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Postmobilization Romance: Transforming Military Rejection into Modernist Tragedy and Symbolism

Keith Gandal

in The Gun and the Pen: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner and the Fiction of Mobilization

These three authors, although compulsively writing out of a distress engendered by their “mobilization wounds,” learned by the time of writing their twenties masterpieces to submerge and transfigure ... More

These three authors, although compulsively writing out of a distress engendered by their “mobilization wounds,” learned by the time of writing their twenties masterpieces to submerge and transfigure this pain so as not to embarrass themselves with the revelation of their sense of inadequacy. All three had produced previous texts that openly address Anglo characters' humiliations in the military and so come off as bitter. The high modernism of Gatsby, Sun, A Farewell to Arms, and Sound, with its symbolism and its sense of tragedy (as opposed to bitterness), is a result of these authors developing the devices that allow them to disguise their mobilization traumas and thus to continue to exorcise them, but now obliquely. In Hemingway's and Faulkner's novels, “objective” sexual obstacles (injury, incest taboo) stand in for the military rejection that emasculated these Anglo authors, disguising and transfiguring it. Hemingway and Faulkner dignified the suffering of their Anglo alter egos by making their true loves impossible; Fitzgerald's alternative strategy for dignifying his sense of rejection was to split himself between two alter egos — one Anglo American and one ethnic American — and to give the experience of social rejection to a tragic character based only minimally on himself, namely, Gatsby.Less

Damned Kids

Nick Riddle

in The Damned

This chapter assesses the children in Joseph Losey's The Damned (1963). King's gang, if not actually orphans, are given no mothers or fathers to rail against. The children themselves, of course, are ... More

This chapter assesses the children in Joseph Losey's The Damned (1963). King's gang, if not actually orphans, are given no mothers or fathers to rail against. The children themselves, of course, are orphans, or at least motherless, and there is also an absence of the 'domestic', in the sense that one never sees a 'home' in the conventional sense. Yet parenthood, childhood, and generative power are strong themes in the film. Meanwhile, Bernard's children — well-spoken, precocious, innocent but deadly — have a lineage that is particularly British in origin. They also share with a handful of contemporary films the distinction of introducing something sinister into the cultural iconography of the child. So who, exactly, are 'The Damned'? Clearly, it is the young in general, consigned to an uncertain fate by nuclear proliferation and the Cold War, by the establishment struggling to maintain the vestiges of an empire, and by social attitudes that see them as a problem to be contained.Less

After-Effects

Nick Riddle

in The Damned

This chapter discusses the legacy of Joseph Losey's The Damned (1963). Unlike many cult films, The Damned has not become a staple of late-night screenings or the subject of internet memes. But it ... More

This chapter discusses the legacy of Joseph Losey's The Damned (1963). Unlike many cult films, The Damned has not become a staple of late-night screenings or the subject of internet memes. But it does strike a spark or two of recognition, when it is not being confused with Village of the Damned (1960) or Children of the Damned (1964). By 1970, Joseph Losey was played out, his health deteriorating after years of heavy drinking and mental strain. Nevertheless, imagery from The Damned sometimes resurfaced in his later work. Meanwhile, Hammer's science fiction output dwindled after The Damned, as its gothic horror productions took over.Less

Introduction

Nick Riddle

in The Damned

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Joseph Losey's sci-fi film The Damned (1963). The film's reputation has undoubtedly risen because of its historical interest, as 1960s culture ... More

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Joseph Losey's sci-fi film The Damned (1963). The film's reputation has undoubtedly risen because of its historical interest, as 1960s culture continues to exert a fascination for cultural writers and consumers. The Damned was made on the cusp of the 1060s, and it exists in a fold between one era and another. In various strands of cinema history, too, The Damned has become a useful case study. This book attempts to set The Damned in context, or in a series of contexts: as a Joseph Losey film, as a Hammer film, as a science fiction film, as a product of the Cold War and the atmosphere of atomic terror that prevailed at the time. It also examines the film's treatment of stock figures such as the scientist, the child, the artist, and the 'yob', and its experiments with imagery and ideas of living and non-living.Less

The Journeyman

Nick Riddle

in The Damned

This chapter assesses whether The Damned (1963) is first a Hammer film or a Joseph Losey film. It argues that, although the auteur theory is so riddled with problems and contradictions that it cannot ... More

This chapter assesses whether The Damned (1963) is first a Hammer film or a Joseph Losey film. It argues that, although the auteur theory is so riddled with problems and contradictions that it cannot really be called a theory at all, certain directors, by dint of personality, distinctive traits, and sheer involvement in the countless elements of the process of film-making, can be considered the guiding creative force behind a film, and therefore an auteur. Losey, by all accounts, fits the bill. Whether The Damned is indeed a Losey film first is debatable; but it is as a Losey film that the chapter considers it first. And since Losey's status as an auteur is of relevance to how The Damned has been seen, the chapter also briefly looks at the auteur question.Less

The Living, The Dead and the Damned

Nick Riddle

in The Damned

This chapter explores how Joseph Losey's The Damned (1963) deals with the subject of the nuclear war. In the popular imagination, atomic weapons were simply too big to deal with. In The Damned, ... More

This chapter explores how Joseph Losey's The Damned (1963) deals with the subject of the nuclear war. In the popular imagination, atomic weapons were simply too big to deal with. In The Damned, nobody mentions nuclear war or atomic weapons by name, and Bernard speaks in allusions and euphemisms. The strategies of allusions and euphemisms reduce the subject of apocalypse to a more manageable, more portable, and more mysterious thing, a 'great whatsit'. Radiation answers this requirement: it is invisible, human-scale, insidious, slower in its effects. The notion of radiation as a virus, like smallpox, that can be used in small amounts to inoculate someone against its own effects is founded on a fallacy — and it is the same fallacy that underlies the irradiated children in The Damned. One can sense, in this uneasy mix of science and superstition, the struggles of post-war culture to come to terms with the puzzling, sinister new world of nuclear physics. The chapter then considers how The Damned experiments with the distinction between living and non-living.Less

‘Forward into Battle, Dear Chaps’: The Production

Nick Riddle

in The Damned

This chapter details the production history of Joseph Losey's The Damned (1963). It begins by considering the source novel, Henry Lionel Lawrence's The Children of Light (1960). The Damned retains, ... More

This chapter details the production history of Joseph Losey's The Damned (1963). It begins by considering the source novel, Henry Lionel Lawrence's The Children of Light (1960). The Damned retains, or reworks, a good deal more of the source novel than Losey suggested: the names of the principal characters; the youth gang; the love story; the southern-England setting; the irradiated, bunker-bound children; the helicopter as malign pursuer; the patriarch committing horrors in the name of human survival. The Damned was criticised for its bleakness, but if anything, The Children of Light is bleaker still. The chapter then addresses how The Children of Light attracted the attention of Hammer, before looking at the principal actors of The Damned.Less

The Heart of Darkness

Nick Riddle

in The Damned

This chapter studies the bunker beneath the Edgecliff Establishment in Joseph Losey's The Damned (1963), which has properties reminiscent of other cinematic spaces that exert a strange influence ... More

This chapter studies the bunker beneath the Edgecliff Establishment in Joseph Losey's The Damned (1963), which has properties reminiscent of other cinematic spaces that exert a strange influence beyond their boundaries. The Damned is a journey into the heart of darkness, all the darker for its location a stone's throw from the gaudy lights of a seaside resort. The hideout has to exist for the plot mechanics to operate, but it is as much a flaw in the script as the children's radioactivity. And it is this secret, irregular space that allows for the non-oblong, the ungoverned, and the fanciful. Like Freya's birdhouse, its rough-hewn surroundings provide a setting for expression and creation: here the children have 'invented' their parents using old magazine pictures, and tell stories about their situation. The hideout may be empowering for the children, but it has the opposite effect on the adults they bring to it.Less

Melancholy, modernity and the middlebrow: the twenties and thirties

in Sophistication: A Literary and Cultural History

This chapter examines the literary treatment of sophistication during the interwar years. It suggests that the 1920s and 1930s can be considered the Age of Sophistication, because they encapsulate ... More

This chapter examines the literary treatment of sophistication during the interwar years. It suggests that the 1920s and 1930s can be considered the Age of Sophistication, because they encapsulate the balancing between nostalgia and modernness which is typical of twentieth–century sophistication. It analyses several relevant works of the period including Noël Coward's play Private Lives, Edith Wharton's novel The Age of Innocence, and F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Beautiful and Damned.Less

‘When The Time Comes’: The Damned and British Cold War Culture

Nick Riddle

in The Damned

This chapter evaluates the influence of the British Cold War culture on Joseph Losey's The Damned (1963). British cinema was far slower than Hollywood to address the nuclear threat in the wake of ... More

This chapter evaluates the influence of the British Cold War culture on Joseph Losey's The Damned (1963). British cinema was far slower than Hollywood to address the nuclear threat in the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This was a reflection of the government's own reticence on the matter. The Edgehill Establishment, Bernard's secret facility, would have been a familiar sight to most people in Great Britain by the early 1960s. Such 'secret establishments' became a regular feature of science fiction from the late 1950s onwards, embodying the growing public distrust in the government's defence programme and anxieties about safety. Ultimately, The Damned inhabits a historical moment between the wane of public deference towards the government concerning nuclear weapons and the more full-throated protests and bolder visualisations of nuclear war that appeared mid-decade.Less

Landscape, Seascape, Manscape

Nick Riddle

in The Damned

This chapter focuses on the location and the first scenes of Joseph Losey's The Damned (1963). The Damned was Losey's first feature film in CinemaScope, though not, as most sources claim, his debut ... More

This chapter focuses on the location and the first scenes of Joseph Losey's The Damned (1963). The Damned was Losey's first feature film in CinemaScope, though not, as most sources claim, his debut with the format; his short for Hammer, A Man on the Beach (1955), was shot in CinemaScope. Perhaps this previous experience gave Losey the confidence to take such full advantage of the possibilities offered by this ratio in the opening sequence. Losey chose Weymouth and Portland Bill as the locations partly because of his love of the Dorset of Thomas Hardy and John Cowper Powys. He referred to Portland Bill in an interview as 'a place where the British were developing germ warfare and also undersea warfare' — not quite accurate, as others have pointed out.Less

F. Scott Fitzgerald

David A. Rennie

in American Writers and World War I

This chapter overviews how Fitzgerald’s war writing was refracted through his evolution as a writer, from The Side of Paradise—his chaotic and immature debut novel—through his experimentations with ... More

This chapter overviews how Fitzgerald’s war writing was refracted through his evolution as a writer, from The Side of Paradise—his chaotic and immature debut novel—through his experimentations with naturalism in The Beautiful and Damned, to the ambiguous portrayal he gives of World War I in The Great Gatsby. Tender Is the Night, while more stylistically mature than Fitzgerald’s first novel, I argue, revisits many of the representational strategies explored in his debut. Like Boyd, Fitzgerald’s World War I-related projects were caught up in his commercially necessitated magazine fiction and spells in Hollywood.Less

The House of Sci-Fi: Hammer and Science Fiction

Nick Riddle

in Constellations

This chapter examines Hammer and its history with science fiction. Hammer had become, by 1963, an easy studio to pin down: the broader production slate of the 1950s had been narrowed to mainly ... More

This chapter examines Hammer and its history with science fiction. Hammer had become, by 1963, an easy studio to pin down: the broader production slate of the 1950s had been narrowed to mainly produce Gothic horror and modern thriller/slasher films, with little interest in cultural 'respectability'. Since Hammer's first feature-length film, however, its slate of releases covered a multitude of subjects and genres such as mysteries, comedies, crime dramas and noirs, and science fiction. A certain amount of commentary on Joseph Losey's The Damned (1963) has identified it as an anomaly in the Hammer catalogue. There is its frequent description as a kind of hybrid, mixing the biker/delinquent movie with the science fiction genre; but Hammer had previous form in this department. The genre mix in The Damned is more ungainly than most because, rather than running concurrently throughout the film, the genres tend to interrupt each other.Less

Violent Reactions and Absurd Heroics

Nick Riddle

in The Damned

This chapter reflects on the heroic failure to rescue the radioactive children in Joseph Losey's The Damned (1963). In the latter half of The Damned, the children are released, only to be rounded up ... More

This chapter reflects on the heroic failure to rescue the radioactive children in Joseph Losey's The Damned (1963). In the latter half of The Damned, the children are released, only to be rounded up and re-incarcerated; this is not what one expects of a rescue plot. The chapter offers several suggestions that, at least partially, fit with the larger narrative and with the terms of Losey's film-making at this point. First, for the children it enacts a kind of fall, just as the other characters have fallen, but in this case it is a fall from innocence or ignorance. Second, it leaves one in no doubt as to the ruthlessness and effectiveness of the state-sanctioned violence. And third, in a film that has been drawing circles since the very first shot, here at the centre is the tightest, and the cruellest, circular motion of all.Less

Creating Woman, Falling Man

Nick Riddle

in The Damned

This chapter addresses how women artists were not a common sight in the cinema of the period; in fact, it is hard to think of any that predate Freya in Joseph Losey's The Damned (1963) — any who are ... More

This chapter addresses how women artists were not a common sight in the cinema of the period; in fact, it is hard to think of any that predate Freya in Joseph Losey's The Damned (1963) — any who are treated seriously, anyway. The introduction of this worldly, European female artist is the film's biggest alteration from the novel, and is a piece of brilliance on Losey's part. Yes, it risks pretension, and some critics judged that the risk was realised, but its effects on the dynamics and the structure of the film are invigorating. Freya's sculptures provide an answering force for the kitsch on the Esplanade and the corrupt powers that it represents. The use of British sculptor Elisabeth Frink's work is crucial to the film's tone and its imagery; Losey conceived the part of Freya with her art in mind, having lately become acquainted with her, and even considered casting her.Less

A Winner Never Quits: The Powerful Force of Sporting Biographies

Ellen Cheshire

in Bio-pics: A Life in Pictures

The more successful sports bio-pics seem to be those where the sporting figure has challenged the system, or overcome great adversity to become the legends they are. Narratives driven on the premise ... More

The more successful sports bio-pics seem to be those where the sporting figure has challenged the system, or overcome great adversity to become the legends they are. Narratives driven on the premise that the underdog can succeed have always proved a popular draw at the box office. This chapter examines two films—Ali (2001) and The Damned United (2009)—which feature two sports (boxing and football) from two countries (US and UK) from an overlapping period of the late 1960s to early 1970s. Ali focuses on Muhammad Ali's career and religious transformation during the ten-year period from 1964 to 1974. The Damned United focuses on the friendship between Brain Clough and Peter Taylor whilst at Derby Country, and Clough's rivalry with Leeds United manager Don Revie.Less

‘Ritz’: The Roof Garden

Robbie Moore

in Hotel Modernity: Corporate Space in Literature and Film

This chapter considers interwar New York hotels, the rise of hotel brands and chains, and the Ritz in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fiction. The Ritz was a fiction of global finance: a licensing apparatus ... More

This chapter considers interwar New York hotels, the rise of hotel brands and chains, and the Ritz in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fiction. The Ritz was a fiction of global finance: a licensing apparatus for a loose, decentralised and self-propagating franchise. The value of the Ritz was not in bricks and mortar but in its name and its brand. The Ritz aesthetic was an anticipation of corporate minimalism: white walls and white curtains with minimal decorative ornaments, culminating in the evaporated surfaces of its rooftop gardens. Its whiteness and transparency were fitting architectural expressions of the Ritz as a deterritorialised brand. Like the Ritz, F. Scott Fitzgerald (or ‘Fitz’) was a branded entity. For Fitzgerald, the pleasure of the Ritz and its roof garden was in its nothingness: a desirable nowhere into which the moneyed elite could escape. This chapter reads ‘The Diamond as Big as the Ritz’ as an allegory for capital’s struggle to escape the physicality of bricks and mortar. It then considers ‘May Day’, The Beautiful and Damned, and The Great Gatsby, where those with means strive toward the mobility and immateriality of ‘Ritz’ and of capital itself.Less

Back to the Cave: Tribalism and Feral Humanity

David L. Pike

in Cold War Space and Culture in the 1960s and 1980s: The Bunkered Decades

While the individual fallout shelter provided a new space for imagining the family unit in the context of broader social forces, the cave shelter stressed the animal nature of modern man. Whether ... More

While the individual fallout shelter provided a new space for imagining the family unit in the context of broader social forces, the cave shelter stressed the animal nature of modern man. Whether fighting for survival in a savage postnuclear world, evolving into a new species, or devolving into animal behavior, the inhabitants of cave shelters display a feral identity. The cave has long carried this resonance regardless of whether composed of natural formations, human or machine-excavated tunnels and mines, or some combination of the two. As a postwar bunker space, the cave’s particular affordances are non-technologized shelter, an exposed passage to the outside world, and the animal survival of the dominant individual. Sometimes, we find a reduced and childless family unit, generally the male and his mate or mates; at others a lone wolf hidden from and pitted against a hostile world. In the cave, any remaining social structure is troped as animalistic or otherwise non-human and often a threat to the surviving individuals. The cave-space presumes not the home shelter’s projection of a strong and paternalistic government but the Hobbesian specter of the loss of any kind of humane community, homo homini lupus, the bunkered mentality that would eventually emerge in the 1980s as survivalism.Less