FILM CHRONICLE
At a time when the normal condition of the citizen is a state of anxiety,
euphoria spreads over our culture like the broad smile of an idiot. In
terms of attitudes towards life, there is very little difference between a
"happy" movie like
Good N ews,
which ignores death and suffering, and
a "sad" movie like
A Tree Grows i'n Brooklyn,
which uses death and
suffering as incidents in the service of a higher optimism.
But, whatever its effectiveness as a source of consolation and a
means of pressure for maintaining "positive" social attitudes, this opti–
mism is .fundamentally satisfying to no one, not even to those who
would be most disoriented without its support. Even within the area of
mass culture, there always exists a current of opposition, seeking to
express by whatever means are available to it that sense of desperation
and inevitable failure which optimism itself helps to create. Most often,
this opposition is confined to rudimentary or semi-literate forms: in mob
politics and journalism, for example, or in certain kinds of religious
enthusiasm. When it does enter the field of art, it is likely to be dis–
guised or attenuated: in an unspecific form of expression like jazz,
in the basically harmless nihilism of the Marx Brothers, in the continually
reasserted strain of hopelessness that often seems to be the real meaning
of the soap opera. The gangster film is remarkable in that it fills the need
for disguise (though not sufficiently to avoid arousing uneasiness) with–
out requiring any serious distortion. From its beginnings, it has been
a consistent and astonishingly complete presentation of the modem
sense of tragedy.
2
In its initial character, the gangster film is simply one example of
the movies' constant tendency to create fixed dramatic patterns that
can be repeated indefinitely with a reasonable expectation of profit.
One gangster film follows another as one musical or one Western fol–
lows another. But this rigidity is not necessarily opposed to the require–
ments of art. There have been very successful types of _art in the past
which developed such specific and detailed conventions as almost to
make individual examples of the type interchangeable. This is true, for
example, of Elizabethan revenge tragedy and Restoration comedy.
American because it was gloomy. Like so much else that was said during the
unhappy investigation of Hollywood, this statement was at once stupid and
illuminating. One knew immediately what M;rs. Rogers was talking about; she
had simply been insensitive enough to carry her philistinism to its conclusion.
2
Efforts have been made from time to time to bring the gangster film into
line with the prevailing optimism and social constructiveness of our culture;
Kiss of Death
is a recent example. These efforts are usually unsuccessful; the
reasons for their lack of success are interesting in themselves, but I shall not
be able to discuss them here.
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