It does feel very much like a film of the 1950's, despite the year in which it was made: I think because it shows a society so determinedly putting the war behind itself and looking forward to a great big beautiful tomorrow, without acknowledging that the past does not simply vanish like a fishing pole lost in the closet under the stairs. But it's noir because of the uncertainty. I didn't talk about this aspect as much as I wanted, but I was thinking about it tonight. Frank believes that he gave information to his Nazi captors because he was afraid of reprisals and because of the starvation conditions of the camp (which were of course designed to create these zero-sum games, dividing prisoners against one another) and we believe his interpretation of events because we watch him replicate the same self-preserving behavior over the course of the film. A part of his brain just shuts off when he's scared. It's one thing to run from a killer, it's another to let himself be talked into taking out a contract on the man. But we never know if he was actually wrong that the escape would have failed: that the escapees would have been caught anyway and executed and other American prisoners shot to make a point. He doubts his motives now, but he doubts everything about himself. And the film isn't interested in determining the truth, in exonerating Frank by the road of good intentions or condemning him any more than his own conscience does already. He did what he did; the consequences are what the story is concerned with. Similarly, I can think of three reasons at least for the decision he makes near the end of the film. Any or all of them might be in play; we're never going to know. I love these two lacunae at key moments. Only characters have simple and complete explanations. People are more complicated. So the story becomes disturbing—and real—because it has no tidy division between good and bad, weak and righteous; if we are not assured that Frank was uniquely doomed to betray his men, then anyone in the camp might have made his choice. Not all stories of survival are heroic. I don't think this awareness could be addressed at the time in any genre other than noir, which I feel increasingly was where all the national anxieties went to breathe, but it really interests me that the attempt is being made at all just two years after the end of a war that would become rapidly mythologized as a quasi-apocalyptic conflict between the forces of clear-cut light and darkness. Then it's like that nuance was generally suppressed in favor of the heroic-epic approach and the ambiguity had to be recovered with time. I should find out how Act of Violence did at the box office; I wonder if it was too soon. I just thought it was great.
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It does feel very much like a film of the 1950's, despite the year in which it was made: I think because it shows a society so determinedly putting the war behind itself and looking forward to a great big beautiful tomorrow, without acknowledging that the past does not simply vanish like a fishing pole lost in the closet under the stairs. But it's noir because of the uncertainty. I didn't talk about this aspect as much as I wanted, but I was thinking about it tonight. Frank believes that he gave information to his Nazi captors because he was afraid of reprisals and because of the starvation conditions of the camp (which were of course designed to create these zero-sum games, dividing prisoners against one another) and we believe his interpretation of events because we watch him replicate the same self-preserving behavior over the course of the film. A part of his brain just shuts off when he's scared. It's one thing to run from a killer, it's another to let himself be talked into taking out a contract on the man. But we never know if he was actually wrong that the escape would have failed: that the escapees would have been caught anyway and executed and other American prisoners shot to make a point. He doubts his motives now, but he doubts everything about himself. And the film isn't interested in determining the truth, in exonerating Frank by the road of good intentions or condemning him any more than his own conscience does already. He did what he did; the consequences are what the story is concerned with. Similarly, I can think of three reasons at least for the decision he makes near the end of the film. Any or all of them might be in play; we're never going to know. I love these two lacunae at key moments. Only characters have simple and complete explanations. People are more complicated. So the story becomes disturbing—and real—because it has no tidy division between good and bad, weak and righteous; if we are not assured that Frank was uniquely doomed to betray his men, then anyone in the camp might have made his choice. Not all stories of survival are heroic. I don't think this awareness could be addressed at the time in any genre other than noir, which I feel increasingly was where all the national anxieties went to breathe, but it really interests me that the attempt is being made at all just two years after the end of a war that would become rapidly mythologized as a quasi-apocalyptic conflict between the forces of clear-cut light and darkness. Then it's like that nuance was generally suppressed in favor of the heroic-epic approach and the ambiguity had to be recovered with time. I should find out how Act of Violence did at the box office; I wonder if it was too soon. I just thought it was great.