The Anatomy of a Proletarian Film: Warner's "Marked Woman" Author(s): Charles W. Eckert Source: Film Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Winter, 1973-1974), pp. 10-24 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1211557 Accessed: 10-12-2016 04:46 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Film Quarterly This content downloaded from 129.100.58.76 on Sat, 10 Dec 2016 04:46:09 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 10 I0 MARKED WOMAN MARKED WOMAN waitingwaiting song of World War II. songIn the midst of Dayof for for Night Night holdsWorld holds a very a veryimportant important posi- War posi- II. In the midst of the melodramatic scramble to save the "inno- tion in in Truffaut's Truffaut's canon. canon. As content, As content, the film- the film- cent" Camilla, the camera gives us close-ups making of process process becomes becomes his vehicle his vehicle for express- for express- Kodak kittens and puppies, reminding us how ing kindness, kindness, wit, wit, and wisdom,and wisdom, the values the which values which easily we can be manipulated by art. Truffaut must tame the wild. The film functions as a pursues this mockery in Day for Night where reaffirmation of art, allowing the full realization the crew struggles to get a shot of an adorable of Truffaut's powers that were present in his fluffy kitten lapping up milk in a love scene. finest films-Shoot the Piano Player, Jules and (Finally, they are forced to bring the scrawny Jim, and The Wild Child. It also succeeds in studio cat as a stand-in.) Even on the set, no integrating the autobiographical films with the one can resist the helpless and adorable. If we others and striking a balance between wildness are foolish like Stanislas, this is how we will and humanism, chance and willfulness. This react to Camilla. The power of art is further development is also reflected in his treatment of undermined when we meet the baby auteur who men and women. Both Truffaut the director and comes up with redeeming evidence. Camilla Julie the actress are successful professional abdicates responsibility for her own acts and her artists and responsible adults whose generous betrayal of Stanislas in the name of art: her social virtues transcend the romantic illusion "sufferings" have made her an artiste, she claims, and selfish cruelty so pervasive in the earlier and Stanislas (if he survives) will be able to films. write the great novel. CHARLES W. ECKERT The Anatomy of a Proletarian Film: Warner's Marked Woman Marked Woman was produced by Warner the scenesscenes that that develop develop the the melodramatic melodramatic plot plot Brothers-First National in 1937, based on an and aa differentdifferent order order of of emotions emotions spanning spanning a a original script by Robert Rossen and Abem spectrum from from despair despair to torage, rage, that that appear appear in a in a Finkel, and directed by Lloyd Bacon. It is, to series ofof interspersedinterspersed scenes scenes (and (and in thein the crucial crucial give it its fullest definition, a topical, proletariat- final scene). The affective center of the film oriented gangster film. As such, it must be un- seems displaced into another dimension than the derstood within a complex tradition of films, and melodramatic, a dimension that the latter scenes against a backdrop of depression issues. The define.' The second problem concerns the way analysis I shall attempt respects the context of in which the moral and social dilemmas are de- the film and centers upon three crucial problems. veloped. And the third concerns the significance The first concerns a striking contrast between of the prime-mover of the plot, the gangster- the cool, rigidly controlled emotions typical of racketeer: since he is a heavily stereotyped fig- This content downloaded from 129.100.58.76 on Sat, 10 Dec 2016 04:46:09 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms The gangster "takes over" the Club Intime. ure bringing with him not simply the swagger sense of disparity between being poor and being and jargon of dozens of previous incarnations rich, that this popular notion of class conflict but a specific aura of significances and values, originates. understanding him requires what we might call The expression of the conflict in the films, a "theory of the gangster," the development of however, is almost never overt. It is instead which will take us beyond Marked Woman. converted into conflicts of a surrogate nature- However disconnected these analytical con- some ethical, some regional, some concerned cerns may seem, they are, I believe, aspects of with life-style, some symbolized by tonal or aes- a single unified intellectual operation that affects thetic overlays created by the makers of the almost every detail of the film. It may be helpful films. The analysis of this elaborate secondary to define this operation and to sketch in the structure requires close attention to the processes conclusions I will be moving towards before of condensation and displacement by which entering upon an extended analysis. My major latent content is converted into manifest con- contention is that the ultimate sources of tent. I would like to avoid jargon for its own Marked Woman and its tradition are in class sake, but Freud's terms and their strict defini- conflict; but the level at which the film-makers tions are essential for an understanding of the perceive this conflict, and the level at which it processes is involved (I shall give definitions at lived by the fictional characters and perceived the appropriate point in the analysis). I hope by the audience, is existential rather than politi- to show that the effect of these operations is to cal or economic. It is in the lived experience attenuate conflicts at the level of real conditions of the depression, in the resentment directed and at to amplify and resolve them at the surrogate those who "caused" the depression, and in the levels of the melodrama. This solution is not This content downloaded from 129.100.58.76 on Sat, 10 Dec 2016 04:46:09 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 12 12 MARKED WOMAN MARKED WOMAN always successful, upon a world however; of exploitation, drab servitude it can lead to dialec- tical play between and occasional terror. the real and disguised con- flicts, the effect Nancy of Presser whichsaid that one of Luciano's is mento make the usually opaque operations transparent. I believe that drove her into prostitution by threatening to "cut this is what happens in Marked Woman and me up so that my own mother wouldn't know that it is the chiet source of the atypical feel of me."2 And Thelma Jordan said "I knew what the film and of the forceful and unsettling char- happened to girls who had talked about the acter of a number of its scenes. combination. The soles of their feet and their But all of this can only be clarified after stomachswe were burned with cigar butts for talk- have recalled the film and its topical basis. ing too much. .... I heard Ralph [Liguori] say Marked Woman capitalized upon a sensational that their tongues were cut when girls talked."3 trial reported almost daily in the New York Liguori also threatened that if any of the women Times between May 14 and June 22, 1936. Be- testified against the combination "their pictures cause the details of this trial strongly influenced would be sent to their home town papers with Rossen and Finkle, and because the trial pro- stories of what they were doing for a living."4 vides a body of real analogues to the fiction of Another of the women, Helen Kelley, testified the film, I shall review it first. I will then give a to the economics of prostitution. She had quit summary of the film designed to make the dis- an underpaid job to become a prostitute and in juncture between the melodramatic and the her first week made $314. After a friendly strongly affective scenes apparent, while giving booker persuaded her to quit and go straight enough detail to tamiliarize the reader with the she took a job as a waitress averaging twelve whole film and to provide material for the sub- dollars per week. After a year of this she went sequent analysis. back to the booker "to solve an economic prob- lem."5 THE TRIAL The conditions of the prostitutes' lives in- Charles "Lucky Luciano" Lucania won his place fluenced Rossen and Finkle, as we shall see, but in the pantheon of depression Mafiosi by corner- the real issue of the trial was the conviction of ing a market more durable than liquor-the Luciano. To this end Dewey faced two obstacles brothels of New York. His method was that of -convincing the women that they would be the simple "take-over," with promises of pro- protected from retaliation, and convincing the tection from the law and fair treatment for all jury, and the public at large, that prostitutes concerned.