THE AESTHETICS of CRIME in AUSTERITY BRITAIN, C
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A VIOLENT ARCHAEOLOGY OF DREAMS: THE AESTHETICS OF CRIME IN AUSTERITY BRITAIN, c. 1944–1951 A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of PhD in the Faculty of Humanities 2011 Alexandros Papadopoulos School of Arts, Histories and Cultures List of Contents List of Contents ...................................................................................................................... 2 List of Figures ......................................................................................................................... 4 Abstract .................................................................................................................................... 8 Author’s Declaration .............................................................................................................. 9 Copyright Statement ............................................................................................................. 10 Dedication .............................................................................................................................. 11 Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................. 12 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 13 Chapter 1. The Phantasmagoric Enigma of Spivery: Criminal Illusion in the Age of Austerity ...................................................................................................................................... 36 ‘What is a Spiv?’ .................................................................................................................... 41 The Spiv’s Progress from the 1930s to the 1940s: The Aesthetic Framework of Deviance ................................................................................................................................ 47 Spivery as a Social Science of the Imagination ................................................................. 61 Chapter 2. Night and the City: Criminal Escapism and National Character in Post-war British Cinema and Society ...................................................................................................... 70 The National Production of Cinematic Escapism ........................................................... 73 Gangsters Looking at Gangsters ........................................................................................ 79 Night and the City: Hollywood’s Confidence Trick in London? ...................................... 87 An American Spiv: Cinematic Convention or National Anomaly? ............................... 93 Chapter 3. Self-reflexivity and National Temperament in 1940s British Crime Films . 116 Objects, Poses and Spaces: The Expansion of Spectatorship ..................................... 123 Erotic Escapism and Spivery ............................................................................................ 135 Chapter 4. The Mystery of the Cleft Chin Murder: Wayward Femininity and Cinematic Escapism ................................................................................................................................... 173 Self-Confession and Courtroom Drama: The Rhetoric of Self-Deception ............... 178 2 The Trial: Staging Criminal, Sexual and Cinematic Time ............................................. 181 Press, Literature and the Cinema ...................................................................................... 198 Chapter 5. The Acid Bath Murder: Horror, the Confidence Trick and Escapism in Austerity-Era Britain ............................................................................................................... 215 Murder Stories and Vernacular Horror ........................................................................... 218 Psychiatry as an Archaeology of Dreams ........................................................................ 240 Celebrity life and Self-Aestheticisation ............................................................................ 250 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 266 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................. 275 1. Unpublished Manuscripts and Collections ................................................................. 275 2. Select Filmography ......................................................................................................... 276 3. Newsreel .......................................................................................................................... 277 4. Newspapers and Periodicals ......................................................................................... 277 5. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography ................................................................. 278 6. Memoirs Online .............................................................................................................. 278 7. Radio Plays ...................................................................................................................... 278 8. Published Books and Articles ....................................................................................... 278 Word Count : 74, 089 3 List of Figures Figure 2.1. Criminality as a perfomance of vanity: photographic self-admiration. Little Caesar (Mervyn LeRoy, 1931). ......................................................................... 81 Figure 2.2. Posing for the photographers. Little Caesar (Mervyn LeRoy, 1931). ......... 82 Figure 2.3. A newspaper photograph on screen encapsulates gangster’s glamour. Little Caesar (Mervyn LeRoy, 1931). ......................................................................... 82 Figure 2.4. The gangster’s self-observance: Rico admires his transformation into an object of stardom. Little Caesar (Mervyn LeRoy, 1931). .............................. 83 Figure 2.5. Rico’s self-mirroring, a dialogue between criminal vanity and cinematic self-reflexivity. Little Caesar (Mervyn LeRoy, 1931). ..................................... 84 Figure 2.6. The snapshot contrasts the theatre poster’s ‘laughing singing dancing succes’ with the fall of a fantasising gangster. Little Caesar (Mervyn LeRoy, 1931). ................................................................................................................... 86 Figure 2.7. Fabian drops a carnation; dandyism merges with danger. Night and the City (Jules Dassin, 1950). .......................................................................................... 97 Figure 2.8. The collection of the carnation, a gesture that exemplifies the criminal aesthetics of spivery. Night and the City (Jules Dassin, 1950). ...................... 97 Figure 2.9. Fabian Promotions: the city as a symbolic surface of self-mirroring. Night and the City (Jules Dassin, 1950) ....................................................................... 99 Figure 2.10. The poster as a metonymy of stardom. Night and the City (Jules Dassin, 1950). ................................................................................................................. 101 Figure 2.11. The office sign as a material trace of fantasy. Night and the City (Jules Dassin, 1950). .................................................................................................. 101 Figure 2.12. High and low forms of urban life: an American classicist and a Greek prostitute in Athens. Never on Sunday (Jules Dassin, 1960). ....................... 113 Figure 3.1. The propagandistic slogan prefigures and contrasts with the representation of the spiv as a sociable being. Noose (Edmond Gréville, 1948). ................................................................................................................. 125 Figure 3.2. Soho superimposed on Gorman: an urban space as a metonymy of spivery. Noose (Edmond Gréville, 1948). ..................................................... 126 4 Figure 3.3. The mise-en-scène (Soho, narrow street, back entrance) fuses deviousness with familiarity. Noose (Edmond Gréville, 1948). ....................................... 130 Figure 3.4. The goodbye scene: the split screen transforms the spiv into an imaginary/cinematic figure. Noose (Edmond Gréville, 1948). .................. 133 Figure 3.5. Tears in front of a folding screen: the female diegetic spectator evokes the women in the audience. Noose (Edmond Gréville, 1948). ......................... 134 Figure 3.6. The spiv as an object of spectatorship (vanity) and an astute spectator. Waterloo Road (Sidney Gilliat, 1944). ............................................................. 138 Figure 3.7. Interchange of gazes through a mirror. Waterloo Road (Sidney Gilliat, 1944). ................................................................................................................. 139 Figure 3.8. Tillie looking back at Ted: the disoriented, diegetic spectator. Waterloo Road (Sidney Gilliat, 1944). ............................................................................ 139 Figure 3.9. The window display overlaps with the cinematic screen. Waterloo Road (Sidney Gilliat, 1944). ...................................................................................... 142 Figure 3.10. A photograph as a dream. Waterloo Road (Sidney Gilliat, 1944). .............