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ABSTRACT

A SURVEY OF CRITICISM OF VIOLENCE IN AMERICAN
MOTION PICTURES--1958 TO 1968

BY

Steven Karl Meuche

This thesis involves an examination of film critics'
reactions to selected films of 1958 to 1968 which contain
acts of violence; the most controversial of these films,
"Bonnie and Clyde," is explored in detail. A great variety
of types of violence appeared in the films of this period.
But, prior to "Bonnie and Clyde" in 1967, we find that the
actual violence, with few exceptions, drew little attention
from the American public or the critics.

Arthur Penn's "Bonnie and Clyde" caused great public
and critical concern. It is shown that this unconventional
film sharply divided the critics over the usefulness of
excessive violence. A discussion of the critics' comments
on "Bonnie and Clyde's" effect on the film audience is also
included.

The preliminary chapters of this thesis present a
brief historical survey of violent films prior to 1958 in

which the writings of numerous motion picture historians

Steven Karl Meuche

and film critics are used as a basis for speculation on
the changes, over the years, in the audience response,
censorship programs, and social norms as they relate to
film violence.

Also included is an examination of film critics'
attitudes regarding their art and their views on the use of

violence in popular motion pictures.

A SURVEY OF CRITICISM OF VIOLENCE IN AMERICAN

MOTION PICTURES--1958 TO 1968

BY

Steven Karl Meuche

A THESIS

Submitted to

. .Michigan State University .
in partial fu fillment of the requirements

for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS

Department of Television and Radio

1970

'2\‘
,2

63H”???

Accepted by the faculty of the Department of

Television and Radio, College of Communication Arts,

Michigan State University, in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the Master of Arts degree.

 

 

firDirector of Thesis

ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author appreciates the invaluable assistance and
guidance of Professor Arthur Weld of the Department of
Television and Radio at Michigan State University.

Also a note of thanks to the many American film critics

whose thoughts on motion pictures made this research so

enjoyable.

 

iii

CHAPTER

II.

III.

IV.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
SOME CRITICS ON FILM CRITICISM . . . . . .
THE CRITICS ON VIOLENCE IN FILM. . . . . .

THE AUDIENCE, THE CRITICS, AND THE VIOLENT
FILMS OF 1920 TO 1958 . . . . . . . .

THE CRITICS ON SOME OF THE MORE VIOLENT
POPULAR FILMS FROM 1958-1968. . . . .

BONNIE AND CLYDE . . . . . . . . . . . . .

CONCLUSIONS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

LIST OF REFERENCES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

iv

Page

15

34
47
65
65

INTRODUCTION

The period from 1958 to 1968 was a particularly exciting
one for followers of film criticism. -During this time the
critics were commenting on some of the most violent and con-
troversial American films ever produced.

This attempt to study critical reaction to violence in
this decade of films necessitates a few preliminaries. Thus
an examination of the writings of film reviewers on techniques
for meaningful criticism and feelings about the use of violence
in movies precedes our discussion of specific violent films.
Also a review of some of the more violent motion pictures
before 1958 should help us understand in what ways and how
much violence has been presented through film's history.

And perhaps we can find some correlations of the societal
norms with the violence in the films of each period and the
critics' reaction to that violence.

For the purposes of this research a thorough definition
of violence is not necessary since we are dealing only with
violence or violent episodes which are called to our atten-
tion and examined by the film critic. However, in our

.analysis, we will try to differentiate the way critics explain

real or fictional violence or the aesthetic treatment of
acts of violence.

The films of 1958 to 1968 to be examined will be drawn
from the Best Films lists, for each year, of the Academy
of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the New York Film
Critics, The New York Times, and the Filmfactg composite of
all films mentioned in fifteen Ten Best lists of leading
magazines and newspapers. To be relevant to this study, all
of these films must contain acts of violence which are
examined by several major film critics.

An important portion of this thesis is devoted to Arthur
Penn's 1967 production of "Bonnie and Clyde" because of its
relevance to this study. Perhaps no other American film has
generated more critical response than "Bonnie and Clyde."
lMore than fifteen film critics wrote lengthy pieces dealing
xwith this motion picture, and to almost all of them it was

cone of the most violent major films they had ever reviewed.

CHAPTER I

SOME CRITICS ON FILM CRITICISM

James Agee's premise that film criticism is a conversa-
tion between moviegoers seems to be generally followed, often
with some amplification, by today's critics.l Judith Crist
subscribes to the Agee philOSOphy but, she says, "my immediate
goal is to keep the conversation going, to stimulate my
listener into a reSponse, whether it involves a reappraisal
of his own Opinions or an affirmation of his disagreement."2

The conversation approach is perhaps more informal and
interesting, but the critic, to the moviegoing public, must
often maintain the role of teacher and the reader the role
of student. "The critic," says Hollis Alpert, "is of value

in educating the public to understanding, appreciation, and

 

lJames Agee in his introductory review in The Nation
(December 26, 1942), p. 22, wrote: "It is my business to
conduct one end of a conversation, as an amateur critic among
amateur critics. And I will be of use and of interest only
insofar as my amateUr judgment is sound, stimulating, or
illuminating."

2Judith Crist, The Private Eye, The Cowbqu,and the Very
Ifiaked Girl (Chicago: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1967),

p - xvii.

 

acceptance of better films and higher standards of film—
making."3 And to be reSpected and authoritative, Alpert
says the good critic must have "more than cursory acquaint-
ance with the fields of literature, theater, philosophy,
science, art, and music--for movies, inevitably, when they
are serious, and even when they are not--touch on all these
fields."4
A respected critic must also be an artist and a thinker.
Oscar Wilde, in his essay "The Critic as Artist," wrote
"the critic is he who exhibits to us a work of art in a form
different from the work itself, and the employment of a new
material is a critical as well as a creative element."5 As
a thinker, John Simon writes: "the critic must have a world
view, which, however one may wish to disguise it, is a moral
position. Nothing is more suspect in criticism nowadays than
a moral position, and yet there can be no criticism without
one."6
Because the critic's work often appears in a mass circu—
lation magazine or newspaper, he often must contain his

reviews to what broadly interests the majority of his readers.

 

aHollis Alpert, The Dreams and The Dreamers (New York:
The Macmillan Company, 1962), p. 9.

4Ibid., p. 9.

5Oscar Wilde, quoted by John Simon in Private Screenings
(New Ybrk: The Macmillan Company, 1967, p. 5.

6John Simon, Private Screenings (New York: The Macmillan
Company, 1967), p- 5-

Thus, Hollis Alpert says, "the publishers create the star
rating system, a kind of Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval,"
because the "public has a tendency to regard the review as a
service feature."7

The film critic for the mass audience exposes himself
to the public's occasional dissatisfaction with his "art."
Pauline Kael, in her outSpoken style, often elicits caustic
reactions from her audience. But Miss Kael knows how to
fight back. In response to some letters critical of a radio
broadcast on "The New American Cinema," she replied:

I recognize your assumptions: the critic is supposed

to be rational, clever, heartless, and empty, envious

of the creative fire of the artist, and if the critic

is a woman, she is supposed to be cold and castrating.

The artist is supposed to be delicate and sensitive and

in need of tender care and nourishment. Well, this

nineteenth—century romanticism is pretty silly in
twentieth-century Bohemia.

There is no magic fOrmula for successful reviewing of
films; art is not created from formulas, and most critics
view their profession as a form of artistic endeavor. A crit—
ical style is more often developed out of a sense of responsi—
bility to help the critic's audience to see what is in a
film, what is in it that shouldn't be, and what is not in it

that could be. A good critic, says Pauline Kael, "helps

people understand more about the work than they could see for

 

7Alpert, Dreams, p. 7.

8Pauline Kael, I Lost It At The Movies (Boston: Little
Brown and Company, 1965), p. 254.

themselves; a great critic . . . can excite people so that
they want to experience more of the art that is waiting
there to be seized."9
To John Simon the critic serves also as a kind of
"gatekeeper" to screen all films that seem worthwhile and to
"Spare us the waste of what as mortals we have the least of--
time." Thus, continues Simon, "criticism can accelerate the
verdict of the ages, it can Speed up the coming of pleasure
and enlightenment."lo
In performing his art, the critic should also relate
the films he reviews to his understanding of contemporary
mores and manners. "If a movie serves falsehood, spreads
prejudice, or distorts issues," says Hollis Alpert, "all this
indeed should be pointed out, but with discernment and fair-

"11 Alpert was referring to a critic's reaction

ness of mind.
to a film ("The Lovers") shown in Dayton, Ohio, which led to
the prosecution of a theatre owner for displaying an obscene
film. He writes: “What value are reviewers at all if they
use specious definitions of morality as grounds for evalua-
tion?"12

Screenwriter Dudley Nichols ("Stagecoach," "The Informer")

as an outsider, views the art quite perceptively. Nichols

 

9Ibid., p. 508.
10Simon, Screenings, p. 2.
llAlpert, Dreams, p. 9.

1amid.

deplores the critic who uses his wit, personality, and power
until his own talents are exalted above his subject matter.
He says, "the true critic, who must combine the heart of a
poet with the intellect of a scholar, must find his reward in
his work, in his sense of growth and discovery, in winning
the reSpect of a few peOple whom he reSpects."13
To Pauline Kael, film criticism is exciting simply be-
cause the film art is exciting, and "you must use everything
you are and everything you know that is relevant. . . ."14
In all his attempts to remain as objective as possible,
the seasoned critic, out of a strong love and devotion to
the film art, often finds himself emotionally involved in his
work. For example, James Agee in his review in The Nation,
of the best films of 1945, thanked the creative people of
Hollywood for getting on the screen more than a Split-second
glimmer of what they have in them to put there. And, he con-
tinued,
I am grateful for hundreds of Split-second glimmers,
which I wish I had room to Specify. But the desire of
any critic, like that of any artist, who has a right
even to try to defend or practice an art--as perhaps any
human being who has a right even to try to defend or
practice living-—cannot be satisfied short of perfect

liberty, discipline, and achievement, though the attempt
may be wholly loved and honored.15

 

13Dudley Nichols in Lewis Jacobs (ed.), Introduction to
the Art of the Movies (New York: Noonday Press, 1964), p.
270.

14Kael, Lost It, p. 509.

15James Agee, Agee on Film (1958 ed.: New York: McDowell,
Obolensky Inc., 1941), p. 188.

Judith Crist has written: "Like parents, we carp and
criticize and pick away at the flaws; like lovers, we go to
passionate heights and depths in our reactions; like true
friends, we know our relationship must be based on honesty."16

And Pauline Kael warns all observers of the art of
film:

When movies, the only art which everyone felt free to

enjoy and have opinions about, lose their connection

with song and dance, drama, and the novel, when they
become cinema, which people fear to criticize just as
they fear to say what they think of a new piece of
music or a new poem or painting, they will become an—
other object<xfacademic study and appreciation, and will
soon be an object of excitement only to practitioners

of the 'art'. 7

Thus the critic, as a conversationalist or a teacher,
views his job as sharing his ideas about film with his audi—
ence. Hopefully, through his experience with film and his
expertise as a writer, he gives the viewer of a motion picture
a new angle or dimension. And because the critic deals in
ideas, Opinions, and social mores, he often becomes the
center of controversy among fellow critics or the film audi-
ence. But he persists because, more often than not, he becomes

the opinion leader and his ideas serve as a catalyst for dis-

<:ussion among other lovers of the art.

16Crist, Cowboy, p. xv.

17Kael, Lost It, p. 25.

CHAPTER II

THE CRITICS ON VIOLENCE IN FILM

Violence or criminal behavior can be motivated for
political, social, or economic reasons. And violence exists,
and is often encouraged, in socially approved forms such as
war and police action, or for self-defense. American motion
pictures have managed many times to treat each of these
aSpects of violence and probably some others.

Critic John Simon describes three types of film violence:
"the ineptly overstated kind, which proves finally boring;

the sadistic one, which is finally nauseating; and the artis-

1

tically meaningful one, which is thereby moral." Simon

admits there are exceptions to these simplified categories of
violence on film. One might be the use of violence for high
comedy. Here some critics point to Chaplin's "Monsieur
Verdoux," a satire in which the hero, a mass murderer, says,
"one murder makes a villain--millions sanctify." Arthur
LKnight calls "Monsieur Verdoux" "probably the most non-
(conformist picture ever made." Knight says, "Chaplin brazenly
iattempted to shock and outrage virtually every organized

¥

1John Simon, "The Question of Violence; It's Not How
MLJCh, But How,P The New York Times, March 17, 1968, p. D17.

.10

section of every American community with his pragmatic,
unconventional morality."2
Judith Crist, in hailing “Verdoux” as one of the rarer,
but more delightful aspects of violence in film, writes:
"But much rarer is the comedy provided by the killer; the
lesser criminal as clown can beta laughing matter, but clowns
are close to our hearts, and who, besides his mother, can
love a murderer, let alone laugh at his on-the-job activi—
ties."3
Film violence also can be used in many other ways. vJohn
Simon, in his essay, "The Question of Violence: It's Not
How Much, but How," says, "violence can depict a condition;
or, by isolating that condition from its context, comment on
it analytically; or, by establishing some correspondence
between the condition and an underlying truth, convey some—
thing deeper than the surface events."4
Producers of violent films seem to Spend a great deal of
time in public appearances and interviews with the press
justifying the use of violence as necessary to the film's
continuity. Tim§_magazine's 1967 cover story on violence in

films examined a new production philosophy. "Movies still

rnake moral points, but the points are rarely driven home in

2Arthur Knight, The Liveliest Art (New York: New Ameri—
cxan Library of World Literature, Inc., 1959). p. 50.

3Crist, Cowboy, p. 75.

‘Simon, The Nengork Times, p. D17.

11

the heavy-hammered old way. »And like some of the most provo-
cative literature, the film now is apt to be amoral, casting
a coolly neutral eye on life and death and on humanity's

most perverse moods and modes."5

Violence is also justified as merely depicting a life—
style that is commonplace in a world of violent happenings;
it frequently enters into our thinking and feeling. And to
represent it on the screen, some critics argue, is merely
telling something about ourselves.

Much can be learned of the critics's attitude toward
limitation on film violence from a symposium conducted among
members of the National Society of Film Critics by Richard
Schickel and John Simon. Schickel and Simon asked fellow
critics "how much farther can the film go with sex and vio-
lence; or has it already gone too far?" Some of the respon-
dents spoke of the relation of film violence to the actual
brutality of the sixties as expressed in the mass media.
Television news reporting of the Vietnam War or riots in
American cities represents the true form of today's film vio—
lence, according to Hollis Alpert. He reSponds: "Films
use . . . the illusion of violence as a means of convincing
the audience of the 'reality' of what they are seeing. When

used to an excessive degree it is to mask weakness in story

5"The Shock of Freedom in Films," Time (December 8.
1967) . p. 66.

12

structure and development by concentrating the audience atten-
tion on these details."6

Stanley Kauffman replied: "How can films go further than
they have gone? We already have torture and killing on the
home screens (TV newsreel clips of war)."7

Both the movies and the front page of The New Ygrk Times,
says Richard Schickel, reflect our setting aside our inhibi-
tions against violence.8

Because the cinema is the art that deals most profoundly
with life, Robert Koenigil says, "it is the greatest creator
of modern myths. That is precisely why it is dangerous: it
will excuse certain important things and then Show effectively

a very modern style that may become perverse to the imagina—

tion: it shows how easy it is to kill, that murder is a way

K

out, that it solves certain other insoluble problems."9

The question of whether the film reviewer should be a
guardian of public morality influences Hollis Alpert's com-
ments on the limitation on film violence. Alpert says:

What a good many quite conscientious peOple are con-

cerned about is the rising level of tolerance in the

audience toward portrayals of sex and violence, as shown

by the commercial success of many films that feature
these aSpects, and our worry about the films is really

6Richard Schickel and John Simon, eds., Film 67/68: An
gynthology by the National Society of Film Critics (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1968), P- 268.

7Ibid., p. 290.

81bid., p. 301.

9Mark Koenigil, Movies in Society (Sex, Crime, and Censor-
§L1ip) (New York: Robert Speller and Sons, 1962), p. 88.

15

a disguised worry about the audience. If we make the

films go away, maybe we'll make the sensation-loving

audience go away too. Few critics who worried about

the violence in Bonnie and Clyde, for example, were

worried about its effect on themselves; it is always

the other person.10

Almost all the respondents in the Schickel-Simon poll
feel that the only violence that warrants disapproval is that
which is used by the filmmaker for purposes of exploitation.
In other words, when violence is just plain bad art. To John
Simon, there is no specifiable limit for violence. "Whatever
serves a given artist's purpose best--provided he is a true
artist--is right; whatever conveys the point to be made
artistically and efficaciously iS good and proper."11

Or as Andrew Sarris puts it: "The film will go only as
far as artists take it. I don't believe film has gone too
far. In sex, it has not yet caught up with literature. In
violence, it still lags behind politics."12

And Simon concludes, "what is violence if not that which
is communicated—-transferred in all its painfulness from the
film to us—-rather than countless gory deaths and lovingly
spelled-out tortures that end up by numbing or nauseating

US "13

‘ 10Schickel and Simon, Film 67168, pp. 286-287.
11Ibid., p. 505.
121bid., p. 299.

13Simon, The New York Times, p. D17.

14

Thus the critics' response to violence seems to be
predicated by several conditions of its use. Since film
almost always attempts a realistic portrayal of events or
ideas, and because violence is often the reality of the day,
it seems to many critics that violence should be an integral
part of the motion picture. The critics are generally
receptive to violent acts which help create the realism of
the film. But when violence is bad art (and critics find
this difficult to agree on) or used only for its own sake,

it is not critically approved.

CHAPTER.III

THE AUDIENCE, THE CRITICS, AND THE VIOLENT
FILMS OF-1920 TO 1958

Following World War I, Hollywood gained domination of
the world film market. Subsequently, the film industry
became the darling of Wall Street, and this new found source
of financial power in turn resulted in more lavish and costly
film productions. The big domestic films of the twenties
and their highly paid stars reflected all the flamboyance of
the "jazz age." The producers and the stars, unprepared for
their sudden wealth, became thoroughly captivated by the
times. Arthur Knight relates: "many of them began to act
like children in a room full of bright new toys. . . .~By
1922 Hollywood had gained the reputation of being not only
the most glamorous but also the most corrupt city in the
United States."1

The industry's own effort at self—regulation, through
the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America,
resulted in films that were more "moral" than their prede—

cessors, but "there was an inevitable duality, a conflict

 

1Knight, Liveliest Art. pp. 110—111.

15

16

between thought and deed that made most pictures of the era
seem basically dishonest. Drinking, petting, orgiastic
parties—~all these were shown in gleeful detail, but always
with a compensating cluCk of disapproval to indicate how
prOper and moral the producers really were."2
"The addition of the middle class and well—to-do to the
movie audience, already apparent on America's entrance into

World War I, was now complete."3

And the film consumer ap-
peared hungry for movies that depicted this lively era of
American life. Lewis Jacobs continues: "So thoroughly did
the spirit of the decade saturate the films that they are
distinguished perhaps more for their innocent reflection of
contemporary life than for their technical advances."4

The end of WOrld War I brought violent reverses in
American manners and morals. Jacobs writes:

The lust for thrills, excitement, and power, the reck-

lessness and defiance of authority condoned by govern-

mental policy, and a general social callousness due to

the war, all combined to produce a moral uncertainty and

laxity unprecedented in American history.

Restrained as life had been during the war days, it was

now unbridled. Sexual promiscuity, faithlessness in

marriage, divorce, bad manners, the hip flask, and

general cynicism became p0pular as millions of people
attempted to escape from responsibilities of all kinds.5

 

2Ibid., p..115.

3Lewis Jacobs, The Rise of the American Film--A Critical
History (1967 ed.: New York: Columbia University, Teachers
College Press, Teachers College, 1959). p. 595.

4Ibid., p. 595.

51bid., p. 596.

17

The mood of the industry and the American people may
have been influential in creating the "gangster era" of films
which preceded the country's entrance into WOrld War II.
There is little doubt that the films of the thirties had a
profound effect on the peOple. Robert Warshow has written:

the experience of the gangster as an experience of art

is universal to Americans. There is almost nothing we
understand better or react to more readily or with
quicker intelligence. .ThuS the importance of the gang-
ster film, and the nature and intensity of its emotional
and aesthetic impact cannot be measured in terms of the
place of the gangster himself or the importance of the
problem of crime in American life.6

The excitement and fascination with these action stories
was due in part to their uniqueness. Gangsterism and its
violence was a new theme for the film. “There was a speed,

a vigor, a sense of the contemporaneous scene, a realism of
character and incident about these films that was in sharp
contrast to the talky problem plays that surrounded them."7

Three of the pOpular pictures of the early thirties were
"Little Caesar" (1950), "Public Enemy" (1951), and "Scarface”
(1952). "Little Caesar" made the reputation of both its
director, Mervyn LeRoy, and the leading man, Edward G.
Robinson. .Lewis Jacobs, in his anthology of the American
film, writes:

It was shocking, it was hard, it was not pleasant, but

it was real. Lack of sentimentality, brutal assault
on the nerves with gunplay, violence, chases, tense

 

6Robert Warshow, The Immediate Ex erience (Garden City,
New York: Doubleday and Company, 1962?, p. 150.

7Knight, Liveliest Art, p. 161.

18

struggles over big stakes, callousness toward human
feelings, appealed to a public suddenly insecure in
their own lives, faced with a desperate struggle for
survival and menaced from all Sides.8
Films like "Little Caesar" brought from the American
peOple a respect and consideration for the courage, daring
and loyalty of the gangsters. "Realistically and objectively
presented, without apology or whitewashing, the criminal
leaders were in a sense exalted and their methods condoned."9
The title, "The Public Enemy," implies to many that
gangsters, though heroic, are social evils. This film, which
detailed the rise and fall of a bootlegging gangster, impress-
ed the critics because its intentions were undoubtedly socio-
logical. But many local citizen's groups were far from
pleased with the story, sociological or not.
Paul Rotha wrote:
Except in 'the Public Enemy,‘ the gangster films had
avoided the social backgrounds of crime. Yet the ex-
haustiveness of their naturalistic detail was in effect
a tacit statement that the slum, and therefore society,
was responsible for uncontrolled twentieth-century crime.
It was this unpleasant implication, perhaps, more than
the danger that the crime film itself might breed
criminals, that lay at the bottom of the boycott of
gangster films by the small town civic clubs.1°

"The Public Enemy," which was directed by William Wellman

and starred James Cagney, was cited by Richard Schickel as the

 

8Jacobs, Rise of American Film, p. 510.
9Ibid.. pp. 510-511.

10Paul Rotha with Richard Griffith, The Film Till Now
(revised 5rd ed.: New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1960),
P- 457.

19

story of
the screen's first absurd--in the existential meaning
of the word--killer. Smilingly vicious, he killed
merely for the pleasure of it; in the end he was rubbed
out in the same pointless way. .Death for no good
reason is one of the central facts of existence in the
twentieth century, and this was a merciless probing of
the fact--the first in the movies and one of the first
in any of the pOpular arts.n
"Scarface," often called the gangster picture to end
all gangster pictures, brought a number of startling events
which climaxed the gangster era of the film. It was "at once
one of the best and most brutal of the gangster films, and
was held up for months until the producers inserted several
placatory scenes Showing an aroused citizenry demanding action
against what the film's subtitle described as 'the shame of
the nation.”12
Gangsterism soon became a national scandal. Although
gangster films were not yet regarded as having a harmful
effect on the public, many of America's powerful national
organizations began to sense an unpatriotic theme in their

"13 "Though audiences in

focusing upon "America's Shame.
general did not recoil from the opened cesspool, its stench
offended more delicate nostrils," and groups such as the

American Legion, Daughters of the American Revolution, and

national men's and women's clubs "pointed out, truly enough,

 

llRichard Schieckel, Movies: The History of an Art and
an Institution (New York: Basic Books, 1964). p. 125.

ngnight, Liveliest Art, p. 259.

13Jacobs, Rise of the American Film, p. 409.

20

that audiences sentimentalized the gangster and envied his
life of unrestrained violence and excitement."14
"YOu Only Live Once," a crime story of the late thirties
(1957) deserves attention here because of its similarity to
the most controversial violent film of the nineteen sixties,
"Bonnie and Clyde." This frightening story of terror chal-
lenged the society which condemns criminal offenders to
ostracism. The story resembles that of the outlaw gang of
the thirties which was led by Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker.
The film, in Spite of its violence, was hailed as a cinematic
triumph. The Tim§_reviewer said the film "sets a pace which

"15 Lewis

1957 cops and robbers sagas may find hard to beat.
Jacobs called it "a picture which in other hands would have
degenerated into a raucous melodrama." But, said Jacobs,
director Fritz Lang, "turned it into an absorbing, tense, and

"16

tragic social document. Newsweek said, "despite his deep

interest in the social aspects of the subject (crime), Lang
doesn't sermonize in 'You Only Live Once.”17

The film is the story of Eddie Taylor, an ex-convict who

has married his girl and decided to go straight. But, he

 

l4Rotha and Griffith, The Film Till Now, pp. 455-456.
15Time, January 11, 1957, p. 56.
16Jacobs, Rise of the American_§ilm, p. 464.

"mesh, January 50. 1957. p. 20.

21

cannot keep a job because of his record. Eventually Eddie

is blamed for a bank robbery and murder and is sent to prison
to die for a crime he did not commit. Eddie escapes, taking
a priest hostage, and then kills the priest in his flight.

He flees with his girl and is finally shot dead after a hot
pursuit by the police.

Many of the critics hailed the final scene where the law
takes its course and the film bares its moral. Newsweek said,
"a few miles from the border, the protagonists of the finest
film Since *Public Enemy' crumple under a hail of lead.":"8
Lewis Jacobs wrote: "the bloody ending was resourceful and
gripping. Throughout the cutting was swiftly paced, economical,
urging the story to its savage conclusion."19 The Time critic
liked the use of cinematic realism. Director Fritz Lang,
he wrote, "gets an extraordinary authenticity of color into
his quick episodic treatment of the life and love of Eddie
Taylor."2O Pauline Kael writes: "Because 'Ybu only Live Once'
was so well done, and because the audience in the thirties
shared this view of the indifference and cruelty of 'Society,'
there were no protests against the sympathetic way the outlaws

were pictured-—and, indeed, there was no reason for any."21

 

18Ibid.

 

19Jacobs, Rise of the American Film, p. 465.
aollmg, January 11, 1957, p. 56.

21Pauline Kael, "Onward and Upward With the Arts,"
The New Yorker, October 21, 1967, pp. 150-151.

22

The gangster's activity, depicted in the films of the
early thirties, as a rational enterprise with fairly definite
goals and techniques only provides a vague background to his
being. The American social critic Robert Warshow describes
the hoodlum's role as a kind of "pure criminality." He
writes: “Certainly our response to the gangster film is most
consistently and most universally a response to sadism; we
gain the double satisfaction of participating vicariously in
the gangster's sadism and then seeing it turned against the

gangster himself."22

Warshow sees the possibility of more
serious social consequences from the gangster films after the
public outcry of the early thirties which resulted in more
"moral" stories as in "You Only Live Once." He writes:

Some of the compromises introduced to avoid the supposed

bad effects of the old gangster movies may be, if any—

thing, more dangerous, for the sadistic violence that

once belonged only to the gangster is now commonly en-

listed on the Side of the law and thus goes undefeated,

allowing us (if we wish) to find in the movies a sort

of 'confirmation' of our fantasies.23

Wars offer more violence than gangster films, and thus
as the war began the film industry began to look for new
themes. But the respite was only temporary. Critic Paul
Rotha writes of the post war period:

The end of the war found Hollywood once again at a loss

for themes. The industry confronted a public weary of

the conflict, but so steeped in violence that anything

less seemed tame. The war was immediately tabued as
story material. . . .

22Warshow, Immediate EXperience, p. 151.

231bid., p. 152.

25

There was only one answer to the American predisposi—
tion to violence as a result of the war experience:
The gangster film was revived with a bang, and with an
accent on violence and sadism unprecedented in the
Depression days.24

James Agee blames the film censors in part for this post—
war rebirth in gangster films. Because for so many years so
much had been forbidden or impossible in Hollywood, crime
offered one of the few chances for vitality on the screen.
Agee wrote:

The idea keeps nagging at me that more people who think
of themselves as serious-minded, and progressive, thor-
oughly disapprove of crime melodramas. They feel that
movies should be devoted, rather, to more elevated
themes. . . . They seem not to remember or not to care
that in Germany, a few years ago, movies had to be con-
structive; stories of crime and of troubled marriage,
for instance, were strictly forbidden.25

Of course the censors had been at work for several years
before the post World War II period. But now the filmmakers
were beginning to test the Code and local censorship boards
as never before.

Richard Randall, in Censorship of the Movies, reported
one of the earliest cases of censored film violence. In 1925
the Chicago censors were upheld by the courts for refusing to
license "Deadwood Coach,"

which featured a stagecoach holdup and a great deal of

shooting. The Illinois court offered a definitive com-

ment on depiction of violence, at the same time giving
great reach to the statutory standard of ‘immoral’;

 

24Rotha and Griffith, Film Till Now, p. 467.

25Agee, On Film, pp. 216-217.

24

such pictures should not be shown unless plainly harm—
less; where gun-play, or the shooting of human beings
is the essence of the play and does not pertain to the
necessities of war, nor the preservation of law and
order, is for personal Spite or revenge, and involves
the taking of law into one's own hands, and thus becomes
a murder, the picture may be said to be immoral. . . .26
Local censorship boards appear to have been more effec-
tive, in many cases, in eliminating film violence than the
self-policing Production Code. Randall cites Oklahoma City
and Sioux City, Iowa, as examples of the "several licensing
laws [which] authorize censorShip of scenes which are likely
to induce unlawful behavior, usually phrased as 'incitement
to crime' or 'disturbance of the public peace or order.”27
Crime stories, particularly those depicting juvenile
delinquency, once again became quite popular in the late
forties and fifties. One of the more controversial of these
films was "Black Tuesday," which detailed wanton slaughter
of law enforcement officers. Protests by local censors and
the National Parent-Teachers Association brought concessions
from the producer who cut "Black Tuesday" so only two police—
men were killed on the screen.
The public outcry over these films also brought to

Hollywood, in June of 1955, a Senate investigating committee,

headed by Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, to probe

 

26Richard Randall, Censorship of the Movies: The Social
and Political Control of a Mass Medium (Madison, Wis.: The
University of Wisconsin Press, 1968). PP. 25-24.

2711616., p. 97.

25

crime and violence in movies and their effect on juvenile
delinquency.

Kefauver prefaced his four days of hearings with an
assurance that the Subcommittee members came to Hollywood
with Open minds. But the official hearing transcript reveals
an overbalance on the part of the foes of film violence.

For example, William Mooring, the Motion Picture and Tele—
vision Editor of a Los Angeles Catholic newspaper reasoned,
"the film peOple tacitly acknowledge the power of the movies
toward public attitudes and thinking. Therefore, programs
glorifying crimes and criminals, condoning loose morals or
revealing low forms of living must have a correspondingly
damaging effect or, at least, a potentiality that way."28
Mooring cited the following as "among films having a poten—
tially harmful influence on behavior problems": "Blackboard
Jungle," "The Wild One," "Big House U.S.A.," "Kiss Me Deadly,"
"Black Tuesday," and "Cell 2455, Death Row."29

In a review of "Blackboard Jungle," Pauline Kael ex—
plained the concern of people such as Mr. Mooring. .She wrote:

The violence means something, it's not just there to

relieve the boredom of the plot, . . . and pressure

groups are right in seeing it as a threat. This violence
is discharged from boredom with American life, and we

 

28U. S. Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee
to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency, Hearings, Motion Pictures,
84th Congress, ist Session, June 15-18, 1955, p. 76. Cited
hereafter as Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency,
Motion Pictures, 1955.

291bid., p. 76.

26

have no available patterns into which it fits, no solu-
tions for the questions it raises, and, as yet, no
social or political formulations that use indifference
toward prosperity and success as a starting point for
new commitments. °

The Production Code itself was attacked by several of
the Kefauver witnesses. The Code, which, according to Martin
Quigley, editor of the Motion Picture Herald, "contemplated
a reasoned application of the moral mandates of the Ten
Commandments to the art of business of motion picture produc-
tion."31 was thought to be inconsistent with the times.
Author Ira H. Carmen reported that the Kefauver Subcommittee

felt that most antisocial behavior caused by moving

pictures could be eradicated if Hollywood's voluntary
censorship code was updated; its enforcing arm was
staffed, in part, by professional people from the

behavioral sciences, and producers obeyed suggestions
advanced by this agency.3

William Morring felt that the Code itself was relatively
sound; the problem was one of enforcement. Mooring testified:

It is apparent that the current trend toward excessive
crime and salacious sex treatment in films is partly
attributable to some failure of performance on the part
of the film producers who are pledged to Observe this
code and the industry appointed officials whose task

it is to administer it.

 

30Kael, Lostht At the Movies, pp. 60-61.

31Martin J. Quigley, "The Motion Picture Production Code,I
America, March 10, 1956, p. 650.

Belra H. Carmen, Movies! Censorship, and the Law
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966), p. 248.

33Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, Motion
Pictures, 1955, p. 89.

27

No actual legislation resulted from the four days of
hearings in Hollywood. But demands for Code changes became
more vocal on all fronts; producers, critics, religious
leaders, and many moviegoers all favored changes, many of
them for different reasons.

.Martin J. Quigley, in a March 1956 article in America,
found the code unworkable because of its attempts to maintain
both prevailing moral standards and industry rules of policy
and expediency. This intermingling of regulations and morals,
he said,

is questionable in theory. In practice, after the

experience of years, it has been found that the procedure

followed has led to unending confusion and has been the
cause of the major responsible criticism to which the

Code has been subjected through the years.34

Finally, in December of 1956, the first comprehensive
changes in the Production Code Since its inception in 1950
‘were made. Newsweek, attributing the changes to the dissatis—
factions of the film producers, reported: "Illegal narcotics,
kidnapping, abortion, childbirth, and prostitution--subjects
formerly banned from films--may now be treated according to
the restraints of good taste which the revised Code lays

"35

down. At the same time, new restrictions were placed on

"detailed physical violence."

 

34Quigley, America, p. 651.

SSHEEEEEEEJ December 24, 1956, p. 70.

28

But, apparently, the changes were not sufficient. -Less
than two years later, Timg_observed, "the much publicized
Production Code, which once bulldogged producers and exhibi-
tors, is being Observed these days about as often as the
whooping crane." The magazine cited, as examples, "Cat on a
Hot Tin Roof," which depicted sexual perversion, "Perfect
Furlough," which employed double entendre, and the suggestive
dances of "The Naked and the Dead."35

Another major revision took place in 1966 when the
Production Code's new standards were set out in ten brief
paragraphs. The only direct reference to violence in the new
Code was vague and hardly definitive; it banned "detailed
and protracted acts of brutality, cruelty, physical violence,
torture, and abuse."37

From the very beginning, the Western has persisted in
America's film history as a durable, yet hardly flawless,
violent element.

-Ever since the first western, Edwin S. Porter's "The
Great Train Robbery“ in 1905, these films hahe been developed
around themes of violence; even Porter's film included fist-
fights, gunplay, and murder.

George N. Fenin and William K. Everson, in The Western,

explain the popularity of these films as a "vehicle through

 

36Time, November 5, 1958, p. 78.

37Randall, Censorship of the Movies, p. 202.

29

which motion pictures and the public consorted in a remark-

able symbiotic relationship."38

Social critic Robert Warshow, in an essay on the Western,

explains their attraction as offering

A serious orientation to the problem of violence such
as can be found almost nowhere else in our culture.

One of the well-known peculiarities of modern civilized
opinion is its refusal to acknowledge the value of
violence. This refusal is a virtue, but like so many
other virtues it involves a certain willful blindness
and it encourages hypocrisy.‘39

In spite of the Western's success with the audience, it
has never been accepted by the major film critics. Perhaps
it is not respectable for critics to review cowboy movies.

Or maybe most of these films are viewed as poorly produced
or unrealistic. Fenin and Everson feel that Hollywood almost
always overemphasized the violent aSpects of the American

West. They write:

Life in the Old west was certainly a lawless one in
many communities, but the generalized concept of the
shooting down of endless villains and ranchers without
so much as a second glance at the corpses is very much
at odds with the facts. . . . Regardless of the vary-
ing degrees of justice, even taking into account a
'kill-or-be-killed' attitude among men who made their
living outside the law, the taking of a human life was
still not regarded lightly.4°

Very few Westerns reached the approving eye of the

critics. Two of these films were "Stagecoach" in 1959 and

 

38George N. Fenin and William K. Everson, The Western
(New York: The Orion Press, 1962).

39Warshow, Immediate Experience, p. 151.

4OFenin and Everson, The Western, p. 10.

50

a 1946 re-make of the Wyatt Earp story, "My Darling
Clementine." 'Both Were produced by John Ford; and, com-
pared to other Westerns, were quite peaceful. The critics
had little to say about the violence in these films, which
were described as "quiet, sensitive, and a visual delight"41
("My Darling Clementine"); and full of "lovely, sentimental

"42 ("Stagecoach"). Other

images, and sweeping actions. . . .
critically accepted films included "The Ox-Bow Incident" in
1945 and "High Noon" in 1952.

The Western, like all other kinds of films, was affected
by the major social upheavals in America's history. Follow-
ing World War II, the cowboy movies began to take up themes
dealing with sex, neuroses, and racial problems. In 1945
"The Ox-Bow Incident" was the first highly acclaimed film to
pioneer what Fenin and Everson call "the new Western."

It "was a successful experiment in social comment, striking

out at, in the name of authenticity, the dignity of America's

respect for the agony of a breed of pioneers, the whole

false picture which the horse Opera had presented to

Americans."43
The early Westerns, through the traditional badman, had

a built-in excuse for violence. The plots almost always

included great chases and numerous fistfights and gun battles.

 

4lIbid., p. 250.
4211616., p. 240.

48Ibid., p. 16.

51

In all his simplicity the badman had a fantastic following
among the American public; he
represented something that the audience could under-
stand and possibly justify, although never condone,
in view of the rigidly upheld code of ethics the hero
represented. 'Crime does not pay,‘ was the ubiquitous
moral these Westerns taught, but the audience was

still able to indulge vicariously in various manifes-
tations of lust and crime the screen badman presented.

44
In Spite of the audience's acceptance of these films,
the critics maintained their unfavorable opinions regarding
the Westerns. Pauline Kael indirectly chastises the film
audience when she says it's not the quality of the film that
attracts the audience, but the stature of the film's stars.
They are all part of a new, meaningful ritual, Kael says.
These men have made themselves movie stars—-which im-
presses audiences all Over the world. The fact that
they can draw audiences to a genre as empty as the
contemporary Western is proof of their power. . . .
Going to a Western these days for Simplicity or hero-
ism or grandeur or meaning iS about like trying to
mate with an ox.4S
But today the Western seems to have lost even the draw-
ing power of the stars. Times have changed so much and the
world has become so complicated that even the fascination
with films of America's pioneer past seems to be waning.

Larry McMurtry, whose novel, Horseman, Pass By, was success—

fully filmed as "Hud," says,

 

4411616., p. 55.

45Kael, KissL Kiss, Bang, Bang, p. 46.

52

A good mythic figure must be susceptible of being woven
into the national destiny, and since the West definite-
ly has been won the cowboy must someday fade. . . .

If one agrees with Warshow--and I do--that the Western
has maintained its hold on our imagination because it
Offers acceptable orientation to violence, then it is
easy to see why the secret agent is SO pOpular just now.
An urban age demands an urban figure. . . . The secret
agent has apprOpriated the style of the gunfighter and
has added urbanity and cosmopolitanism.4

Pauline Kael feels the Western never really made it at
all as a recognizable fOrm of the motion picture art. She
writes:

I don't believe that there ever were the great works in

this genre that so many peOple claim for it. There

were some good Westerns, of course, and there was a

beautiful kind of purity in some of them, and later even

the ritual plots and dull action were, at least, set
outdoors, and the horses were often good to look at.

But all that was a long time ago.4

Thus, from the twenties to the mid-fifties the violence
of the screen was altered and refined to reflect the require-
ments of the censors for "moral" stories, the demands of
the audience for excitement, and the needs of Hollywood for
a profit.

Every production of mass culture is a public act and
must conform with the accepted notions of public good.
Warshow writes:

Nobody seriously questions the principle that it is the

function of mass culture to maintain public morale, and
certainly nobody in the mass audience objects to having

 

46Larry McMurtry, "Cowboys, Movies, Myths, and Cadillacs:
Realism in the Western," Man and the Movies, ed. W. R.
Robinson and assisted by George Garrett (Baton Rouge, La.:
Louisiana State University Press,.1967).

47Kael, Kiss, KisstBanq, Bang, p. 40.

55

his morale maintained. At a time when the normal con—

dition of the citizen is a state of anxiety, euphoria

Spreads over our culture like the broad smile of an

idiot.48

We have shown that the development of the uses of film
violence before the late fifties paved the way for the con—
troversial films of the Sixties. During this earlier period
the film art and its themes became more sophisticated in
many ways. Technical advancements such as sound and color
photography helped add to the realism of the stories. The
producers seemed to be testing the audience and the censors,
and critics began thinking in terms of the social conse-
quences of film. Sometimes the test was to see how much a
film could "get away with," but often the attempts to
present an important message were sincere. During this
period there were also feeble programs of industry self—
regulation which ultimately led to restrictions which were
more relaxed and relevant to the times. The Code, the censors,

the peOple, and the producers were all changing rapidly with

the times--but not all at the same pace.

 

48Warshow, Immediate EXperience, p..128.

CHAPTER IV

THE CRITICS ON SOME OF THE MORE VIOLENT
POPULAR FILMS FROM 1958-1968

The moviemakers had no central theme to focus on at
the end of the nineteen fifties and they began to look deep
into the American conscience for their material. As a wave
of "earthy" American novels became more pOpular, the film
producers began to focus more on psychological themes.
Adaptations of the novels of Erskine Caldwell and the plays
of Tennessee Williams were filmed with large budgets, big
stars, and famous directors. The little amount of actual
violence that was portrayed in these films was overshadowed
by subtle, and sometimes direct, references to all kinds of
unacceptable behavior that people knew was taking place but
didn't see, and didn't expect to see, on the screen. These
films had intricately woven psychological plots that many
of the critics felt were often ineffective because they were
too complicated for the audience, the actors, or the
director.

Even in the beginning of this brief period, some of the

more perceptive critics had doubts about the durability of

54

55

these films. One of the first of them was an adaptation of
Tennessee Williams' “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" in 1958. In
his review of the film, which suggested rape and cannibalism,
Stanley Kauffmann sounded the warning:
What keeps most of his work out of the swamp of sensa-
tionalism is his gift for evocative dialogue, his
ability to give his plays a garment of poetic rhapsody,
and his quick sympathy for buried emotional horror
which he can often convey piercingly. But there are
risks in this vein. It tends to rely on the exclusively
visceral effect, it can linger so long over animalistic
characters that they become repellent rather than moving,
and unwavering devotion to it makes us suspect the
author of eXploiting the lurid rather than seeking raw
emotion. All these risks are realized in ‘Cat on a Hot
Tin-Roof.'1
In 1959, Sam Spiegel directed his own adaptation of
Williams' one act play, "Suddenly Last Summer." The film,
which was found "essentially moral" by the Legion of Decency,
alluded to homosexuality, incest, and procuring; it also
portrayed a sadistic nun and a cannibalistic orgy. The
critical reaction was mixed--generally it was viewed as either
ridiculous or as an adult horror picture. But none of the
critics had much to say about any actual violence in the plot.
Hollis Alpert called the film a "Gothic horror piece,"
and gave the following reasons for the picture's acceptance
by the Legion of Decency:
The intimations of homosexuality, incest, and cannibal-
ism were thoroughly implied, but kept relatively safe

from censorial cutting. Impossibly fancy and luxurious
settings in New Orleans were set against a dreamlike

 

lStanley Kauffmann, A WOrld on Film (New York: Harper
and Row, 1966), pp. 79-80.

56

Spanish seacoast background, filmed on location, but
made less real and more nightmarish by montage and
editing. The picture was heavily suggestive, unpleasant,
but strong, and Miss Taylor's presence in the cast was
sufficient to intrigue audiences.2
The Time reviewer dismissed the film as "arranging all
the various bits of dirt into some sort of significant mud
pie."3
The film's violence and sex was so cloaked that Alpert
wondered if the audience really knew what it was all about.
"The canny direction by Joseph L. Mankiewicz left it to the
audience to decide what the film was about, and no poll was
ever undertaken to discover what percentage of the millions
who saw the film were fully aware of the nature of its sub—
ject matter and what were the attitudes toward it."4
Finally, the critics grew tired of the Williams films,
mostly because they all seemed to revert back to the same
type of characters and plot. -When Stanley Kauffmann reviewed
"The Fugitive Kind," he asked his readers: How long can you
and I go on being represented by riffraff? Kauffmann wrote:
When Williams first appeared, he seared his audience
because his milieu was a novel semiunderworld and
because the currency of that world was violence and sex.
Our urbane theatre, except in murder mysteries and sheer
melodrama, takes a long time to get down to these ele-

mental theatrical forces, if it ever gets to them at
all. . . . By now, however, his almost unvaried return

 

2Alpert, Dreams, p. 156.
3Time, January 11, 1960, p. 64.

4Alpert, Dreams, p. 228.

57

to the same seamy arena, at the same cultural level,

begins to make us restive.5

At about this same time, two other major American films
dealt in different ways with violent themes. One, an elabor-
ate Bible—fiction story entitled "Ben Hur," captured the 1959
Academy Award as the Best Motion Picture. William Wyler's
film adaptation of this classic story dealt more with the
physical rather than with the Spiritual aSpects of the story
of a wealthy Jewish prince who meets Christ and is cleansed
of his hate. "Ben Hur" was unusual in the sense that it
carefully mixed violence and religion into a captivating story
that was generally hailed by the critics, including Arthur
Knight, as "Spectacular without being a Spectacle." Knight
went even further in proclaiming, "not only is it not simple

6 "Ben Hur" featured two

minded, it is downright literate."
huge and Spectacular scenes of violent action, a bitter sea
battle and a deadly chariot race. The chariot race, com-
mented Time, was "a superbly handled crescendo of violence
that ranks as one of the finest action sequences ever shot."7
Arthur Knight approved of both of these violent scenes
because they "serve the story; they do not exist as an end

in themselves."8

 

5Kauffman, WOrld on Film, p. 85.
6Arthur Knight, Saturday Review, December 5, 1959, p. 52.
7Time, November 20, 1959, p. 55.

8Arthur Knight, Saturday Review, December 5, 1959, p. 52.

58

Even the Crucifixion was pictured in, what Tim§_called,
"a matter of fact manner, as contemporary political events."9
The other 1959 critical success was Stanley Kramer's
"On the Beach," a fictionalized story of the end of the
world after an atomic bomb attack. Although no real violence
was depicted in the picture, the film was filled with horror
because of the strange reactions of the survivors of the
attack to the imminence of death by radiation poisoning.
Kramer developed his theme, “There is Still Time Brother,"
by concentrating on the emotions of the final survivors rather
than showing countless bodies of the already dead or dying.
-Most of the critics accepted this approach as tasteful, while
still effective. But the Timg_critic labeled it a "radiation
romance in which the customers are spared any scenes of
realistic horror."lo
By far the most violent pOpular American film of the
early sixties was Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" in which actress
Janet Leigh is brutally stabbed while in the Shower. The V
critics were almost unanimous--it was too violent. 7Commonweal
writer Philip T. Hartung said, "Hitchcock pushes everything
as far as it can go: the violence, the sex, the thrills, and

the gore."ll

 

9Time, November 50, 1959, p. 55.
lozimgl December 28, 1959, p. 44.

11Philip T. Hartung, The Commonweal, September 9, 1960,
p. 469.

59

Moira Walsh, who noted that Hitchcock's chief source of
inspiration seemed to be Krafft-Ebing and the Marquis de
Sade, said the director "seems to have been more interested
in shocking his audience with the bloodiest bathtub murder
in screen history . . . than in observing the ordinary rules
of good film construction."12

Time, Stanley Kauffmann, and John McCarten felt Hitchcock
had destroyed a potentially good story by going too far with
the violence. The Tim; reviewer called the shower scene
"one of the messiest, most nauseating murders ever filmed,"
and noted, "Hitchcock bears down too heavily in this one,
and the delicate illusion of reality necessary for a creak and
shriek movie becomes, instead, a spectacle of stomach churning
horror."13

Kauffmann, feeling that the film went beyond horror,
wrote: "Two murders and a third attempt are among the most
vicious I have ever seen in films, with Hitchcock employing
his considerable Skill in direction and cutting and the use
of sound and music to Shock us past horror-entertainment
into resentment."l4

McCarten, in The New Yorker, commented: "Hitchcock does

several spooky scenes with his usual éclat, and works dili-

gently to make things as horrible as possible, but it's all

 

l2Moira Walsh, America, July 9, 1960, p. 445.
13_T_im_e, June 27, 1960, p. 51.

14Stanley Kauffmann, New Republic, August 29, 1960, p. 25.

40

rather heavy-handed and not in any way comparable to the fine
job he's done in the not so distant past."15
DeSpite the critical uproar, Hitchcock remained unmoved;
as George Perry comments in his film history of the director,
Hitchcock seems to create movies with a kind of immunity
from the critics, and he appreciates a critic's knowledge of
Hitchcock history rather than his criticism of the effect of
his films on the general public. Perry says that "'Psycho'
disturbed many film critics who felt it was too much of a
vicious practical joke on the audience. They had taken the
film seriously—-the last thing that Hitchcock had intended.
He has constantly maintained that his films were made for
audiences, not critics."16
Hitchcock's defense of the gory scene was that he had
Shown literally nothing violent, that it was the audience,
which, in their minds, had constructed all the violence.
Hollis Alpert wrote: "The movie exemplified the very violence
and sadism, so it was said, that was menacing the minds of
the youth of the country. But was Hitchcock guilty of any-

thing but using film technique for the maximum effect his

story was capable of?"17

 

15John McCarten, The New YOrker, June 25, 1960, p. 70.

16George Perry, The Films OT Al££ed Hitchcock (London:
Studio Vista Limited, 1965). p. 142.

17Alpert, Dreams, p. 176.

41

Hitchcock himself wrote, in Coronet, "'Psycho' is perfect
for children, don't you think? Too violent, you say? well
consider Jack and Jill—-all they wanted was a pail of water."18

But with all its violence, real or imagined, "Psycho"
caused little alarm among the American public.

At the same time, the foreign film was making inroads
on the American boxoffice. These films were more frank, and
their directors were frequently discovering that blatant acts
of violence could often be effectively integrated with
psychological themes. Early in the Sixties, two major foreign
films, "Lord of the Flies" and "The Collector," featured
scenes of violence. Both were loose adaptations Of relatively
pOpular novels. And many of the critics Spent much of their
time comparing the books to the screenplays, usually by dis—
cussing how each differed from the other in developing the
"message." John Fowles' "Collector" was the story of a
sexually impotent butterfly collector who decides to move on
to bigger things and captures a young lady for a specimen.

It is essentially a twoecharacter story which develops the
man's psycho-sexual problems and the woman's attempts to
understand his motives. In Fowles' novel, the story was
treated equally from both characters' points of View, but
William Wyler chose to develop the film only around the

"collector." This change in emphasis from the book to the

 

18Alfred Hitchcock, Coronet, September 1960, p. 61.

42

film served as the major point of discussion for the critics.
Few criticized the actual theme of the story. However,
Judith Crist, objecting to Wyler's treatment, wrote: "for
almost two hours we watch a living creature being frustrated
to death by the stolid compulsion of a madman; what sort of
sadistic offering is this?"19
One other foreign film a few years later led to some
interesting critical comment. .Polish director Roman Polanski,
in 1965, produced "Repulsion,“ the story of a homicidally
psychotic girl, played by Catherine Deneuve, who wants sex,
but hates it and hates the Opposite sex for making her want
it. The critics immediately began to see parallels with
"Psycho." The Time crific, noting that Catherine Deneuve
played a role essentially the same as Tony Perkins in
Hitchcock's film, called "Repulsion" "A Gothic horror piece
of the 'Psycho' school and approximately twice as persuasive."20
Pointing out that "Repulsion" is "Psycho" turned inside
out, Kenneth Tynan wrote, "In Hitchcock's film we see a double
murder through the eyes of the victims-—in Polanski's our
vieWpoint is the killer's."2l
Polanski developed the girl's world of sexual fantasies

to the fullest through dream sequences and over-modulated

sounds. The girl eventually becomes so crazed that She

 

19Crist, Cowboy, p. 122.
202292, October 8, 1965, p. 115.

alKenneth Tynan, Life, October 8, 1965, p. 25.

 

45

brutally murders two men. Stanley Kauffmann voiced an Ob-
jection to the treatment of the first murder. He wrote:

'Repulsion' contains as horrifying a scene as I can
remember. . . . The landlord breaks into the barred
apartment for his rent, is impressed by the pretty girl
in her nightgown, and gets other ideas. She holds a
straight razor behind her, and as she permits him to
embrace her, She slits the back of his neck. We see
this close up. . . . .We see her slash his throat again
and again as he Sinks from sight. It is horrible.

We are today supposed to be primed for and needful of
the Artaudian eXperience--the purge through violence,
instead of through pity and terror. If this scene was
so intended, it produced no purge in me, only the
repulsion of the title.2
But to the Tim§_writer, the gory murders were useful in
developing the full character of the sexually repressed mur-
deress. She is the tragic one, "the most pitiable victim of
the evil She does." However, he wrote, "whether such a film
finally serves any purpose other than to scare people silly
remains doubtful, yet in the long tradition of cinematic
Shockers, 'Repulsion' looms as a work of monstrous art."23
Tynan also expressed an unusual final assessment of
Polanski's skill. "Within its limits," he wrote, "'Repulsion'
is a flawless exercise; it establishes Polanski as a master
of the casual macabre. We know that he can scare us to death--
all that remains is for him to prove that he can also warm

us to life."24

 

2‘aStanley Kauffmann, New Republic, October 16, 1965,
p. 52.

23Time, October 8, 1965, p. 115.

24Tynan, LTTQJ p. 25.

44

At this point in time, the foreign films seemed to have
the edge over the domestic ones in carefully interwoven
plots which used violence as an integral part of the charr
acter development. When American filmmakers tried the same
methods their often poor imitations led to a tirade from the
critics. Judith Crist, disgusted over American films such
as "Point Blank" and "St. Valentine's Day Massacre," wrote:
It is this exploitation of perversion and violence for their
own sick sakes that justifies the current outcry and our
increasing concern over the license filmmakers are exercis-
ing in their new and hard-won freedom from censorship."25

One film of this period, Richard Brooks' adaptation of
Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, created in anticipation some
concern over the portrayal of the brutal multiple murder of
a wealthy Kansas farm family. Capote's book was so carefully
analyzed before the film's release that many people were
fearful of a sadistic or inaccurate adaptation. But Brooks
surprised the critics with a film in which the excitement
was not over who committed the murders or how, but why.

Arthur Knight was so pleased with the treatment that he
not only commended Brooks for eliminating all the possible
sensationalism, but also hailed the writer-director for

imbuing it "with a quality of social responsibility."26

 

25Crist, Cowboy, p. 252.

26Arthur Knight, Saturday Review, December 50, 1967,
p. 55.

45

Bosley Crowther complimented Brooks for creating a mood
which shocks without being excessively violent. He wrote:
"Without once showing the raw performance and effects of
violence, the Shooting and the knifing, he builds up a horri-
fying sense of the slow terror and maniacal momentum of the
murderous escapade."27

In many respects, "In Cold Blood" was a rarity of the
sixties. At a time when crime stories adapted for film could
be extremely violent, the film, while still retaining its
morbidity, emphasized such elements as the stupidity of crime
and the futility of attempted escape from justice. ,And un—
like many Of the gangster films of the thirties, its moral
that "crime doesn't pay" was not tacked on to placate an out-
raged public or the censors, but was carefully developed as
an integral part of the story from beginning to end.

Thus a great variety of types of violence appeared in
the motion pictures of this perigd; the range was from out-
right shock and horror to very cloaked and subtle suggestions
of violence.

All the while the audience seemed to be accepting and
adjusting to any changes that were taking place in the treat-
ment of violence. The actual violence in almost all of these
films of the late fifties and early Sixties was either so

common or so subordinate to the plot that it drew little

 

27Bosley Crowther, The New York Times, December 15, 1967,
p. 60.

46

attention from the American public or the critics; they often
busied themselves trying to analyze the film's message, and

in most cases overt violence had little to do with the

message.

CHAPTER V

BONNIE AND CLYDE

No American film of the last decade caused more critical
discussion or raised more seriously the question of violence
in the cinema than "Bonnie and Clyde." This adaptation of
the story of a Depression Era gang of small-town bank robbers
became the most controversial violent film Since the gangster
films of the thirties. Timg, in a 1967 cover story on "Bonnie
and Clyde," said, "Hitchcock's 'Psycho' inaugurated America's
cinema of cruelty, with a demonic amalgam of bloodshed and
violence that was not equaled until 'Bonnie and Clyde.'"1

The film was analyzed and debated not only by the critics,
but also by social scientists and advertising and publicity
men. The premiere showing of "Bonnie and Clyde" at the
Montreal Film Festival in August of 1967 was so well received
that the trade press soon began to accuse Warner Brothers-
Seven Arts, the producing company, of a promotional hype.
Variety, on December 15th, said, "many observers see an ex-
tremely clever campaign behind the release. It is recalled

that when the film first Showed . . . the entire W7 promotional

 

1"The New Cinema: Violence, Sex, Art," Time, December 8.
1967, p. 75.

47

48

echelon was present. . . . Their expertise in marshalling
the weight Of buff opinion for the film is credited, and/Or
suspected."2

"Bonnie and Clyde" became the source of bitter arguments
among critics, and the film even resulted twice in the almost
unprecedented act of a major film critic reversing himself on
original negative reviews. On August 21, 1967, Newsweek
critic Joseph Morgenstern denounced the film as a "squalid
shoot-em for the moron trade" and "an attempt at lyricism
consisting of a slow-motion sequence in which the inert bodies
of Bonnie and Clyde, being perforated by the law's lead, rise
and fall and pitch and turn with something of the grace that
Vittorio Mussolini must have Seen in Ethiopia when he compared
bomb bursts to rose petals." Morganstern felt the film,
except for its.treatment of violence, was somewhat interesting,
but, he wrote, "it does not know what to make of its own

"3 One week later, in the same magazine, Morgenstern

violence.
called his earlier review "grossly unfair and regrettably
inaccurate." He apologized for his previous negative comments
and then he explained why he and so many other people had

found "Bonnie and Clyde" SO grossly unappealing on the first

viewing:

 

2"Time Also Swallows Own Criticism," Variety, December
15, 1967, p. 22.

3Joseph Morgenstern, "Two for a Tommy Gun," Newsweek,
August 21, 1967, p. 65.

49

I had become SO surfeited and preoccupied by violence

in daily life that my reaction was as excessive as the

stimulus. .There are indeed a few moments in which

the gore goes too far, becomes stock shockery that

invites standard revulsion. And yet, precisely because

'Bonnie and Clyde‘ combines these gratuitous crudities

with scene after scene of dazzling artistry, precisely

because it has the power both to enthrall and appall,

it is an ideal laboratory for the study of violence,

a subject in which we are all matriculating these days.4

Variety, on December 15, 1967, noted that observers of
the press thought of Morgenstern's action as a performance
that would be hard to top. But, commented the Variety writer,
"last week Time overtook the opposition-~not only reversing
itself, but devoting almost an entire six page cover story to
a laudatory appraisal of the film, which it now calls 'not
only the sleeper of the decade but also to a growing consensus
of audiences and critics, the best movie of the year.”5

Time, in the original review of “Bonnie and Clyde" on
August 25, 1967, said both the actors and the director "tell
their tale of bullets and blood in a strange purposeless
mingling of fact and claptrap that teeters uneasily on the
brink of burlesque. Like Bonnie and Clyde themselves, the
film rides off in all directions and ends up full of holes."6
However, less than four months later the magazine's cover

story on sex and violence in the film admitted that "part of

the scandal and success of "Bonnie and Clyde" stems from its

 

4Joseph Morgenstern, Newsweek, August 28, 1967, p. 82.

5Variety, p. 22.

6"Low Down Hoedown," Time, AUQUSt 25: 1967' P° 78‘

50

creative use of what has always been a good box-office draw:
violence."7

Stefan Kanfer, Tlmgfs motion picture editor, said, "in
both conception and execution, 'Bonnie and Clyde' is a
watershed picture, the kind that signals a new style, a new
trend."8 Kanfer compared it to other innovative films such
as "Citizen Kane," which he cited for its remarkable character
analysis and deep focus photography; "Stagecoach," which, he
said, brought the western up from cowboy and Indian melodrama;
and "Singing in the Rain," which Kanfer calls film's first
musical comedy.

America's leading film critics became involved in an
extremely heated debate over the'meaning and effect of the
violence in Arthur Penn's film. Moira Walsh, in America,
attacked the "anti-violence" prOponents because "they make no
distinctions, or make unconvincing ones between gratuitous
violence that merely panders to base instincts, and violence
that is set in a firm enough dramatic context SO that it can

9 Miss Walsh also wrote that it is

have a purging effect."
not a reasonable goal to expect to eliminate violence from

the screen.

 

7"The New Cinema: Violence, Sex, Art," Time, December 8,
1967, p. 67.

 

81bid., p. 75.

9Moira Walsh, America, September 2, 1967, p. 227.

51

Pauline Kael, in a lengthy New Yorker piece, suspected
that the great disagreement over the film arose because of
its absence of sadism. "It is the violence without sadism
that throws the audience off balance at 'Bonnie and Clyde.‘
The brutality that comes out of this innocence is far more
shocking than the calculated brutalities of mean killers."lo

Like Pauline Kael, sociologist Robert Coles believed
that the diversity of opinion over “Bonnie and Clyde“ was a
result of the film's unique treatment of gangsterism and vio-
lence. Coles wrote, in the social science journal Transaction:

Up to now the gangster was Hollywood's safest social

critic--in the end he could be done away with and arouse

no alarm in any loyal citizen. . . . Well, what has

'Bonnie and Clyde' done to all that, to a virtual tradi-

tion of films? Very simply, the movie more or less

follows Nietzsche's argument, rather than either Freud's
or Marx's, and suggests that neither money nor therapy
will quite do--but action will, action that flouts the
decadent will of a corrupt society, action that exposes

Old and useless and rotting moralities and establishes

a new one by its very example, its presence in the eyes

of the hitherto deceived onlooker.l

The critics could not even agree whether the film's vio—
lence was presented uniquely. The New Republig reviewer,
Richard Gilman, said the film begins with some exciting inno-
vations, but after a few scenes of pistol-whipping and shooting

gets "caught up in the great chase, the COpS and robbers plot

of American popular art. And it is here that the movie begins

 

loPauline Kael, "Onward and Upward With the Arts,"
New Yorker, October 21, 1967, p. 158.

11Robert Coles, "Bonnie and Clyde and the Graduate:
Hollywood's New Social Criticism," Transaction, May, 1968,
p. 17.

52

to lose them as original creations as it more and more takes
on the attributes of the gangster movie as we have always
known it and makes increasing use of the romantic myth as
before, that of doomed young love in an inimical world."12
At the same time, Moira Walsh felt the film was quite
different from the traditional American gangster film.
Unlike the films of the nineteen-thirties, She wrote: "It is
neither lurid nor sentimental but rather captures the whole
Spectrum of inadequacies and evils of the age SO that they
point up one another."13
Bosley Crowther of The New York Times was one of the
first critics to comment on the film. In a news item from
the Montreal Film Festival, Crowther attacked the film for
both its violence and its historical inaccuracies. Crowther
said Arthur Penn, the film's director, "evidently intended
this jazzy crime film to give a historical indication of the
moral laxity and despair of an age that induced two scatter-
brain nobodies to take to crime as though it were a game.
But he has missed the very misery and drabness of that social
depression in his slap happy color film Charade."l4

Crowther was so alarmed at the film's glorification of

crime and its historical inaccuracies that he quoted the

 

laRichard Gilman, The New Republic, November 4, 1967,
p. 27.

13Walsh, America, p. 227.

14Bosley Crowther, The New York Times, August 7, 1967,
p. 52.

55

following New York Times report of the capture and death of
Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker in May of 1954:

Clyde Barrow was a snake-eyed murderer who killed with—
out giving his victims a chance to draw. He was slight,
altogether unheroic in appearance. Bonnie Parker was

a fit companion for him. She was a hard-faced Sharp-
mouthed woman who gave up a waitress job in a Kansas
City restaurant to become the mistress of Ray Hamilton,
Texas bank robber. Barrow took her away from Hamil—
ton.15,16

However, most of the critics of the film felt its his-
torical accuracy or inaccuracy was subordinate to its direct
or indirect commentary on American social mores. In fact,
many of the critics were quick to relate the film's theme to
contemporary times. Timg, in its cover story saw the film
as "a commentary on the mindless daily violence of the Ameri-

can '603 and an esthetic evocation of the past.“17

 

15Bosley Crowther, The New York Times, September 5,
1967, p. D1.

18John Toland, the author of The Dillinger Days and a
war historian, in "The Sad Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde" in
the New York Times Magazine on February 18, 1968, wrote:

 

One cannot help wondering how Bonnie and Clyde would
have liked 'Bonnie and Clyde.‘ I suspect Clyde would
not have cared much for it, particularly the romanti-
cized love story. He also would have ridiculed the
idea of his being repelled by violence and killing.

He was proud of his record: his shotgun was notched
seven times. In his way, he was a realist and never
flinched from what he was. Bonnie would probably have
loved the movie; as her poetry writing indicated, some—
where deep within her lurked a romantic. But I think
she would have liked to see one change--a new scene
tacked on at the end showing the lovers doomed by a
hostile society to be buried apart.

17"The New Cinema: Violence, Sex, Art," Time, December
8, 1967, p. 67.

54

Sociologist Robert Coles viewed the film's disturbing
message, where law-and-order wins in the end even though
the audience's sympathy is, almost without exception, with
the "outlaws," as a result of the modern world's effect
upon the filmmakers. "Like everyone else," Coles says,
movie-makers live in history, and I suppose have the
same trouble we all have in sorting out what is
irrational, what is accidental, and what is purposeful
in the politics, the news, and the tragedies of a given
age. Anyway, one thing the film does provide is the
protection of distance. Bonnie and Clyde have long
since been dead, and they can be dismissed as 'period'
characters. The country has changed, the world has
changed, we all have changed-~or so we can wryly say
and not quite believe.18
Judith Crist, also ignoring the historical accuracy argument,
viewed the film as a triumph because of its naturalism in
characters and background. She wrote: "We are so thoroughly
saturated with a sense of time and place that we are, para-
doxically, compelled to recognize the universality of the
theme and its particular contemporary relevance."19
The film critics and the American moviegoer were most
at odds over whether "Bonnie and Clyde" actually glorified
crime. Critic John Simon, in a follow-up review three months
after the film's release, complained about the film as per-
petrating hero worship of the Barrow gang. Simon also felt

Arthur Penn, the film's director, was unfair in his depic—

tion of violence. He noted: "The crimes and killings

 

18Coles, Transaction, pp. 18—19.

19Crist, Cowboy, p. 244.

55

performed by the Barrow gang are all picturesque, humorous,
cozy, or, at worst, matter of fact affairs. But the vio-
lence performed upon the gang is always made as harrowingly
inhuman as possible."20
When Arthur Penn was asked by New York Times film critic
Vincent Canby if "Bonnie and Clyde'I glorifies crime, the
director replied: "God, no! I think it shows the squalor,
the isolation, the terrible boredom of these people. Bonnie
and Clyde and the others were in constant flight. And they
got none of the rewards usually associated with crime."21
Judith Crist saw the film not as promoting crime, but,
on the contrary, as an amazingly moral motion picture with
"its thesis that those who live by violence shall die thereby,
its demonstration that the rewards of crime are nil, its
depiction of the empty, shallow young psychOpathS who cap-
tured the imagination of a Depression-ridden countryside."22
TO Penelope Gilliat, the violence can only be understood
if it is separated into two distinct classifications. .There
is the violence of the film's characters ("Like the kids of
the present TV generation, Bonnie and Clyde unconsciously

assume that blood is makeup and that bang-band—you're-dead

will be over by the next installment. Bonnie and Clyde don't

 

20Schickel and Simon, Film 67/68, p. 50.

21Vincent Canby, "Vincent Canby Interviews Arthur Penn,"
The New York Times, September 17, 1967, p. D21.

22Crist, Cowboy, p. 79.

56

really know that killing kills."23) and the comment on vio-
lence which the film itself portrays (The film knows that
killing kills.)

The Timg_critic viewed the violence of "Bonnie and Clyde"
as essentially that of innocents when he wrote, "although
Clyde is a murderous ex-convict and Bonnie is his willing,
amoral moll, they are essentially innocents, violence is
something they can neither comprehend nor manage, and their
dreams are always of settling down somewhere when hard times
are over."24

The New York Times critic Renata Adler took a more uncon-
ventional approach to the film. In a column entitled "Anyone
for a Good Cry?" Miss Adler lamented the fact that the Ameri—
can filmgoer has become so sensitized to violence on the
screen that he no longer identifies or sympathizes with the
characters. "Nobody cries when they (Bonnie and Clyde) are
killed. . . . Everyone is attuned to (or alienated by) what
a movie is trying to do, not moved by what is going on in
it."25

Robert Coles, in his analysis of the film's disturbing

effect on the American people, noted that the film is

 

23PenelOpe Gilliat, "The Party," The New Yorker, August.
19, 1967; p. 79.‘

24"The New Cinema: Violence, Sex, Art," Time, December
8, 1967, p. 67.

25RenatayAdler, "Anyone for a Good Cry?" The New York
Times, December 15, 1968, Sec. II, p. 5.

57

"grievously un-American, . . . sly, mocking, disrespectful
[of] all sorts of things that all of us have been brought up
to cherish." Coles concludes that "Bonnie and Clyde" brutally
confronts us with "our national history of violence."26

Pauline Kael simplified the entire violence argument by
defending its use simply as

something that movies must be free to use. And it is

just because artists must be free to use violence--

a legal right that is beginning to come under attack--

that we must also defend the legal rights of those film-

makers who use violence to sell tickets, for it is not

the province of the law to decide that one man is an

artist and another man a no-talent.27

"The trouble with violence in most films is that it is
not violent enough. A war film that doesn't Show the real
horror of war-~bodies being torn apart and arms being shot
off--really glorifies war."28 (Arthur Penn)

The debate over brutality in the films of the sixties
usually centers on a determination of the point where violence
panders instead of enlightens. And, because this decision is
basically an artistic judgment, it becomes affected by personal
values. One person argues that films such as "Bonnie and Clyde"

glorify and perpetrate crime, while another claims it is

nothing more than an historical account of American life, past

 

26Coles, Transaction, p. 15.

27Pauline Kael, "Onward and Upward With the Arts," The
Nengorker, October 21, 1967, p. 161.

eBVincent Canby, "Vincent Canby Interviews Arthur Penn,"
The New York Times, September 17, 1967, p. D1.

58

and present, and merely an inevitable consequence of violent
life. In fact, some critics, including Newsweekjs Joseph
Morgenstern argue it is nothing more than "perSpective on
violence we have known, and in many cases loved."29

The critics also disagreed over the effects of different
types of violence. When experimental filmmaker Agnes Varda
told John Simon She liked "Bonnie and Clyde" because it is
"violent without being sadistic," Simon wrote:

I doubt that there is much difference between the two

when violence is dealt on with such clucking solicitude.

At the utmost one could call such violence unconscious

sadism. But that may even be more attractive to the

asinine audiences that gaffaw their way through the film;

overt sadism is kinky, whereas this is just rousing

shooting the hell out of peOple.30 .

Richard Schickel concurred with Miss Varda. He commented:
"Everyone concerned keeps the violence which attended their
activities casual, mindless, childlike. .This has disconcerted

many observers, but I think it is esthetically correct, for it

carries none of the sado-sexual overtones common in today's
representations of violence."31

And then there is in "Bonnie and Clyde" what is probably
the most controversial violent segment in any popular American

motion picture--the final scene in which Clyde Barrow and

Bonnie Parker are virtually torn apart in a hail Of bullets

 

29Joseph Morgenstern,.Newsweek, August 28, 1967, p. 82.
soSchickel and Simon, Film 67/68, p. 29.

81Richard Schickel, "Flaws in a Savage Satire," Life,
October 15, 1967, p. 16.

59

which Pauline Kael so aptly described as a "rag doll dance of
death."32 Some critics hailed the scene as a cinematic
masterpiece, while others were astonished at its crudity and
horror. The Tim§_critic, assuming the "triumph" approach,
wrote, "in what may be the most remarkable use of Slow motion
in cinema history, the bodies of Bonnie and Clyde writhe to
earth in a quarter-time choreography of death."33
New Republic critic Richard Gilman viewed the film's
finale as a comment on the often heavy-handed ways of eliminat-
ing "the shame of the nation." He noted: "The scene mounts
up to an image of absolute blind violence on the part of
organized society, a violence far surpassing that which it is
supposed to be putting down."34
Pauline Kael defends the violence not only because of its
realism, but also because our world has gone beyond good taste.
"Tasteful suggestions of violence," She writes, "would at this
point be a more grotesque form of comedy than 'Bonnie and
Clyde' attempts. 'Bonnie and Clyde' needs violence; violence

is its meaning."35

 

32Pauline Kael, "Onward and Upward With the Arts," The
New Yorker, October 21, 1967, p. 170.

33"The New Cinema: Violence, Sex, Art," Time, VOl- 90:
No. 25, December 8, 1967, p. 68.

34Richard Gilman, "Gangsters on the Road to Nowhere,"
New Republic, November 4, 1967, p. 27.

35Pauline Kael, "Onward and Upward With the Arts," The
New Yorker, October 21, 1967, p. 161.

 

60

The critical acclaim for "Bonnie and Clyde," with all its
horror, seems to have resulted from the film's unparalleled
treatment Of our nation's past and present preoccupation with
violence. Not only did many of the critics describe it as
touching society's "raw nerve," but many also saw the film as
putting the viewer in an extremely uncompromising position
where virtue agg_brutality are on the same Side, and where the
viewer finds himself in a virtual hell trying to rationalize
his response to this motion picture. Wilfred Sheed points out
that the truthful observer of "Bonnie and Clyde" should realize
the inescapably harsh verdict that "we gg_enjoy the pain,
otherwise there would be no violence problem at all. But our
enjoyment is monitored by pity. This is the best most of us
can hope for right now."36

Thus, John Simon says, "'Bonnie.and Clyde' was more real
than most American films," and the "people frightened by it
were not so much frightened by violence as by reality."37

Albert Johnson in ETTmyngrterly, writing of the film's
tremendous effect of mixing emotions by making the audience
both howl in laughter and groan in horror, says:

It is this device that most distinguishes 'Bonnie and

Clyde' from all other gangster films and leaves one

with a confirmed awareness that the director and the

writers have deliberately created a unique pseudo-
documentary style by which spectators could be

 

36Wilfred Sheed, Esquire, December 1967, p. 46.

37John.Simon, "The Question of Violence: It's Not How
Much, But How," The New York Times, March 17, 1968, p. D17.

61

entertained and astonished at the same time. It is the

romantic imagination in this work that makes it such a

distinguished American film.38

Pauline Kael, although not going as far as Time in call—
ing the film a "watershed" picture, praises "Bonnie and Clyde"
for its innovation. She wrote:

[it] brings into the almost frighteningly public world

of movies things that peOple have been feeling and say-

ing and writing about. And once something is said or

done on the screens of the world, once it has entered

mass art, it can never again belong to a minority, never

again be the private possession of an educated or

'knowing' group.39

"Bonnie and Clyde," unquestionably the most violent and
most talked about major film of the decade, sharply divided
the film critics. The reviewers Spent an unusually large
amount of time discussing the film's effect on its audience.
"Bonnie and Clyde," it could be argued, did some strange things
to its viewers. .Many of the critics were upset because of the
film's tremendous box-office draw. How could such a purpose—
less and shocking movie, some critics argued, be so popular
with so many supposedly sophisticated filmgoers? Other critics
saw the audience as consisting in part of a type of "pseudo-
sophisticate" who tried too hard to analyze the film's message.
And the message itself, depending on which critic you read,
took on a variety of meanings. To some it reflected the hOpe-

lessness and squalor of the Depression, while, to others, it

was a reflection of contemporary times.

 

38Albert Johnson, Eilm Qparterly, Vol. XXI (Winter 1967-
68), p. 45.

39Pauline Kael, "Onward and Upward With the Arts," The
New Yorker, October 21, 1967, p. 147.

62

"Bonnie and Clyde's" uniqueness probably comes from its
departure from tradition. It was supposed to be a gangster
film, but gangster films didn't make people laugh hysterically
one moment and then horrify them the next. YOu weren't sup-
posed to sympathize with the "bad guys," to try to understand
why they robbed banks, or cry when they are gunned down but
you did. To some the film was a cruel hoax--a dirty trick.

Sometimes there even appeared to be a kind of critical
snobbery at work. A few critics who failed to understand
the audience attraction to the film dismissed it as simply
being bad for the moviegoer.

There were also many people who didn't take the film
seriously. But to others "Bonnie and Clyde" looms as a water-
shed picture. Any popular film they argue which deals with
so many diverse aSpects of American life--the country's violent
past, the frustration of the poor and hOpeless, the rebellion
of the young, and the reality of the present-~cannot be easily

forgotten.

CONCLUSIONS

The period of violent films from 1958 to 1968 leaves
one with some perplexing thoughts. Was this the beginning of
a new film era or the end of an Old one?

The critics seem to be writing more and more about film
violence as a reflection of contemporary times. And although
the times are, without a doubt, pretty gruesome, some critics
feel the films have gone too far. Is it that they feel the
truth is hard to take or are they just trying to temper our
eXposure to additional brutality? Robert Warshow says the
chief function of mass culture is to relieve one of the neces-
sity of experiencing one's life directly. He believes "mass
culture . . . seeks only to make things easier."1

Perhaps the censors and the Code which, some argue, have
always seemed to be behind the times have now been adjusted
to represent current social norms. So now, as Judith Crist
says, "all the varieties of bloodletting have been explored

in full and blazing color. . . ."2

 

lWarshow, Immediate Experience, p. 58.

2Crist, Cowboy, p. 267.

65

64

At any rate, there is undoubtedly a new critical response
to today's films, not necessarily because today's critics are
different, but because the times and the films are different.
The themes, the cinematic effects, and the audience are mostly
new. Murray Schumach says the state of the film art is re-
sponsible, in part, for the dissatisfaction with film violence
many peOple are experiencing. Schumach says: "It took
sound and color to surround gruesomeness and gore with box-
office halos. Now came the crunch of breaking bones, the
groans and screams of the afflicted, the crack and whine of
bullets. Blood was no longer a dark smudge. It was rich,
flowing red."3

It seems to be almost a heyday for critics. Never before
have they been so largely read, and they appear to like this
new exposure. More of them seem to write more complex reviews
because they know their audience likes to speculate on all the
hidden meanings and implications of today's films.

It all appears to lead to this: today's films are more
complex and searching than ever before and the audience is

more attuned to what the films and the critics are trying to

say.

 

3Murray Schumach, The Face On The Cutting Room Floor,
New York: William Morrow and Company, 1964), p. 171.

. LIST OF REFERENCES

LIST OF REFERENCES
BOOKS
Agee, James. AAgee on Film. New York: McDowell, Obolensky

Inc., 1941 (1958 ed.).

Alpert, Hollis. The Dreams and the Dreamers. .New York: The
Macmillan Company, 1962.

Carmen, Ira A. Movies, Censorship, and the Law. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1966.

Crist, Judith. The Private Eyey The Cowboy. andfithe Vegy
Naked Girl. Chicago: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1967.

Douglas, Drake. Horror. New York: The Macmillan Company,
1966.

Fenin, George N. and Everson, William K. The Western.
New York: The Orion Press, 1962.

Hughes, Robert, ed. Film: Book 2. New York: Grove Press,
1962.

Hunnings, Neville March. Film Censors and the Law. London:
George Allen and Unwin Limited, 1967.

Jacobs, Lewis, ed. Introduction to the Art Ogvthe Movies.
New York: Noonday Press, 1964.

. The Rise oiythe American Film. New York: Teachers
College Press, Columbia University, 1967 ed., 1959.

Kael, Pauline. I Lost It At The Movies. Boston: Little
Brown and Company, 1965.

. ~Kiss KISS Bang Bang. Boston: Little Brown and
Company, 1968.

 

Kauffmann, Stanley. A WOrld On Film. New York: Harper and
Row, 1966.

65

66

Knight, Arthur. The Liveliest Art. New York: New American
Library of WOrld Literature, 1959.

Koenigil, Mark. Movies in Society. New York: Robert Speller
and Sons, 1962.

Powdermaker, Hortense. Hollywood: The Dream Factory.
Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1950.

Ramsaye, Terry. A Million and One Nights. New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1926.

Randall, Richard S. Censorship of the Movies. Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1968.

Robinson, W. R., ed. Man and the Movies. Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1967.

Rotha, Paul. Rotha On Film. London: Faber and Faber Limited,
1958.

with Griffith, Richard. The_Film Till Now. New York:
Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1949 (5rd ed. rev., 1960).

Sarris, Andrew, ed. Interviews with Fiim Directors.
Indianapolis' Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1967.

Schickel, Richard. .Movies: The History_of an git and an
Tnstitution. -New York: Basic Books, 1964.

and Simon, John, eds. Film 67(68. New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1968.

Schumach, Murray. The Face on the Cutting Room Floor.
New York: William Morrow and Company, 1964.

Simon, John. Private Screenings. New York: The Macmillan
Company, 1967.

U. S. Congress. Senate. \Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile
Delinquency of the Committee on the Judiciary. .Motion
Pictures. Hearings on S. R. 62, 84th Cong., lst Sess.,
June 15-18, 1955.

Walker, Alexander. Sex in the Movies. Middlesex: Penguin
Books Limited, 1966.

Warshow, Robert. The Immediate Exgerience. Garden City,
New York: 'Doubleday and Company, 1962.

67

ARTICLES

Adler, Renata. "Anyone for a Good Cry?" The New York Times,
December 15, 1968, Sec. II, p. 5.

Canby, Vincent. "Vincent Canby Interviews Arthur Penn."
The New York Times, September 17, 1967, p. D21.

Coles, Robert. "Bonnie and Clyde and the Graduate: Hollywood's

 

New Social Criticism.” Transaction, May, 1968, pp.
15-19.

"Film Classification Defied." America. December 5, 1964,
p. 750.

Kael, Pauline. "Onward and Upward With the Arts." The New
Yorker, October 21, 1967, pp. 147-170.

Kanfer, Stefan. "Hollywood: The Shock of Freedom in Films."
Time, December 8, 1967, p. 66.

Knight, Arthur. "Who's to Classify." Saturday Review,
February 26, 1966, p. 42.

Morgenstern, Joseph. "Two for a Tommy Gun." Newsweek, August
21, 1967, p. 65.

. "The Thin Red Line." Newsweek, August 28, 1967,
pp. 82-85.

"The New Cinema: Violence, Sex, Art." Time, December 8,
1967, pp. 67-75.

Quigley, Martin J. "The Motion Picture Production Code."
America, March 10, 1956. PP. 650-652.

Simon, John. "The Question of Violence: It's Not HOW’MUCh,
But How." The New York Times, March 17, 1968, p. D17.

PERIODICALS

Filmfacts. Volumes I-XI (1958-1968).

MICHIGAN STATE UNIV. LIBRQRIES

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III III III IIII II II IIIII