are introduced her reaction is an ecstatic "He heard me, OF A DOUBT of the American smaJl-town symmetrically lying on beds, Uncle he heard me!" Hitchcock cuts at once to a family. The warmth and togetherness, Charlie fondling his phallic cigar, Young

50 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1977 Charlie prone, hands behind head. When Uncle Charlie gets off the train he is bent over a stick, pretending to be ill; as soon as he sees Young Charlie he "comes erect," flourishing the stick. One of his first actions on taking over her bedroom is to pluck a rose for his but- tonhole ("deflowering")- More obvi- ously, there is the business with the ring, which not only, as a symbolic token of engagement, links Charlie sexually with her uncle, but also links her, through its previous ownership, to his succession of merry widows. The film shows sexual pathology at the heart of the American family, the necessary product of its re- pressions and sublimations. As for the "accident"—that old critical stumbling-block—it presents no prob- lem at all, provided one is ready to ac- knowledge the validity of a psycho- analytical reading of movies. Indeed, it provides a rather beautiful example of the way in which ideology, in seeking to impose itself, succeeds merely in con- firming its own subversion. The "ac- cident" (Charlie was "riding a bicycle" for the first time, which resulted in a "collision") can be read as elementary Freudian metaphor for the trauma of premature sexual awakening (after which Charlie was "never the same again"). The smothering sexual/ pos- sessive devotion of a doting older sister may be felt to provide a clue to the sexual motivation behind the merry-widow murders; Charlie isn't interested in money. Indeed, Emmy connected to the merry widows by an associative chain in which important links are her own prac- tical widowhood (her ineffectual hus- band is largely ignored), her ladies' club, and its leading light Mrs. Potter, Uncle Charlie's potential next-in-line.

fuller analysis would need to dwell Aon the limitations of Hitchcock's vi- sion, nearer the nihilistic than the tragic; on his inability to conceive of repressed energies as other than evil, and the sur- face world that represses them as other than shallow and unfulfilling. This ex- plains why there can be no Heaven cor- responding to Hitchcock's Hell, for every vision of Heaven that is not merely negative is rooted in a concept of the lib- eration of the instincts, the Resurrection of the Body, which Hitchcock must al- ways deny. But my final stress is less on the evaluation of a particular film or di- rector than on the implications for a criti- cism of the Hollywood cinema of the no- tions of interaction and multiple deter- minacy I have been employing. It is its rootedness in the Hollywood genres, and in the very ideological structure it so disturbingly subverts, that makes SHADOW OF A DOUBT so much more suggestive and significant a work than Hitchcock the bourgeois entertainer could ever have guessed.

FILM COMMENT 51