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Bridging the Great Divide: Hollywood Versus the Avant-garde [Page 1]
Fritz Lang’s films M and Scarlet Street illuminate the gaping, yet often blurred division between high avant-garde art and low, appropriated imitation by mass culture. Lang’s two films, when juxtaposed, begin to engage in a dialogue about the cultural position of each of the two forms--one, a typical European art film, and the other, an production of the Hollywood school. Both of the texts have aggressive and muscular visual styles, yet only one can claim to possess integrity. M embodies the German Expressionist style and speaks itself convincingly as an ‘art film;’ Scarlet Street is a mere derivative. What is most disconcerting about the two films is the fact that they are products of the same director. In the transition from M to Scarlet Street, the culturally destructive powers of the Hollywood system are brought to light. The later film’s artistic messages and merits are overdetermined and subsumed by the controlling framework of the system. Conventions of Hollywood film are so deeply imbedded in its products that they are almost invisible. This is indicative of the Hollywood project--to achieve a level of transparency, utter seamlessness in style and appearance. These pictures are astoundingly well crafted, through the practice of continuity editing; they do not draw attentions to themselves and audiences begin to lose themselves in the narratives. Additionally, the star and studio systems created standardized and recognized commodities of the people associated with each film. Directors and stars alike belonged in a way to studios, signing contacts for multiple picture deals, so that the public could consistently associate specific people with specific studios. Within the Hollywood system, as an arm of the culture industry, "all culture is standardized, organized and administered for the sole purpose of serving as an instrument of social control" (Huyssen 21). By determining and defining cultural norms, the system can regulate and manipulate on its own terms. In contrast, the conventions that characterize European ‘art films,’ specifically those of the German Expressionist school are considerably apparent. There is no obscuring or hiding of form. Over the top performances by the actors, dramatic and exaggerated chirascuro lighting and the use of techniques like forced perspective give the films an overarching sense of artificiality. They work in direct opposition to those of Hollywood. The composition of the films often seems motivated purely by the richness of the aesthetic qualities, contrary to practicality, functionality or relevance. Unlike Hollywood films, aspects of style are rarely stimulated by plot. The Expressionist style was Lang’s forte; it was only his exposure and subsequent submission to Hollywood that tainted his craftmanship. As Lang, forced from his homeland, was given the illusory freedom to work in the United States, he had to operate in a new system that severely undercut the messages of his work. Hannah Arendt writes in her essay Work, "There can be hardly anything more alien or even more destructive to workmanship than teamwork" (161). Lang’s personal stamp is all but lost in Scarlet Street by the politics and practices of Hollywood and specifically, the Production Code. The Code operated under the pretense of fostering the creation and distribution of wholesome, popular entertainment while in actuality, asserting control over the masses. According to Dwight MacDonald in A Theory of Mass Culture, "The serious artist rarely ventures into the media of mass culture: radio, the movies, comic books, detective stories, science fiction, television" (59). He equates, like many others, mass culture with the impersonal and high culture with individual vision. In the United States, it seems near impossible to use mass mediums to speak personal conceptions. This fits nicely with Arendt’s sentiments and speaks to the fate of Scarlet Street. M is made in Germany in 1931. Scarlet Street is made in the United States in 1945. The change in venue and time is staggering in consideration of the artistic properties of the end products. One of the most marked distinctions between the two films is the way in which violence is portrayed. In Lang’s earlier film, the audience never sees the direct depiction of murder, an impressive feat considering the plot follows a serial killer. In M, the representation of each murder is implied, and is therefore more demanding of the viewer. Watching Elsie Beckmann’s balloon float away and tangle among telephone wires is far more harrowing and insidious than witnessing a straightforward and obvious killing. With Lang’s use of subtlety in certain key scenes, the audiences’ imagination is engaged and provoked.
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