by B.J. Burrow
I would like to begin this month’s column with an author’s note: in 1941, Universal released a black and white gem entitled
The Wolf Man. I had originally planned to include it as one of my ‘three’ subjects (a self imposed structure, because if not three, then four? If not four, then five? So, you know―three), but decided against it.
It doesn't quiet fit the criteria, does it? The criteria being simply this: does it explore man’s inner evil?
After deciding it didn’t fit, I still wanted to include it for a selfish reason, which is to further explore the variations of the Dr. Jekyll/Mr Hyde theme carved out by Robert Louis Stevens. I wanted to follow its progression through the decades.
I love the movie―love Bela Lugosi playing a gypsy, love the promise that Lon Chaney Senior’s son displays, and love the striking set pieces and cinematography.
I love the movie, but it is a fantasy that keeps the happenings of the world shoved off the frame. It doesn’t ‘stand on the shoulders’ of those who came before in exploring man’s inner evil.
Mr. Talbot (Chaney) is an innocent. This film isn’t a further commentary on the Jekyll/Hyde theme because Talbot doesn’t drink a potion―and continue to chose to drink it on his own free will. He doesn’t make a deal with the devil. He is bitten by a werewolf, infected, and with the next full moon, changes into a beast, one that is devoid of all humanity.
He is animal and will eat. And maybe fall in love with a pretty girl.
So, to be clear, after eight paragraphs, I repeat: I will not include
The Wolf Man.
But I will start off with an unusual entry that might not quite fit either….
The 1940’s opened with The War To End All Wars Part II in full swing, and literature answered with…
Captain America.
Timely (later Marvel) published Captain America Comics’ Number 1 in March, 1941. The cover depicted Captain America punching Adolf Hitler.
Created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, this was every wide-eyed wimpy boy’s fantasy: a scientist-created serum that instantly turned one into a Super Soldier.
Captain America has NO inner evil. This is interesting because, as we explored in the
previous Inner Evil post about the 30’s, our hero’s had started letting their own inner evil slip out a little.
Would a hero work who had no inner evil?
It was working for Superman, but he was an alien.
Batman was born from inner evil and wrestled with his demons: he became a master detective for revenge, not necessarily justice.
In the 1940’s, when Captain America was socking Hitler on the jaw, he worked great. But he ended his run by the 50’s, disappearing from the shelves, and wasn’t thawed out again until the 60’s. Even then it wasn’t to carry his own title, but to become part of a super-team.
Captain America fought villains who wore their inner evil on their sleeves. It worked in the 40’s because he was a direct response to a real evil in the world that made the little kid in all of us want to take a galvanized, titanium flag-shield and put evil in its place.
Two years after Germany invaded France, Albert Camus published
The Stranger (1942).
The Stranger is an intimate, first person account of a sociopath. Camus is such a skilled writer; his slim book is packed with intricate lines, including the absurdity of life and our place in the universe. But make no mistake, Meursault is a sociopath.
(Definition of a sociopath, courtesy of Ira Levin’s Deathtrap: a person with ‘no sense of moral obligation whatsoever.’)
Meursault starts his tale at the side of his mother’s coffin, while drinking a nice coffee. He is, at best, indifferent.
He sets up his friend’s girlfriend to be beaten up. He is, at best, indifferent.
He kills a man. Eh.
And he ends his tale with one of the best last lines of any novel, for which no SPOILER ALERT, even in 100 pt. bold face type, would justify my revealing.
As World War II raged, as France fell, Camus turned the microscope inward on a singular man’s evil, and perhaps this makes sense―perhaps one of the questions to ask while some of the worst atrocities ever seen on such a grand scale is happening is this: how can one man create even one act of violence, and does it matter?
The Stranger is another step toward coming to grips with man’s inner evil―that man, unaided by a potion or the devil, can chose evil.
Another step came in 1943, with the release of Alfred Hitchcock’s
Shadow of a Doubt. I could easily fill each of these columns with an Alfred Hitchcock movie, but I will limit myself to this one and one other to come in another decade (I bet you can guess which film! In fact, I’ll send an autographed copy of
The Changed to the first one who guesses correctly, just for funzies.)
Shadow of a Doubt gets, ahem, overshadowed by Hitchcock’s other masterpieces, but this is one of his best. In fact, David Mamet has stated this is Hitchcock’s “finest film,” so, you know―take it to the bank.
Shadow of a Doubt is perhaps the first film to deal with a family member as murderer. (At least on this level of intimacy and with all its implications, ie: how much evidence does it take for you to believe your loved one is guilty, what do you do with the information, how will it affect the family, etc.)
Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Newton (played by Teresa Wright) is so excited that her Uncle Charlie (her namesake, played by Joseph Cotton) is coming to visit. He is beloved by the family.
And he might just be a murderer of rich widows.
It is unthinkable that someone we love could be a cold blooded killer. And for all the movie’s black and white, Hitchcock fun, this is the darkest theme he ever explored.
Uncle Charlie as serial killer.
How’s that for awkward conversation around the Thanksgiving turkey?
In the film, we are told Uncle Charlie had a happy childhood, but that he suffered a blow to the head and ‘went wild’ after that.
With all the recent research into concussions and how they can dramatically affect a person’s personality (witness the tragedies of Andre Waters and other numerous football players), we know, today, that this rings true.
But back in the 40’s, this ‘blow to the head’ turning someone into a crazed killer would have been tantamount to an urban legend.
And I don’t believe the writer’s (Thornton Wilder, Sally Benson and Alma Reville) are hanging their hat on the ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ peg―this explanation is just offered in passing. As far as our pursuit into man’s inner evil, we don’t really have an answer as to why Uncle Charlie would say something like, ‘Are (rich widows) human or are they fat, wheezing animals, hmmm?’
Shadow of a Doubt just merrily confronts us with the fact that someone you love might be plotting murder, maybe even your own.
The 1940’s built on the disturbing work of other artist’s exploration of inner evil in the 30’s. World War II did create a series of fantasy worlds we wanted to escape into, for sure, but the bar on our exploration into man’s dark depths had been raised.
And the 1950’s would respond to the challenge.
MGE:
Can you give our readers a bit of background on how you got involved with the
first