Laurent Bouzereau, Becoming Hitchcock: The Legacy of Blackmail, TCM

Kevin Brianton

Senior Adjunct Research Fellow, La Trobe University, Melbourne

Becoming Hitchcock: The Legacy of Blackmail (2022) holds a unique and important place within Hitchcock scholarship. The feature-length documentary examines Blackmail (1929), Hitchcock’s first sound film. This movie is now seen as a key work of British cinema. However, as the title suggests, Bouzereau’s project argues that many of Alfred Hitchcock’s signature directing techniques were developed with this film.

The most obvious criticism of the documentary is that Blackmail was not his first Hitchcockian film. In the 1920s, Hitchcock worked on many different types of films, but the origin of the title “Master of Suspense” is often associated with The Lodger (1926). Hitchcock himself considered it his first film in the genre that would define his career. Many agree with him. The film historian Henry K. Miller has championed The Lodger as his starting point, most recently in the book of essays Re-Viewing Hitchcock (2025), describing it as “Hitchcock’s First True Movie.” Miller outlines numerous critics over the decades who argued along similar lines. For example, Paul Rotha, in the influential The Film Till Now (1930), saw the pair of films as key stepping stones in Hitchcock’s development. In sharp contrast to these views, Bouzereau offers a compelling counterpoint through this documentary.

The film’s plot centres on Alice White, played by Anny Ondra, the daughter of a London shopkeeper, who quarrels with her police detective boyfriend, Frank Webber, played by John Longden. In a rebellious mood, she goes out with a charming artist, Mr. Crewe, played by Cyril Ritchard, who takes her to his studio. When he tries to rape her, Alice kills him in self-defense with a bread knife. The next day, the body is discovered, and Frank is assigned to investigate the murder. He finds Alice’s glove at the scene and realizes she is the killer. He secretly covers up that evidence. However, a petty criminal named Tracy, played by Donald Calthrop, witnesses Alice with the artist and gets the other glove as proof. He tries to blackmail both Alice and Frank. When Tracy’s scheme falls apart, he is suspected of the murder. A dramatic chase happens through the British Museum. The film ends with Tracy’s accidental death and an uneasy resolution: Alice feels she must confess to the authorities, but she is stopped at the last moment. Frank and Alice must face the consequences of their obstruction of justice, leaving their future uncertain.

Hitchcock’s early work is explored through this documentary, revealing various aspects of his emerging cinematic talent. The first part focuses on the transition from silent to sound cinema. Blackmail was released in both versions since it was made right at this pivotal moment in 1929. Hitchcock’s impressive ability to adapt to new technology is clear in the film’s most famous scene, where Alice hears a neighbour’s gossip that gradually becomes a distorted chorus repeating the word “knife.” Despite the challenges of this awkward new technology, Hitchcock showed he could be innovative. Others faced even greater difficulties. The female lead, Anny Ondra, had a strong Czech accent, so she had to be dubbed for the sound version. Ultimately, she moved to Germany to continue her acting career.

The documentary then shifts to other recurring themes in Hitchcock’s films that would dominate his cinema for the next 40 years. The first theme was that of an accused, but innocent person. The documentary shows that, starting with this work, themes of personal guilt emerge and are projected onto others. Alice’s guilt is indirectly transferred when her boyfriend, a Scotland Yard detective, frames the blackmailer for the murder. A blurred line then exists between justice and vigilante action. In Blackmail, the “hero” breaks the law, complicating the moral landscape. In his later work, Hitchcock repeatedly questions the nature of crime and punishment. In Dial M for Murder (1954), the husband plans the “perfect crime,” and almost defeats the legal system. In Strangers on a Train (1951), Bruno acts on Guy’s suppressed desire. In Psycho (1960), Norman Bates disposes of a body to protect his ‘mother.’

Alice becomes caught in a web of shame and fear while another innocent person is hunted. This theme is arguably central to Hitchcock’s work. From The 39 Steps (1935) through to North by Northwest (1959), Hitchcock enjoyed placing an ordinary individual in extraordinary, dangerous situations where they are wrongly accused or implicated. The documentary shows that these ideas re-emerge in I Confess (1953), where a priest bears guilt for a murder. In Vertigo (1958), another police detective, Scottie, falsely feels guilt over Madeleine’s death while being manipulated by others.

Two final points support the idea that it is Hitchcock’s first true film. Alice is almost certainly the prototype of the “Hitchcock Blonde.” She is attractive, takes a risk by entering the artist’s studio, and her actions drive the entire story. Alice is a more vulnerable, morally complex character caught in a web of her own making. The documentary examines the famous scene where Alice is assaulted by the artist, which, for the time, nearly crossed the boundaries of sexual violence. It marks the beginning of the glamorous, elegant, often cold or mysterious blonde, a figure central to the film’s themes of danger and desire: Madeleine/Judy in Vertigo, Eve Kendall in North by Northwest, and Melanie in The Birds. They are both objects of fascination and threats.

The first use of landmarks in a climactic chase occurred in this film, a technique that would become a staple of his cinema. In Blackmail, it takes place on the dome of the British Museum, a public landmark, which is transformed into a tense, surreal arena for a chase and a death. His fellow director, Michael Powell, claims some credit for suggesting the idea. Hitchcock would go on to famously use iconic locations to heighten suspense: Mount Rushmore and the United Nations building in North by Northwest, and the Statue of Liberty in Saboteur (1942).

In the documentary, Blackmail serves as a blueprint for the Hitchcock universe. It highlights his central obsession: the fragility of ordinary life and how quickly a simple decision can turn a person into a nightmare of guilt, accusation, and moral confusion, all conveyed through a masterful, subjective visual style. Overall, the film emphasizes the idea of an auteur’s work. The title Becoming Hitchcock is straightforward, implying a destined path for the British director. This perspective overlooks the more chaotic, chance-driven nature of artistic growth. Opportunities appeared, and Hitchcock seized them fully. The influence of writers, actors, and camera operators is quietly downplayed. While his wife Alma Reville, producers, and screenwriters are mentioned, the documentary’s narrative focuses on Hitchcock’s individual genius overcoming all obstacles. For film students, it offers an engaging introduction to the foundational elements of Hitchcock’s cinema. Bouzereau’s Becoming Hitchcock: The Legacy of Blackmail is a well-crafted piece of popular film history that succeeds in its primary goal: establishing Blackmail as the foundational text of Hitchcock’s career and demonstrating, with compelling visual evidence, the development of his signature style.

A note on availability: Blackmail was restored in 2024, building on earlier preservation work. Bouzereau’s documentary is featured on DVD sets of Hitchcock’s silent films, on various streaming platforms. It has been broadcast on channels like TCM. It was screened at the British Film Festival at Palace Cinemas in Australia.

New book reviews

Kevin Brianton

Adjunct Senior Adjunct Research Fellow and Book Review Editor for Film and History

Mty reviews for the Winter 2025 edition

Policing Show Business: J. Edgar Hoover, the Hollywood Blacklist, and Cold War Movies by Francis MacDonnell

K Brianton – Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2025

Francis MacDonnell begins a careful analysis of Cold War cinema.

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976847

Hollywood Unions ed. by Kate Fortmueller and Luci Marzola

K Brianton – Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2025

Kate Fortmueller and Luci Marzola have an ambitious approach to Hollywood
Unions. They have compiled a set of essays that examine the full range of Hollywood
industrial organizations from the silent era to the present day.

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976848

John Ford at Work: Production Histories 1927–1939 by Lea Jacobs

K Brianton – Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2025

Lea Jacobs looks at the great auteur through the lens of his production histories.

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976849

Rethinking the Cinematic Cold War: The Struggle for Hearts and Minds Goes Global ed. by Stefano Pisu, Francesco Pitassio and Maurizio Zinni

K Brianton – Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2025

When film historians write about the cinematic Cold War, their focus has largely been
on blacklisting in the American film industry or on Hollywood films that depict
communism in one way or another. Three Italian academics think otherwise.

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976850

Quisling: The Final Days and Number 24

Kevin Brianton, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, La Trobe University

This year’s Scandinavian Film Festival in Australia witnesses the release of two Norwegian historical dramas about the Second World War. The first film is Quisling: The Final Days, directed by Erik Poppe, a psychological study of Nazi collaborator Vidkun Quisling’s final days and execution. The second is Number 24, directed by John Andreas Andersen, based on the real-life story of World War II resistance fighter Gunnar Sønsteby.

Poppe’s film, which had the Norwegian title of Quislings Siste Dager, adopts an uncompromising approach to historical drama, confining itself almost entirely to Quisling’s prison cell during his 1945 trial and execution. The director uses many visual metaphors of confinement, such as bars, shadows, and tight compositions. His claustrophobic character study of Quisling examines the psychological collapse of infamous collaborator Vidkun Quisling, whose surname is now a byword for traitor. Quisling’s psychological intensity comes from psychosis, which we see through his pastor, Peder Olsen, who is played by the understated Anders Danielsen Lei.

Quisling has one central predecessor in *Downfall* (2004). Image courtesy of eMovieposter.com.

The film has one central predecessor in Downfall (2004), famous for its mesmerising central performance of Bruno Ganz as Adolf Hitler as the Third Reich begins to disintegrate. In both Downfall and Quisling: The Final Days, directors Oliver Hirschbiegel and Erik Poppe explore the psychology of fascist collaborators in their final moments. Both films employ claustrophobic storytelling to explore how authoritarian figures confront impending defeat, not with remorse, but with escalating denial.

In the German film, the physical structure of Hitler’s world is under assault from Russian artillery as he disintegrates. Downfall depicts Hitler’s last days in the Führerbunker, and during the film, Bruno Ganz’s portrayal reveals a tyrant oscillating between rage and delusion. Downfall shows the Nazi regime’s apocalyptic end through multiple perspectives, while Quisling sets apart its subject, making his isolation a metaphor for moral bankruptcy. Similarly, Quisling traps its protagonist in a prison cell. We, basically, only see Quisling through the eyes of his reluctant pastor, Peder Olsen. Yet the differences between the films are revealing. In a similar mould to Ganz, Gard B. Eidsvold produces a serpentine Quisling convinced of his noble actions, despite all evidence to the contrary. He is even escorted to the graves of those whom the Nazi regime slaughtered and remains unmoved. Eidsvold’s performance reveals a deeply deluded bureaucrat clinging to his self-image as Norway’s misunderstood saviour. The film’s power does not grant Quisling either redemption or even a dramatic breakdown – he meets his fate still mired in denial. “I am innocent,” he shouts to his executioners. Quisling almost personifies Hannah Arendt’s concept of the “banality of evil.” A mediocre and limited man at best, entirely out of his depth.

As a result, they illuminate fascism’s twin pathologies of megalomania and bureaucratic cowardice. The films illustrate how corrupting systems can influence individuals – and how those individuals, when cornered, often choose self-delusion over reckoning. Both films reject redemption arcs, instead showing how ideology distorts reality until death. Stylistically, the films share a commitment to psychological realism over spectacle. Downfall’s bunker and Quisling’s prison cell become microcosms of collapsing worlds, with tight framing emphasizing entrapment.

In sharp contrast, Andersen’s resistance drama Number 24 celebrates the calculated heroism of saboteur Gunnar Sønsteby, who is played by Sjur Vatne Brean. The young Sønsteby is clear-headed, cold-hearted, and ruthlessly efficient. His meticulous planning and extraordinary personal self-control make him an ideal conduit for the English to provide money, weapons, and targets to the resistance.

Andersen structures his resistance drama around an elderly Sønsteby, played by Erik Hivju, who recounts his wartime experiences to students. This framing device creates increasing tension between past heroics and present trauma, as the aging saboteur visibly struggles with what he calls “the fifth drawer in his mind,” where memories are locked away. The dynamic shifts between past and present, alternating between exciting sabotage scenes and painful current reflections on the morality of resistance violence.

Sønsteby’s strict self-control is an essential survival tactic, but even his remarkable resilience is tested when a young student confronts him about wartime executions of Norwegian collaborators. The film begins with friends skiing and debating book burning. It ends by focusing on a letter, which is now in a museum, to the German authorities by one of the friends denouncing the other. The letter leads to the writer’s execution.

Number 24 has many links to Melville’s Army of Shadows (1969). Image courtesy of eMovieposter.com.

It has many links to Melville’s Army of Shadows (1969), as both films strip resistance movements of Hollywood heroism, revealing the psychological toll of clandestine warfare. Melville filmed the resistance in a similar vein to gangster noir: with shadowy safe houses, trench coats, and agonizing silences. Andersen, by contrast, cuts between Sønsteby’s sabotage missions and his elderly self’s post-traumatic stress disorder. Both films explore the problematic issue of executing traitors within the resistance. In both films, executing a traitor is portrayed as a necessary action, even if the person is a friend or someone admired. Number 24 questions this approach when students challenge Sønsteby’s assassinations with alternatives such as non-violent approaches. His response was “Gandhi didn’t face the Nazis,” but the framing device makes the audience question his answer, even though the student’s question seems almost naively simple.

Both films critique national myths: Melville’s Army of Shadows is a chain of betrayals, and its “heroes” are all doomed by the war’s end. Andersen’s Sønsteby is not doomed and is celebrated as a national hero, but the film lingers on his trauma—his “fifth drawer” of memories suggesting heroism and suffering are inseparable. Quisling and Number 24 arrive in an era eager to interrogate historical narratives. Together, they prove that the truest war films aren’t about glory—they’re about what it costs to survive. Melville’s film is a eulogy for the resistance, while Andersen’s is a dialogue between past and present, but both refuse to romanticize war.

Released together at the Scandinavian Film Festival in Australia, these films offer Norwegian cinema’s most nuanced reckoning about the Second World War in years. Quisling forces viewers to sit with a collaborator’s uncomfortable humanity, while Number 24 complicates noble resistance heroism with psychological scars. Where Poppe shows evil as mundane, Andersen reveals heroism as traumatic.

As Europe faces new threats to democracy, these Norwegian films provide a crucial perspective on collaboration, resistance, and their enduring personal costs. Their contrasting approaches address current concerns about moral compromise during times of crisis. Quisling warns how easily ordinary men justify atrocity, while Number 24 questions what violence freedom requires – and who bears its enduring wounds. Both films ultimately suggest that war’s moral questions are complex, whether examining perpetrators or heroes. These films are examples of powerful historical cinema that engage viewers and challenge them to confront the complexities of the past, rather than providing simple lessons. Both these films form a compelling depiction of Norwegian wartime morality – one exploring the banality of evil through a collaborator’s final days, the other interrogating the costs of righteous violence through a freedom fighter’s memories.

Second Victims

Kevin Brianton, Senior Adjunct Research Fellow, La Trobe University

Det andet offer was released in Denmark in 2025, and the film is now showing at the Scandinavian Film Festival in Australia under the English title: Second Victims. The title of the film, Second Victims, refers to the condition that care workers suffer when patients are hurt or injured by their actions.

The film opens with a series of targets positioned next to the central character, Alexandra, played by Özlem Saglanmak, as if to suggest she is on a firing range. The image is perfectly apt, as the film is set in an understaffed stroke unit, where there is unrelenting pressure, a lack of resources, and near-exhausted staff. In this environment, Alexandra, who portrays a highly skilled and self-assured neurologist, appears to have unwavering confidence. She seems to be juggling a massive number of patients with complex conditions, all demanding immediate attention, while also dealing with the hospital’s financial problems, along with personal pressures that combined would turn any normal person into a frazzled wreck. She initially deals with one desperately sick patient in a highly efficient manner. Racing between patients, she examines and releases another young patient who appears fine. This calm facade is shattered when a second and apparently minor case spirals into tragedy due to her critical misjudgment.

Director Zinnini Elkington follows Alexandra around the ward with a hand-held camera employing long takes, which gives the film a cinema verité or documentary edge. This hospital world appears to be out of kilter, but she somehow manages to maintain control. She must then deal with junior doctors, whose advice she spurned, panicky surgeons, nurses, hospital administrators who want everything resolved immediately, and even police investigating an assault.

Alexandra faces the horror of professional disgrace and personal disintegration as she deals with the grief of a patient’s relatives and her own. Özlem Saglanmak delivers a strong performance as Alexandra, as she moves through the various stages of guilt, denial, and eventual acceptance. The sterile and cold hues of the hospital are punctuated by deliberate splashes of red in scenes where Alexandra faces her most unstable moments, effectively mirroring her internal turmoil.

The supporting cast, including Trine Dyrholm as the grieving mother, provides some astonishing emotional depth. One scene where an organ donor form is given to the parents, minutes after their son’s death, has an awful ring of authenticity to it. The system demands that forms be filled out, regardless of the emotional consequences.

^{Robert Donat appears as a revered doctor in The Citadel (1938). Image courtesy of Emovieposter.}

The film represents a departure from the traditional notion of a doctor possessing almost superhuman ethics, knowledge and ability. In The Citadel (1938), a young doctor, played by Robert Donat, struggles between wealth and serving a poor mining community. He ends as a noble and heroic figure serving the people of the community. Also released in the 1930s, the Dr. Kildare series was a popular collection of films that morphed into a highly successful TV show, centered around an idealistic young doctor, Dr. James Kildare, and his mentor, the gruff but wise Dr. Leonard Gillespie. Doctors represented a fixture of certainty in the community. Their skills are never really questioned. Many shows have followed this trend.

Second Victims goes beyond these traditional medical dramas to create a story about accountability, compassion, and the shared vulnerability of humanity. As one character says, “The only thing we don’t have control over is death. Not even doctors can help us with that.” Director and writer Zinnini Elkington uses Second Victims to examine a system under immense pressure, studying the individuals caught within it with great sympathy. A quote near the end of Second Victims is that every doctor has a “graveyard.” It is a reminder of the pressure medical staff face on a daily basis.

Second Victims examines a health system and the individuals caught within it. There is no readily identifiable villain; it is a blur of accountability, including our impossibly high expectations of the health system. We are asking doctors to be gods, and we set out to destroy them when they are just fallible human beings.

Second Victims is currently being shown at the 2025 Scandinavian Film Festival. Kevin Brianton was a guest at the premiere of this film.

Nick Davis, Competing with idiots: Herman and Joe Mankiewicz, a dual portrait

Alfred A. Knopf, 2021

By Kevin Brianton, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, La Trobe University

The unspoken presence in Nick Davis’s dual biography of Herman and Joseph Mankiewicz is a similar book by Sydney Stern, who published an extensive and well-received dual biography in 2019. Writing a book that covers the same ground only two years after such an impressive work is crazy brave. However, Nick Davis has some grounds to revisit the area. He is writer Herman Mankiewicz’s grandson and great-nephew to the director Joseph Mankiewicz. He is part of their story. Davis conducted many original interviews with people close to the family over 18 years, beginning in the 1970s, so there is a clear promise of different and exciting insights. It seems readily apparent that the two writers worked separately and arrived at their conclusions independently. In any event, Stern is not mentioned in the select bibliography. This approach represents a lost opportunity, as it would have been good to see how Davis responded to Stern’s various claims. What was true, what was false, what was overemphasized, and what had been missed? No biography is definitive. Instead, Davis appears to have consciously decided to avoid commenting on Stern’s work.

This lapse is disappointing, but his efforts as a historian are more concerning. The flaws in his approach can be seen in the coverage of one of the critical incidents in Joseph Mankiewicz’s life. His dispute with Cecil B. DeMille over mandatory loyalty oaths during the Red Scare period is the stuff of Hollywood legends. It resulted in a highly publicized meeting where directors eventually voted to dismiss the board. John Ford said that he made westerns at the meeting. Among a host of stinging accusations, Mankiewicz accused DeMille of making anti-Semitic slurs during his speech to the meeting.

For such a momentous meeting, his account contains a lot of errors. Some are minor and should have been picked up by any self-respecting copy editor. Davis writes that a committee meeting was held on 11 October 1951 (233), just before the climactic meeting of 22 October 1950, (234). Getting a date wrong is a minor error in a long book, but it does not augur well for the rest of the account. Davis mainly quotes secondary sources and dated ones at that. He bases his chapter on the meeting on Kenneth Geist’s biography of Mankiewicz, People Will Talk, published in 1978. Davis goes so far as to describe it as one of the pillars of the entire work. He also looks at a newspaper article written in 1998 by Greg Mitchell, summarising a section in his 1991 book. It also includes a piece by James Ulmer for the Directors Guild of America. Ulmer’s commentary has appeared in various versions on the Directors Guild of America website over the years. These accounts accuse DeMille of a host of offenses.

In researching the meeting, Davis did not access the Joseph Mankiewicz papers, which have been publicly available since 2014. He could have examined the meeting’s stenographic transcript at the Margaret Herrick Library in Los Angeles, which directly refutes many of these accusations. After reading the transcript, the acclaimed film historian Kevin Brownlow updated his documentary on DeMille because he could see that Mankiewicz had made dubious claims. Even then, he could have looked at Scott Eyman’s biography of Cecil B. DeMille, written in 2010, which debates and dismisses many of these claims. He could have looked at my specialist study released in 2016. To add to matters, Davis did not even deal with Geist’s criticisms of Mankiewicz for his actions at the meeting. He concludes Joe Mankiewicz is simply a ‘good man.’

The director, George Stevens, was also heavily involved with the meeting. Another recent family account of George Stevens, written by his son George Stevens Jr., repeated these accusations. At least, he also admitted that historians raised some doubts. Stevens Jr. eventually acknowledged he was ‘printing the legend’. Davis has no such qualms. The story Davis tells is basically that developed by Joseph Mankiewicz in the late 1970s and early 1980s when memories were blurred with bitterness. It became a Hollywood legend, but it is now discredited.

The flaws in this section underpin a problem with the research throughout the book. Davis says that most of the interviews were conducted from the early 1970s for a period of about 18 years, meaning he must have completed the oral history section before the year 2000. His select bibliography appears impressive, with close to 100 works cited. Yet, Davis references only three books that were released after 2010. One is a memoir by his relative Tom Mankiewicz in 2012; the second is Ben Urwand’s The Collaboration, released in 2013; the third Richard Sandomir’s book on creating the Pride of the Yankees, published in 2017. The secondary research seems to have ground to a halt more than a decade before the book’s publication, and recent discoveries are just not mentioned. It is not just Stern that has been ignored but also many other important writers. The book represents a lost opportunity to fuse his valuable interviews with contemporary research.

Putting aside these concerns about his research, Davis is far stronger at family dynamics. His interviews have yielded a lot of valuable information. We gain an insight into the private lives of these two men as they dealt with their issues and the machinations of Hollywood. His recollections and family interviews explain these key figures in Hollywood. Even so, his flawed approach to research has resulted in a highly uneven book of doubtful quality.

“The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers” (University Press of Kentucky, 2008) by Mark T. Conard

Dimitris Passas

Standing in the intersection between philosophical reasoning and popular culture, the series of books that have been published under the general title “The Philosophy of Popular Culture” delves into the deep waters of linking abstract thought with cultural theory and the result is a sequence of scholastic inquiries on a multitude of subjects, always remaining within the field of the ever-growing pop culture phenomenon. In addition to volumes devoted to the work of eminent artists such as Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, and David Cronenberg, there are also studies on the neo-noir movement in cinema, the legendary TV show X Files, and even on the relation between philosophical inquiry and sports such as tennis and football. Due to my particular fondness for the work of Joel and Ethan Coen, two true auteurs whose films left their distinct stamp on modern cinema, I chose to begin my first book in the series, that is The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers. It consists of a collection of 16 essays, divided into four parts each focusing on a more specified subject matter, and it is edited by Mark T. Conard who also authors the brief introduction in which we learn some general information regarding each section. Regarding the purpose of this collection, Conard writes: “This work investigates the philosophical themes and underpinnings of the films of these master filmmakers and uses the movies as a vehicle for exploring and explicating traditional philosophical ideas”.

Conard stresses that despite the presentation of several hard-to-grasp in their entirety philosophical concepts, the book is accessible to everyone and no former knowledge of the history of Western thought is required in order to comprehend the essays. Nevertheless, many readers, as I realized by reading some online reviews about the book, seem to think that there are some parts where the scholarly aspect is overtly heavy-handed and that was the reason why their ratings were mediocre. I was fortunate enough to be familiar with the majority of philosophers mentioned in the essays as my post-graduate studies were on philosophy, so I am not the most fitting individual to judge whether or not The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers is a widely accessible collection. Throughout the pages, one comes across the ideas and concepts conceived by some of the most renowned intellectuals that marked philosophical thought such as Aristotle, Plato, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Søren Kierkegaard, and the proponents of Existentialism, and numerous others whose influence on the discipline of philosophy is colossal and unanimously acknowledged. The authors of each essay are prudent enough to present their arguments simply and concisely and even obscure notions such as the Heideggerian “Dasein” are treated in such a way that a layman can understand their use in the specific context.

The Coen brothers’ oeuvre consists of more than 25 films and in the majority of them they are also screenwriters. Their debut took place in 1984 with the release of the iconic neo-noir Blood Simple, a film that adopted some of the most recognizable classic noir tropes combined with a touch of irony and dark humor that made it easier to stand apart from its predecessors. From then on, the duo has written and directed films of any genre and in their filmography, we come across gangster films, comedies, modern westerns, and most importantly some of the most shining examples of the neo-noir movement that helped to define and evolve the, relatively new, genre. The majority of essays featured in this collection analyze the Coens’ work from the perspective of the distinction between the two types of noir (classic and neo) and the reader obtains a comprehensive idea regarding the nuances between them. In the second essay of the first part, titled “The Human Comedy Perpetuates Itself: Nihilism and Comedy in Coen Neo-Noir”, Thomas S. Hibbs examines the effects of nihilism and pessimism in Coens’ films, employing Friedrich Nietzsche’s views on the subject in order to make clear his point that the fictional characters living and acting in imaginary settings in the brothers’ movies essentially inhabit an absurd universe, that is a world “divested of value, a world without hierarchies of meaning, a world of stark individual freedom”. The lack of any inherent purpose in the world had been one of the fundamental teachings of the Existentialists, a school of thought that underlined the desperation of a man who has lost any fixed point that would allow him to view life from a brighter perspective. Camus defines the absurd as “the divorce between the mind that desires and the world that disappoints, my nostalgia for unity, this fragmented universe and the contradiction that binds them together”.

While Nietzsche agrees with the Existentialists concerning the essential meaninglessness of the world, he is not advocating hopelessness and he doesn’t lament this fact as he sees it as an opportunity for the spirit to become empowered and for the man to acquire his own identity through the sheer power of his will. If we backtrack for a while, and re-examine the noir pictures of the 1940s and 1950s, we will realize that they embrace a pessimistic worldview as the characters, and especially the protagonist/hero, are bound to submit to the universal truths that will eventually crush him as an individual. In neo-noirs though, there is hope for the new type of hero who will implement his will, through the use of wits or force, to disengage himself from a dire predicament. Thus, he becomes an “active nihilist”, the type of new man who will be at the forefront of what Nietzsche calls the “transvaluation of values” and will construct his identity all by himself in a process that is personal as well as aesthetic. Hibbs summarizes the development of noir in time and the emergence of significant differences as follows: “Neo-noir’s greatest departure from classic noir consists in a turn to aristocratic nihilism. The most resourceful of these characters are in control of the noir plot, using their cunning and artistry to ensnare others”. The new human identity is aesthetically assembled through the endorsement of style.

Style is another aspect that differentiates the two types of noir and refers both to that conerning the characters of the stories and the actual form that the film obtains under the guidance of the director(s). All neo-noir films share the inclination to be too self-conscious in terms of their visual style in a way that prompts the audience to discern a comical side even in the grimmest of stories. Hibbs writes that “in neo-noir, the accentuation of hopelessness and the overtly self-conscious deployment of the artistic technique make the turn to dark comedy nearly inevitable”. Style becomes the actual subject of the film and the audience is invited to the artifice, to get in on the “joke”. Furthermore, as far as the characters are concerned, the acquisition of a personal style is something as essential as breathing to form a coherent sense of identity. In his article, “What Kind of Man Are You? The Coen Brothers and Existentialist Role Playing”, Richard Gaughran writes that “many Coen characters adopt a style, an aggregate of gestures, principally in order to define themselves, to create an identity”. There are more than a few examples of Coens’ protagonists to clarify that theory: “The Dude” Lebowski, Jerry Lundegaard, Everett McGill, the characters in Miller’s Crossing, and even more. Whether it is about the use of the correct hat in Miller’s Crossing, a hat which is inextricably linked with power within the story’s universe, Everett McGill’s obsession with his hair and a specific pomade, or Lebowski’s bohemian exterior, the endorsement of such peculiarities is more than crucial for these characters. In Paul Schrader’s words, it is within the confines of the absurd universe that “the style becomes paramount; it is all that separates one from meaninglessness”. If pre-fixed values are non-existent as nihilism claims, then it is the duty of the individual to build his own style and identity.

The Coens are also famous for their use of setting, and the choice of the right terrain for a modern noir to take place. They avoid big cities and as a rule, they go for small towns in the American countryside, with a clear preference for Texas, and they usually opt for a Western-like wilderness which reflects the cruelty of the stories. Gaughran underscores: “The setting becomes a character at least as important as any of the human characters”, while Paul Schrader, the acclaimed American screenwriter of films such as Taxi Driver and the man who adapted Nikos Kazantzakis’s novel The Last Temptation of Christ into a screenplay, argues, in his essay on film noir that the prominence of setting leads to a fatalistic, hopeless mood as the individual is always subject to its whims and caprices, rendering him a kind of a pawn in a game which he doesn’t understand: “Characters act freely, but they do so within an uncaring, hostile environment, that is, within the realm of the absurd”. The tyranny of the environment that surrounds the character amplifies his existential angst and often leads him to fateful decisions. Take, for example, the Fargo locale. It is a canvas of pure whiteness, so much that some define this movie as “film blanc” (“white movie”), that swallows the protagonist, the meek swindler Jerry Lundegaard who sees his life unravel after he decides to kidnap his own wife in order to get the bulky ransom from his father-in-law. Minnesota and North Dakota offered the best of backdrops for the Coens’ bleak story, one of the best neo-noirs of all time.

But there are also examples of movies such as No Country for Old Men, a film in which the brothers omitted the irony and the dashes of dark humor in favor of a more “serious” approach to the story, that merges the Western setting with the noir plotting. This movie lacks what is termed as “meta-irony”, one of the chief characteristics of the brothers’ earlier movies that refers to the “level of detachment, a sense that their movies were meant to be taken as just stories, that you should not take them too seriously”. “It was the first film created by the Coens that is based on a novel, one of Cormac McCarthy’s most popular works, and “it is and is not a classic western”. In one of the last essays of the collection, Richard Gilmore’s “No Country for Old Men: The Coens’ Tragic Western”, the author, in an attempt to correct an impression acquired by few regarding the importance of the character of Anton Chigurh, argues that this film, and the novel, revives the motifs that were first introduced in the Ancient Greek Tragedy. Chigurh is the embodiment of evil, “a walking abbatoir (…) he is like a modern version of the traditional figure of Death with his scythe”. Nevertheless, the focus is elsewhere. He supports this statement by writing that “what is of interest to McCarthy and the Coens is rather what happens when a good, but flawed, man encounters this force of nature in human guise”. This type of character arc is truly reminiscent of several tragedies where the tragic hero falls victim to his own hubris and gets punished despite, or exactly because, of his flaws and virtues. Llewelyn Moss is the modern tragic hero, a taciturn westerner who stumbles upon the scene of a massive shooting, the result of a drug deal gone wrong, and collects the bag of money that lies there.

By doing this, Llewelyn sets off a mechanism that will propel the plot of the story forward and seal his fate, as an experienced contract serial killer, Chigurh is charged with the task of retrieving the money. Llewelyn commits hubris as he oversteps his personal limits, paying no heed to the ancient Greek commandment “Know thyself”, and what follows is a journey of pain that concludes with his murder at the end of the movie. As Gilmore summarizes “his experience is a Greek tragedy in miniature”. Apart from that, there is something else that binds No Country for Old Men with tragedy and that is the element of fatalism, which is the belief that “you are what you do and that what you have done cannot be undone (…) that what you do, what you have decided, will have its natural consequences in the world, and there is no avoiding or evading these consequences”. In the Coens’ fictional universe, each action we take leads inevitably to a certain result and this is a reality that man has to face and accept in order to develop and grow. The voiceovers, where Sheriff Ed Tom Bell ponders on the human condition, further emphasize the above point and it is after the finale of the movie that we witness the inescapable progress of a predetermined story. The movie was a huge critical as well as commercial success, but perhaps Gilmore is right in stressing the misinterpretation, which partially stems from Javier Bardem’s stellar performance, that wants the character of Chigurh to be at the epicenter of the story.

Despite their embracement of a nihilistic worldview, the Coen brothers can be rightfully labeled as comic filmmakers mainly because of the levity by which they treat their characters: “Many of the absurd characters are entertaining and likable and even some of the Coens’ nihilistic destroyers are attractive for their defiant energy”. As it happens in several more recent productions, the villain, or the “evil antihero”, is portrayed as more interesting and alluring than the “good guys”, thus subverting the audiences’ expectations as “they mock properly human longing for justice, truth, and love”. Other characters, such as the “Dude” Lebowski choose to shrug off the seriousness and gravity of the existential void by living lightly and taking it easy, offering many instances of heartfelt laughter to the viewer: “His way of life affirms the equal significance or insignificance of all human endeavors”. “The Dude” is a hilarious protagonist and Big Lebowski is one of the most entertaining Coen brothers picture. In this review, I tried to present some of the most important points in my favorite essays, and the choice is strictly subjective. There are more mentally challenging essays involving prominent thinkers such as Heidegger Kierkegaard and others. The collection apparently covers all tastes. If you are into Coens’ cinema and also have a flair for the work of grand philosophers, then The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers is a must-read. I would also advise checking out the totality of the “Philosophy of Popular Culture” series as you will surely find some subjects that will entice you to promptly begin reading. This was one of the most informative and enlightening reads that I’ve had in a long time and I strongly recommend it.

The Dark Interval: Film noir, Iconography and Affect (review)

PADRAIC KILLEEN, 2022, New York, Bloomsbury, pp. 271, $162.00 (cloth)

Adjunct Senior Research Fellow Kevin Brianton, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia

Film noir is characterized by its dark and pessimistic atmosphere, typically depicting crime, corruption, and moral ambiguity. In The Dark Interval: Film Noir, Iconography and Affect,Padraic Killeen begins his book by arguing against a strict definition for film noir and for a passion towards the genre. It is a promising start. Killeen argues that ‘noir cinema has produced some of our culture’s most riveting images of the human in strange intervals of stillness, detachment and suspended time.’ Killeen hopes to draw these ideas out further by employing the work of various philosophers, critics, and thinkers across a wide range of disciplines. Killeen is careful to separate, “The protagonists of noir are people who lapse into crime, collapse into love, fall from grace, lose their way, lose their minds.” He wants to focus, however, on a ‘temporal lapse, [or] a lapse into a time that seems outside of time’. (p.8)

For full review see

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01439685.2023.2232151

The Wrath to Come: Gone with the Wind and the Lies America Tells

SARAH CHURCHWELL, 2022

London, Head of Zeus pp. 453, illus., $40.00 (cloth), $18.99 (paper)

Book review by Adjunct Senior Research Fellow Kevin Brianton, La Trobe University

One of the most immediate reactions to the attack on Congress on 6 January 2021 was complete bewilderment. People were at a loss to know where such violence came from or what it meant. America had a long tradition of transferring political power through elections without conflict or rancour. Some commentators considered Adolph Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch of 1923 as a point of comparison. In her outstanding book. The Wrath to Come: Gone With the Wind and the Lies America Tells, the cultural and political historian Sarah Churchwell looks for reasons far closer to home.

Full review:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01439685.2023.2232152

A Cosmic Coincidence: It’s A Wonderful Life and A Matter of Life and Death

Kevin Brianton, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, La Trobe University, Melbourne Australia

George Bailey learns the value of life in It’s A Wonderful life (1946.) Image courtesy of eMoviePoster.

In 1946, both the British and American people keenly felt the impact of death. In Britain, an estimated 384,000 soldiers were killed in combat during the Second World War, and 70,000 civilians died mainly due to German bombing raids during the Blitz. The United States had suffered more than 400,000 casualties across Asia and Europe. It is, therefore, unremarkable then that the cinema of the period responded to the possibility of life after death. Two movies attempted to bring the afterlife into focus, and both were released in 1946. Although different filmmakers made the films on opposite sides of the Atlantic, they share several similarities. The first film was the British film A Matter of Life and Death, and the second was It’s a Wonderful Life from Hollywood. Many observers have noted their similarities.[1]

The American film opens with people praying for a man named George Bailey, who is played by James Stewart. Bailey is a good man and widely respected in his community of Bedford Falls. Bailey appears to have met some severe problems and is contemplating suicide. The prayers come from all parts of the town and move out into space. A Senior Angel, Joseph, sends a Guardian Angel – Second Class, Clarence, to help save his soul. Clarence glimpses into Bailey’s life during the film’s first part of the film. Bailey begins as a young man dissatisfied with the slow pace of the small town in which he lives. George’s father tells him that it is a great honor to help people own houses and move on with their lives. Despite his best efforts, George is thwarted in his quest to travel the world at every turn. He is compelled to take over his father’s small-town bank and save it during a crisis. We look at his life which becomes a series of disappointments, and finally, the bank to which he had dedicated his life appears close to collapsing. The road to his suicide attempt is a tortured descent through a small-town purgatory. This America echoes Billy Wilder’s view in Double Indemnity that the nation was a land of “shattered hopes and twisted dreams.”

At the end of his tether, Bailey looks down from a bridge to a fast-flowing river, contemplating suicide. The river appears to be fiercely cold, as there are dark snow drifts on the banks of the river. It is a picture of suicidal gloom. Clarence moves beside him and jumps into the river ahead. Bailey is immediately shaken from his suicidal thoughts and jumps into the frozen river to save him. Yet director Frank Capra finds hope in this despair. Once George had rescued Clarence, he was shown by the angel how different his community would be without him. Bedford Falls becomes Pottersville, named after a rival banker, and descends into a living hell. Pottersville is swarming with bars, strip clubs, casinos, and pawn shops. Cops, traffic, lights, noise, and strangers fill the streets. It has a violent and ugly edge. George appears to have been an angel saving the town’s soul. The experience makes George realize his life’s value and how much he has impacted those around him. The message woven into the movie is the importance of kindness, compassion, and community. It says one individual can make a significant difference in the world, no matter how humble they appear. Hope exists in the bleakest moments. Another clear message is that following society’s moral rules will reward you in the afterlife. It is a simple reinterpretation of the message of Christian salvation.

A Matter of Life and Death explores the afterlife. Image courtesy of eMoviePoster.

The film’s opening of the cosmos is astonishingly similar to a British film, A Matter of Life and Death, directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. It was released in 1946 as well. Both films begin with a cosmic perspective, showing stars and galaxies in space. While in It’s a Wonderful Life, prayers float up to the heavens. In the British film, the opening show is of the universe, which seems to overwhelm the relatively minor conflict of the Second World War. The camera appears to move down from the heavens to earth and eventually to a single stricken bomber returning to base in the United Kingdom. The pilot Peter Carter talks to a wireless operator, June, and tells her he is finished because he does not have a parachute. Peter Carter, played by David Niven, miraculously survives a plane crash. He finds himself on the English beach, which he assumes is heaven. He falls in love with the operator but must fight for his right to stay alive on earth in a cosmic trial to live his life with her.

In both films, a character from another world guides the main character. In It’s a Wonderful Life, the guardian angel Clarence is sent to help George Bailey during a crisis. In contrast, A Matter of Life and Death sends Conductor 71 to guide RAF pilot Peter Carter in a different situation. The main character’s life is also altered by a physical supernatural intervention in both films. Even in small details, the films have strong similarities. At the end of A Matter of Life and Death, a book on chess is returned to Peter Carter; while Clarence leaves a signed copy of Tom Sawyer for George Bailey, saying he has earned his full angel’s wings.

The critical difference is that It’s A Wonderful Life depicts a benign system of angels who want to help the individual when they reach breaking point. It is fair to ask why they did not intervene earlier when Bailey prayed for help. In A Matter of Life and Death’s afterlife, a more hard-hearted legalistic, and cold-blooded bureaucracy processes people indifferently. Due to a mistake made by the administration, Peter Carter must face a trial for his life. He is granted a long life with June.

Their galactic vision allows these films to explore themes such as our place in the universe and the possibility of a greater cosmic order than we can comprehend. It explores the idea of fate, free will, and individual responsibility. Both films’ opening sequences establish these themes visually and thematically. Given the similarities, it is extraordinary that both films were made in the same year in different countries and could not have possibly influenced each other.

Even so, A Matter of Life and Death was possibly influenced by one film. Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941). Robert Montgomery plays boxer Joe Pendleton, who dies in a plane crash on his way to a championship match. Compared to Peter Carter in A Matter of Life and Death, Joe Pendleton was not meant to die and was brought to heaven too soon by an overeager angel. Claude Rains plays the angel’s boss, Mr. Jordan, who sends Joe back to earth in a body. Evelyn Keyes plays Bette Logan, an idealistic young woman with whom he falls in love.

Here Comes Mr. Jordan was clearly an influence on A Matter of Life and Death. Image courtesy of eMoviePoster.

Second chances and the afterlife are common themes between these two films. In both, characters make decisions that influence their fates in the celestial realm. Joe Pendleton’s chance to return to life and Mr. Jordan’s role as an angel overseeing the transition of souls are central to Here Comes Mr. Jordan. Both films blend fantasy elements with comedy and romance. Not to mention that the first step to heaven is a type of airport. While dealing with serious themes such as life, death, and love, they use humor to create a light-hearted and whimsical atmosphere. Characters in both films navigate between the mortal world and the afterlife, highlighting the importance of human links and the desire for a second chance.[2]

The central difference is that Here Comes Mr. Jordan picked up audience concerns about an approaching war, while A Matter of Life and Death and It’s A Wonderful Life addressed people who were well aware of the carnage.

[1] “A Matter of Life and Death Deserves a Place on Your Holiday Watch-list Alongside It’s A Wonderful Life,” 2018, accessed December 18,, https://www.tor.com/2018/12/19/a-matter-of-life-and-death-deserves-a-place-on-your-holiday-watch-list-alongside-its-a-wonderful-life/.

[2] A similar view is in: “Criterion Review: Here Comes Mr. Jordan,” 2016, https://cine-vue.com/2016/06/criterion-review-here-comes-mr-jordan.html.

‘We’ll Have No More Grapes of Wrath:’ The Origins, Rise and Impact of a Dubious Cinematic Anecdote

Kevin Brianton,

Grapes of Wrath was a controversial film on its release, and the controversy grew after the Second World War.

Image courtesy of eMoviePoster.com.

Kevin Brianton, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, La Trobe University

Eric Johnston, President of the Motion Picture Association of America, supposedly remarked ‘we’ll have no more Grapes of Wrath’ in response to an investigation by the House Committee on Un-American Activities into communism in the American film industry in 1947. Many film historians have employed the quotation as evidence that the investigation had created strict controls that led to fewer politically and socially motivated films in the United States in the 1950s. It has also linked Johnston to the highly conservative Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. However, the quotation was based on a suspect source and was possibly derived from material said or written by other people. Johnston may well have made this comment, but if so, the context of the comment has been ignored. A more nuanced interpretation is needed to assess Johnston’s views and actions.

Text of the full article is available at:

Kevin Brianton, “‘We’ll Have No More Grapes of Wrath:’ The Origins, Rise and Impact of a Dubious Cinematic Anecdote,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television (2023),https://doi.org/10.1080/01439685.2023.2193043, https://doi.org/10.1080/01439685.2023.2193043.