Film & History 40.
1: Book Reviews
Brian Dauth and the University
Press of Mississippi are to be
congratulated for this fine collection
of interviews, which should encourage
contemporary film scholars to
reconsider the contributions of Joseph
L. Mankiewicz to classical Hollywood
narrative during the studio era.
Ron Briley
Sandia Preparatory School
Albuquerque, New Mexico
___________________________
Dennis Broe.
Film Noir, American Workers, and
Postwar Hollywood.
University Press of Florida, 2009.
192 pages; $69.95.
Daniel Broe explores the film
noir crime and suspense story in the
mid-twentieth century, focusing not
exclusively on cinematographic
analysis but instead discussing the
plots in light of contemporary politics
as a reflection on the worker within
society at a given moment in time. In
a brief preface, Boer notes that the
book began in the Clinton-era 1990s
as an examination of what seemed like
a distant past—until with 9/11 he
found that “we are again in an
undeclared war, the war on terror,
where in an even more concerted way
than in the previous cold war, we are
constantly reminded that this unseen,
unknowable menace can strike at any
moment.” (xi) There is no clear
dividing line between past and
present. Instead, public fear recurs
periodically taking on new names, the
invisible threat having currently
passed from the communist to the
terrorist.
Broe’s book is an intriguing
interdisciplinary approach to the social
sciences and the humanities. Labor
unrest, Great Depression, World
War II, and HUAC certainly were
significant moments in U.S. history,
which makes it all too plausible that
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they would be reflected—more or
less directly—in a public media meant
to entertain the paying masses. Broe
suggests, “the film noir tough-guy
language, which is often read as
simply the protagonist’s cynicism, is
explicitly presented as a contesting the
integrity of a working-class position
when confronted with the raw power
of an opposing class.” [69] Then again,
“Just as the empire Western […]
positioned the spectator behind the
barrel of a rifle firing at the Native
American (and metaphorically taking
aim at the budding anticolonial
movements) […], so too the crime
film positioned its viewer behind the
wheel of the squad car responding to
an all-points bulletin in a working-
class neighborhood.” [87-8]
Broe discovers different
successive phases of Film Noir up to
the high point of the McCarthy Era
and subsequently follows the Neo-
Noir through the 1980s and 1990s to
the Bush II administration. Depending
on the general sentiment (such as
moments when the public sentiment
shifted to a climate of public paranoia,
as was the case at the onset of the
Cold War), protagonists in the Film
Noir would shift from sympathy-
inspiring fugitives to hard-boiled law
enforcers, thus shifting from a
questioning law-enforcement to
almost giving it a cart-blanche. Broe’s
wry conclusion for the post 9/11
film: “Be afraid, be very afraid, and
never ask why.” [125]
Broe structures his concise book
into five main chapters: the Home
Front detective as dissident lawman (-
or, politically correct, -woman)
followed by two chapters entitled
Noir Part I and Noir Part II, of which
the first deals with socialism, and the
second with “Fugitive Kinds.” The
fourth chapter explores McCarthyite
crime films. The final chapter is
devoted to Neo-Noirers. In an
appendix starting on page 129, Broe
Film & History 40.1: Book Reviews
lists crime films for each of the Noir
periods that he defined. The chapters
typically start out with a few remarks
as to historical context followed by
examples including more or less
detailed plot synopses. In discussing
Neo-Noirers, Broe includes Errol
Morris’ 1988 The Thin Blue Line,
which is actually a documentary
tracing the story of a man on death
row who was innocently convicted of
murder; as all of Morris’ films, it is a
sophistical art work in itself far
removed from traditional fact-
recounting documentaries.
Due to its brevity, the book can
necessarily be but a glimpse,
reminding us of a more and more
widespread practice in U.S. academia
of publishing in book-format what
should have been brilliant but concise
articles. As they say: I am writing you a
long letter because I did not have the time
to write a short one. Broe’s book also
points to another problem of the
American academe: the tendency
introspectively to focus on national
U.S. historiography without regard
for the outside world. Film Noir, as the
French name suggests, obviously has
foreign roots. Why would an art form
in America take on this French name
to depict the American worker? In the
nineteenth and first half of the
twentieth century, the U.S. labor
movement was actually carried by a
huge immigration population.
Socialism and communism were
brewed up in Europe and traveled
across the Atlantic aboard the
immigrant vessel. As sources from
Russian archives revealed in the
1990s, the communist underground in
the U.S. did have strong ties with the
Soviet Union from its very inception.
But the hysteria of the Red Scares in
1919 and again in the late 1940s
nonetheless unduly exaggerated the
actual threat.
Broe’s book is a starting point,
and it is to be hoped that in the
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future, there will be more
comprehensive analyses, focusing on
achieving an ever-closer synthesis of
different disciplines, such as history
and film studies
Anja Becker
Vanderbilt University
anja.becker@Vanderbilt.edu
___________________________
Allan Havis.
Cult Films: Taboo and
Transgression.
University Press of America, 2008.
119 pages; $21.95.
Difficult to pin down precisely,
the cult film has a special relationship
with its audiences. As Allan Havis
argues it is an experience that is at
once nostalgic and ephemeral, but “no
one agrees, about the top selection of
such benchmark films.” While Havis is
quick to point out the obvious cult
(and camp) champion, The Rocky
Horror Picture Show (1975), he wisely
does not dwell there, given the
attention it has already received.
Instead, his selection of three key cult
films made in each decade from the
1920s to the 2000s allows him a broad
perspective. This results in some
omissions beyond Rocky Horror that
Havis points out in the introduction.
He is quick to convey that he wants to
“rule out any archival encyclopedia for
the sheer avoidance of the drudgery of
cataloguing”, but in doing so, Havis
probably engages in too much
mentioning’ of cult films in place of
analytical insight.
This is not to say that Havis’
remarks about each of the chosen
twenty-seven films are not discerning.
On the contrary, his lucid, although
sometimes too brief, observations
afford an incisive glimpse at the inner
machinations of cult films and their
followers. “The cult viewer,” he
writes, “slips beyond the usual ways of
seeing, sensing, and empathizing with