Romance, Revolution and Regulation: Colonialism and the US-Mexico Border in American Cold War Film Stephanie Fuller Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of East Anglia, School of Film, Television and Media September 2013 This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that use of any information derived there from must be in accordance with current UK Copyright Law. In addition, any quotation or extract must include full attribution. Abstract The 1950s saw perhaps the largest number of American films set on and around the US- Mexico border of any period of the twentieth century. This thesis investigates why this concentration of films appeared at this point in time. It argues that rather than responding to the changes in policy and practice along the borderline that were taking place in the 1950s, these films engage with cold war politics as they explore the relationship between the United States and Mexico through ideas of romance, revolution and regulation. The thesis contributes to the growing field of cultural studies of the Cold War by contending that these movies engage with cold war discourses of colonialism. I argue that through images of the US-Mexico border, colonialism is interrogated and that the international boundary is thus produced as a site through which concerns about the United States’ place in the cold war world are articulated. While much existing scholarship has examined the relationship of specific genres such as science fiction, westerns and film noir to cold war politics, this thesis moves away from such generic constraints to focus on films of different genres which feature representations of the US-Mexico border. The thesis’ central contribution therefore lies in its assertion that a study which is attentive to cinematic space and focused on a particular cinematic location can provide new ways of understanding cold war culture, and that American cinematic engagement with the Cold War is not limited to or defined by generic frameworks. 2 Contents Abstract .............................................................................................................. 2 Contents ............................................................................................................. 3 Acknowledgments .............................................................................................. 4 Introduction ....................................................................................................... 5 PART ONE Romance: Tourists, Lawbreakers and Undercover Cops ............. 30 Chapter One: The Romance of Mexico: Tourists, Fugitives and Escaping the US in Where Danger Lives (1950) ............................................................................. 31 Chapter Two: Masquerades, Mapping and Transformation: Identity and Ethnicity in Borderline (1950) ............................................................................................ 45 Chapter Three: Danger, Disappearance and the Exotic: American Travellers and Mexican Migrants in Wetbacks (1956) ................................................................. 65 PART TWO Revolution: Territory, Nation and Politics .................................. 82 Chapter Four: The Revolutionary Politics of Mexico: Vera Cruz (1954) and Representations of Individualism ......................................................................... 85 Chapter Five: Territory, Colonialism and Gender: Border River (1954) and the American Frontier ................................................................................................ 100 PART THREE Regulation: Criminality, Identity and Mobility....................... 118 Chapter Six: Ethnicity, Imperialism and the Law: Policing Identities in Border Incident (1949) .................................................................................................... 119 Chapter Seven: Border Cities as Contested Space: Postcolonial Resistance and The Tijuana Story (1957) ..................................................................................... 139 Chapter Eight: Imperial Journeys and Travelling Shots: Regulation, Power and Mobility in Touch of Evil (1958) .......................................................................... 156 Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 177 Appendix A: Indicative List of Cold War Border Films .................................. 189 Appendix B: Publications .................................................................................. 193 Bibliography ....................................................................................................... 194 Filmography ....................................................................................................... 225 3 Acknowledgments Firstly, I am extremely grateful to the AHRC for the PhD studentship I was awarded and without which I would have been unable to undertake this research. Many thanks are also due to the University of East Anglia for providing support and training and to my supervisors, Mark Jancovich and Brett Mills who have offered me invaluable advice and guidance throughout the past three years. Thank you also to my MA supervisor Jann Matlock for her support and encouragement with the project proposal. I am grateful to the extremely helpful staff at the British Film Institute library and the British Library for all their assistance with my research. I would like to thank my fellow School of Film, Television and Media PhD students for their collegiality and useful feedback in our work in progress seminars. Thanks are also due to the critical writing workshop group – particularly Kate Jones, Kelvin Knight, Stephen Mitchell, Tim Jones and Ed Clough – for their insightful feedback on early versions of several chapters of the thesis. I am extremely grateful to Nina Mickwitz and Sophie Halliday for their superb work proofreading and providing comments on the whole thesis in its final stages and especially for Thursday night drinks. I must also extend heartfelt thanks to a great many friends and family who have given me their support throughout this process, and I apologise for not being in touch as much as I would have liked. Special thanks to Rachel Eddy, Sarah Ross and Jo Phillips for hosting me in London, coming to visit Norwich and for some brilliant and much-needed holidays from the thesis! I am also hugely grateful to Dr Maria Thomas for her constant encouragement, generous advice on all aspects of academic life and general PhD camaraderie. And here is acknowledgment number two for Mat Croft, Tamar Nissin and Anthony Lloyd for their friendship and support. Special thanks are due to Matt Woody for his continuous support and interest in my project, helpful ideas and for moving to Norwich with me. To Sally, Graham, Carrie and Ellie Fuller, and Val and Roy Muscutt, I will always be grateful for your love and encouragement throughout my university career and for all the wonderful visits to Long Buckby, Lincoln, Heacham and San Felieu. 4 Introduction …they crossed sometime near noon the international boundary line into Mexico, State of Sonora, undifferentiated in its terrain from the country they quit and yet wholly alien and wholly strange.1 The US-Mexico border has been an iconic space in American film ever since movies were invented. As the Ringo Kid and Dallas head across the border into Mexico to start a new life at the end of Stagecoach (John Ford, 1939), the border becomes a space of renewal and hope where their romance can flourish. For South of the Border (George Sherman, 1939) starring Gene Autry’s singing cowboy, the border similarly offers the promise of romance, but while Autry serenades a beautiful senorita one moment, he is captured by Mexican revolutionaries the next. Mexico also became synonymous with ideas of revolution in films such as Vera Cruz (Robert Aldrich, 1954) and The Professionals (Richard Brooks, 1966) as American heroes head south of the border to join the revolution and test their political ambitions against those of the Mexican radicals. Additionally, crossing the US-Mexico border has often served as an escape from the regulations of American law. As Bart and Laurie tear south through the United States in Gun Crazy (Joseph H. Lewis, 1950), the international line harbours an elusive promise of escape from the police on their tail. But the border itself is also regulated, particularly for those seeking to head north into the United States, and films such as Border Incident (Anthony Mann, 1949) dramatise the exploitation and hardships faced by Mexican workers in the American south. Marked variously by barbed wire fences, border posts, rivers, immigration checkpoints, or by nothing at all, the US-Mexico border inhabits different forms in keeping with the different stories these films tell. With their themes of romance, revolution and regulation, this thesis seeks to understand what connects these films and what their relationship might be to the real US-Mexico border. The 1950s saw perhaps the largest number of American films set on and around the US-Mexico border of any period of the twentieth century.2 This thesis investigates why this concentration of films appeared at this time. It argues that rather than responding to the changes in policy and practice along the borderline taking place in the 1950s, these films engage with cold war