Movie Monday

Just when I spend a good portion of Saturday thinking up my coda for this segment on 1930s Hollywood movies and its treatment of the rich, Frank Rich (now there’s an irony) writes an “Awake and Sing!” column for the Sunday New York Times (4/12/09):

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/opinion/12rich.html?ref=global *

and ties up everything as I was going to, but so much better.

I guess I should be grateful since I would have had to join two eras together, the 1930s Depression and the 21st century Depression. Now, I can just concentrate on my primary topic: Hollywood Depression Movies and the Rich.

I'll finish up my look at the 1930s Hollywood movie this Monday with a look at the two last years, ‘38 and ‘39.

Adventure:
The Four Feathers (1939)
Gunga Din (1939)
Drums Along the Mohawk (1939)
Beau Geste (1939)
Test Pilot (1938)
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
Biography:
Young Mr. Lincoln (1939)
Children’s Movie:
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Comedy/Drama:
You Can't Take It With You (1938)
Holiday (1938)
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
Crime:
The Roaring Twenties (1939)
Angels With Dirty Faces (1938)
Drama (as a catch-all):
Jezebel (1938)
Boys Town (1938)
Algiers (1938)
The Women (1939)
Love Affair (1939)
Drama with Comedy:
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
Drama with Hankies:
Dark Victory (1939)
Four Daughters (1938)
Foreign Language Film:
The Rules of the Game (1939)
Movie based on Classic Work:
Wuthering Heights (1939)
Of Mice and Men (1939)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)
Pygmalion (1938)
Movie based on Popular Book:
Gone With the Wind (1939)
Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)
The Citadel (1938)
Musical:
Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938)
Mystery: The Lady Vanishes (1938)
Western: Stagecoach (1939)
Destry Rides Again (1939)

Source: http://www.filmsite.org/filmh.html

Not a complete list, of course, but the pattern remains the same. Hollywood was playing it safe with movies from popular or classic works. Pre-Code sex had been replaced by “culture.”

Rich people had prominent roles in most of these movies. In one, You Can’t Take It With You, Lionel Barrymore shows the wealthy Edward Arnold that he, Arnold, is not a happy man. However, though the rich may be shown as hollow and greedy in these movies unless they acquired their money through crime their wealth remained intact as the credits roll.

Which, unless someone has other facts, leads me to conclude my original premise was right: Hollywood gave the rich a “pass” during the Great Depression of the 1930s. And, moving right into hyperbole: Thus saving capitalism for the western world.

Which brings me to Alfred Hitchcock and Saboteur made in 1942. Three years removed from this decade, Hitchcock in one scene captures the cold-blooded, calculated, hypocritical demeanor of the rich that no 1930s movie came close to.

In many ways by categorizing Hitchcock as a director of thrillers, we miss his true gift: upsiding our calm, comfortable lives and showing us the underbelly of the beast which lives there. Whether it’s the banter about poisons in Shadow of a Doubt while a true criminal walks among them or the long, tedious attempt by two “good” people to kill someone quietly in Torn Curtain, Hitchcock gets the human condition right: even the best of us, or those who think we are the best of us, who struggle to get things right on this darkling plain are always surrounded by the banality of evil and many, many times will lose or be corrupted in our battle with it.

Wow! How did this blog get so dark? Maybe because I finally “saw” the scene in Saboteur with Otto Kruger sitting on Mrs. Sutton’s ornate sofa in that ornate room upstairs from that ornate ballroom which rivaled Penn Station in size.

It’s a continuous shot; just Kruger talking to the unseen hero, Robert Cummings, and telling him he’s a quixotic fool to think he can do battle with the power Kruger and his rich friends control.

Of course, Hitchcock couches it all in the patriotism of WWII. Kruger and his ilk are traitors, enemies of the state. But this scene is classic because it is Kruger’s speech that is timeless and ironically the patriotic retort by Cummings seems so dated.

In our day, reading about the Wall Street bailouts, the Wall Street salaries, the Wall Street greed, you can see Kruger’s “you are mere peons” smirk. And while Hitchcock moves our attention quickly away from the machinations of the rich to the thrilling scenes with Norman Lloyd - in the radio truck, in the movie theater, on the Statue of Liberty (talk about patriotism), we shouldn't forget that Kruger does walk away from this mess. He does get to frolic in Havana. His reward may be off-screen but there is no mistaking what Hitchcock is saying to us, the mere peons.

So go read Rich’s column. Rent Saboteur. When you watch movies take a look at their treatment of the rich. Or better still, take a look at the news and information television channels. How do they treat the rich?

Ralph Ellison in The Invisible Man had the grandfather say that the white man will always make the black man chase his tail. The rich are doing that to all of us.


*While the comments in The Huffington Post were positive in regard to Rich’s column, many commenters related that both he and Maureen Dowd “trashed” Al Gore during the 2000 U.S. election campaign.