The Quiet American (1958, 2002)

Sometimes the remake of a movie is set in the year in which it is made, which requires an updating of the story, as when the 1932 version of Scarface was remade in 1983.  But it is an entirely different matter when the remake has the same setting as the original, and yet the story has been significantly altered.  In that case, the change must be largely attributed to the change in attitude toward the events of that time and place.  This is the case with The Quiet American.  The matter is further complicated when the remake is truer to the novel than was the original.  And cutting across all this is the fact that the novel, written by Graham Greene, who was English, was not well-received here in America, owing to its negative portrayal of the title character.

The 1958 version of this novel is set in Vietnam in the early 1950s, when it was still a French colony, and when it was the French who were fighting the communists.  Thomas Fowler (Michael Redgrave) is a middle-aged British journalist stationed in Saigon.  His lives with Phuong, a much younger Vietnamese woman.  Fowler doesn’t believe in anything.  He has no political affiliation, he doesn’t care which side wins the ongoing war, and he doesn’t believe in God.

When the movie opens, he is brought to a police station and interrogated by Inspector Vigot regarding a young man who is referred to in the movie only as an “American,” sometimes as the “young American,” and, of course, sometimes as the “quiet American” (Audie Murphy).  Even at a restaurant where everyone is being introduced, he remains unnamed.  He is an idealist.  He speaks of the Third Force, in addition to the French and the communists.  It represents the idea of the Vietnamese deciding for themselves how they want to live.

When Fowler, Phuong, and the American first meet, they go to a restaurant where men entering without a lady must accept a dinner-and-dancing companion supplied by the restaurant.  The American doesn’t want to have such a companion, whom he regards as a prostitute.  It is explained to him that these women are not prostitutes. In fact, Phuong used to be work at the restaurant as a companion when Fowler first met her.  When the American asks what happens to these young women when they are too old for the job of companion, he is told that they end up being prostitutes.

Because prostitution is a kind of doom hanging over young women who do not marry, the fact that Phuong is only Fowler’s mistress means that she may eventually be back where she was, or worse.  Fowler cannot marry her, because he is already married.  He is separated from his wife, whom he no longer loves, but she will not give him a divorce on account of her religion, referred to as “High Church” and “Episcopalian.”  When Phuong’s sister, Miss Hei, sees Phuong and the American dancing, she sees this as a chance to get Phuong married.  Inasmuch as the American has fallen in love with Phuong at first sight and, as we later find out, wants to marry her, Fowler begins to feel threatened.

The American avoids Phuong until he has a chance to tell Fowler that he loves her, so as not to be sneaky about it.  He would leave her alone if they were married, but as she is only living with Fowler, he believes that makes a difference, especially since he agrees with Phuong’s sister that Phuong needs the security of marriage.  As the American puts it, “We both have her interests at heart.”  To this Fowler replies: “I’m fed to the teeth with your brothers-under-the-skin dribble about cellophane-wrapped security for the atomic future. I don’t care that about Phuong’s interest. You can have her interest.  I want her. I want her with me. I’d rather ruin her and be with her than worry about her interest.”

In other words, the American cares about Phuong and wants what is best for her, even saying at one point that he wishes Fowler could marry her.  That is, he would be willing to give her up knowing that she would be taken care of.  Fowler, on the other hand, has the exact opposite attitude.  His love for her, if you can call it that, is of the most selfish kind.  The remark that he would be willing to ruin her is no mere hyperbole, for that is likely to be her fate if she stays with him.

This fits with the stereotype of the atheist:  someone who is selfish and amoral.  Also part of the stereotype of an atheist is that of being unpleasant.  Fowler is churlish and rude, unlike the American, who is easygoing and forgiving.  Some might argue that while this attitude toward atheists was prevalent in the late 1950s when this movie was made, this is much less so today.  However, as we shall see, the remake is confirmation that this attitude still prevails.

Right after the confrontation, a cable arrives for Fowler telling him that the newspaper he works for is promoting him to foreign editor, which means he will be working in London.  That, in turn, means the end of his relationship with Phuong.  He does not tell her, however, intending to maintain their relationship right up until the time he has to leave her, even though, as we can figure out for ourselves, if he were to be honest with her and break off the relationship immediately, she might be able to marry the American.  But, as noted above, he doesn’t care about that.  In fact, he even remarks to the American that these Vietnamese people have no concept of the future, because they just live from day to day.  In other words, if Phuong has no concept of the future, then Fowler doesn’t have to worry about her future either.  It is a ridiculous rationalization.  Furthermore, it is a demeaning, racist remark, suggesting that the Vietnamese are no better than animals in this regard.  And, as if this attitude were actually worthy of the time it takes to refute it, we might note that Phuong’s sister had enough of a concept of the future to worry about what would happen to Phuong in the years to come should she fail to find a husband.

Fowler writes to his wife, telling her of his situation, and asks for a divorce.  Phuong notes that he never asked his wife for a divorce before.  When he tells her he will have to return to England, she offers to return with him as his mistress, but he rebuffs the offer, saying she would be uncomfortable there not being married to him.  But we know that he cares nothing about her interests.  He is the one who would be uncomfortable.  When he finally gets a reply from his wife saying no to a divorce, he lies to Phuong, telling her his wife has agreed.  He does this merely to put off the day when he will lose her.

A communist leader convinces Fowler that the plastics that the American has brought into the country are being used for explosives on the part of an independent general and his army who are not on either side, giving the expression “Third Way” an ominous meaning.  Fowler never cared about the war before, but now the thought that the American is contributing to the carnage in some way changes everything.  Now he becomes conveniently outraged and willingly enters into a conspiracy against him.  He seems completely unaware that it is his own selfish motives that make him willing to act against the American.  He sort of convinces himself that this conspiracy might not end in the American’s death, but we know that deep down he knows better.  This is ironic, because earlier in the movie, the American saved his life instead of leaving him to die.

Fowler agrees to get the American to meet him for dinner at a certain time so that the communists will know when they can find him on the street.  Fowler then gives the American the opportunity of not meeting him for dinner, but the American says he will be there.  This allows Fowler to tell himself he gave the American his chance, and that it is all in God’s hands now.

God?  That’s right.  Just as Fowler conveniently started caring about all the people dying in the war when he was told that the American was involved in it, so too does this atheist now allow himself to suppose that there is a God who will intervene if that is his will:  “There was no harm in giving him that one chance. But what was I hoping for? Did I, of all people, hope for some kind of miracle? A method of discussion arranged by Mr. Heng which would not be simply death. It was no longer my decision. I had handed it over to that somebody in whom I didn’t believe. You can intervene if you want to. In so many ways:  a telegram on his desk; his dog can become ill; the minister can want to see him; his work, whatever it is, can take up the time.”

This is a new one.  By the late 1950s, we were used to seeing atheists in the movies finally admit that there is a God after all, usually because they were in the equivalent of a foxhole, but seeing an atheist somewhat disingenuously say to himself that God can save the American if he wants, thereby absolving himself of any guilt, is not exactly the kind of capitulation that movies commonly depicted.

Anyway, God does not intervene.  The communists abduct the American and kill him.  Furthermore, it turns out that the communists have played on Fowler’s ignorance, getting him to confuse ordinary plastic material, which the American was bringing into the country to make noisemakers for the coming Chinese New Year, with plastic explosives, which the American has nothing to do with.  And they played on his fear of losing Phuong to the American.  The reason the communists kill the American is to kill the idea of a Third Force that he brought with him, the simple idea that the Vietnamese people should be able to decide how they want to live.

Inspector Vigot arrests everyone who was involved in the murder except Fowler, even though he has figured out Fowler’s complicity and his motives.  He hands Fowler a cable, in which his wife says she agrees to a divorce.  Elated, he rushes to the restaurant where Phuong works once more as a dinner-and-dance companion to tell her they can now get married.  But she knows what he did and what kind of man he is, not anything like the American who truly loved her.  She refuses to have anything to do with him, preferring instead to accept the fate that awaits the women who work at that restaurant.

Now that Fowler no longer needs to pretend to himself that God might intervene to prevent the American from being killed, his atheism returns.  He says, “I wish someone existed to whom I could say I’m sorry.”  Vigot offers to drive him to the cathedral, but Fowler just turns and walks away.

As noted above, Fowler’s acknowledgement that there might be a God was disingenuous and self-serving.  And it was dropped as soon as it no longer served that function.  In other words, this may be the first movie in which the protagonist is still an atheist at the end.  There had been movies before where the atheist was still an atheist by the end of the movie, provided he was a minor character.  In Angel and the Badman (1947), the doctor remains an atheist, although his dogmatic certainty has been replaced by doubt and bewilderment at what he cannot explain.  And in Strange Cargo (1940), the atheist is a villain who seems headed for eternal damnation.

In short, this movie is transitional.  Whereas before 1958, if the protagonist was an atheist when the movie started, he had to acknowledge the existence of God by the movie’s end.  Beginning with this movie, he could merely suffer the fate previously reserved for minor characters who were atheists:  beset by doubts or meeting a bad end.  We are not sure if Fowler’s doubts were genuine, but he definitely is unhappy right up to the end.

The 2002 remake is set in the same place and in the same year, but it was made decades after the end of the Vietnam War that was fought by the United States, whereas the original was produced before that war started.  As a result, a twenty-first century perspective naturally finds its way into the story, which is something of a paradox since the remake is more faithful to the novel than was the original.  In the 2002 version, the quiet American has a name, Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser), as in the novel.  No longer a man who just wants to help the Vietnamese find a way to govern themselves, free of the French and the communists, the quiet American is now a CIA agent, as in the novel.  And his plastic material is not harmless, but is actually used to make the bombs that kill and maim innocent civilians, as in the novel.  And so, the generic American who in his own small way tried to make this a better world, with whom the audience of 1958 would have wanted to identify, has become a specific kind of American, one that most of us would disown, as in the novel.  In this remake, Pyle represents those other Americans, the ones that got us into a war that, in the opinion of this movie, was as immoral as he was.  Once the quiet American has become the bad guy, Thomas Fowler (Michael Caine) becomes the good guy by default.  He is still a little on the selfish side, but in the end, he and Phuong are together and will live happily ever after, as in the novel.

But in one way, the 1958 version was more faithful to the novel than the 2002 remake.  All the stuff about Fowler’s atheism was in the novel, whereas it has been completely purged from the remake.  In order for Fowler to be an atheist in the 1958 version, he had to be a louse who ends up alone and miserable.  But in order for the 2002 version to make Fowler the good guy and for it to end happily for him, it was necessary to omit all that stuff about his not believing in God.

In short, while a change in how we feel about American involvement in Vietnam may have been responsible for most of the differences between the two versions of the novel, there is one difference that arises from an attitude that has not changed, and that is the prejudice against atheists.

 

Rope (1948), Compulsion (1959), and Swoon (1992)

Early in the twentieth century, there were several crimes that shocked the nation.  There was the assassination of President William McKinley, shot to death by anarchist Leon Czolgosz.  There was the case of “Fatty” Arbuckle, who was charged with the rape and accidental death of actress Virginia Rappe by means too sordid to be repeated here.  And there was the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, ordered by Al Capone, which resulted in the machine-gun deaths of seven members of Bugs Moran’s North Side Gang.  In each case, the crime involved someone well-known to the public:  a president of the United States, a movie actor, a notorious gangster.  And each of the crimes had a motive that people could understand:  ideology, sex, power.  But there was another crime involving people no one had ever heard of for a motive that didn’t make sense.

What was shocking about the crime in question was that it was a thrill-killing of a fourteen-year-old boy by two young men of exceptional intelligence from wealthy families.  The boy was Bobby Franks.  The killers were Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold.  As if this were not enough to capture the nation’s attention, they were represented by Clarence Darrow, famous defense attorney, soon to become even more famous for his role in the Scopes Monkey Trial, which became the basis for the movie Inherit the Wind (1960).  The fact that Loeb and Leopold were both Jews may have contributed to the fascination people had with this crime, in that it could feed off attitudes of antisemitism.  Added to that was the fact that they were homosexuals, regarded as a perversion in those days, one that Darrow himself said contributed to their act of murder.

Rope (1948)

The first movie based on these events was Rope, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, which in turn was based on a play by Patrick Hamilton.  It distills the story down to its essence.  Two characters, Brandon (John Dall) and Phillip (Farley Granger), correspond to Loeb and Leopold.  They murder a friend of theirs, David, to prove that they are Nietzschean supermen, men with superior intellects, unfettered by moral fictions of right and wrong.  Brandon revels in what they have done.  Phillip, on the other hand, immediately starts feeling guilty.  As Nietzsche would say, his character wasn’t equal to the deed.

Those who are alert to such things can tell that these two men are homosexuals.  As for me, I wouldn’t know that to this day if I hadn’t read it somewhere.  I thought they were just friends.  And there is even a reference to the fact that Brandon once dated Janet, David’s girlfriend, put in the movie just to fool people like me, I suppose.  As another hint, the actors Dall and Granger were either homosexual or bisexual, but I would never have figured that out on my own either.  Just one more proof of my heterosexual blind spot.

But while the suppression of their homosexuality might be regarded as an unfortunate requirement by the Hays Office, its full expression in this movie would have had the effect of displacing the influence of Nietzsche on these two men, and suggesting instead that it was their homosexuality that was the real reason for their crime.  What was then regarded as a sexual perversion might in turn have been taken as an explanation for their perverted understanding of Nietzsche’s philosophy.  Or maybe that was the point, and I’m just being naïve again.

Anyway, the two men stuff David’s body in a chest, and then throw a party with food and drink set on the chest for the guests, consisting of David’s father, David’s aunt, Janet, Janet’s previous boyfriend, and Rupert, a college professor from whom Brandon and Phillip first learned about Friedrich Nietzsche and his concept of the superman.  Rupert is played by Jimmy Stewart.

Jimmy Stewart?  You mean George Macready or Otto Kruger wasn’t available for this role, and Hitchcock had to pick an actor whose persona absolutely precluded the possibility that he was anything but a paragon of moral rectitude?  As a result, when Rupert holds forth on his view that those who are superior have the right to kill those who are inferior, we never take him seriously for a moment.  And as if Stewart’s persona were not enough for us to see through his discourse on murder, Rupert’s flippant words and frivolous manner would have made it clear that he was being facetious even if Macready or Kruger had played this role.

But when Brandon takes over the ideas being advanced by Rupert, he is quite serious.  David’s father remarks that Hitler also agreed with Nietzsche’s theory of the superman, to which Brandon replies that he would have hanged all the Nazis, not because they were evil, but because they were stupid and incompetent.  I guess he was contemptuous of them because they lost the war.

Little by little, Rupert begins to suspect that a real murder has taken place, eventually leading him to lift the lid of the chest to see David’s body.  When he does so, his philosophy flips like a Necker cube.  Suddenly announcing that he is now ashamed of his belief that the superior few have the privilege of killing those who are inferior, he starts talking about morality, love, and God.  And then he makes reference to the fact that society will punish Brandon and Phillip for the murder they have committed.

So, he goes to the telephone to call the police, right?  Wrong!  Having taken possession of Brandon’s revolver, Rupert goes to the window, opens it, and fires three shots in the air.  That way when someone on the street below hears the shots, he will go to a telephone and call the police.  And why would that person on the street use a telephone to call the police?  Because he doesn’t have a gun to fire three shots in the air.

Compulsion (1959)

Of the movies that have been based on the Leopold-Loeb murder, the best by far is Compulsion.  The names were changed to allow some latitude for the sake of storytelling.  Richard Loeb is Arthur “Artie” Straus (Bradford Dillman); Nathan Leopold is Judd Steiner (Dean Stockwell); and Clarence Darrow is Jonathan Wilk (Orson Welles).

Because this movie was made in 1959, there is no indication of a homosexual relationship between Artie and Judd as there was between Loeb and Leopold.  (At least, there is no indication that I’m aware of, but I suppose to others it is as obvious as in the movie Rope.)  Furthermore, there is no reference to Judd’s being sexually molested by his governess when he was twelve, as was the case with Leopold.  But aside from a few liberties taken here and there, the movie does a pretty good job of sticking to the facts.

When the movie begins, we see Artie and Judd in the act of burglarizing a fraternity house, in which they steal some money and a typewriter.  As they drive away from the house, Judd says, somewhat lightheartedly, “The perfect crime,” although Artie is contemptuous of the small amount of money they stole.  He is also irritated with Judd’s bungling and timidity.  It is clear that Artie is the dominant character, and Judd likes it when Artie commands him to do things so that he can submit.  As they drive down the road, Artie tries to run over a drunk, to kill him, because, as he explains to Judd, “I damn well felt like it.”

In a small way, this opening scene and the one that follows give us their motivation for what is to come.  Artie wants to commit the perfect crime, something really dangerous, one that everyone will be talking about, but which the police will not be able to solve.  Judd wants to commit a great crime as the true test of the superior intellect, to prove that they are Nietzschean supermen.  Whatever Friedrich Nietzsche wanted us to understand by his concept of the superman, anytime someone in a movie is an admirer of this philosopher, he typically believes he is free to act in a way that ordinary people would regard as immoral, as in the movie Baby Face (1933).

Artie is thinking of the thrill of committing such a crime.  As Nietzsche would say, he wants the “bliss of the knife.”  But Judd wants to do it “as an experiment, detached, with no emotional involvement,” he tells Artie, “and no reason for it except to show that we can do it.”

The next day, Sid Brooks (Martin Milner), who is a friend of Judd, is late for class.  While the professor is lecturing on the tribal laws of ancient civilizations, he signals Judd, who is already in the lecture room, to create a distraction so that he can slip into class unnoticed.  Judd does so by challenging the professor on whether the leaders he is discussing, such as Hammurabi, Solon, and Pericles, felt obligated to obey the very laws they laid down for others.  Citing Nietzsche, Judd argues that they did not.  When the professor asks about Moses as an example, Judd responds, while looking at his watch, somewhat bored with having to school the professor on the matter, “He had a motley crew on his hands, and he had to get them through the desert somehow.”

The professor asks if Judd can cite a single example of any of these ancient leaders that did not feel obligated to obey their own laws, if Nietzsche can explain that.  “Oh, I think so, sir,” Judd replies, “if you’ve read him, sir” (the professor flinches), “you remember that he conceives the superman as being detached from such emotions as anger and greed and lust and the will to power.”

The professor concedes, with just a touch of sarcasm, that this modern way of thinking is beyond his comprehension, though not, apparently, Judd’s or Nietzsche’s.  Still, he says, even if we evolved into a race of superior intellects, we would still establish our own code of laws.  “Superlaws, sir,” Sid wisecracks, having slipped into class while this was going on, though not unnoticed by the professor.  After class, Sid asks Judd if he really believes there are superior intellects.  Judd answers that he does, which is not surprising, since he has himself as proof of such.  Along with Sid, Judd joins Artie, who is talking to some friends, but soon they excuse themselves, for there is something they had planned on doing.  But they all agree to meet that night at a speakeasy, where we see young people dancing the Charleston.  The Jazz Age is the perfect setting for this story, with its connotations of bootleg gin and loose morals.

Sid works as a cub reporter and finds himself helping out on a kidnapping case, to see if there is any connection to a dead boy found in a culvert, supposedly drowned, but the coroner he interviews makes it clear that the boy was murdered, hit several times in the head with a blunt instrument.  Some glasses fall to the floor, which the coroner thinks belonged to the boy, but Sid figures out that they really belong to the murderer.

Because he had to work, Sid knew he would be late meeting the gang at the speakeasy, so he agreed with Artie’s suggestion to let Judd bring Sid’s girlfriend Ruth (Diane Varsi).  While the others are dancing, we see Judd explaining to Ruth some of the ideas put forward by Plato in his Republic.  In particular, he is talking about the part where Plato thought that the state should decide who mated with whom.  The children would be separated from their parents and raised by the state, so no one would know who gave birth to whom.  Children born by parents not approved of by the state would be put to death.  At first, it seems strange that Judd would be talking to Ruth about Plato instead of Nietzsche.  However, as we know, fairly or unfairly, Nietzsche’s philosophy was appropriated by the Nazis, though long after the Leopold-Loeb murder took place.  Therefore, the fascist elements of Plato’s Republic are being implicitly connected in this movie with the subsequent fascist interpretation of Nietzsche during the Third Reich.

As Judd and Ruth begin to form a friendship, he invites her to go to the park with him where they can observe the birds, for Judd is an amateur ornithologist of some note.  When Artie finds out, he tells Judd this is his opportunity to have the experience of raping a woman, detached and without emotion.  Artie cynically observes that girls never want to talk about it afterwards.  Judd is reluctant.  But then, just as at one point in the beginning of the movie, when Artie commanded Judd to run over the drunk, so too does Artie have to command Judd to rape Ruth.  It might seem strange that someone like Judd, who is all into Nietzsche and his will-to-power philosophy, would want to be the one to obey rather than command.  But commanding and obeying are just two sides of the fascist soul.  What the fascist cannot abide is democracy, equality, cooperation, and compromise.  However, just as he failed to run over the drunk, Judd fails in his attempt to rape Ruth, because she cares more about what Judd will be doing to himself than what he does to her, and such sympathy and understanding is more than he can bear.

One of the great ironies of the Leopold-Loeb murder is the way these two geniuses planned their perfect crime for seven months, and yet they made one stupid mistake after another, so many, in fact, that not all of them could be depicted in this movie.  One that was not included was where they drive the car they rented for the murder to Leopold’s garage in order to clean out the blood.  The chauffeur sees them cleaning out some red stuff, which Loeb says is wine.  (This event was depicted in the movie Swoon (q.v.)).  The most damning piece of evidence was the glasses that Sid discovered.  It had a special hinge that only three people in the area had purchased, and the other two were easily eliminated as suspects.  But the final flaw in their plan comes when the chauffeur says that Judd’s car, the one Judd said that he and Artie had used the day of the murder to pick up a couple of girls, was in the garage all day while he worked on the brakes.  Confronted with all the evidence against them by District Attorney Harold Horn (E.G. Marshall), Artie confesses first, admitting that they rented a car for the kidnapping and murder, after which Judd accuses him of being a “weakling.”

Wilk is hired as their lawyer, with much reluctance on the part of their parents, however, because he is an “atheist.”  Actually, the real Clarence Darrow considered himself an agnostic, as does Wilk in the movie, but one suspects that people who did not like Clarence Darrow preferred the more pejorative term “atheist,” refusing to mince words on the matter.  Given the enormity of the crime committed by Artie and Judd, along with a full confession from both of them, a trial would seem to be pointless, at least from a dramatic standpoint.  And yet, such is the screen presence of Orson Welles that as soon as he walks through the door as Jonathan Wilk, we experience a reversal of attitude, reinforced by the following scene in which we see the Ku Klux Klan burning a cross outside of Wilk’s residence.

Artie and Judd never characterize themselves as either agnostic or atheist, but it would be hard to believe that they were anything but atheists, given their admiration of Nietzsche and their willingness to commit a horrible murder just to prove that they were superior.  Regardless of what the final words actually were between Darrow, on the one hand, and Loeb and Leopold, on the other, it was still necessary in the late 1950s for movie agnostics and atheists to make amends.  The agnostic had to indicate that he still regarded the existence of God as a genuine possibility.  Traditionally, the atheist had to admit that he was wrong, that God really did exist, but by the time this movie was made, it was enough for the atheist either to show signs of doubt or to be miserable.  A similar formula was employed in the above-referenced movie Inherit the Wind (1960).

We see both in the final scene.  After the judge rules that Artie and Judd will not be hanged for their crime, but will spend the rest of their lives in prison, which was the only outcome Wilk could reasonably hope for, the following dialogue takes place:

Artie:  So, we sweat through three months of misery just to hear that.  I wish they’d have hung us right off the bat.

Wilk:  I wasn’t expecting you to fall down on your knees and thank God for deliverance.

Judd:  God?  That sounds rather strange coming from you, Mr. Wilk.

Wilk:  A lifetime of doubt and questioning doesn’t necessarily mean I’ve reached any final conclusions.

Judd:  Well, I have, and God has nothing to do with it.

Wilk:  Are you sure, Judd? In those years to come you might find yourself asking, if it wasn’t the hand of God dropped those glasses.  And if he didn’t, who did?

To that question Judd hesitates, and then has a look of fear and bewilderment.

In the trial of Loeb and Leopold, it was actually the State’s Attorney Robert Crowe, corresponding to District Attorney Harold Horn in the movie, who saw Divine Justice in Leopold’s eyeglasses.  Speaking to him directly, he says:

I wonder now, Nathan, whether you think there is a God or not. I wonder whether you think it is pure accident that this disciple of Nietzschean philosophy dropped his glasses, or whether it was an act of Divine Providence to visit upon your miserable carcasses the wrath of God in the enforcement of the laws of the State of Illinois….  I think that when the glasses, that Leopold had not worn for three months, glasses that he no longer needed, dropped from his pocket at night, the hand of God was at work in this case.

This speculation about the hand of God doesn’t make any sense.  If God was going to get involved, why didn’t he protect the little boy and keep him from being murdered in the first place?  But some people would say that that way of thinking is typical of an atheist like me, who just doesn’t understand that God works in mysterious ways.  So, even if I think Crowe’s (Wilk’s) suggestion presupposes a dilatory deity, most people reading about this case in 1924, or watching this movie in 1959, would have found it perfectly reasonable.

Alternatively, one might go all Freudian and say that Judd had an unconscious desire to be caught.  That would seem to be the significance of Wilk’s last question, “And if he didn’t, who did?”

I think it was just an accident.  We don’t need God or Freud to explain that.  But the main thing is that for those in the audience who needed to see the atheist realize that there might actually be a God, Wilk’s first hypothesis about the hand of God dropping the glasses would have been the preferred interpretation.

Swoon (1992)

Now imagine that the story of Loeb and Leopold is made into a weird foreign film of the sort produced back in the 1950s and 1960s, full of symbolism and anachronisms.  It would be in black and white with subtitles.

Now imagine that the movie is made in 1992 by a weird foreign-film director wannabe right here in America.  In this case, there would be no subtitles.  This the movie Swoon.

Even if you like weird foreign-films, that style completely undermines our ability to accept anything we see in this movie as being a faithful depiction of what actually happened.  With Compulsion, we know we have to make allowances for the Production Code and the liberties that must be taken to turn any true story into a movie, but we believe that most of what we are seeing is true.  With Swoon, we are presented with so much that is absurd, such as Loeb using a touchtone telephone or Loeb and Leopold in bed together in the middle of the courtroom during their trial, that the movie loses all credibility.  We only believe what we already know to be true from other sources.  For example, there is a scene in this movie in which the chauffeur sees Loeb and Leopold cleaning blood out of their rented automobile.  If I hadn’t already known about this from what I had read elsewhere, I wouldn’t know if this actually happened, or whether it was just something dreamt up by the director.

While the homosexuality of the two killers in Rope and Compulsion was only hinted at, and so subtly that it went right over my head, here it gets enough emphasis for all three movies.  And while this might seem to be the movie’s strongpoint, finally depicting on the screen the real nature of the relationship between Loeb and Leopold, it might have the opposite effect from what was intended.  While proudly displaying an honesty and openness about homosexuality that wasn’t possible before, this movie might well have the effect of justifying attitudes of homophobia, leading the audience to conclude that their homosexuality was the ultimate cause of the murder of Bobby Franks, with Nietzsche’s philosophy being nothing but a superficial way to dress up a murder.  Maybe not even that.  Nietzsche is just barely referenced in this movie.

Inherit the Wind (1960)

Inherit the Wind is a reasonably faithful rendition of the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, in which John T. Scopes was charged with teaching evolution in a public school, contrary to state law.  However, the fact that the names are changed is an indication that the producers of this movie wanted to take a few liberties.  In particular, the Scopes character in the film is Bertram Cates (Dick York); Scopes’ defense lawyer, Clarence Darrow, is Henry Drummond (Spencer Tracy); William Jennings Bryan, who participated in the prosecution, is Matthew Harrison Brady (Fredric March); and H.L. Mencken, the famous reporter who covered the trial, is E.K. Hornbeck (Gene Kelly).  This can become a little confusing, so here are the identities of the three major characters displayed for quick reference:

Henry Drummond = Clarence Darrow = Spencer Tracy.

Matthew Harrison Brady = William Jennings Bryan = Fredric March.

E.K. Hornbeck = H.L. Mencken = Gene Kelly.

While the town in which the trial takes place is full of minor characters who are fervent fundamentalists, there is another major character with strong religious views in addition to Brady, and that is the Reverend Jeremiah Brown (Claude Akins).  In what is clearly a Hollywood contribution, Brown’s daughter is Cates’ fiancée, and she is torn between her love for Cates and her desire to please her father.

Clarence Darrow considered himself an agnostic.  It can be debated whether H.L. Mencken was an agnostic or an atheist, but he seems more the latter.  The distinction between the two matters more in the movies than it does in real life, which is complicated by the evolving connotation of the word “agnostic.”  In the early part of the twentieth century, it had a harder edge to it than it does today, for merely to doubt the existence of God was scandalous back then.  By the late 1960s, it had already begun to lose some of its bite, and this is even more so today.  For example, in the novel Brideshead Revisted, published in 1945, Sebastian refers to Ryder as an atheist, but Ryder corrects him, saying he is an agnostic.  In the 2008 movie version of this novel, however, Ryder explicitly denies being an agnostic, saying he is an atheist, just the opposite of what was in the novel.  Why would the producers of this movie make this change?  I suspect the reason lies in the shifting sense of the word “agnostic.”  An agnostic Ryder would no longer compel our interest.  In order to have dramatic value, he had to become an atheist.

In any event, as far as the movie is concerned, neither Drummond nor Hornbeck refers to himself as either an atheist or an agnostic.  Drummond is referred to as both by others, and Hornbeck is referred to as neither.  However, one gets the sense that Drummond is an agnostic while Hornbeck is an atheist, which corresponds to what we suspect about Darrow and Mencken.

Ordinarily, there would be nothing remarkable about that.  Atheists and agnostics do not typically go around announcing which word more accurately applies to them.  But as noted above, such things matter in the movies, especially when this movie was made.  Any character that acknowledged being an atheist would typically be required to affirm the existence of God before the movie was over.  An agnostic, on the other hand, would not be required to capitulate.  He already admits that there might be a God.  All he would have to do is admit it just a little bit more in the final reel.  And if there is no definite assertion by the character as to the nature of his doubt or disbelief, he might be able to get by without having to do either.

Had this movie been made shortly after the Scopes Monkey Trial, Drummond and Hornbeck would have been made to seem superficial and arrogant, while Brady and Brown would have been treated more sympathetically.  By 1960, however, evolution had become mainstream, and fundamentalism had been marginalized.  As a result, Brady and Brown are made to look ridiculous.  Of course, it is hard to portray anyone who believes in the literal truth of the Book of Genesis as anything but ridiculous.

The Reverend Brown is a man who will not hesitate to assert that someone is going to Hell.  Saying it about Drummond would be expected, but we find out that he said the same of a little boy who drowned without having been baptized.  And then he condemns his own daughter to Hell while giving a fiery speech before a crowd.  Of course, the Bible says the vast majority of people will go to Hell, so you could reasonably give long odds on that about anyone.  But saying such about a little boy or one’s own daughter seems especially cruel.  In short, Brown exemplifies the idea that someone can be so religious as to be evil.

Brady, on the other hand, who actually comes to Brown’s daughter’s defense during that speech, admonishing Brown for saying such things, is negatively portrayed in a different way.  In Brady’s case, we see an intelligent man destroyed by his insistence on the literal truth of the Bible as the word of God.  A less intelligent man can hold such views without any difficulty, but the cognitive dissonance Brady experiences during the trial proves to be too much for him, especially when Drummond puts him on the stand as an expert on the Bible.  The movie even suggests that the strain kills him, since he collapses on the floor of the courtroom right after the trial has ended.

It almost seems like shooting fish in a barrel to hear Drummond challenge Brady as to how some of the stories in the Bible could be literally true, such as Cain taking a wife, when up to that point, Eve was the only woman that existed.  Unfortunately, most of Drummond’s arguments against the Bible go awry.  For example, Drummond asks Brady how long the first day was, the implication being that since the sun was not created until the fourth day, there would have been no way to measure the length of the first day.  In short, the first day might have been the equivalent of millions of years.

That’s cute, but speaking of days before there was a sun is no worse than speaking of years before there was a solar system.  If scientists can say that billions of years passed before there was an Earth to orbit the sun, in terms of which the length of a year is defined, then there is no reason a fundamentalist could not say that three days passed before there was a sun, in terms of which the length of a day is defined.  Brady, however, fails to point this out, and so Drummond’s fallacious argument goes unchallenged.

To make matters worse, this is preceded by a misunderstanding on Drummond’s part.  He asks Brady how all the holy people in the Bible could be holy when they were doing all that begetting.  Drummond says, “What is the biblical evaluation of sex?  It is considered original sin.  And all these holy people got themselves begat through original sin.  Well, all that sinning make them any less holy?”

I have never heard that one before.  The original sin was eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which God had forbidden.  God never forbade sex within the confines of marriage.  Brady should have known that.  And it would have been his chance to put Drummond in his place by pointing it out.  Maybe the actual Darrow and Bryan thought the original sin was sex, or maybe it was just a misconception on the part of the people who made this movie (or wrote the script for the play on which it was based).  But whatever the case, this is one of the weaker scenes in the movie.

There is another scene that is weaker still, and once again, Drummond opens himself up to withering criticism that Brady simply fails to take advantage of.  Drummond is questioning one of the students in Cates’ class.  In an effort to show that science and technology are not intrinsically evil, Drummond says, “You know, Moses never made a phone call.  You figure that makes the telephone an instrument of the devil?”

Brady interrupts:  “Your honor, the defense makes the same old error of all godless men.  He confuses material things with the great spiritual value of the revealed word.  Why do you bewilder this child?  Does right have no meaning to you, sir?”

Drummond responds:  “Realizing that I may prejudice the case of my client, I must tell you that right has no meaning for me whatsoever. But truth has meaning, as a direction.  But it is one of the peculiar imbecilities of our time that we place a grid of morality upon human behavior so that the action of every man must be measured against an arbitrary latitude of right and a longitude of wrong in exact minutes, degrees, and seconds….”

So right and wrong have no meaning, only truth and falsehood.  In other words, all that matters is whether it is true that one man killed another man, not whether it was wrong for him to do so.  Is it “arbitrary” that we say it is wrong for a man to rape a child?  It is a common stereotype of the atheist that he is amoral:  God is dead, so all is permitted!  Why this movie plays right into that stereotype, I do not know.  The real Clarence Darrow did not hold such a view.  He believed that man had emotions that told him whether something was right or wrong, what most people would call a conscience.  In the Loeb and Leopold case, he argued that the defendants lacked those emotions.  But in this movie, we almost get the sense that it is Drummond who lacks those emotions when he says that distinguishing between right and wrong is an “imbecility.”  In any event, it is even more disappointing that Brady does not seize upon this opportunity.  He could have argued that by Drummond’s own words, without God there would be nothing to restrain man, that we would all end up acting like animals.  But he fails to take advantage of Drummond’s stance that moral words such as “right” and “wrong” are meaningless.

I already noted above that Brady is demeaned as a man whose intellect collapses under the strain of trying to reconcile reason and common sense with the myths of the Bible.  But it is worse than that.  Leading up to the final day of the trial, Brady is infantilized.  Now, it is not uncommon for a married couple with children to start referring to each other as “Mom” and “Dad.”  So, the first time Brady addresses his wife as “Mother,” we think nothing of it.  Furthermore, lovers often call each other “baby” as a term of affection, so we normally wouldn’t think much of that either.  But after Brady is put on the stand and subjected to a grilling by Drummond, he becomes pathetic, saying to his wife, “Mother, they laughed at me.”  She holds him in her arms and says, “Hush, baby.”  Then he says, “I can’t stand it when they laugh at me.”  She continues holding him and rocking him, saying, “It’s all right, baby.  It’s all right.”  He whimpers, “They laughed.”  And she continues, “Baby, baby.”  However much these old movies were at pains to put the atheist in a bad light, an even lower place in movie Hell was reserved for anyone who was too religious, and this scene exemplifies that principle.

But that does not mean that the atheist in this movie is off the hook, for it is in the last scene that amends must finally be made for all the irreligion that has come before:  the agnostic must display an affinity for religion, and the atheist must be disparaged.  As they debate whether Brady was a great man or a bigot, Hornbeck accuses Drummond of being a hypocrite and a fraud, an “atheist who believes in God,” saying, “You’re just as religious as he was.”  Drummond in turn tells Hornbeck that he pities him, telling him his life is meaningless, because he doesn’t need people or love.  “You poor slob.  You’re all alone.”  Well, gosh!  That’s telling him.  Of course, the real H.L. Mencken was married at the time of this trial, and he loved his wife.  But the need for the movie atheist to be put down must take precedence over reality.  Actually, one might think of this as progress.  By the late 1950s, it was no longer necessary for the atheist to acknowledge the existence of God, although it still did happen in some movies.  Rather, the atheist could remain an atheist, but he had to be unhappy.

Anyway, after a few more words along those lines, Hornbeck leaves the room.  Drummond puts Darwin’s Descent of Man together with the Bible, smiles, and walks toward the camera as the movie ends.  And so, in typical Hollywood fashion, the movie tries to have it both ways.

 

Pacifism

Of all things the New Testament says we are supposed to do, the injunction of pacifism found in Matthew 5:38-39 is the most troublesome:  “Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:  But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.”  A lot of people are not sure what to make of that.  This ambivalence is reflected in the movies.

Pacifism in the Modern City

If a movie is set in the twentieth century, and the characters in the movie live in a large city, pacifism will be given short shrift.  For example, in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes (1938), passengers on a train are being fired on by some enemy spies and soldiers.  One of the passengers, a politician, says he doesn’t believe in fighting and wants to surrender.  Another passenger replies, “Pacifist? Won’t work. Christians tried it and got thrown to the lions.”  The pacifist steps outside the train waving a white handkerchief, trying to surrender, but he is shot.  He dies, mumbling that he doesn’t understand.  To keep us from supposing that he will pass through the pearly gates and be rewarded for adhering to the words of Jesus, those who wrote the screenplay made him an adulterer, and a cad at that, one that betrays the woman who thought they were going to be married.  Moreover, we also get the impression that he is a coward, that his pacifism is not based on religious principle, but on fear.  A couple of years later, Hitchcock made Foreign Correspondent (1940), in which the head of a pacifist organization turns out to be a Nazi spy.

In some cases, the pacifist is a man of good moral character, but shown to be naïve. For example, in The War of the Worlds (1953), a pastor decides that he just needs to offer the Martians peace.  He starts walking toward the flying saucers, reading the Twenty-Third Psalm, and just as he gets to the last line, the part about the goodness and mercy of the LORD following him all the days of his life, that life is brought to an abrupt end as one of the flying saucers zaps him with a death ray.

In general, pacifists in a modern city are portrayed as either knaves or fools.

Pacifism in the Old West and in Rural Communities

More sympathy can be shown for pacifism in Westerns.  In a couple of such Westerns, the pacifism of the protagonist seems to have nothing to do with religion at all.  For example, there is Destry Rides Again (1939), in which James Stewart, as the title character, becomes a deputy sheriff, even though he forswears violence and eschews guns.  There is no indication that his aversion to killing has anything to do with religion. But when his friend, the sheriff, is murdered, Destry finally has to strap on his gun and kill the bad guy.  In Shane (1952), Alan Ladd, as the title character, also wants to hang up his gun, but not on account of any religious beliefs.  Rather, he feels guilty about his past as a gunfighter.  But at the end of the movie, when he learns that the another gunslinger has been hired to get rid of the homesteaders, he realizes that he must put on his gun once more.  It is easier for the hero to reluctantly give up his pacifism if, as in these cases, it was not based on religious belief to begin with.

When religion is involved, the man who is a pacifist usually is so on account of a woman.  There is nothing shameful about a woman being a pacifist, so if a man becomes a pacifist because of his love for her, we make allowances.  In High Noon (1952), Gary Cooper, who admits that he hasn’t been a “churchgoing man,” marries Grace Kelly, who is a Quaker.  He has promised her that he will give up being the town marshal and become a storekeeper.  But then he finds that there is one last job he must do, which involves killing other men.  As a result, she decides to leave him.  But in the end, she gets a gun and kills one of the men herself.  In Friendly Persuasion (1956), there is an entire family of Quakers.  This time, Gary Cooper is married to Dorothy McGuire, who is very religious.  We have to wonder if Cooper would even be a Quaker were it not for his wife.  In any event, the results are mixed. There is some resistance to evil, but it is kept to a minimum, and the central characters seem to survive mostly by luck, with their ideals mostly intact.

In Sergeant York (1941), Gary Cooper is Alvin York, who doesn’t want to fight in World War I because killing is forbidden by the Bible.  This is an exception to the rule that if a man is a pacifist for religious reasons, he has fallen under the influence of a woman. There is a woman he wants to marry, for which reason he decides to settle down and give up his wild ways.  But his conversion to Christianity is the not the result of her, but of a bolt of lightning that almost kills him just as he was on his way to get some revenge. Interestingly, his pacifism is not based on the injunction by Jesus quoted above, telling us to turn the other cheek.  Rather, it is based on the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.”  This compensates for the fact that he does not have a woman as an excuse for his refusal to fight in the war.  Pacifism is more manly if based on the Ten Commandments than on the words of Jesus.  Ironically, it is the words of Jesus that free him from his pacifism:  he decides that killing for one’s country is just rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, so that makes it all right. Although this is not a Western, it is set in the backwoods of Tennessee.  Pacifism is more acceptable in a rural community, where the characters lack big-city sophistication.  A city slicker may be a draft dodger, but never a pacifist.  In any event, Gary Cooper certainly has had his share of pacifist roles.

Billy Jack (1971) is set contemporaneously in a small Arizona town near an Indian reservation, the title character (Tom Laughlin) himself being half Indian.  He tries, with limited success, to restrain his lethal, martial-arts skills under the influence of a woman that runs a hippie, counter-culture school, preaching love and peace.  It is with great sorrow that Billy Jack has to kick so much redneck butt.

Reversing the Formula

In Westerns and in movies set in rural communities, the pacifist is typically allowed to redeem himself when he realizes he must resist evil and fight back.  That is a satisfying formula. Somewhat disconcerting, however, is the reverse of that formula:  the man decides to become a pacifist at the end of the movie, giving up his gun forever.

Angel and the Badman (1947).  An example of this is Angel and the Badman.  The “badman” in this movie is Quirt Evans.  Since he is played by John Wayne, we wonder, “Just how bad can he be?”  I mean, has John Wayne ever played a villain in the movies?  It turns out, much as we suspected, that for all the talk about his being a bad man, it seems to be just that, talk.  Apparently, he once worked as a lawman for Wyatt Earp. Then he became a cattleman for a while.  But one day, Wall Ennis, the man who raised Quirt like a father, was shot down by Laredo Stevens (Bruce Cabot) while another man grabbed his hand as he was going for his gun.  That’s when Quirt sold his herd and began plaguing Laredo, hoping to goad him into a gunfight in front of witnesses.  It is this that gets him on the wrong side of the law.

For example, when Laredo and his gang rustle some cattle, killing all the cowboys who were herding them, Quirt and his boys bonk Laredo’s gang over their heads, knocking them off their horses.  Then Quirt’s gang takes off with the cattle and presumably sells them.  I guess the idea is that the cattle were already stolen, so what Quirt did was not really so bad.

Before that, however, at the beginning of the movie, Quirt beats Laredo to some land he wanted. Laredo’s gang chases him until he collapses from a gunshot wound.  Some Quakers help him get to a telegraph station to make the claim and then take him in so that he can convalesce.  One Quaker in particular, Penny (Gail Russell), is the “angel” in this movie.

Dr. Mangram (Tom Powers) comes over to take the bullet out.  He makes a snide remark about the way the wicked always seem to be able to survive gunshot wounds, while the godly succumb to infection. Penny’s father chastises him, saying, “You so-called atheists.  You always feel so compelled to stretch your godlessness.”  With this brief exchange, the movie expresses a common attitude toward atheists when this movie was made.  First, the atheist is rude and churlish, entering the house of a family he knows to be devout and mocking their religion. For a long time in the movies, atheists were never allowed to be congenial and easygoing.  Movie atheists had to let everyone know just how much they despised religion. Second, this movie was made at a time when a lot of people believed that there really was no such thing as an atheist, that their denial of God’s existence was a self-deluding pretense.  Hence the use of the term “so-called” to modify the word “atheist.”

Another feature of the stereotypical movie atheist is the emphasis on science and logic, at the expense of sentiment and feeling.  Dr. Mangram says to Penny’s mother, “You can carry this head-in-sand attitude just so far in the world of reality.”  She replies, “We assure you that you will finally realize that realism untempered by sentiments of humanity is really just a mean, hard, cold outlook on life.”  She is right, of course.  But that is precisely the sort of thing David Hume might have said.

[Note:  I watched the worthless 2009 remake so you won’t have to, and to see if there were any script changes of interest.  About the only one worth mentioning occurs when the father refers to the doctor as a “nonbeliever” instead of a “so-called atheist.”  That atheists exist is today undeniable, making the qualifier “so-called” untenable.  But in that case, just to refer to the doctor as an atheist would be too harsh, whereas “nonbeliever” seems less confrontational.  And it seems to go with the doctor in the remake, whose character is softened up somewhat.]

Anyway, Quirt and Penny fall in love.  She is willing to follow him anywhere, but he is not sure he wants to be tied down.  So, this struggle goes on throughout the movie, while she acquaints him with the views of the Society of Friends, such as that a person can harm only himself, even if he appears to harm someone else.  One day, she gets him to leave his gun behind while they go for a ride.  As this is shortly after the cattle-rustling incident, Laredo and his boys show up and give chase until the wagon goes over a cliff and into the water.  Penny almost drowns.  Quirt gets her back to the house and Dr. Mangram is sent for. When it looks as though Penny is likely to die, Quirt decides to kill Laredo.

Right after he rides off, Penny comes to.  She seems to be completely well.  Mangram is stunned.  “I can’t understand it,” he says.  “I can’t understand it at all.  There must be some logical, scientific explanation.  I am too old to start believing in miracles.”  And thus does the movie refute the atheist.

As noted above, a common feature of the Western is the gunslinger with a guilty past. He wants to hang up his guns, but there is one last thing he must do.  Another recurring feature involves revenge.  The hero relentlessly pursues his goal of getting his revenge against a man who killed someone he loved.  But when the moment arrives, he renounces his revenge.  However, the man he was pursuing somehow gets what is coming to him anyway.

And so it is with Angel and the Badman.  Quirt rides into town and calls out Laredo, who is in the saloon with the sidekick who helped him gun down Wall Ennis.  Suddenly, Penny’s parents ride into town in a wagon with Penny in the back.  She gets Quirt to hand her his gun.  Just then, Laredo and his companion step out into the street.  Quirt turns around unarmed.  And then Marshall McClintock (Harry Carey), who has been threatening to hang Quirt and Laredo throughout the movie, shoots Laredo and his friend, killing them both.  Quirt tells McClintock that from now on he is a farmer.

It is worth noting that, although Penny and her family would have been disappointed with Quirt if he had killed Laredo, they are just fine with the way McClintock killed Laredo instead.  And so, these pacifists are parasites, who manage survive in a violent world because someone else is willing to do the killing for them.

Wagon Master (1950).  Another such movie is Wagon Master.  Now, whereas we all know that Quakers are pacifists, John Ford made the bizarre decision to have the pacifists in this movie be Mormons, something Mormons are not known for.  And not only were Mormons willing to use guns to defend themselves, but for a long time, they were also associated with evil.  In Roughing It (published in 1872), Mark Twain tells of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, where Mormons are said to have slaughtered a bunch of people they didn’t like.  In both A Study in Scarlet (published in 1887) and Riders of the Purple Sage (published in 1912), Mormons threaten physical violence to force women into polygamous marriages.

One day some Mormon missionaries knocked on my mother’s door and started telling her about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In all innocence, and without the slightest trace of irony, my mother said, “Oh, you mean like in Sherlock Holmes?” They must get that a lot.

Some early films depicted Mormons in those negative ways.  In A Victim of the Mormons (1911), for example, a Mormon seduces a woman in Denmark, persuading her to come to America with him. She changes her mind, but he drugs her, locks her up, determined to force her to become one of his wives.  In the 1918 version of Riders of the Purple Sage, Mormons are referred to explicitly, but the 1925 version of this novel avoided referring to the bad guys as Mormons, and every adaptation since has done likewise. There has never been an adaptation of A Study in Scarlet that includes the part about Mormons referred to as such.

At this point I must make a parenthetical comment.  These early movies depicting Mormons in a terrible light are not unique.  Films of that period did likewise with other groups of people.  The 1920 version of The Last of the Mohicans portrays Indians as being especially vicious.  During a massacre, white women are raped and children brutally tomahawked.  One Indian, upon finding a woman he wants to rape, snatches a baby out of her arms and tosses it high in the air, just for the fun of it. The Birth of a Nation (1915) expresses a dread of Negro lust for white women, along with many other degrading stereotypes.  Martyrs of the Alamo (1915) portrays Mexicans as vicious dope fiends, bayonetting children and raping white women.

And then something happened.  Perhaps it was censorship, or perhaps it was public outrage, but as with the 1925 version of Riders of the Purple Sage, the movies began pulling back from these loathsome stereotypes.  There was still plenty of prejudice in the movies after that.  Native Americans were still portrayed as savages.  African Americans were mostly reduced to playing coons.  Mexicans were seen to be lazy and lawless.  But all this was mild compared to those early films.

In 1940, 20th Century Fox produced Brigham Young.  Instead of avoiding the subject of Mormonism altogether, this movie attempts to rehabilitate it, showing it in a positive light.  There is, of course, the embarrassing doctrine of polygamy that must be dealt with, for to ignore it would only make things worse. But the subject is handled in a lighthearted way, and with no sense that women were being forced into such marriages.

Returning now to Wagon Master, Elder Wiggs (Ward Bond) pooh-poohs the whole thing without quite denying it. When asked if he is a Mormon, he says:

That’s right, son.  That’s why I keep my hat on all the time.  So my horns won’t show. Why, I got more wives than Solomon himself.  At least, that’s what folks around here say.  And if they don’t say it, they think it.

And thus we in the audience are indirectly chastised for thinking he and other men in his party have more than one wife.

In any event, the transition to Mormons-as-pacifists in Wagon Master would seem to take this effort at rehabilitation too far.  John Ford, who directed this film, would have been better off just making up a pacifist religion instead.  Unlike the Quakers in movies, who enunciate some principle of pacifism, as did Penny in Angel and the Badman, we hear no such explicit pacifist doctrines espoused in Wagon Master. Instead, their pacifism is mostly implied.  None of the Mormons have guns, not even the rifles and shotguns you would expect them to have for shooting game.  There is a little boy who turns up with a pistol that had belonged to someone’s grandfather “before he got religion,” but that is the exception that proves the rule.

Travis (Ben Johnson) and Sandy (Harry Carey Jr.), who are not Mormons, and who wear guns, are hired by the Mormons to be wagon master and guide.  Along the way, they run into some Indians, who do have guns.  It turns out that they are friendly, however, just like the Native Americans that have replaced the Indians in movies over the last several decades.  And that was a lucky break, because had they been anything like the Indians we saw in other John Ford Westerns, you could bet that an unarmed wagon train traveling through Indian territory would likely get the men scalped and the women raped.

These Mormons are not so fortunate, however, when it comes to some bandits they encounter.  The bandits kill one of the Mormons and threaten to steal their seed grain, without which, we are told, the Mormons in this group and those yet to come would all starve.  But Travis and Sandy use their guns to kill the whole lot of them.  After Travis and Sandy have killed all the bandits, Travis throws his gun away, as if he knows he will never need it again and can now be a pacifist just like the Mormons.

Paradoxically, neither Travis nor Sandy had ever killed anyone before they encountered the Mormons.  So, not only do the Mormons survive because others do their killing for them, but there would have been no need for any killing at all had they been armed.  The five bandits would have been no match for dozens of armed Mormons, and so the bandits would have just moved on without trying anything.  If we didn’t know better, we might think that the moral of this movie is that pacifists, by refusing to defend themselves, not only depend on others to protect them, but they also end up being the cause of the very killing they have forsworn.

Movies in which someone overcomes his reluctance to kill, when he realizes it is necessary to do so, are quite enjoyable, which explains why so many movies are based on that formula.  But movies that reverse that formula, movies in which someone who had previously been willing to defend himself against those that would do him harm, but who embraces pacifism in the final reel, are not so popular, which is why they are few in number.  If we enjoy these movies at all, it is only because we are touched by these adorable cultures, so sweet in the purity of their beliefs, even though we would never want to belong to such a community ourselves.

Religious Movies for Atheists

The movie Noah (2014) was released a few years ago, and I suppose I shall watch it eventually, but quite frankly, I have not been able to work up much enthusiasm for it.  I have seen a lot of biblical films.  In fact, I believe I have seen just about every Moses or Jesus movie ever made. But I have yet to see one that I enjoyed. And so I started wondering:  What is it about biblical films that I do not like?  Is it that the stories in the Bible never happened, at least not the way they were set down?  That cannot be it, for I like all sorts of movies about things that never happened.  Perhaps it is because the movies diverge from the original myth, which is one of the criticisms I have heard leveled against Noah.  But dramatists have been changing stories to suit their purposes since Aeschylus wrote Agamemnon, and often for the better.  Maybe it is the existence of supernatural beings that bothers me.  But that did not ruin Jason and the Argonauts (1963) for me, or, for that matter, The Exorcist (1973), a movie that definitely presupposes the truth of Christianity.

Maybe it is not truth that is critical, but morality.  Bill Maher has condemned the movie Noah in that it depicts God as a “psychotic mass murderer.”  In fact, such criticism is hardly limited to the story of Noah.  There is much in The Old Testament attributed to God that we regard as immoral today.  But I enjoy movies about immoral people, so why not immoral gods?  The gods of Greek mythology are often immoral, but that never spoils our enjoyment of the stories told about them.

I believe the problem is one of attitude.  Biblical movies invariably suffer from the oppressive weight of reverence, the sense that we are supposed to stand in awe of God, that we must bow our heads, fall to our knees, and worship him in all his glory. I get queasy just thinking about it.  Some people are atheists because they are unable believe that God exists; some are atheists because they are unable to believe that God is good; but some are atheists because they are unable to get down on their knees and abase themselves. This last reason, though it seldom gets as much attention as the first two, I believe to be characteristic of atheism in general, whatever the primary reason for disbelief.

Moving beyond biblical movies, it is primarily this feature that distinguishes religious movies that atheists might enjoy from ones they cannot.  A good example of this is The Godless Girl (1929).  Judy and Bob are high school students.  Judy is a militant atheist, who holds meetings ridiculing religion, accompanied by a monkey as a prop, whom she refers to as our cousin.  Bob is a Christian fundamentalist who leads a bunch of like-minded fanatics on a raid of one of those meetings.  A melee breaks out, during which a girl dies accidentally.  Bob and Judy are sent to a reform school.  After enduring much brutality, they escape and fall in love.  While bathing in a river, Judy admires the beauty of nature, made no less beautiful by a naked Judy, and she thinks how she might almost believe in a God who created it.  Bob, on the other hand, recalling all horrors of the reform school, says there is no way he can believe in a God who would allow such things to happen.  So far there is balance between the two.  But notwithstanding the fact that this is a pre-Code movie, I knew that it would be required that Judy pray to God before the movie was over.  I thought of San Francisco (1936) and The Spiral Road (1962), where the atheists in those two movies eventually kneel and humble themselves before God, and so I braced myself for the inevitable.

They are captured and returned to the reform school.  Bob is handcuffed to the bench in his cell, but Judy is handcuffed to a pipe above her head.  Within the movie, this was just another act of cruelty perpetrated by the guard.  But from outside the movie, it just did not make sense, since handcuffed like that she would not be able to use the bucket, but would have to foul her pants when she needed to defecate.  I suspected there was a reason this was put in the movie, but I could not figure out what it was.  But soon all was revealed. A fire breaks out in the reform school, and Judy is forgotten about as the flames close in around her.  In desperation, she prays.  It is a conditional kind of prayer, not exactly expressing full belief, but more importantly, she cannot kneel.  She thus retains her dignity, literally standing tall, and thus figuratively as well.

After Judy is saved by Bob, they rescue the brutal guard, whose dying wish is that they be pardoned, and so they are.  As they ride away from the prison, Bob curses the foul place, but Judy says that it was in that prison that they learned to believe, and let believe.  It is not clear exactly what each believes at this point, but they will clearly tolerate each other’s views, whatever they may be.  More importantly, because we were not treated to a vulgar display of humiliation and self-abasement on the part of Judy, this is a movie an atheist can enjoy, regardless of what Judy may or may not believe in the end.

In a sense, this aversion to the posture of worship and reverence extends well beyond the nonbeliever and into the general population.  The typical hero in a movie may believe in God, but the subject rarely comes up.  He certainly does not regularly attend church on Sundays. And as for Bible study in the middle of the week?  Don’t be absurd.  Unless the movie is biblical, or at least set in the distant past, if a character is excessively devout and pious, he usually turns out to be a hypocrite or a fool, as in Elmer Gantry (1960) or Inherit the Wind (1960).  Of course, women in the movies are allowed to be more religious than men without suffering any disparagement, and in such a case, her husband can go along, so to speak, as in Friendly Persuasion (1956) or Tender Mercies (1983).  But if it is the man who is more religious than his wife, then watch out, especially if he has the words “love” and “hate” tattooed on his fingers. In any event, if the general audience enjoys seeing excessively religious figures in a bad light, then all the more so can such be enjoyed by atheists.  But movies mocking the devout are not really religious movies, and thus do not count, just as movies about the Devil, like Rosemary’s Baby (1968) or Angel Heart (1987) do not count.  Finally, irreligious movies like Bedazzled (1967) or Religulous (2008) do not count either.

Rather, what I have in mind are religious movies that are inspirational, generating those feelings often associated with religion in a positive sense, and yet in such a way as can be enjoyed by an atheist.  The Razor’s Edge (1946) is well known and requires little comment. The fact that the principal character gets much of his inspiration from his trip to India, thereby stepping outside the Judeo-Christian tradition, may account for its being palatable to atheists. Groundhog Day (1993) would make an excellent Christmas movie were it not for the fact that the story is firmly attached to February 2.  Much like the notion of reincarnation, Bill Murray has to keep reliving the same day over and over again until he makes enough spiritual progress to move on.  Except for one brief upward-looking gesture on the part of Murray, when a homeless man dies, the role of God, or belief in such, is practically nonexistent.

A less well-known movie is Strange Cargo (1940).  God, in human form, slips into a penal colony and joins a bunch of prisoners in an escape, along with a prostitute. Each of them, with one exception, comes to repent his wickedness and transcend his selfish nature.  God seems to act only as a catalyst, employing no supernatural powers, and even has to be saved from drowning by Clark Gable.  Needless to say, this God demands no worship, reverence, or self-abasement.

Finally, there is an unusual religious movie that an atheist can enjoy, although it is not inspirational (at least, I hope not), and is not ruled out by any of my criteria, like being about the Devil or being sacrilegious.  The movie is Gabriel Over the White House (1933), set in the early thirties, during the Great Depression.  The president is like Warren G. Harding, a man of dubious morals. He believes in limited government, saying unemployment and organized crime are local matters, which gives him more time to fool around with his mistress. Being reckless, he crashes his car while speeding, and ends up in a coma. Gabriel infuses the spirit and wisdom of God into the president, and then wakes him up. He becomes a dictator with the symbolic trappings of Lincoln. He disbands Congress under threat of martial law, puts the unemployed to work, suspends habeas corpus, has gangsters rounded up and executed by firing squad, and that is just his domestic policy.  Then he demands that the European countries pay their war debts, which they will be able to afford, because they don’t need a military anymore, they just need to do what America says, or else they will be destroyed. Having established peace and prosperity, he dies.  And what is important is that throughout this fascist fantasy, though inspired by God, he never goes to church or gets on his knees to pray, and thus the movie is devoid of any sense of reverence or worship.

So there are religious movies an atheist can enjoy, but they are for the most part set in modern times, because the general public is not too keen on seeing displays of sincere piety and devotion in the modern setting either. The public’s tolerance for this sort of thing, however, increases the further back one goes into the past, until we reach biblical times, where it is deemed appropriate and even expected, and thus likely to prove insufferable to an atheist. It is for this reason that I look forward to watching Noah with a sense of dread.

Warren Buffett Predicts Dow 1,000,000 in 100 Years

It sounds as though Warren Buffett is pretty bullish on America. He has optimistically predicted that the Dow Jones Industrial Average will be over 1,000,000 in 100 years.  But what does this actually amount to? Let i be the annualized rate of return for the Dow over the next century.  The Dow closed today at 22,413.  So, we have the following:

22,413 (1 + i ) ^ 100 = 1,000,000

(1 + i ) ^ 100 = 44.6

(1 + i ) = 44.6 ^ (1/100)

(1 + i ) = 1.039

i = 0.039 = 3.9%

In other words, Warren Buffett might just as easily have said that the annualized return on the stock market over the next 100 years will be less than 4%.  But you can’t grab headlines with a lackluster prediction like that.

Alice Adams (1935) and Stella Dallas (1937)

It is only natural to want nice things, and provided a man comes by them honestly, people will approve of his efforts to obtain them.  (I am using the masculine gender here merely for ease of expression.)  If he works hard to make more money so that he can own his own home, that is just part of the American dream.  To that end, he may pursue an education in hopes of finding employment for which he will be well paid.  In so doing, his socio-economic status will be enhanced, for that is largely a function of income and education level.

But getting into the upper class is another thing entirely, for achieving that depends largely on being accepted into it by those that already belong, something that is not readily forthcoming for someone trying to ascend from the lower ranks, whom the elite are likely to regard as an upstart.  Nor will his efforts to rise to the upper echelons of society be met with approval by those in his own class, whom he obviously deems not good enough for his association.

Given this disapproval coming from both classes, we might expect one of two outcomes in which the protagonist in a story is a social climber:  either he will be punished and come to an unhappy end, or he will learn to accept his place in the world, finding contentment thereby.  More often than not, however, this proves not be the case when the protagonist is a woman.  Or rather, she is punished in the middle of the movie, but ultimately rewarded, in which case social climbing is not repudiated, but rather is seen to have paid off.

Two movies that exemplify this principle are Alice Adams (1935) and Stella Dallas (1937).  These movies have many things in common.  For one thing, they were both made around the same time.  For another, their titles refer to their respective female protagonists.  Both were remakes of silent films, Alice Adams (1923) and Stella Dallas (1925).  Both were based on novels written just after World War I, 1921 and 1923 respectively.  But most importantly, both are thematically related in the way the women in these movies, both coming from working-class families, are motivated by a desire to become upper class by marrying into it.  In each case, there is a mother who wants this for her daughter:  the daughter being the protagonist in the former; the mother, in the latter.

The title character of Alice Adams, played by Katherine Hepburn, is a young woman who lives in a small town named South Renford. At first, it appears to be the strangest small town you ever saw, because everyone seems to be rich except the Adams family. Alice gets invited to dances and parties for the upper class, but she cannot afford to dress the way they do. The upper-class men never ask her out, so she has to coerce her brother Virgil to escort her. At the dance, the men prefer to dance with women of their own class, and as her brother deserts her, she is left alone and comes across as a wallflower. In other words, we never see other young women of working-class background for her to be friends with, and we never see working-class men asking her out for a date. What an odd town.

Of course, we know that this cannot be. No town is like that. In fact, there are bound to be far more working-class families than rich ones: young women of her own class to be friends with; young men of her own class to fall in love with. Now, in one sense, we do  see a few people that are working class aside from those in the Adams family, miscellaneous shopkeepers and workmen for instance.  And there is Virgil, who prefers working-class companions to those Alice wants to socialize with. However, all those of his class we see him with are black:  we see him shooting craps with black servants, and at the dance, he greets the black bandleader, who in turn is happy to see him. It is left to us to infer, I suppose, that they know each other from a nightclub where black musicians provide entertainment for white working-class patrons, whom we never actually see.  In any event, we may assume that Alice never goes to that nightclub, where she might meet people in her own class. In fact, she is mortified when Virgil says “Hi” to the bandleader.

This association between Alice’s brother and African Americans is presumably twofold.  First, we do not expect Alice to socialize with black women or to date black men.  So, the more we think of the working class in South Renford as being composed of African Americans, the more we are induced to forget about her having any chances of finding love and friendship within that class.  Second, given the attitudes toward African Americans in 1935, the more the working class is associated with them, the more undesirable that class seems to be.

In any event, Alice is a big phony. And yet, we know we are supposed to feel sorry for her. To a certain extent we do. We all know how young people desperately want things that really do not matter, and it is painful to watch her suffer so from pretending to be something she is not, especially when we also know that she could be happy if she just let all that go. In fact, that is why we never see young women of her own class inviting her to parties or young men of her own class asking her out. If we did, and she snubbed them, we would have no sympathy for her. But by making it look as though she lives in a town where there are no opportunities for her in her own class, absurd as that is, we are more forgiving of her pretensions.

At the dance, Alice meets Arthur (Fred MacMurray), who seems to be quite taken with her, but she is just as much of a phony with him as with everyone else. It is hard to understand what he sees in her.  Later in the movie, Alice invites Arthur to have dinner at her house, for which purpose Malena (Hattie McDaniel) is hired, another black representative of the working class in South Renford.

But while we are trying to overlook Alice’s affectations as the folly of youth, we discover that her mother, apparently in her fifties, is just as foolish as Alice in such matters. Instead of encouraging Alice to stay within her class, she berates her husband for not making more money so that Alice can continue to socialize with the town’s upper crust. So much for the wisdom that supposedly comes with age.

Alice’s father is recovering from a long illness. His boss, Mr. Lamb, continues to pay him a salary and holds his job open for him, and her father wants to go back to work there when he gets better. But Alice’s mother pushes him to go into business by starting a glue factory, based on a formula that actually seems to belong to his boss, inasmuch as Alice’s father discovered it on company time.

What we are hoping for is that Alice will realize how wrongheaded she has been. Instead, the movie justifies her. Virgil gets into a jam and steals $150 from Mr. Lamb, whom he also works for, probably to pay off a gambling debt to some of those black servants he was shooting craps with. In other words, we can no longer admire Virgil for being content to fraternize with those in his class, thereby making it seem right for Alice to avoid such people as unworthy.

Anyway, with Alice’s father stealing the glue formula and Alice’s brother stealing the money, Mr. Lamb shows up at the Adams house to let them have a piece of his mind. It all looks pretty grim. But Alice tells him that it is all her and her mother’s fault for pushing her father to make more money. Mr. Lamb is magnanimous, willing to let Alice’s father have his job back when he gets well, willing to give them time to pay back the $150, and willing to let Alice’s father share in the profits from the glue formula.  But we should note that while Alice explains why her mother pushed her father to start a glue factory, which is so that she could have social status and be happy, she gives no indication that her desire to hobnob with rich society was an unworthy goal.

Ultimately, she has learned nothing. We had hoped that she would quit being a phony, make friends with women in her own class, and fall in love with a man who is also from a working-class background. But no. The movie rewards her vanity by having Arthur fall in love with her and want to marry her. Because he is one of the elite, and presumably has plenty of money, she will get what she always wanted, inclusion in the upper class of South Renford.  Now she can be the real thing.

We see two principles at work here that make Alice’s desire to be upper class somewhat palatable:  there don’t seem to be any opportunities for her in her own class, for it appears to be practically nonexistent; and through her brother’s example, her own class is portrayed as something any reasonable person would wish to get away from.  Together, they allow Alice’s punishment to be mild and temporary, while bringing her love and happiness in the end.

Barbara Stanwyck plays the title character of Stella Dallas.  This movie is a little more realistic in that we are aware of the fact that there are plenty of working-class folks in Stella’s town of Millhampton, Massachusetts, many of whom work in a mill, including her father and her brother.  We see mill hands saying hello to Stella as they walk by, but she is indifferent in her response to them.  Like Alice’s brother, Stella’s brother is content to be working class, but Stella has set her sights on Stephen Dallas.  We learn from a brief glance at a newspaper clipping that Stephen was a man who came from an upper-class family.  His once-millionaire father ended up penniless and committed suicide, leaving his son nothing.  Stephen had hoped to marry Helen Morrison, his childhood sweetheart, but given his sudden misfortune, he simply disappeared, leaving a note saying that he was going to try to make a new life, which he apparently succeeded in doing, inasmuch as he has become the advertising manager at the mill.  As a result of his disappearance, however, Helen has since married another man.

All this information is given to us in a matter of seconds, but let’s think about it for a little longer than that.  By having Stephen simply disappear, the movie avoids putting Helen in a bad light.  We are allowed to think that she would have married Stephen anyway.  After all, with his Harvard education, he could have supported her with a decent middle-class job like the one he got at the mill.  Through his action, he is basically saying that he regarded himself as being unworthy of her, which is a kind of reverse snobbery.  As a result, we are not surprised that when Stella manages to get him to marry her, he will come to think of her as unworthy of him.

But that’s only after they get married.  While they are just dating, Stella tells Stephen that she wants to improve herself, to do everything “well-bred and refined.”  “And Dull,” Stephen replies.  “Stay as you are. Don’t pretend.  Anyway, it isn’t really well-bred to act the way you aren’t.”  Of course, when people say, “Just be yourself,” they usually have no idea what they are encouraging.  They want you to be the person they imagine you to be, not the person you really are, which you have been at great pains to conceal, and rightly so.

Anyway, when they get married, that changes everything.  Stella quits trying to improve herself, and Stephen becomes embarrassed by the way her working-class background keeps surfacing.  She wears costume jewelry, and she uses bad grammar—Stephen pulls a long face when she says “further” when she should have said “farther.”  After she has a baby, she is not weak and bedridden the way any decent, upper-class woman would be, but rather her quick recovery is downright shameless and low class.  Stephen is appalled.

The night they get back from the hospital, she discovers an invitation to go to a dance at the River Club, a club for the elite that Stella has long wanted to belong to, and she prevails upon Stephen to attend.  At the dance, she meets Ed Munn (Alan Hale), a racetrack tout, popular with the upper class on account of the tips he provides them.  Ed and Stella really hit it off, because he is the sort of man Stella should have married.  He introduces her to some of the richest people in town.

After the dance, Stephen tells her he has been promoted to a position in New York, and that she will have to try extra hard to behave appropriately when they get there.  Needless to say, that ticks her off. She tells Stephen that she wants to stay in Millhampton, now that she has finally become a part of that town’s high society.  This leads to their separation, during which time she continues her friendship with Ed, which is completely innocent, but which makes Stephen suspicious and scandalizes Millhampton society.  As a result, Stella’s daughter Laurel is ostracized, as when the upper-class mothers of the children invited to her birthday party suddenly send excuses for being unable to attend.  Stephen becomes reacquainted with the now-widowed Helen and they start seeing each other regularly, but because they do so with decorum and refinement, no one in New York holds that against them.

Of course, if Laurel were to make working-class friends, there wouldn’t be a problem, although Stella would undoubtedly discourage that.  In any event, we are not supposed to think about that, just as we were not supposed to think about the opportunities for love and friendship in the working-class milieu for Alice Adams.  Because Laurel’s social opportunities in Millhampton have supposedly been foreclosed, once we suppress all thought of her opportunities among the working class, Laurel ends up spending a lot of time with her father in New York.  In so doing, she acquires the polish her mother lacks.  And she makes a lot of upper-class friends.  Meanwhile, Stella has become so garish and loud in manner and dress that she is a parody of a floozy, and Ed has become a drunken slob, the result, apparently, of his unrequited love for Stella.  In other words, we are presented with a picture of the working class that is so tawdry and repulsive that no one born into it could reasonably be expected to be content to remain there.

Both principles that worked to justify Alice’s desire to be admitted into the upper class are at work here too, only they apply to Stella’s daughter:  social opportunities among the working class appear to be nonexistent, and being working class is depicted as so awful that we cringe at the idea of Laurel being trapped in it.

Stella finally realizes what upper-class people really think of her. She gives Stephen a divorce so he can marry Helen, and so that Laurel can live with them and have all the advantages of an upper-class life.  Laurel remains faithful to her mother, but Stella pretends to reject her so that she will live with her father, telling Laurel that she and Ed are going to get married and live in South America, and that she doesn’t want to be bothered with her anymore.  Eventually, Laurel marries a rich young man, as Stella watches outside in the rain, after which she walks away, knowing that they will live happily ever after, because it is on account of her sacrifice that her daughter will now be upper class.  It is this sacrifice on the part of a mother for her daughter that is the central idea of Stella Dallas, but that sacrifice makes sense only if being a member of the upper class is such a wonderful thing that it justifies the estrangement of mother and daughter, who will never see each other again.

The moral of these two movies, then, is that if you are a working-class woman and you try to become a member of the upper class, people will spot you as a phony, and you will be humiliated.  But if you persevere and manage to pull it off by marrying up, it will bring love and happiness, as it does to Alice directly, with the connivance of her mother, and to Stella vicariously, through her daughter Laurel.

But don’t try this if you are a man.  Men that are social climbers, especially those that marry up, are seldom vouchsafed such happy endings.  In From the Terrace (1960), Paul Newman’s character marries up, but he then comes to realize that there are more important things in life than being upper class, allowing him to find happiness by marrying for love.  The title character of Barry Lyndon (1975), however, never renounces his social-climbing ambitions, and for him things end badly.  But Lyndon is only miserable.  In A Place in the Sun (1951), Montgomery Clift’s character tries to marry up and gets the death penalty.

Rich and Strange (1931)

Rich and Strange is a second-rate movie, made all the more disappointing by the fact that it was directed by Alfred Hitchcock.  We expect more from Hitchcock, so we feel let down when we watch one of his inferior films.  However, this is frequently the case with his earlier efforts.  Nevertheless, I found the movie interesting because of its attitude toward love and marriage.

Fred and Emily are a married couple.  Fred is disgruntled.  He is tired of his job, the routine of domesticity, and the kind of entertainment afforded him and his wife by the radio and the movies.  Emily appears to be satisfied with their situation, but Fred is frustrated that he cannot provide for her properly.  But mostly, he wants the “good things of life.”  There is a painting of a ship that he points to, indicating that he wants adventure.  He is irritated that Emily seems so content, thinking she ought to want more.  In his exasperation, he flings something at their cat to get him off the table.  Finally, he concludes, “I think the best place for us is a gas oven.”  Needless to say, Emily is appalled, noting that they have a plenty of food and a roof over their heads.  And needless to say, Fred is not impressed.  This is a reversal from what we usually see in the movies, where it is the nagging wife who is dissatisfied and wishes her husband could make more money so that she could have nicer things.

A common plot point in a fairy tale is for someone to get his wish, only for things to go terribly wrong.  Presumably, the point is to make us content with our lot.  In any event, as in a fairy tale, a letter arrives from Fred’s uncle, who has decided to give Fred an advance on his inheritance so that he can travel and enjoy life to the full.  He and Emily set sail from England, heading first to France before eventually ending up in the Far East.

On board the ship, Fred gets seasick, leaving Emily enough free time to make friends with Commander Gordon, with whom she soon falls in love, though hesitantly.  Fred finally recovers, meets a princess, with whom he soon falls in love without any hesitation whatsoever.  He is so obvious about it that Emily forms an even stronger attachment to Gordon.

And it is here that we get the first indication that this movie has an unusual attitude toward love.  Emily asks Gordon if he has ever been in love, and he replies, “No, I can’t say that I have.”  Gordon is played by Percy Marmont, an actor who was about thirty-eight years old at the time, so we can figure that Gordon is supposed to be a man in his thirties as well.  The idea that a man could reach that age never having been in love is preposterous.  So, we have to assume that what most of us would call “love,” this movie would dismiss as puppy love, infatuation, or simply lust.  In other words, this movie has an idealistic notion of love, from which vantage point it is assumed that the only way for a (heterosexual) man to still be a bachelor in his thirties would be if either he had never truly been in love, or if his true love was unrequited, something he never completely got over.

At the same time, Emily espouses a grim view of love.  She says that because she loves Fred, she wants him to think well of her, but because he is so clever, he frequently makes her feel foolish.  In other words, he belittles her with his “cleverness.”  She goes on to say that love makes people timid.  They are frightened when they are happy and sadder when they are sad.  Everything is multiplied by two, such as sickness and death.  That’s why she is so happy with Gordon, she says, because he is not clever, and if he were to tire of talking to her and excuse himself, it would not be a big deal.  They agree that it is lucky they are not in love.  But then she concludes that love is a wonderful thing.  In other words, love justifies all the misery it puts people through, which is an essential feature of this movie’s sentimental notions of love.

Things eventually reach the point where Fred and the princess are going to run off together, and Emily is going to leave Fred and marry Gordon.  But Gordon makes the mistake of telling Emily how much he despises Fred, that he is a sham, just a “great baby masquerading as a big, strong man.”  He then goes on to mention that the “princess” is actually an adventuress who wants Fred only for his money.  That brings out Emily’s pity.  She leaves Gordon to go back to Fred, noting at one point that a wife is more than half a mother to her husband.

When she gets back to their room, she finds Fred and the princess making arrangements to leave.  Speaking sotto voce, the princess tells Emily she was a fool not to go with Gordon, for then both women would have benefited, after which she leaves, ostensibly to let Fred and Emily speak to each other alone.  Now, Gordon may have made a mistake bad mouthing Fred to Emily, but she turns around and not only tells Fred what Gordon said, but also that she realized he was telling the truth, so that’s why she came back to him.  When she repeats to Fred that Gordon said he was a sham and a bluff, Fred says he ought to smash him.  But Emily says that Gordon wouldn’t be afraid of him because he knows that Fred is a coward.  The reason she came back, she says, is that she now realizes that all along she had dressed up his faults as virtues, and that he would be lost without her.  Well, Fred would have to be the cowardly worm Emily says he is in order for him to remain married to her after she said all that.

Meanwhile, the princess takes off with £1,000 pounds of Fred’s money (about $80,000 today).  Almost broke, they catch a cheap ship to get back home, but it almost sinks and they are abandoned.  However, a Chinese junk comes along, the crew of which are intent on salvage.  Fred and Emily board the ship.  One of the crew gets tangled up in the lines, struggles, and then drowns.  The rest of the crew simply watch, with no one making a move to help him.  Back in those days, it was believed that people in the Orient were indifferent to the suffering of others, and this movie reflects that notion.

While Fred and Emily are on the Chinese junk, a woman has a baby. From the way they look at each other, there seems to be the suggestion that Fred and Emily are inspired to have a baby themselves, now that they are reconciled. Back home, Fred wonders whether they can get a “pram” (baby carriage) up the stairs, and Emily responds that they are going to have to get a bigger place anyway, presumably because they will need an extra bedroom.  So, it looks as though the baby is a done deal.

But I could not help wondering, “Whose baby is it?” The movie is not explicit about how far these two went with their philandering, although one gets the sense that Fred and the “princess” went all the way, while Emily and Gordon never went beyond kissing. But with these old movies, so much is left to the imagination that it is hard to tell.

Then again, even if we assume that Emily and Gordon did not have sex, I can’t help but wonder how long it will take Fred to start wondering whose baby it is.

And in any event, if Fred gets so irritated with their cat, what is he going to be like when the squalling baby arrives?

Are we really supposed to regard this as a happy ending?

Is Hate Innate?

In the aftermath of the violence in Charlottesville, Barack Obama quoted Nelson Mandela in a tweet:

No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.

In addition, Nikki Haley issued an email to her staff condemning the hatred in that same event, noting that “People aren’t born with hate.”  These remarks are in response to President Trump’s failure to unequivocally condemn Nazis, Klansmen, and white supremacists generally, who are undoubtedly filled with hatred for blacks and Jews especially, but for anyone who is not white or not Christian.  But what caught my attention here is the fact that Obama and Haley were not content merely to condemn hate; they went further and insisted that we are not born with hate.

Presumably, they suppose that by denying the innate existence of hate, they are making some kind of case against hatred. However, as they do not explicitly make that case themselves, it is left to us to try to figure out what they have in mind and what they suppose it proves.  Hopefully, their point is not that babies do not emerge from the womb filled with hate for people of a different race or religion, for that would be a simpleminded argument against a position that no one has ever held. Rather, the only interesting question is whether people are born with a disposition to hate, an emotion that will become manifest under certain circumstances.  In other words, the question is whether people are born with a natural inclination to have feelings of enmity toward those who are different. Therefore, let us be generous and suppose not that Obama and Haley were making a case about what the newborn baby is thinking and feeling before the umbilical cord has even been cut, but rather that they are saying that there is no innate disposition to hate which may express itself as the child grows up.

Obama and Haley would seem to be of the same frame of mind as Jean-Jacques Rousseau.  In his book Émile, Rousseau averred that “all is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things, all degenerates in the hands of men.”  In an earlier work, Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of Inequality among Men, he argued that it is civilization that has corrupted man; for in a state of nature, he is noble and good. For writing such things, Rousseau was accused of impiety by the archbishop of Paris, because his assertion that man is basically good contradicted the doctrine of original sin, which held that man was basically evil. The question as to whether man is basically good or evil is not the same as the question as to whether man has a natural inclination to love or to hate, but they are close cousins.

Given that Obama and Haley do not believe people are born with a disposition to hate, we do not know, unfortunately, whether they believe that people are born with a disposition to love.  But given the readiness with which a baby comes to love its mother and the universal tendency for people to fall in love later in life, hopefully they do accept that at least love is innate.  But to say as much for love, yet deny the same for hate would be bizarre.  In defending the doctrine of original sin, St. Augustine pointed out that if babies had the size and strength of adults, they would be monsters.  In his Confessions, he says:

Who can recall to me the sins I committed as a baby?  For in your [God’s] sight no man is free from sin, not even a child who has lived only one day on earth….  If babies are innocent, it is not for lack of will to do harm, but for lack of strength.

I have myself seen jealousy in a baby and know what it means.  He was not old enough to talk, but whenever he saw his foster-brother at the breast, he would grow pale with envy….  Such faults are not small or unimportant….  It is clear that they are not mere peccadilloes, because the same faults are intolerable in older persons.

It may be that Obama and Haley are trying to say in their incomplete way that while indeed people have innate dispositions to love and to hate, the object of their love or hatred is not inherited but acquired.  In the old days, when marrying well was an important goal for young women, it was often said that they went to college to get their MRS; for while no one can be taught to love one person rather than another, it is nevertheless true that we tend to fall in love with someone we are around a lot rather than someone we run into only occasionally.  Love, that is to say, cannot be taught, but it can be encouraged and abetted.

In a similar manner, hate cannot be taught, but it can be encouraged and abetted. But only up to a point.  My grandfather belonged to the Ku Klux Klan. My father never joined, but he would have fit right in.  And he used to say, regarding the Jews, that Hitler had the right idea.  Raised in the Jim Crow South, I was taught not to use the water fountains or restrooms marked “Colored.”  I observed the rule much in the same way that I used the silverware at the dinner table in the proper manner. But my heart was never in it.  I have often thought that many of us in the Jim Crow South really did not believe in segregation, but we went along with it in order not to incur the wrath of those who were filled with hatred for blacks. So when integration was finally imposed on the South, it met with no resistance from people like us. Had all whites hated blacks, the Civil Rights movement would have failed. But as the haters were in the minority, it succeeded.  The main point of all this, however, is that while I was taught to hate blacks and Jews, I never did. In other words, people are born with varying dispositions to love and to hate, and those dispositions can be stronger than the influence of education.

Presumably, then, Obama and Haley wish to emphasize the goodness of man and the importance of education in their remarks.  It is an optimistic ideology, for if hate is not innate and if education is efficacious, then we can all look forward to a future in which racism and other forms of discrimination no longer exist.  But I doubt that “love comes more naturally to the human heart than hate.”  It all depends on the heart. Hatred will always be with us, for many people are born with a natural disposition to hate those who are different, and that disposition can be easily reinforced through education and friendship.

Musings on the Market

One of the frustrating things about politics is the sense of futility one gets.  I live in Texas, a winner-take-all state that always goes Republican in a presidential election.  I live in Houston, which has gerrymandered districts in which incumbents almost never lose, mostly because they are never even challenged. The inevitable result is apathy, a reasonable attitude to have regarding something beyond one’s control.  I manage to overcome this apathy just enough to vote the straight Democratic ticket, but that is about all.  As most of the people I play bridge with are Republicans, the opportunity does arise occasionally for a discussion of politics. Theoretically, there is the possibility that a nice argument might persuade someone to reconsider his political views, but as a practical matter, it never seems to happen.

In many ways, one also gets a sense of futility when it comes to the economy. As with politics, there is nothing I can do about America’s fiscal policy or the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve, and there is nothing I can do about whether Obamacare will be repealed or whether there will be tax cuts for the rich, except to become more apathetic.  As with politics, I can engage in discussions of economics with the Republicans I play bridge with, though without any hope of persuading anyone to my point of view.  Occasionally, when my partner and I are down by over a thousand points, I will casually remark between hands that I think it would be a good idea to raise taxes and cut defense; for my Republican friends are not apathetic, and there is the hope that my offending comment will be so disturbing as to throw them off their game.  I actually think it has worked once or twice.

Unlike voting in an election, where there is the nagging feeling that that one’s vote does not count, one’s vote when it comes to personal finances can have consequences of great significance.  Far from producing a feeling of apathy, making decisions about one’s own money can produce a great deal of anxiety and insomnia. You can read all the books you like, allowing others to persuade you to invest your money one way or another, but when it comes to time to buy or sell, you don’t have to persuade anybody.  The stakes are high, and you are on your own.

In one sense, I am quite fortunate.  The amount of money I have saved in combination with my Social Security checks is adequate for the necessities and a few luxuries.  So far.  There is a lot of longevity in my family, so even though I am seventy years old, I may have to support myself for decades. And that means that if I make a mistake with my money, I may find myself facing a hard old age.

Until recently, I had been rather sanguine about my investments.  The stock market had been advancing nicely since 2009, and the dividends I had been collecting had been giving me a warm feeling of security.  But then things started becoming worrisome.  The stock market, by many metrics, had become overvalued. The “Trump bump” made it even more so.  The Federal Reserve had started raising interest rates, and they are talking about unwinding their four-and-a-half trillion dollar balance sheet.  And then, on March 4, 2017, Trump tweeted that Obama tapped his phones and that Obama was bad or sick. That was the proverbial last straw.  I said to myself, “This will never end well,” and on Monday, March 6, I sold every share of stock I had.  But now, instead of those nice dividends, the interest I get having all my money in a money market fund is less than one percent, which in turn is less than inflation, giving me a real return that is negative.  So, instead of worrying about a bear market, I now have to worry about declining principal.

Anyway, among the Republicans I play bridge with, there are several retired financial advisers.  One in particular made the usual arguments, to wit, that no one can successfully time the market, that I won’t know when to get back in, that buy and hold has worked over the long haul, and so on, arguments that I have been familiar with and accepted for forty years. And since, according to my calculations, the gains in the stock market since I got out plus dividends I would have received amount to an opportunity cost to me of five percent, this financial adviser has been giving me a none too subtle raspberry for the last five months.

Of course, financial advisers are biased.  Even if a financial adviser knew that going to cash was the right thing to do, he could never recommend such action to his clients.  After about six months to a year of being in cash, receiving a paltry interest rate, which would be more than swallowed up by fees, it would likely occur to a client that if his money is just going to sit there in a money market fund, he doesn’t need a financial adviser at all. Then, after the passage of another six months or so, after the client had moved on to another financial adviser, who would have put him right back into the stock market, suppose that same stock market began a precipitous forty or fifty percent decline.  The original financial adviser would finally be vindicated, but it would be too late; for having lost all his clients owing to prudence, however justified, he would have long since had to find another line of work.

For the most part, having your money in the stock market is the right thing to do. Buy and hold, dollar cost averaging, reinvesting dividends—all these things pay off over the long haul.  So, financial advisers are basically doing the right thing by keeping their clients in the stock market.  But what occurred to me in all this is that what is appropriate for someone who is young or even middle age may be completely inappropriate for someone who is retired.  Actually, this is an established principle, which is why people are advised to put increasing amounts of their portfolio in bonds as they age. Would that I could!  But the interest on even long term bonds is pretty paltry right now, thanks to all that quantitative easing. Moreover, if interest rates rise, as surely they might, those bonds will lose value, and so there may be just as much risk in ten-year bonds as in the stock market.

The thing is, when I was working for a living, I could regard a decline in the stock market with dispassion.  I didn’t need my investments to live on, because I had an income.  In fact, I would continue putting my savings into the stock market and reinvesting dividends, because, as they say, the stock market was going on sale. But that is no longer true.  Now, I must dip into my savings to fund my retirement. And that creates an uneasy feeling.

My bridge partner has been retired for about a year now, and she is talking about going back to work.  It is my impression that she has plenty of money, much more than I do, in fact, but I think I may know the reason.  After a lifetime of adding to her savings, she is now bothered by having to make monthly withdrawals from her nest egg.  Like me, I am sure she has recalculated her finances to reassure herself that she will have enough money to last the rest of her life, even if she lives to be a hundred-and-three years old.  But drawing down on one’s savings is spooky, and she may need the feeling of security that income from employment brings.

The financial adviser who has been giving me raspberry for getting out of the market says that all I need to do is keep five years’ worth of living expenses in cash and invest the rest. That used to be my thinking.  And since I retired in 2007, just before the Great Recession, it is well that I observed that rule. But five years is not always enough.  Depending on the index you use (Dow Jones 30 or S&P 500) and depending on whether you just look at the nominal values or reinvest dividends and adjust for inflation, if you had money in the stock market in the late 1960s, it would be anywhere from fourteen to twenty years before you broke even.  If you had money in the stock market in 1929, it would be somewhere between twenty-five and thirty years before you got your money back.  And if you were in the Japanese stock market in 1989, then today, twenty-eight years later, you would still have lost half your money.

Let us be conservative and pick the least amount of time from these three examples, which is fourteen years.  That would mean that if I had five years’ worth of living expenses in cash and the rest in the stock market, then after five years I would have to start selling my stocks at depressed prices and continue to do so for the next nine years, almost guaranteeing that I would run out of money, if I lived another twenty or thirty years.  And God forbid that a Great Depression or Nikkei scenario of twenty to thirty years of depressed prices should be my fate.

The way I see it, there are three phases to saving and investing. In the beginning, there is the saving phase.  For the first few thousand dollars you save, it doesn’t matter what return you get.  The important thing is that you are saving the money, even if it just sits in your bank account.  The second is the return on investment phase, where the amount of return you get is important in order to benefit from the miracle of compound interest.  Third, there is the capital preservation phase, where keeping what you have is more important than getting a return.  That is where I am right now.  If there is never another recession or bear market in my lifetime, if this bull market goes up and up forever, and if I have to suffer raspberries from that financial adviser every time we play bridge, at least I will not run out of money (barring some catastrophe, like my having a stroke and having to go into a nursing home).  But if I got back into the stock market now, and if a bear market like any of the three I mentioned should occur, I would soon be impoverished.

From this I dare to generalize.  The baby boomers have had an impact on society and the economy from the time they were born owing to their overwhelming numbers.  Of those that are now retired, many of them will be in my shape: maybe a little better, like my bridge partner; maybe a little worse. But they will be as sensitive to and as fearful of running out of money as I am. They may be in the stock market now, desperate for yield, but the need of retired baby boomers to get out of the stock market will be much greater when it starts to go down in a big way than when they were still working for a living and could better stand the declines. In other words, the mega-bear market I fear may be exacerbated by the fact that many baby boomers have so much more to lose by being in the stock market now that they are retired, and thus will be more likely to panic and sell everything as the market descends.

Whenever I read essays on investing, there is often a disclaimer at the end that has something to do with the essay not being advice to invest this way or that.  I suppose the purpose of it is to keep the author from being sued.  I guess I should do the same.  I wrote this essay merely to put my thoughts down on electronic paper and present them to others for their consideration and possible amusement.