“We are the real countries”: Space and Identity in British, French, and American Prisoner of War Cinema by Mandy Elliott A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of The University of Manitoba In partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of English, Film, & Theatre University of Manitoba Winnipeg Copyright © 2018 by Mandy Elliott ABSTRACT While Prisoner of War (POW) films made in the twenty years following World War II are usually panned for their saccharine nostalgia, they are also imbued with the context of their time. That is, they engage with expressions of nationality, patriotism, gender, and various other markers of identity that are set during World War II, but very much reflect their respective postwar national climates. This thesis focuses on the dramatization of camp spaces in these films and the relationships and ideologies they foster. Spatial theorists like Henri Lefebvre and Edward Soja, and Michel Foucault’s biopolitical scholarship, ground my research into three distinctive national cinemas, Britain, France, and America. I argue that British films like The Captive Heart (1946), Albert, R.N. (1953), The Colditz Story (1955), Very Important Person (1961), and The Password is Courage (1962) exemplify British POW cinema’s practice of reimagining what Britishness entails while building a broader community. In contrast, French films like A Man Escaped (1956) and Le caporal épinglé (1962) dramatize pessimistic views of postwar French identity and suggest that community is overrated and that independence is the best way forward. American POW films like Decision Before Dawn (1951), Stalag 17 (1957), 36 Hours (1964), and King Rat (1965) point out flaws in exceptionalist attitudes and highlight the virtues of other ways of moving through conflict. Finally, my examination of The Great Escape (1963) and The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) looks at how these films use camp space to reinforce expected, and even stereotypical, ways of asserting identity. These films draw attention away from the binary ally/enemy, good/bad, masculine/feminine assertions of identity seen in combat films and instead dramatize culture-reflecting shifts in those values using the prison camp space. ii Acknowledgements This project has been a long time coming and several people have supported me through this wonderful, if not completely self-serving, task, and they have my sincere thanks. My advisor, Dr. Brenda Austin-Smith, has given me unwavering guidance, advice, care, and many, many pep talks. She kept me afloat when I lost confidence and encouraged me to push myself to be better. I would never have finished this project without her. I would like to thank Dr. George Toles, who has encouraged me and enthusiastically championed my strange and abstract thoughts. Thanks also to Dr. Neil McArthur and Dr. Bill Beard, who agreed to read my work and provided lively and insightful comments. I would also like to offer heartfelt thanks to Anita King and Darlene McWhirter, whose patience, care, and kindness made all the difference. Your work was crucial to my success, and I appreciate you so much. Thanks, too, to Katelyn Dykstra and Karalyn Dokurno, my sisters throughout this process, who laughed, cried, and otherwise emoted with me in solidarity. You women are wonderful. Profound thanks to my family, who have ceaselessly supported me, and to my incredibly patient and supportive friends who didn’t always understand, but who cheered me on anyway. Finally, thanks to Aaron, who sees all sides of me and whose love, thoughtfulness, kindness, and wisdom never cease to amaze me. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract............................................................................................................................................ii Acknowledgments..........................................................................................................................iii Table of Contents............................................................................................................................iv Introduction......................................................................................................................................1 Chapter One: Little Pieces of England: Changing Britishness in Postwar Prisoner of War Cinema...................22 Chapter Two: Raising the Rifle Butt: French Postwar Identity and the New Pessimism.....................................75 Chapter Three: “Meat’s Meat”: American Exceptionalism in Postwar Prisoner of War Cinema........................128 Chapter Four: “This is our Show”: Taking up Space in The Great Escape and The Bridge on the River Kwai.............................................................................................................................................182 Conclusion...................................................................................................................................235 Works Cited.................................................................................................................................243 iv “We are the real countries”: Space and Identity in British, French, and American Prisoner of War Cinema INTRODUCTION “We are the real countries—not the lines drawn on maps or the names of powerful men.” —Katharine Clifton, The English Patient (1996)1 In Jean Renoir’s great anti-war film Grand Illusion (1937) there is a scene in which French prisoners of war team up with their English counterparts to perform a follies act for the German guards. The Englishmen rambunctiously high-step their way across the stage singing “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” while the show’s star makes his way down a set of stairs toward centre stage for his solo. The camera cranes in for a close-up as he bats his false eyelashes, emphasizing his dramatic and delightfully silly falsetto. Suddenly, Maréchal (Jean Gabin), a French prisoner, bursts onto the stage with news that France has retaken Douaumont, a fort that in the previous scene had fallen to the Germans. That earlier German victory had led to a rousing chorus of “Die Wacht am Rhine” in the German mess hall. But now, in a dramatic gesture of Allied pride, the British star of the follies act snatches off his curly blonde wig, turns to the band and commands in a deep voice — “the Marseillaise, please!” We then see a medium shot of the British soldier, still in drag, wig in hand, now less exclusively a British soldier and more a general resister of German military authority, proudly leading those in the room in singing the French national anthem. The shot cuts again and suddenly we see the stage from the rear of the theatre and watch the soldiers stand and sing in unison, brought together by shared defiance of their wartime enemy. After seeing this film multiple times, I became fascinated with the cinematic prisoner of war (POW) camp as a space in which this sort of strange performance can happen. By making the camp a place in which men can dress as women, English soldiers can sing the French 1 national anthem, and German guards can look on as part of an audience, Grand Illusion suggests that within the POW camp, a soldier’s sense of identity — the host of beliefs and assumptions that define who they are — can shift, encouraging a greater sense of community with others in the camp and, as we see later in the film, even with guards who do not quite exemplify the wartime “enemy” label. Crucially, while my reading of space and spatiality in this thesis involves some analysis of physical spaces (tunnels, barracks, walls, wires, etc.), I also investigate characters’ experiences of psychological, philosophical, sociological, and even spiritual spaciality that come about as they navigate these physical camp spaces. As a result of my obsession with how Grand Illusion — a critically acclaimed film about World War I — uses camp space to explore expressions of identity, I began to study other POW films made following World War II. I re-watched popular films like The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), The Great Escape (1963), and Stalag 17 (1953), and dug further into the history of the genre to discover The Captive Heart (1946), Very Important Person (1961), Le caporal épinglé (1962), and others. I was compelled not only by each film’s use of the camp space to dismantle, rebuild, or reinforce the identities of those held captive, but by the clear national ideologies that most of these films articulate because of the national and international contexts in which they were made. These films present plots and themes relative to their countries of origin, but also grapple with the wartime reality of threats to familiar patterns of everyday life, and with the assumptions about the nation and its citizens, that war brings about. Moreover, because these films are set during World War II, but were made after its outcomes had been realized, relationships between characters often echo the bonds and animosities of that era while at the same time reflecting the new allegiances and fears springing out of the Cold War context. 2 The homosocial settings of these films also provoke reflection on the meanings of the very personal identities we see interacting in these same-sex camps. Follies shows like the one in Grand Illusion are ubiquitous throughout the genre and suggest that prison camps are spaces where characters literally and figuratively try on different gender and social identities without fear of ridicule or retribution. Sometimes these shows are celebratory,