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Title: Film Re-Vision Author: Luis Veramon Date: September 17th, 1938 Language: en Topics: revolution, Counterrevolution, film review Source: Retrieved on 15th August 2020 from https://waste.org/~roadrunner/ScarletLetterArchives/Veramon/Veramon.htm Notes: Originally published in Umbral 44 as Revision de films: RevoluciĂłn y antirrevoluciĂłn en dos films de Paul Muni.
IN all countries – except Spain – cinema obeys social reality. Cinema is
the reflection of the society that makes it. The State prevails over
cinema. In Russia, the only country in which the experiment of social
cinema has been made, cinema lives in the shade of the red dictatorship
and unswervingly serves the interests of the Communist Party. In
Germany, Goebbels, minister of Propaganda of the Reich, has already
said: “Cinema will sing of valor, of force, even of violence, in so far
as this serves the patriotic ideal. It will be this, or it will be
nothing.” And indeed, German cinema – rather, Nazi cinema – with Leni
Riefenstahl, Hitler’s lover, as its principal figure, has set out to
serve the interests of the State. This is also happening in Italy,
France, England, and especially North America, although the White House
has not officially attacked Hollywood. But all we know that the N.R.A.
[National Recovery Administration] and its social reforms has an active
agent of propaganda in cinema. And although Yankee cinema appeals to a
soppy sentimentality wrapped up in a superficially dynamic life, relying
on images of a physically perfect youthfulness while promoting, also in
appearance only, puritan concepts, its real use is as a justification
for submission to the State. And one doesn’t have to dig very deeply to
see how it is compromised by the social characteristics of those who
direct it.
For that reason, when films arise from the American “studios” that try
to expose or raise the issue of a social reality, we must analyze them
thoroughly and try to discover what is hidden behind their arguments so
that they have been distributed to European markets. Not that we deny
that Yankee production has created revolutionary films. Indeed, this
very column in UMBRAL has highlighted some of them; and in today’s
column, there appears a revolutionary film whose exhibition impassioned
the entire European public. The work that we have undertaken has a
purpose: that of orienting the public and defending it from a facile
campaign against counterrevolutionary films.
PAUL MUNI, FACE TO FACE
“I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang” and “Black Fury”
The harshness of the penitentiary regime in the State of Georgia, the
terrible cruelty of the penalty of the chain gang, the punishment of
those who have been beaten down; the perennial anguish of the innocent
man submitted to brutal laws. “I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang” [1932]
indicates the rebirth of Yankee cinema, submerged in a predominantly
frivolous and gray atmosphere for four long years.
We are not going to now investigate the causes of this decadence. The
interesting thing is that, with this work by Merwyn Le Roy, American
cinema comes to receive impulses of humanity that soon obliterate the
memory of the fleeting frivolity.
“I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang” is a revolutionary film, a film
whose context corresponds to a real fact. It is the case of Robert
Elliot Burns, an American citizen, a citizen of the bourgeois type, who
lives comfortably, who does not understand the rights for which workers
struggle, who is sure that American justice is perfect. And one day,
this citizen commits a misdemeanor and is condemned to ten years of
forced labor in a chain gang of prisoners, in which abound vulgar
criminals and warped minds, in which life is continual torture. On this
basis, Merwyn Le Roy constructs his magnificent cinematographic work of
social content, which will pass into the history of revolutionary
cinema. He constructs a film full of beautiful images, of great artistic
values, in which each scene hurls a violent, terrible and shameful
accusation against the American authorities, a bold accusation against a
social system that must disappear, and creates one of the most profound
dramas of democratic North America.
But here Paul Muni must face Paul Muni. Witness “Black Fury” [1935].
Michael Curtiz against Merwyn Le Roy. With the same actor, one foments
revolution and counterrevolution. For “Black Fury” is indeed a
counterrevolutionary film. Joe Radek (Paul Muni), the constantly
exploited miner, has no class consciousness. He is in agreement with his
destiny and only aspires to marry the beautiful Ann and buy a little
house near the mine. The strike does not matter to him. Ever since she
became the fiancée of a mine guard, he does nothing but drink. And he is
drunk when she enters where the strikers are gathered. And the workers,
who, according to Michael Curtiz, have neither culture nor class
consciousness, make the drunkard Radek its president. And since there is
no strike committee, the new president goes to the tavern to continue
drinking. And, finally, he is brought to the mine for sentimental
reasons and foments the strike with dynamite. But he does this
unconsciously, for in this film, it is demonstrated that the American
miners and bosses want to be as brothers, and if not for outside
agitators who wish the ruin of the workers, the American miners and
their bosses would spend their holidays together.