11.2 Social Themes: Corruption and Outsiders

Social Themes: Corruption and Outsiders

Andrew Spicer explores themes and narrative strategies of film noir in his book, Film Noir. The following excerpt highlights Touch of Evil's significance and position.

(2) Corruption and Outsiders Although the important presence of conservative films noirs within the cycle must not be denied, a more powerful group of films was informed by a left-liberal critique of American democracy as sick and corrupt. These films attempted to keep alive the spirit of the 1930s New Deal - and its cultural image, the Popular Front, a broad alliance of left-wing activists - in which the inequalities of capitalism require welfarist intervention and amelioration (Denning, 1997). Orson Welles was the most significant Popular Front figure. (good article I found on popular front https://isreview.org/issue/108/new-deal-and-popular-front/index.html)

His Disparate (essentially different in kind; not allowing comparison) films noirs in a career frustrated by studio intransigence (unwillingness to change) and forced exile - Journey into Fear (1943), The Stranger (1946) and Mr Arkadin (1955), as well as The Lady From Shanghai (1948) and Touch of Evil (1958) - are informed by an existentialist Marxism that characterizes a generation of filmmakers whose radicalism was forced in New York's political theater of the 1930s: Jules Dassin, Edward Dymtryk, John Houston, Elia Kazan, Joseph Losey, Abraham Polonsky, Nicholas Ray and Robert Rossen whose collective contribution to film noir was substantial (Neve, 1992).

- Andrew Spicer, Film Noir pg. 71

NOTE: (1) Law & Order excerpt highlighting Pickup on South Street (1953) was included in on page 10.2

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