The perimeters of art aside, it’s when film is used as a blatant ideological tool that I regard it as offputting. When I see this occur, it’s like my mind turns off any belief or investment in the characters. The film becomes like a dry, empty, uninvolving term-paper. It’s one thing if a story is obviously alleghorical from the start, it’s another when I get the notion that I’m being deliberately and subtlely manipulated on some larger ideological agenda. Again, to certain degrees, ideological angles can be gleaned from just about every film, if you get down to the nitty-gritty. But to what extent are they deliberate, versus reflecting the worldview of the filmmakers?
Gathering together some of the films I’ve watched this past month, I’d be fairly hard-pressed to really find anything exemplifying more than the latter scenario...
“Finn and Hattie” (1931-Paramount) Leon Errol
“South of St. Louis” (1949-WB) Joel McCrea
“The Gun Woman” (1918-Triangle) Texas Guinan
“Wake Up and Live” (1937-Fox) Alice Faye
“Fangs of the Arctic” (1953-Monogram) Kirby Grant
“36 Hours to Kill” (1936-Fox) Brian Donlevy
“Oh! Doctor” (1925-Universal) Reginald Denny
“Four Fast Guns” (1960-Fox) James Craig
“Swing Hostess” (1944-PRC) Martha Tilton
You’re welcome to find any art or any ideology in any of these, but it’s clear to me that wasn’t the agenda of such films as these. Unlike items such as “These Three” or “The Ox-Bow Incident,” two film ‘classics’ that I actively dislike.
I have not seen any of those films but a lot of B films were actually quite loaded with all sorts of contexts. The Science Fiction films of the ‘50s with their Cold War parallels and such. The Ox Bow Incident is hampered by heavy handedness. That’s why it isn’t all that much talked about today except as a period film. The similarly themed ‘12 Angry Men’ has held up much better - despite heavy handed moments.