This is a great McCarthy era B film noir with charismatic performances by Beverly Michaels and Richard Egan.
This is a great McCarthy era B film noir with charismatic performances by Beverly Michaels and Richard Egan.
“[N]o mode of production and therefore no dominant social order and therefore no dominant culture ever in reality includes or exhausts all human practice, human energy, and human intention.”
— Raymond Williams, “Dominant, Residual and Emergent”
Fau.
Where are you damned?
Meph.
In hell.
Fau.
How comes it then that thou art out of hell?
Meph.
Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.
Thinkst thou that I who saw the face of God,
And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells,
In being deprived of everlasting bliss?
Uncle Charlie: You think you know something, don’t you? You think you’re the clever little girl who knows something. There’s so much you don’t know. So much. What do you know, really? You’re just an ordinary little girl living in an ordinary little town. You wake up every morning of your life and you know perfectly well that there’s nothing in the world to trouble you. You go through your ordinary little day and at night you sleep your untroubled, ordinary little sleep filled with peaceful, stupid dreams. And I brought you nightmares! Or did I, or was it a silly inexpert little lie. You live in a dream. You’re a sleepwalker, blind. How do you know what the world is like? Do you know the world is a foul sty? Do you know if you rip the fronts off houses you’d find swine? The world’s a hell. What does it matter what happens in it? Wake up, Charlie! Use your wits. Learn something.
[Charlie runs out, then is caught by her uncle near her house]
Uncle Charlie: The same blood flows through our veins, Charlie. A week ago, I was at the end of my rope. Oh, I’m so tired, Charlie. There’s an end to the running a man can do. You’ll never know what it’s like to be so tired. I was going to (he pauses) – Well, then I got the idea of coming out here. It’s my last chance, Charlie. Give it to me! Graham and the other fellow, they don’t know. There’s a man in the East. They suspect him too. And if they get him, I– Charlie, give me this last chance.
Charlie: Take your chance. Go.
Uncle Charlie: I’ll go, Charlie, I’ll go. Just give me a few days. Think of your mother. It’ll kill your mother.
Charlie: Yes, it would kill my mother. Oh, take your few days. See that you get away from here.
Uncle Charlie: Do you realize what it will mean if they get me? The electric chair. Charlie, you’ve got to help me. I count on you. You said yourself we’re no ordinary uncle and niece, no matter what I’ve done.
— Shadow of a Doubt (Hitchcock 1943) screenplay by Thornton Wilder.
Film noir narrates modernity as a gothic romance.