Twentieth Century American Cinema
Master Thesis European Studies Identity and Integration Graduate School for Humanities
Supervisor: dhr. dr. A.J. (Alex) Drace-Francis Second Reader: dhr. Prof. dr. J.T. (Joep) Leerssen
The 30th of June 2020 Samantha Staggs
11591315 Word count: 17,245
which beliefs and notions of cultures are expressed and visualized, whilst at the same time re-shaping or influencing the cultural attitudes it sets out to represent. This research analyzes five Hollywood films from the 1940s and 1950s to realize what image of Europe in terms of space, place, and gender is presented to viewers. Through the Hollywood lens of the mid-twentieth century, it becomes evident America’s imagination of Europe is grounded in a decidedly fluid process that shifts between seeing Europe as an “other” and as a mirror for America’s own self-image.
continuously provided supportive and insightful comments, both in his role as my supervisor during this research thesis and as lecturer in my master’s program electives. I also thank Dr Joep Leerssen for the great lectures and material supplied in the Cultures of Nationalism in
Contemporary Europe elective and for his role as my secondary marker. Lastly, I would like to convey gratitude to my fellow peers within the European Studies master’s track Identity and Integration. Their contributions and participation in discussions and conversations, both in and outside academics, have been invaluable and certainly embodied the interdisciplinary and dynamic spirit of the Graduate School for Humanities.
Chapter One: Casablanca (1942) ...……….12
Space……….12
Place……….….…13
Gender………...14
Illustrations………16
Chapter Two: Watch on the Rhine (1943) ………...……….………17
Space……….……….17
Place……….………...………...…19
Gender………20
Chapter Three: A Foreign Affair (1948) ………...………22
Space………...………...22
Place………...23
Gender………24
Illustrations…….………...………….………...25
Chapter Four: Roman Holiday (1953) ……….…….27
Space……….……….…………27
Place………...………29
Gender………30
Illustrations………31
Chapter Five: Three Coins in the Fountain (1954) ……….………..34
Space………...………...………34 Place………..……….35 Gender………36 Illustrations….….……….….39 Conclusion………..………...…………40 Bibliography………..46 Filmography………...46
Introduction
In his book, Not Like Us: How Europeans Have Loved, Hated, And Transformed American Culture Since World War II, Richard Pells goes to great lengths to discuss the myth of
“Americanization” of Europe and how America tried to remake Europe after its own image. It is Pells’ own interpretation that a great deal of European domestication of American exports takes place in the process and it is not a static transfer of cultural products or practices (Pells, 1997). Hence, Pells’ suggestion that Europe is ‘not like us (America)’. Regardless of what happens with cultural products after exportation, the initial effort by America to construct the image of Europe after its own image is more significant, in my opinion. Kuisel criticizes Pells when reviewing his work, saying a more appropriate title for the process instead of ‘not like us’ is ‘more like us’ (Kuisel, 1998: 621). Thus, my research thesis is here to examine the image of Europe in five Hollywood productions from the 1940s and 1950s to realize its fluid imagination as an “Other” (‘not like us’) and as a reflection of the self-image of America (‘more like us’). Through the lens of Hollywood and specific themes of space, place, and gender, it becomes apparent what kind of image(s) of Europe are created and how it reflects a process that teeters between othering and equating.
As I grew up in western Nebraska in the United States, I often was quite curious about the topic of Europe. Cliché as it might sound, at that time, Europe was only something I had heard about or seen ‘in the movies’. Whatever I imagined it to be, its manifestation was still something of a great unknown, and as a child, this is what made it most exciting for me. Fast forward several years later, I am thankful to have had eventually formed my envisions of Europe through more diverse sources outside of Hollywood film. Nonetheless, as a current student of European Studies: Identity and Integration at the University of Amsterdam, I am most interested to investigate the image of Europe in this American context. The selection of Hollywood films I examine in the research were released in the 1940s and 1950s, thus, they are not the ones I grew up watching. They at one point, however, could have later informed the films that I grew up watching, as we know cultural images are often reproduced and reimagined. Moreover, “cultures produce myths because they satisfy a deep-rooted human need: the need to make sense of life,” says Matthew Screech (2005). As Screech suggests, people feel a natural desire to make sense of the world around them and ‘culture’ is part of this process as it helps to construct or express the world as experienced by its contributors. Many social constructivism experts explain how the
world is not simply given and as is, yet one that is constructed through the actions, beliefs, and interests of the actors themselves (Collins, 2009: 71). With Matthew Screech’s and social constructivists’ insights in mind, culture can be grasped as a socially constructed set of images, that is constantly in flux and produced differently across time and space. So, what cultural studies scholars are here to do is track these developments and constructions of a given culture over time, how this is influenced by certain players or factors, and examine how expressions or images of culture at a certain time are embedded in the political and economic discourses of the same time. From my own personal experience and work as a student in cultural studies, I find it essential that research be done to examine the variations and changes in, or repetitions and
reiterations of images created of Europe and understand this process from both inside and outside of Europe. There is a fair amount of literature on this subject from the American perspective in which I delve more into later, yet most of this scholarship is produced by American studies scholars like Robert Shandley and Emily Rosenberg and not led by student of European studies like myself.
Cinema was one of the most influential forms of entertainment and engaging social practices of the twentieth century. Hollywood films, especially, were the most popular worldwide. In the 1930s, Hollywood films began to overtake the European cinematic market. From then onwards, American film distribution to Europe only ever increased and by the gloomy European aftermath of the Second World War “..audience numbers soared and cinemas provided an important community focus and social function, whilst the films so fervently offered audiences a shared set of images of the world. Of course, the source of the majority of the images was Hollywood, hence Sorlin’s comment that ‘we Europeans create images of the world through Hollywood’s lenses’” (Everett, 1996: 16). Hollywood films, especially, have been identified by scholars to be useful sources, not just for cultural studies scholars but for historians as well, as they contain symbolic associations and representations that “provide rich glimpses into the discursive forms of an era (embedded in the non-separable realms often called ‘politics’/culture or
‘personal/political) and suggest changes in such forms over time” (Rosenberg 1994: 60). Hollywood films pose then as a promising source for exploring ideas and images about Europe as a sort of social practice, “projected and performed, expressed and exported, labeled and legitimized, appropriated and emulated by people in the past in a range of contexts” (Patel, 2013: 23). As one of the foremost mediums of American popular culture, Hollywood films are rich in
their symbolic and cultural associations and representations and therefore serve as interesting sources for cultural studies. The insight from Sorlin reveals the significance of Hollywood films for European audiences at the time. It also demonstrates the impact cinema can have, as people form their ideas of the world through the images shown to them on the ‘big-screen.’ Bear in mind that mass media are the main source of knowing the “other” for average person in western society, so “the role of Hollywood depictions of ‘outsiders’ becomes essential, as most people do not have other ways to access those cultures but by seeing their representation on the screen” (Macros & Colὀn, 2015: 12).
Considered by some as cultural imperialism, the export of American culture and imagery in the twentieth century was unmatched, from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show to images of American soldiers handing out candy to children in occupied Berlin to Coca-cola commercials on the TV (Bowen, 1985; Maisuwong, 2012). The American post-war cultural impact was especially taken note of in Europe, as “most educated Europeans only found their century-old prejudice against the uncultured upstart across the Atlantic confirmed” (Wagnleitner, 1986: 61). Even in more contemporary times, Hollywood films have been identified as to especially worry EU politicians and officials because they fear American exports “threaten to undermine the integrity of
European culture” (Shore, 2006: 19). America has at times been imagined in European media as culturally threatening, infected with capitalist and consumerist manners, and without a
‘sophisticated’ artistic and literary canon. Even when it comes to music, a scholar notes that something as ‘American’ represents sounds of “consonance, simplicity, and clarity” whilst something as ‘European’ is recognized through sounds of “sophistication, dissonance, abstraction” (Gann, 2011: 41). Before mainstream Coca-Cola commercials and John Wayne westerns, Europe’s image of a ‘low culture’ America can perhaps be linked to the moments when American entrepreneurs, who from the 1880s to the Great Depression, “pillaged Europe’s
cultural treasures” such as old master paintings, tapestries, silver and porcelain, armor, and furniture, and collected by the nouveau riche American upper class to “legitimize their wealth with the trappings of taste and sophistication” (Ewell, 2014: 15).
Since the nineteenth century, the notion of ‘Europe’ and being from ‘Europe’ became more widespread and given more substantial meaning, (Schmale, 2001: 39) yet contemporary debates still argue over what is meant with ‘European’ or ‘Europe’ and it remains a relatively ambiguous,
divided, and situational categorization (Patel, 2013: 24). What is considered to be representative of ‘Europe’ or ‘European’ topic has been heavily explored in a range of European contexts often embedded in intellectual or philosophical discourses. Its discussion is embedded in intellectual and philosophical discourses where normative answers about the European imaginary are the tendency and still theses answers are just as contradictory, complex, and ambiguous as earlier notions on the subject (Patel, 2013: 26). The general image that is constructed of Europe at the institutional level is based in the traditional ideas of the European cultural canon, which reflect only a relatively small group of mainly white, Christian, western Enlightenment inspired, men. The EU imagines Europe primarily through its “high culture” (opera, classical music, grand architecture) and ideas of “popular culture, multiculturalism and cultural pluralism, and hybridity appear to be anathema to official conceptions of European culture” (Shore, 2006: 19).
There is little literature in the field dedicated to exploration in non-traditional sources or discourses. The work of Claudia degli Alessandrini, Ben Wellings, and Julie Kalman explores European cultural constructions and presentations within the Eurovision Song Contest and they are among the small number of scholars who approach this process within a popular culture discourse (degli Alessandrini, 2015; Kalman & Wellilngs, 2019). It is a source of popular culture in Europe that is under researched within cultural studies in comparison to the amount of
literature dedicated to the official EU’s narratives of Europe. Like Hollywood films, the ESC is a form of mass entertainment, viewed by more than one billion people. It is television contest where European and Non-European members compete for best artistic performance of the year. Like the image of America within American popular culture discourses, the image of Europe or what is understood as European within the ESC is an imaginative construct that can transform into a literal performance or act. The contest is broadcasted way beyond the geographical
boundaries of the EU, but the countries that can participate in the ESC “rely on the preconditions that their national broadcasting association is an active member of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), or the Council of Europe” (degli Alessandrini, 2015: 4). So, to some degree the enlargement of participating countries in the ESC, mirror EU enlargement, therefore, one debated hypothesis is that non-European members participate in the contest to improve their chance of EU accession (degli Alessandrini, 2015: 4). Nonetheless, the ESC has become a major cultural force in European identity building and allegiance (degli Alessandrini, 2015: 2;
Degli Alessandrini concludes in her study that the ESC is a platform for European identity contestation, fitting the EU theory of “unity in diversity”. Yet according to degli Alessandrini, the projected image of Europe as borderless and inclusive in the ESC still it does not match the reality of integratory European efforts, where Europe fits the image of a more “closed ‘fortress’” type (degli Alessandrini, 2015: 55). As we see with the studies of the ESC, significant and relevant conclusions over the constructions of the image of Europe and its materializations can be drawn from non-traditional, popular culture discourses. Ideas about the images of Europe within in its own context are less pertinent to the aim of the current research, yet nevertheless, provide insight for the overall scope of the thesis.
I have chosen five Hollywood films for my research, Casablanca (1942), Watch on the Rhine (1943), A Foreign Affair (1948), Roman Holiday (1953), Three Coins in the Fountain (1954). I initially reasoned to research films produced from the 1940s and 1950s as it is a dramatic time for American and European interactions. In 1942, the United States had recently entered World War Two and by the mid-1950s, had solidified an alliance with western Europe and taken on some of the final surges of European immigration (Ferrie & Hatton, 2013: 17). As “Europe might best be understood as the product of moments of crisis concerning other identity concepts, often triggered by intercultural encounters and migration” (Patel, 2013: 26), the mid-twentieth century time period encapsulates many such moments, especially in regard to American and European relations. I chose to start the analysis with Casablanca, as it captures the moment of the beginnings of the United States rising hot war in Europe and I end with Three Coins in the Fountain as it symbolizes the end up of a decreasing hot war and the new solidifying of a cold war between the United States and parts of Europe. I did not find it essential that the collection of films belong to same genres, so the genres of the films range from romantic comedy, to espionage, to romantic drama. It was more necessary that the plot or storyline of a film (to various degrees) European players regardless of genre. For example in Roman Holiday and Three Coins in A Fountain its poor Italian clerks and barbers, or landlords and princes (Bernardi, 2019), in Watch on the Rhine its refugees and aristocrats (Rubenstein, 1979) and Casablanca and A Foreign Affair its performers and officials (Gemünden, 2008). Though several other
Hollywood productions from this period could have met the same criterion, I chose this set of five films for a few reasons. For instance, Casablanca and Watch on the Rhine both take place and are filmed somewhere outside of Europe, thus in part I chose those two films considering
they might provide an interesting contrast alongside the discussion of the films, A Foreign Affair, Roman Holiday, and Three Coins in the Fountain, which were set and shot exclusively in
Europe. Furthermore, I chose films that had already had a significant amount of commentary made about them as my strategy is to expand upon and further develop the previous conclusions made by scholars about the films in regards to themes of space, place and gender.
Each film has been previously analyzed, yet on an individual basis or in combination with another film, which is not included in this research. Moreover, as previously stated, much of the literature from the American perspective of the image of Europe in cinema is produced by American studies scholars like Robert Shandley and Emily Rosenberg and not led by student of European studies like myself. My research is meant to expand upon already existing conclusions about Hollywood’s image of Europe in the mid-twentieth century. As a student in cultural studies, I understand it unreasonable to try to come up with essential definitions of what is ‘European’ or ‘Europe’. Post-1945, the turn to anti-essentialism in the humanities grew from the desire to reconcile the torn nations in Europe and scholars “began to note that national
characterizations related, first and foremost, not to an external anthropological reality mimetically represented, but to an oppositional discursive economy of other national
characterizations, most fundamentally along an axis of Self vs. Other (soon termed “auto-image” vs. “hetero-image”)” (Leersen, 2016: 15). ‘Europe’ or being ‘European’ is not a nationality, but its representation process takes place on a similar axis. Understandings of culture are not made up by one single element, but a cluster of many, intersectional factors that come together to form an overall cultural image for a group or community. Yet in this study, I qualitatively examine the image produced of Europe regarding three factors; space, place, and gender.
Scholars have argued the ‘American’ self-image as seen on the ‘big-screen’ in the 1940s and 1950s was constructed to be in terms of a most powerful, heroic, and influential world player, and eager to position Europe as a cultural opposite. In regard to the image of Europe in Roman Holiday and Three Coins in the Fountain, Shandley commented extensively on how the films constitute as travelogue romances, utilizing the most prominent fixations of the “Old World” to transform spaces in Europe into ideal and sought after romantic travel destinations (Shandley, 2009). Brence makes comment on the usage of Casablanca for the film Casablanca, which provided an even more “exotic” setting for a familiar Hollywood romance (Brence, 2014: 424).
Furthermore, Rubenstein discussed the leftist appeal and antifascist tone of Watch on the Rhine and his text suggests, if only implicitly, how political ideology helped Americans to draw up “the good” Europe versus “the bad” Europe (Rubenstein, 1979: 17). My research will make a point of this more explicitly. Dina Smith analyzed the Hollywood film, Sabrina (1954), and discussed how the film represents a dramatization of the main U.S. foreign policy narrative for Europe post World War II, noting like many of the other Billy Wilder films of the 1950s, such as A Foreign Affair, the main American protagonist represents an image of America, that is projected as a strong (male) hero coming to the aid of a “culturally savvy” yet orphan (woman) European character which is to represent a frail, weak image of Europe (Smith, 2002: 27).
Emily Rosenberg studied the frame of A Foreign Affair and determined the discourse
incorporated traditional American isolationist themes, evident through the relationship between the American soldier and his decision to choose one Iowan woman, who represents America, over a German woman, who represents the “other” Europe (Rosenberg, 1994: 62). Regarding Casablanca and gender, Kunze, Cohan and Hark have discussed similar notions of patriarchal ideology underlining the Euro-American romance in the film. Lastly, though she discusses in relation to 1950s British cinema, comments of Christine Geraghty are nonetheless relevant for my discussion of gender as she demonstrated in her work how the European woman was expressed as an ‘other’ through the notions of her hyper-sexuality embedded in British ideas main continent Europe being a place of sexual freedom (Geraghty, 2000: 93). How the
suggestions above about the self-image of America and hetero-image of Europe came to be made are naturally to some degree contingent upon the scholars’ own method and overall scope of their individual analyses, still their work guides mine by providing the field’s empirical
comprehensions regarding the subject and its themes. Yet generally, and most importantly, I see a tendency in the scholarship to shy away from highlighting the perpetual fluidity of Europe’s image in the 1940s and 1950s from that of an “other” to a complementing, mirroring imagination of an American self-image. Thus, it is my current research that especially emphasizes this point.
I will explain how each theme is applied in relation to a film analysis, yet first I will endeavor briefly to indicate how additional factors fuel “othering” processes within America most
ruthlessly, and can lead to very serious consequences for the targeted group. Factors such as race, can have very serious consequences for some groups, a signal to this research that the process of
cultural ‘othering’ takes places on several degrees and it should not be taken for granted the less disparaging nature of the ‘othering’ process between America and Europe. Acknowledging the impact processes of ‘othering’ are capable of is necessary. If understood as a social construct and a component in the human imaginary, race has still been utilized in very real ways and
unequivocally helps to further marginalize groups of people in societies. Hollywood has shown great tenacity for finding groups of people to vilify, especially in terms of race. “The most significant case in classical Hollywood is probably the mythical and distorted portrait of Native American Indians, as profusely and accurately explored by Jojola, but can also extend, as
suggested by May to the “perpetuated racial stereotypes” of non-whites that Hollywood strongly echoed from the 1930s” (Macros & Colὀn, 2015: 17). Within the current research’s selected films its quite clear how the image of Europe is constructed in terms of race. To America, Europe is white, or at least their agenda really pursued a white Europe based on the racial representation throughout the films coupled with the U.S. immigration policy of the period that established national-origin quotas, which gave priority to immigrants from Western and Northern Europe (Alperin & Batalova, 2018).
Each film is accorded a chapter in the research and structured according to the chronological order of the films. Each chapter begins with a brief and descriptive passage introducing general information about the film. Then, qualitatively, and according to the given theme, I evaluate instances in the films where the viewer is explicitly or implicitly, visually, or discursively, presented with images of Europe. The subtopic of space is dedicated to the imaginations of macro and micro spaces. The macro, public space includes both the official and unofficial, city streets, squares, parks, government buildings, monuments, nature, etc., The micro includes the private, domestic space, primarily the private space of a family home or household. What do the depictions reveal about the American imagination of these types of spaces in Europe? The answer to this question will help to inform how Europe imagined as an overall place.
According to Stephen Heath, British film theorist and critic, space is not an empirical given that the director simply records on film (Heath, 1976). He writes that cinema “poses an image, not immediate or neutral, framed and centered. Perspective-system images bind the spectator in place, the suturing central position that is the sense of the image..” (Heath, 1976: 99). Due to editing and framing, the objects captured on film acquire an importance that surpasses “the
recording of their physical extension in reality” and in the end, the viewer is required to make sense of a film’s “fragmented visualizations of spaces into a coherent notion of place” (Liang Tong & Cheng Chye Tan, 2002: 5). Within one film, for example, a viewer may be presented with scenes or images within public spaces, domestic spaces, or panoramic spaces to positive spaces, negative spaces, on-sight location spaces, or studio-built spaces. Each space that is depicted for the viewer helps to build an overall sense of a place imagined to be ‘realistic’. Whether the spaces depicted in scenes and shots accurately represent the visual reality, they nonetheless play a role in how viewers inform their spatial imaginations of a place. Thus, the categories of ‘on-location’ spaces versus ‘studio-built space’ are also taken into consideration when it comes to the general discussions of the private and public spaces.
The second theme of analysis is place. In the case of Europe, there are numerous ways,
according to its status as a ‘place’, that it can be described and not only in accordance to its mere geographical relativities whilst even understandings of that fluctuate over time. Pocock notes, that contemporarily the practice of describing Europe as a “continent”, separate from Asia persists, despite there being essentially no determinate physical or cultural frontiers (Pocock, 1997: 16). In his own view, however, he understands Europe not as a “continent” but as a “civilization” (Pocock, 1997: 16). In Pocock’s outlook, Europe is not simply then a geographical conception yet one controlled by the meanings of its spaces and experiences. So, depending on its understanding, ‘place’ can be pinpointed differently. In one sense, ‘place’ is defined as a “geometric conception” and “definable entirely in relation to a singular spatial metric (latitude and longitude, elevation, etc.)” (Agnew, 2011: 3). On the other hand, ‘place’ is defined also simply as “spaces with meaning” that “tend to be understood as a unique location, connected to other places but self-contained and distinctive” (Hopkins 2010: 11). Hopkins and Agnew both derive their ideas from the initial theorizer of space, Michel de Certeau, who states, “In short, space is a practiced place. Thus, the street geometrically defined by urban planning is
transformed into a space by walkers. In the same way, an act of reading is the space produced by the practice of place: a written text, i.e.., a place constituted by a system of signs” (de Certeau 1980: 117). In a source like film, however, where there is major editing and framing, the presentation of a place in the end comes to be something more describable as a collection of “fragmented visualizations of spaces” in which the viewer is required to make sense of and imagine themselves “into a coherent notion of place” (Liang Tong & Cheng Cye Tan, 2002: 5).
Thus, in the passages headed ‘place’ in each chapter, I examine the image of Europe in the films by evaluating both the geographic and ideological notions presented to the viewer, implicitly or explicitly.
An implicit awareness can already be established that Hollywood was quite partial to western Europe. Whether considered a geographical or ideological conception, ‘western’ Europe is utilized much more often in representations of Europe as a place. Today, it is no longer a secret that a cultural propaganda program, was led by the United States government in western Europe from 1950 to 1967, which included investments in Hollywood and was aimed to push, what Saunders describes as the “intelligentsia of western Europe away from its lingering fascination with Marxism and Communism towards a view more accommodating of the ‘the American way’” (Saunders, 1991: 1). With Casablanca being the earliest released of the selected films in 1942 and Three Coins in the Fountain being the latest release in 1954, this twelve period saw major political and economic developments between the United States and nations of Western Europe along with the emergence of a rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union that drew clear divisions at the Iron Curtain (Nerlich, 1983: 87). In Hollywood, it can be said that the divide was especially clear, as a ‘blacklist’ was introduced by Congress to Hollywood in 1947, which denied employment to entertainment professionals who were thought to be Communists or Communist sympathizers (Gordon, 1999). Yet, I do not yet assume that Hollywood’s partialities to western Europe, during this twelve-year period were totally and always translated onto the ‘big-screen’.
The third theme of analysis is gender. As I highlighted earlier, many scholars have addressed the relationships between gender and cinema. Leading up to the 1960s and the rise of second wave feminism and political awareness of sex inequality in Europe and North America, a new
consciousness in academics arose between the terms ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ where now “one signaled bodily prescription and proscription, the other counterposed the heavy weight of culture,
economics and tradition in allowing only certain kinds of possibilities” (Oakley, 2005: 2).
Gender is something that is determined by the environment in which it is grounded in and what it means to be ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ is not defined by biology but is established through a socially constructed set of traits or behaviors attributed to either a woman or a man. Cinema is a key informer for society’s imagination of gender roles and femininity or masculinity. For
instance, “one of the key contributions of feminist film theorists has been to show how cinematic representations of gender relations are never neutral, but instead both express and have the potential to reinforce or challenge unequal gender relations in wider society” (Fullwood, 2015: 16). Masculinity and femininity both can be understood as a notion of gender performativity and though femininity is often realized in relation to the oppositional oppression from masculinity, it cannot always be suggested the films or other mediums, for that matter, project entirely
transparent notions of gender dichotomies then or now. Since numerous scholars have previously distinguished within the films the gendered performativity amongst American and European characters, I move directly to an analysis of how different spaces themselves become gendered by the gender performatives of the characters. Given that “one of the key contributions of feminist geographers has been to show how gender operates within society’s organization of space (Fullwood, 2015: 16)”, it is realistic to investigate how ideas about gender becomes part of space or suggested to be a ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ space. “The houses in which we live and the buildings in which we learn, and work reflect assumptions about the proper relations among family members, colleagues, and strangers. Those buildings, in turn, shape the occupants’ behavior” (Hillier and Hanson 1984; Weisman 1992). In the gender analysis, I first discuss the representations of masculine or feminine spaces and how it is constructed in a scene for example at the workplace, café, house, etc. Then I aim to evaluate what the notions of gendered spaces or gender performativity of the characters reveal about the imaginations or expectations in the heteronormative relationships of husband and wife. The films’ presentations of gendered spaces and expectations of husband and wife are not invulnerable to already existing notions of gender rooted in American or European discourses operating on an axis self vs. the ‘other’.
In the conclusion of the research, I both summarize and give a final comment, in terms of the three subtopics, on how images of Europe are created in the films. I anticipate the results do not construct just one singular image of Europe but produce several varying sets of images that at times are contradictory and jump in and out of an ‘other’ status. Given understandings of social constructivism and ‘othering’ processes, I also anticipate results that strengthen the larger discussion of film and its capacity to inform the shaping and re-shaping of cultural images and pursuit to construct it after its own imagination. Furthermore, the results can serve to contribute to other, contemporary cultural studies’ discussions and academia concerning the image of Europe and how it is imagined both from within Europe and outside of it.
Chapter One: Casablanca (1942)
Casablanca is an American romantic drama film directed by Hungarian-born Michael Curtiz and released by Warner Bros. Studios in 1942. Curtiz was a very well-known director before he came to the United States from Europe in 1926 after being offered a director job in a new film studio in Hollywood (Barson, 2020). Casablanca is based on the play Everybody Comes to Rick’s by Joan Alison and Murray Burnett. Burnett, inspired by his own travels to Austria and France in 1938 and several scenes in the film are inspired directly from his experiences there (Harmetz, 1997). Filmed at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California, the story is set in 1941 in
Casablanca, Morocco, which at the time was a French protectorate. Most scenes take place inside American Rick Blaine’s café, who is played by American actor Humphrey Bogart. Along with helping his former lover, played by Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman, and her husband, Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid), a Czech underground leader, get out of Casablanca, there are a slew of other European characters that Rick encounters inside his café. Most are European refugees who are trying to reach what is described as ‘freedom’ in the United States. In the end, Rick is the hero as he assists Laszlo and Ilsa escape on to the plane and out of Casablanca.
Space
Rick and Isla met in Paris in 1940, just before its occupation by the Nazis and at a time when Isla thought her husband had died in a concentration camp. When they unexpectedly meet a year later in Casablanca at Rick’s café, Rick asks Sam, Dooley Wilson as the piano player, to play “As Time Goes By”, triggering a flashback from Rick. At one moment, the shot zooms in on the upper half of Rick showing his sad face whilst he drinks alone in the café at night and smoking, as the soft piano music plays in the background. Then the picture begins to become blurry when a large, elevated shot of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris comes into picture with what sounds to be like a softer rendition of royal entrance trumpets playing in the background. Then the shot changes to Rick and Isla driving down the Champs Elysées, the Arc de Triomphe in the background, smiles on their faces and accompanied with light violin music. The background changes next to an empty country road, where it is only Rick and Isla, and she rests her head on his shoulders as he looks up dreamingly to the afternoon sky. Again, the scene changes within a few seconds, to show Rick and Isla enjoying themselves on the river Seine with a French flag
flying and the Eiffel Tower in the background as a stereotypical fitted Frenchmen in a striped sailor shirt and beret, passes by them.1
The short montage of clips between Rick and Isla in Paris illustrate an imagination of European public space. Just as we will see in Roman Holiday and Three Coins in the Fountains, the grand, historic monuments of the city are showcased along with a touch of countryside that brings together the full romantic aesthetic of public space in Europe as constructed by Hollywood. Robert Shandley noted how Hollywood in the 1950s and early 1960s loved to tell stories about Americans falling in love with someone in Europe and most often it takes place in front of the most famous, grand landmarks of the Old World positioned in the background (Shandley, 2009). Made in 1943, even the same can be said about Casablanca, as the images of public spaces are mostly scenes that show grand, yet idyllic spaces, perfect settings for romance.
European public space is also imagined in another sense within Casablanca. Rick’s café in a way creates a microcosm extension of a ‘European’ public space. It is café, a public space that is crowded with European refugees from across the continent along with Nazi officers and French generals. The space is characterized by the same ensuing tensions with which are arising in Europe itself in 1941 and becomes most evident in the moment as a show of patriotism the German soldiers begin singing ‘Die Wacht am Rhein‘ (The Watch on the Rhine) as Laszlo and others in the café begin to drown them out in their own French song of La Marseillaise.
Place
To some definable degree the city of Casablanca is an extension of an European city, as it is under the colonial rule of France at the time and this fact is made clear several times in the film as to let viewers not forget. As the discussion of space proved, some scenes also take place in parts of Paris. The cities of London, Lisbon, Berlin, and Prague are mentioned in character dialogue along with the countries of Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Spain, Norway, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia. Casablanca demonstrates wider a geographical notion of Europe that the other films do not and does not embrace an overt partiality to western or eastern Europe in terms of geography or ideology. Whether or not the same can be said about the original script of Everybody Comes to Rick’s, the screenplay version of Casablanca undoubtedly demonstrates a greater awareness of those being affected by the war and lends to a more geographical
film that were of European origin. Michael Curtiz, the director, along with several of the actresses and actors had previously worked in European cinema before coming to Hollywood, bringing with them what Ginette Vincendeau argues is the particular influence of French filmmaking and its emphasis on community and the social milieu (1993: 52). Ideologically speaking, it is not underlined by the east-west dichotomy, rather its notion of place are embedded in the ‘danger’ or ‘risk’ is poses as an entirely which becomes dichotomized by a notion of ‘safety’ or ‘sanctuary’ suggested to be found in America. Furthermore, the representations of the characters, from the Russian, to the Germans, to the French, and to the Spanish are all to a similar extent built around their ethnotype (jaunty Frenchman, stubborn German, crazy Russian) (Leerssen, 2016: 22). In Casablanca, the European characters coexist together as ‘others’, helping to extend to a greater notion of Europe as a place of the ‘other’ and ‘danger’.
Gender
Kunze, Cohan and Hark made extensive comments about gender performativity in Casablanca. Kunze says for example, “What remains baffling is the celebration of the film’s romance in spite of the obvious disregard for Ilsa and her feelings.. the patriarchal ideology underlying the
narrative commodifies Ilsa, leading Rick to exchange her with other men in an act of friendship and solidarity” (Kunze, 2014: 20). Whilst Ilsa, a Norwegian woman, hardly has agency in the film and her femininity is characterized as weak in comparison to masculinity performed by the American character, Rick and the other European characters like her husband as they assert power over Ilsa by making decisions about and for her. The actor who plays Rick, Humphrey Bogart, now regarded as an iconic example of noir masculinity, is according to Steven Cohan “the male fantasy of impeccable virility – ‘the toughie, the roughie, the kind of guy who’s incapable of being eloquent about it’ – structuring the heterosexual masculinity of the average American man” (Cohan & Hark, 1993: 80). The interactions of the male character Rick with Ilsa and the European male characters, though not always explicit, is organized by the power
structure of gender dynamics and reduction of the role of women (Kunze, 2014: 20). There are several instances in the film where I interpret Rick’s café is projected as a masculine space and translates this power structure between masculinity and femininity to the space. Firstly, it is mostly men who occupy the café and never does the number of women sitting at a table out number the number of men, whereas several shots reveal exclusively men occupying a table. Many of whom wear decorated military outfits, a symbol for their power status. Furthermore, it
is mostly men who work in the visible positions of café for example, the doorkeeper, the band, the bartender, the seater. Women are never seen coming or going into the café alone whereas men do. Rick’s café is imagined like an extension of a European public space, whilst
simultaneously being gendered as masculine.
When it comes to how the film’s translates notions of husband and wife roles in European relationships, the most telling signals come from the relationship of Ilsa and her husband Victor Laszlo. It is made clear that Ilsa was with Rick in Paris because she had thought her husband Victor died in a concentration camp. The film intended to be apparent with this information otherwise it would have been glorifying a relationship between a married woman, Ilsa, and a single man Rick, and perhaps this would have undermined the solidarity Rick later shows to Lazlo. When Ilsa learns Victor is indeed alive, she immediately leaves Paris and Rick, proving her devotion to her husband over her dynamic love affair. Though at one moment, alone with Rick at night in the café, Ilsa indirectly refers to him and herself in a story, by saying “At the house of some friends she met a man about whom she’d heard her whole life, a very great and courageous man. He opened for her a whole beautiful world full of knowledge and thoughts and ideals. Everything she knew or ever became was because of him. And she looked up to him and worship him with a feeling she supposed was love” (Casablanca, 1942). Yet even after
confessing her love for Rick, Ilsa’s loyalty stays to her husband Lazlo and reassures him in a scene later that she will not leave Casablanca without him. This comes just after the scene where Victor fearlessly responds with the band and French national anthem to the Nazi German
patriotic song. Though it is Rick who ultimately holds power in the final decision of whether Victor and Ilsa leave Casablanca together, Victor offers to sacrifice his letter of transit to ensure Ilsa’s departure and safety, demonstrating his loyalty to his wife. It remains inexplicitly unclear, however, with both the characters of Lazlo and Ilsa whether their motives for each other were out of love, for the political cause or in response to the decisions of Rick. Whether or not the film intended to insinuate a kind of marital ideal in Europe, the marriage of Lazlo and Ilsa is
ultimately not for purposes of love but to progress the narrative surrounding Rick, the American representative and his solidarity with men like Lazlo, the national representatives of Europe. At a time when the United States had recently joined the fight in western Europe, I interpret whether the simple politics of war helped to influence the uncomplicated, gender power dynamics embodied by the characters.
Illustrations: Casablanca (1942) 1:
Chapter Two: Watch on the Rhine (1943)
Based on the 1941 play by Lillian Hellman, Watch on the Rhine was directed by American Herman Shumlin, shot entirely in Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California and was released by Warner Bros. in 1943. The film stars Bette Davis, a beloved American actress whose
Hollywood career spanned over several decades and Paul Lukas, a Hungarian actor who like other European actors and directors relocated to Hollywood in the 1920s and 1930s to carry out successful careers (Schnapper, 2016). Lukas plays the role of Kurt Miller, the German husband of Davis’s American character, Sara. Set in 1940 Sara and Kurt along with their three children, travel to Washington D.C. from Europe to visit Sara’s family. They lived in Europe the past 17 years, and its first heavily ensued and then later revealed in the film that Kurt engaged in antifascist activities in response to the rise of Hitler. As a result, Europe has been the ‘home’ of the family as they moved from country to country, Germany to Switzerland, Denmark to Czechoslovakia, and Belgium to France. The entire plot essentially surrounds this ‘dangerous’ European past of Kurt, since the house guest of Sara’s family, Teck de Brancovis, a Romanian aristocrat, is in cahoots with the German embassy in Washington D.C. and plans to out him if Kurt returns to Germany to assist others.
Space
In one of the very first scenes, the family is travelling by train from the southern, Mexican border to the north towards Washington D.C. Bodo, the youngest boy, is seen staring out and says “I did not imagine houses in America to be of those I have seen from this train” (Watch on the Rhine, 1943). The viewer sees shabby, one room houses on the dusty, desert plain to which the boy is referring to. He continues to his sister, “Do you think the house of mama’s mother is of one such?” (Watch on the Rhine, 1943). She replies by saying “I do not know. Is it that you have been accustomed to palaces?” (Watch on the Rhine, 1943). Juxtaposing the visual image of a shabby, one-bedroom house on the American desert plain whilst Babette asks her brother if he is accustomed to the palaces, an implicit difference is created between the American domestic space and the imagined, European one. Though it is never explicitly said, it is obvious ‘home’ for them is in Europe, as it is mentioned several times later in on how they have moved from country to country, Germany to Switzerland, Denmark to Czechoslovakia, and Belgium to France. In this moment between Bodo and Babette, the European domestic space is imagined in
terms of ‘palaces’, ensuing its grand, and more impressive than those rusty, unsophisticated houses that Bodo had not imagined to be in America. Yet, once the family arrives at the house of Sara’s mother, Mrs. Fanny, the viewer sees a much different example of an American domestic space. The home is a massive, magnificent mansion accompanied with servants and decorated most lavishly. Kurt, Sara and the children often make note of the domestic differences,
mentioning several times how clean the home is. A scene includes Bodo telling his father while in the bathroom, “the plumbing is such as you have never seen” and “it is most sanitary” (Watch on the Rhine, 1943). Even when the children initially arrive in the house, Sara’s mother, played by Lucile Watson, takes notice of their dirtiness says, “I need to wash the children” (Watch on the Rhine, 1943). In this instance, the domestic space in Europe is imagined as one that’s dirty and unmodern, whilst in America its hygienic and infrastructurally superior. Even if the mansion of Mrs. Fanny does not directly reflect most of the average domestic spaces in America the 1940s, it nonetheless is presented in a way that is distinguishable from a European one. Yet, even more significantly, we see already can notice how the initial imagination of a European domestic space contradicts a later imagination of the same type of space. In one instance, its imagined as palace-like and grand, and in another instance its dirty and undesirable.
I speculate, that in one sense, the discursive representations of the European domestic space in Watch on the Rhine, is a play on the narrative trope of ‘Old World’ Europe, full of grand palaces and architectural splendor that helps inspires to the romantic or picturesque conceptions of any European space (Shandley, 2009: XIIV). Yet, in other instances it is described by characters as quite filthy and lacking adequate hygiene. Is it again an effort to invoke the ‘Old’ versus ‘New’ World trope? America is more modern and equipped whilst Europe lacks the mere simple means to be hygienic? Or was there indeed an overall American angst against European cleanliness? When cholera first spread around Europe in the 1880s, newspapers were “filled with cholera stories and the New York Times editorialized on ‘cholera panics’”, in the United States cholera was the ‘all-absorbing topic’ (Duffy, 1971: 803). The hysteria is demonstrated around the disease in several headlines from the New York Times between 1883 to 1924: “THE TERRORS OF CHOLERA. CONTINUED SPREAD OF THE DISEASE-EUROPEAN SANITARY
MEASURES” “OUR QUARANTINE RULES HELP EUROPE CLEAN UP;” “THE DIEASE APPEARS IN MARSEILLES” “TYPUS BAN CLOSES ITALIAN FRONTIERS” (“New York Times Archive,” 2007). This remains mere speculation and any which way the makers of Watch
on the Rhine informed their presentations and dialogues surrounding domestic spaces in Europe, the imagined space in which it forms is clearly considered different or foreign even if their envisions sometimes contradict themselves.
Place
Unlike the other four films, Watch on the Rhine, is not set in Europe and features no European locations. There are several instances within character dialogue that the cities of Paris, Berlin, Munich, and Brussels and the countries of Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, Germany, Spain, and Romania are named. As far as geographical representation of Europe, it is placed more so in cities and countries located in the west. Czechoslovakia and Romania tip the scale only slightly in favor of representation of countries in eastern Europe. It cannot be necessarily said either that the film showcased Romania to enhance balance of Europe’s east-west representation. Though it is never explicitly said, it is evident through the presentation of the Romanian character, that the film reproduces an ideological divide between the ‘good’ (west) Europe and the ‘bad’ (east) Europe. Romania at this point in time is not a communist country rather its allied with the Axis Powers, yet the hero-enemy dichotomy set up between the German character Kurt and Romanian character Teck is a good indication for the cold war American narratives to come that vilify eastern European countries and commend or glorify acts of western European countries.
Teck de Brancovis, a Romanian count, and aristocrat is played by English actor George
Coulouris, Essentially, the film pits the western European character against the eastern European character. In 1941, Romania allied itself with Nazi Germany and in 1944 become a part of the Soviet Union thus the official diplomatic relations between Romania and the United States were sparse and cold (Kirk & Raceanu, 1994: 1), and the tensions evidently translated onto the ‘big-screen’ in this case. Teck de Brancovis and his roots in ‘east’ symbolize “the evil” in the fight against “the good” of the ‘west’ as he threatens to turn in Kurt, the anti-fascist fighting German and husband to the American character Sara, to the Nazi authorities in Washington D.C. if Kurt tries to return to Europe and help the resistance. Though Kurt and Teck regard each other as fellow Europeans on several occasions in the film, it is more likely they realize their shared place of Europe in terms of geography and not ideology.
Consider the character presentation of Teck, who is made to visit the German Embassy on several occasions to fraternize and gamble with the Nazi officials. Several times in the film Teck and his Romanian nationality are linked to gambling, issues with money, or some short coming of sorts. One evening at the embassy, a Nazi officer says to him: “One knows, of course, the routine things. Romanian, former diplomat. A gambler” (Watch on the Rhine, 1943). It is made known by Sara’s mother, Fanny, that Teck has been borrowing a lot money whilst he and his wife have been staying with them. She asks, “Why do you suppose anybody would give charge accounts to Romanian nobility” (Watch on the Rhine, 1943). When Teck does not arrive at breakfast on time, Fanny asks him, “Oh, there you are. Don’t people ever get out of bed in Romania?” to which Teck answers, “Not if they can help it,” and apologies (Watch on the Rhine, 1943). The character presentation of Teck is based entirely in his Romanian roots and exposes the ‘othering’ tactic often found in European identity discourses of the ‘western’ self and the ‘eastern’ other (Neumann, 1999: 210). Rubenstein discussed the antifascist attitudes in Watch on the Rhine and the simple politics of war where Nazi Germany was the enemy and anyone who helped them was, too. Reiterating or reproducing general motifs for a eastern European character like Teck, Europe is simultaneously imagined as a place of ideological divide of “the good” (anti-facist) Europe versus “the bad” (fascist) other Europe and the “the west” (western Europe/America) versus “the east” (eastern Europe) other.
Gender
A gendered reading of Watch on the Rhine in terms of how European spaces are gendered proves to be somewhat difficult as the entirety of film takes place in the United States and imaginations of European spaces are only constructed through dialogue not visuals, resulting in a more abstract or fuzzy picture of the space in general. Gender performativity of the characters, however, help to give clues on how spaces regardless of location become gendered. Most of the scenes take place within the family home of Sara. As I discussed earlier, it is a luxurious, extravagantly decorated mansion outside the city of Washington D.C. Described by Sara and Kurt as ‘lovely’ and ‘fine’, Sara once becomes emotional when she recalls to Kurt her childhood memories with her brother in the garden and pond around and outside the home. The emotion and fondness that Sara, a woman and now mother of her own three children, attaches to her childhood home, an American domestic space, lends to support my interpretation that it is envisioned as a feminine space, too. Sara, though American, represents to an extent an
imagination of a European woman as she has lived there for many years and raised a family with a European man. Since the family was essentially on the run all over Europe due to Kurt’s political activities, they have been without a proper or even stable family home. Sara, to the limited extent she represents the European woman, expresses her desire for a real ‘home’ for her family to settle down in, attaching a similar emotion or fondness to domestic space that the film establishes to be upheld in both American and European homes. Given that, the European
household is similarly imagined in Watch on the Rhine, as a feminine space, where the woman is expected to embrace and be fond of the domestic, feminine duty.
The expectations of European family roles of husband and wife molded by the film are again noticeably like American marital expectations. In the portrayal of the relationship between Kurt and Sara, as Patraka has pointed out, Kurt is the heroic and strongest figure of his family
(Patraka, 1989). He takes responsibility for that fact they have no family home in Europe saying, “You shall not be afraid that you will hurt me because I have not given you a house like this” (Watch on the Rhine, 1943). Here, the expectation is insinuated that the husband is meant to give his wife and children a house. Instead of a bruised masculinity, Kurt remains unbothered telling Sara it does not hurt him to know he has failed at this. Instead, he insists that Sara “not be a baby” and “enjoy the house” because they “are on a holiday”. Despite Sara’s legitimate concerns over their lack of family household, Kurt remains cool and insists she be at ease and just enjoy what comes their way. It is obvious Sara’s femininity performs subservient to Kurt’s
masculinity, as he portrayed as tough and unfazed whereas Sara is emotional and fearful. Kurt in the end leaves Sara and goes back to Europe to help his fellow resistance fighter, and its ensued he dies, making the ultimate sacrifice. Released in the same wartime period as Casablanca, I speculate whether the simple politics of war helped to influence the also uncomplicated, yet unequal gender relations between Kurt and Sara in Watch in the Rhine.
Chapter Three: A Foreign Affair (1948)
Released by Paramount Pictures in 1948, the film A Foreign Affair was shot in Berlin, Germany and directed by Billy Wilder. Set in 1947, the storyline involves a U.S. Army Captain John Pringle, played by John Lund, who is in occupied Berlin and asked by the U.S. congresswoman Phoebe Frost of Iowa, played by Jean Arthur, to help assist her in her investigation of cabaret singer Erika Von Schlütow, played by Marlene Dietrich. The congresswoman suspects Schlütow and her shady Nazi past is being protected by an American officer, yet the congresswoman does not know Schlütow is the secret lover of Captain John Pringle. Pringle becomes torn between the two women, and they both fall for him. In the end, Erika is arrested, and Phoebe and John
become reunited, even after the congresswoman learns Erika was John’s secret lover.
Space
The opening scene of the film takes place in the cabin of a plane with the U.S. congresswoman and various U.S. congressmen. A man out of frame alerts them that they are now flying over the ‘heart of Berlin’ and he reports that over 750,000 tons of explosives were dropped there as the congressmen excitedly jump up to look out the window. One congressman exclaims to another as he looks out the window, “Look at it. Like pack rats been gnawing at a hunk of old mouldy Roquefort cheese” (A Foreign Affair, 1948). Another congressman chimes in “You got quite a sight coming, looks like chicken innards at frying time” (A Foreign Affair, 1948).
Congresswomen Frost makes her way to the window and finally the viewer sees the view below to which the congressmen were referring to.2 The viewer sees aerial footage, which comes from Billy Wilder’s own archival collection when he served as a military government film officer in Berlin in 1945, and it reveals graphic shots of the heavily damaged city (Willet, 1989: 40).
A few scenes later, the visiting U.S. officials are taken on a tour around the city, where some of the most famous spots of Berlin are pointed out. Even as the footage clearly shows the locations are still heavily damaged from the war, the atmosphere in which that is created around them seems much lighter and cheerful than one might expect to be generated around such heavily destructed and ravaged public spaces. For instance, they pass the Reichstag, and once in frame, the guide, an American military official, says “That's the building set on fire in 1933 and blamed on a poor Dutchman. The word got out it was Hitler who threw the match. They used to say it's the first time in history a man gave himself the hotfoot” (A Foreign Affair, 1948). Then they ride
under the Brandenburg Gate whose towering gates can be seen in the background and the guide makes another comment, “The Brandenburg Gate, an arch of triumph until they got out of the habit” (A Foreign Affair, 1948). He continues on, “Over there is the balcony where he bet his Reich would last a thousand years. That is the one that broke the bookies' hearts” (A Foreign Affair, 1948). Even as the viewer can clearly recognize from the on-location shot footage that these public spaces in Berlin are heavily damaged and of mostly rubble, the dialogue that exists around it helps to create a lighter, less somber image of the destructed space that allows still for the fun and adventurous endeavors of the American guests. Gerd Gemünden has also commented on this sequence and the way it combines historic fact with humor “making the film waver between an educational program, an overwrought history lesson, and a comedy of very dark humor” (Gemünden, 2018: 110). In addition to this, Donald Sassoon once commented on 1950s war films and their “comic renditions on the theme of ‘war can be funny’” (Sassoon, 2006: 1,003). Released in 1948, A Foreign Affair and its representation of Berlin’s public space were just the beginning of Wilder’s usage of crisis turned into comedy. Years later in the film One, Two, Three (1961) Wilder again attempted to humorize the situation, a capitalist and communist confrontation at the Berlin Wall, however, unlike in A Foreign Affair, audiences as Wilder described “took it too seriously” (Crowe, 1999) and One, Two, Three flopped (Pelaz López, 2011: 9).
Still on the tour, the guide tells his passengers that they might want to see a typical Berlin residential area. He describes how the houses are empty shells and completely burned out. Yet, “life goes on in those ruins, though” (A Foreign Affair, 1948) as the viewer sees an American army sergeant with a bouquet of flowers entering one of the residential complexes. The representation of the outside domestic space of Berlin in this instance, like the public space, comes across initially as a destructed and heavily damaged one, yet accompanied with the picture of the cheerful American solider brining flowers to whomever it is that awaits him insides, the space transforms into a more welcoming, and hospitable place that is still capable of being a suitable backdrop for an American-European love story. The apartment of Erika is the only instance where the viewer sees inside a domestic space and as one might expect, it is just as shabby as the outside. Interestingly, however, one shot reveals the type of wall décor that hangs in the apartment. Two large, dark, angel statues are mounted on the wall behind Erika and John.3 Despite the destruction, ornate and sophisticated décor are still infused into the domestic space.
Place
A Foreign Affair takes place in Berlin and the all characters in the film, as far as it is made known, are characterized as coming from western European countries. Russia is the only country of the ‘east’ to even be mentioned in the film. The references to Russia are primarily made within a military context. When discussing the bombing of Berlin at the beginning of the film, a congressman mentions “I heard Russian artillery had a little part in it too, if you don’t mind” (A Foreign Affair, 1948). Later, when touring the city of Berlin, the guide mentions “On your left is the Russian war memorial, built in honor of their soldiers killed in the battle of Berlin” (A Foreign Affair, 1948). Only later when congresswoman Frost is speaking privately to an
American colonel does the colonel say to her “Our boys sneak off to places in the Russian sector, or the British, or in the French and there’s another thing...[..]...Those places attract a lot of scum..” (A Foreign Affair, 1948). Perhaps it went without being said that Russia represents the “other” ‘east’, however, there were no instances in the film where it is “othered” because of this. To expand further, the final comment by the American colonel does not invoke a division between east and west, rather he warns of danger that could be found in each. In this instance, the notion of Europe as a place is carried out without enforcing any underlying Europe’s ‘east’ versus ‘west’ ideological dichotomies, rather it suggests an entirety of Europe that is a place of ‘danger’ or ‘risk’ dichotomized by a notion of ‘safety’ or ‘sanctuary’ found in America.
Gender
Rosenberg and Smith discuss in their literature the gendered metaphors and performativity in A Foreign Affair. The main American protagonist, John, a usually strong and heroic figure, falls into the foreign allure and temptation of the German cabaret character Erika. Objectified and sexualized, Erika is to represent the “other” Europe, that poses a danger to the American
morality, which is represented in the Iowan congresswoman Frost’s character (Rosenberg, 1994: 62). In the end, “John Pringle will leave Berlin, corruption, and the foreign affair (Erika/Europe) behind; he will come home to the American heartland and to a re-feminized woman who will please him by being both attractive and understanding” (Rosenberg, 1994: 62). In A Foreign Affair, the American expectations of European roles of husband and wife are not made explicit enough for me to make a concrete interpretation about it. Considering Rosenberg’s comments and my inability to pinpoint, explicit or implicit, notions of European gender roles in marriage, I speculate the film intended not to present the audience with real expectations of roles in
European relationships. The film gives only an expectation to American couples, which was to reestablish traditional, American only, gender roles.
When it comes to gendered spaces in the film, one might assume that in the attempt to feminize Europe through portrayal of German cabaret singer, Erika, more feminine spaces would as a result translate. Yet this is not the case in A Foreign Affair. For instance, the cabaret is
transformed into a masculine space as it mostly military men inside building who hoot and holler at the performer on stage. On one hand, I could say that the space actually becomes more
feminine, as it is a feminine entertainer that is the focal point in the room who embraces her sexual inuendo on stage. On the other hand, her focality I could say is a result of her hyper sexualization by shouting men and not her own embracing of her femininity. I lean to the latter and interpret the cabaret space as a masculine one. Even at the home of Erika, there are moments in the film when her apartment feels feminine due to the fact a woman and her belongings
(assumed to be feminine, like dresses, make-up, hair brush, night gown, etc.,) occupy the space. However, John Pringle consistently invades her domestic space and brings with him a masculine, dominant, powerful energy that turns the space into an assumedly otherwise feminine,
autonomous space, to a masculine space of power imbalance.
Illustrations: A Foreign Affair (1948) 2:
Chapter Four: Roman Holiday (1953)
Roman Holiday is an American romantic comedy directed by American William Wyler and released by Paramount Pictures in 1953. Wyler, a Swiss-German, came to the United States in 1921 after being offered a job at Universal Studios in New York and several years later made it to Hollywood to become a director (Herman, 1995). Roman Holiday was shot on-location in the city Rome and in Cinecittà studios. Audrey Hepburn, who gained critical acclaim from her first starring role in Roman Holiday (Weiler, 1953), plays a royal princess, Ann, of an unnamed European nation, who is bored and successfully escapes her royal confines whilst on a European capital tour in Rome. She meets an American news reporter Joe Bradley, played by Gregory Peck and they enjoy escapades throughout the city, as Joe tries not to reveal to Princess Ann that he is a reporter hoping to get a good story and photos out of her. Ultimately, they fall in love with each other just before Ann reassumes her duties as princess and Bradley decides not to release anything to the press about their adventuresome day together.
Space
Within the first opening credits of the film, the viewer is fed a two minute or so montage of numerous images of public space. An aerial image of the Piazza Navona is presented on the screen, one of the most popular squares in Rome, then the title Roman Holiday is put over the image. The same sort of sequence follows of picturesque views of public space from the ancient Roman ruins in the Eternal City to spurting fountains to the Tiber river, with text over top of it.4 Already, public space in this Italian setting comes across as very historic, monumental, and magnificent. Then the viewer is presented images from Princess Ann’s European capital tour. First, she’s in England, when the viewer sees a large, wide shot of the British Parliament followed by shots of big crowds of people who are waving to ‘Ann’ and like in Casablanca, the scenes are a back and forth of glossy studio shots with archival footage. The same sort of visual sequence plays for her visit to Amsterdam, Paris, and finally, Rome.5
As the viewer is taken from one European capital to the next on Princess Ann’s royal tour, public spaces are the highlight of this sequence, and only the most major landmarks or monuments of the city within frame accompanied by the footage of the large crowds, illustrating the type of excitement generated in these public spaces by visits of European monarchs or royalty.
Public space in Rome is extensively showcased throughout the film, as Princess Ann and Joe Bradley run around the city. Specifically, it is the most beautiful, ornate, and grand looking corners of public space that Ann and Joe occupy. Their first meeting, for example, takes place right on the edge of the Eternal Gardens, where The Forum towers behind them in the
background.6 There are many large or aerial shots of the various monuments, landmarks, and fountains, which helps to remind the viewer of the grandness of the space, before focusing into a smaller frame with Joe and Ann.
The representations of domestic space in Roman Holiday complement the romantic and piteresque images of the Italian public space. There are several scenes set at Joe Bradley’s apartment, which lies on the Margutta street in the heart of Rome, the same street where the famous Italian film director Federico Fellini and his wife lived. Several different shots showing the surroundings of the apartment frame the space in a charming and quaint manner, from the winding steps up to his apartment, to the view on top the large attached terraced, and exit
corridor of the apartment building.7 Joe Bradley’s apartment is indeed quaint, but the viewer also sees the domestic space of Princess Ann before she sneaks out into the city and over to Joe’s. In the embassy building of her country, the quarters’ of Princess Ann are exteremly extravagent and luxourious, with expensive and eyeing décor provided only for the super elites or royalty. The domestic space of Princess Ann I call ‘royal’ domestic space and Bradley’s apartment is a representation of a ‘local’ domestic space. Though they differ in size, quality, and class, both the ‘royal’ and the ‘local’ domestic spaces represented a type of European household that was framed to complement the ongoing love story that required the most lovely and picturesque enviornments.
The director of the film, Willy Wyler, was praised by critics for the film’s emphasis on
‘authenticity’ and for utilizing many world-famous landmarks, some that had not yet been seen in a motion picture (Shandley, 2009: 42). Regardless of the director being the first to capture the space in such cinematic format, it is evident the public space and domestic imagination is embedded the recycled ‘Old World’ formula that foremostly serves to be scenic and charming backdrop to complement the American and Italian (European) love story. Wyler’s direction was in this sense is hardly authentic.
