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revolution_frThe Black Book/Reign of Terror has to be the campiest fucking movie ever made about the French Revolution. Start the Revolution Without Me comes close, but that movie was intentionally hilarious. The current discussion reminded me that I had an essay just rotting away on my hard drive about the production of B.B/R.o.T. This should clear up exactly why this movie was so bad it's bad/so bad it's good. Don't ask me were I found it, because I don't remember. Please excuse the formatting errors; I just copied and pasted the entire gawdamn thing from a word doc.
You can view the movie here for free if you've never seen it (and have an hour and change to waste). Oh, and please do refrain from kicking the nearest kitten. Thanks.
Hollywood History and the French Revolution: From The Bastille to The Black Book
by LEGER GRINDON
For through this blessed July night, there is clangour, confusion very great . . .
-- Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution
FROM THE INITIAL CONCEPT TO THE PREmiere screening, a Hollywood film goes through a process influenced by financial pressures, social forces, and personal wills in which the shifts from cooperation to conflict constitute a drama often more revealing than the film itself. Though commanding figures such as Charles Chaplin, David O. Selznick, or John Ford have, at times, displayed the authority of an author, many films fail to express a unified and coherent view that can be attributed to a particular filmmaker. In such a case, understanding may be fostered not by looking to a single guiding presence but to the tensions that arose during the production. These difficulties may illustrate the social nature of Hollywood filmmaking and bear witness to forces at work within the industry and in society at large. The production of Reign of Terror ( 1949 ) is such a case. In the summers of 1794 and 1948 the fall of Robespierre was contemplated, first in Paris and later in Hollywood. Little seems to link the events, though if we can trust Carlyle, both periods were marked by confusion and uncertainty. Upon examination there should be little doubt that Hollywood's meditation upon Robespierre reveals more about its own time than about the course of the French Revolution.
On February 11, 1948 Variety announced the Walter Wanger production of The Bastille at EagleLion studio. By the screenplay's completion in June the title had changed to Reign of Terror, and before the exhibition run had ended a third title appeared, The Black Book. The shift in title raises questions about the evolution of this production, an eccentric hybrid of historical fiction and film noir that portrays the crisis of 9 Thermidor 1794.
The tradition of the historical film is one of pomp and solemnity--the lavish sets, thoughtful research, and high aspirations of Intolerance, Gone with the Wind, Ivan the Terrible come to mind. Films of the French Revolution such as Orphans of the Storm, Marie Antoinette, or La Marseillaise challenged the resources of various film industries. They were not, however, built out of the tawdry pulp of crime melodramas common to Eagle-Lion. Eagle-Lion, among the more disreputable of Hollywood factories, had never released a historical film. Nor would they ever again make the attempt. Georges Sadoul dismissed Reign of Terror as "the worst kind of pseudo-historical melodrama." More recently Robert E. Smith expressed the growing fascination with the movie he described as "the most bizarre and baroquely shot of French Revoltions." Though Reign of Terror offers a distorted view of France in 1794, the film reflects key elements in the relationship between the Hollywood motion picture industry and historical representation. The circumstances at Eagle-Lion and the studio's relationship with Walter Wanger begin to explain the initiation and transformation of the production.
Aspirations and Execution in a Divided Production
In the eighteen months between the announcement of the production in February 1948 and the premiere of Reign of Terror in July 1949, the film went through major shifts in its goals, resources, and personnel. These vicissitudes bred conflicts and compromises which threatened the coherence of the film and fostered the contradictory elements which give the work its special quality.
The Eagle-Lion studio was in operation for only five years, from 1946 to 1951. The enterprise was engineered by railroad magnate Robert Young, who began operations by purchasing the Producers Releasing Corporation, a low budget Hollywood studio which had churned out genre pictures since 1940. Young then struck an agreement with the J.
Arthur Rank organization of Britain whereby Rank products would be distributed by Eagle-Lion in the United States. The ambition of Young and his president of operations, Arthur Krim, was to establish a competitive studio on the order of Columbia or United Artists with a mixed program of quality and "B" films.
The first Eagle-Lion releases hit the screen in 1947 with limited success, but the seminal picture from the studio, T-Men, appeared in January 1948. T-Men, an urban crime film featuring police procedure and location shooting in the noir manner, garnered favorable reviews and earned a handsome $1.6 million on an investment of $424,000.5 The success provided welcome income for the struggling enterprise, which faced losses of $2.2 million in 1947. Eagle-Lion tried to duplicate their hit by producing similar crime films such as Raw Deal, Canon City, and He Walked by Night. Then the prospect of quality prestige pictures arose from an agreement between Eagle-Lion and the independent producer Walter Wanger.
In October 1947 Wanger signed an agreement to make two to four films for Eagle-Lion studio. As former president of the Academy of Motion Pictures and one of the leading independent producers in Hollywood with credits including Stagecoach, Foreign Correspondent, and Scarlet Street, Wanger brought prestige to a firm largely known for programmers. During the spring of 1948 Wanger was developing his initial Eagle-Lion projects: Tulsa and a film about the French Revolution, The Bastille.
Walter Wanger had many reasons for developing a film on the French Revolution. For one, he was a producer who brought his cosmopolitan sensibility and political convictions to the screen. As an internationalist, Wanger contested isolationist sentiment before World War II through public support for American intervention in European affairs and he dramatized that conviction in Blockade and Foreign Correspondent. Wanger worked regularly with émigré European directors, counting Fritz Lang and Max Ophuls as well as Alfred Hitchcock among his professional associates. Furthermore, the producer sought to increase Hollywood access to foreign markets and was generally interested in cooperative foreign ventures. The association between Britain's J. Arthur Rank and Hollywood's Eagle-Lion encouraged Wanger to strike an alliance with the fledgling studio. As a result, subjects with a European setting expressing transatlantic concerns were attractive to Wanger. In 1947 Wanger was already making a lavish historical spectacle, Joan of Arc, which he believed would strengthen Franco-American relations and attract European audiences. In addition the subject of the French Revolution potentially represented a popular struggle against an authoritarian regime. Both before and after World War II Wanger did not hesitate to trumpet antitotalitarian themes in his films.
A disparity soon became apparent between the resources of Eagle-Lion and the aspirations of Walter Wanger. In Hollywood, historical films were an expensive prospect and their costs carried commensurate prestige. Eagle-Lion, eager to gain recognition for an "A" product, found in the historical film a genre that said "quality." The problem for the struggling studio was raising the money. In the early months of 1948 the project was developed as an "A" film with Wanger considering Joan Crawford, Alida Valli, and Victor Mature for leading roles. In May, Wanger and Eagle-Lion negotiated one million-dollar-plus budgets for Tulsa and Reign of Terror. But one month later continuing financial losses forced the studio to cut back funding for the high quality productions Wanger planned. In order to protect funding levels for Tulsa, the producer had to accept restrictions on Reign of Terror. Though initially conceived as a big budget spectacular, Wanger's film of the French Revolution was soon restricted to the resources of a programmer. The historical spectacle was budgeted at $750,000, a paltry sum for such a picture. Wanger, disillusioned and pressed for cash, had to settle for Robert Cummings and Arlene Dahl as the headliners. In spite of limited resources an impressive group of craftsmen were assembled for the project. The key personnel included screenwriters Aeneas MacKenzie and Philip Yordan, producer William Cameron Menzies, cinematographer John Alton, and director Anthony Mann. Three of these five men were to receive the industry's highest honor, an Academy Award, during their career. Shooting on the film began on August 9, 1948, and was completed in early October.
The screenplay for Reign of Terror was composed in two distinct stages. First, the script was developed over a period of months by Aeneas MacKenzie, a writer specializing in period and historical films. His first screen credits were at Warner Brothers on their lavish productions from 1939, Juarez and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. His last credit came in 1956 on De Mille The Ten Commandments. The screenwriter was a veteran at integrating historical fact, popular legend, and dramatic action. In the early months of 1948, MacKenzie proceeded with the research and writing of a screenplay. But with the budget cut and the shift from an "A" production MacKenzie was out. Anthony Mann called in his friend Philip Yordan to transform the MacKenzie material from a historical spectacle to a more economical action picture. By comparison with MacKenzie, Yordan was a junior screenwriter with a string of minor credits; however, in the years to come he would write distinguished westerns and historical films for both Mann and Nicholas Ray ( Johnny Guitar, The Man from Laramie, El Cid, 55 Days at Peking, The Fall of the Roman Empire), as well as an Oscarwinning effort in 1954 , Broken Lance. Yordan claims to have made substantial revisions in the screenplay and completed his manuscript in a short period, possibly in the six days between June 12, 1948, when an Eagle-Lion memorandum reduced financing, and June 17, when Yordan submitted the text to Wanger. Yordan worked without conducting any historical research or consulting MacKenzie. In an interview, Yordan confirmed that Wanger had little interest in the picture at this point and gave no attention to the revised screenplay. The shifting agendas of MacKenzie and Yordan begin to explain the unusual hybrid of historical spectacle and film noir, and the jocular tone of the dialogue that often punctures the solemnity common to historical fiction.
Disillusioned and caught up with the shooting and release of his "A" pictures, Joan of Arc and Tulsa, Wanger delegated authority as the producer of Reign of Terror to William Cameron Menzies. In over twenty-five years of work, Menzies had gained a reputation as one of the outstanding art directors in the industry and in 1928 won the first Academy Award given in this category. Gone with the Wind was among his celebrated credits. When Menzies, the art director, assumed the duties of producer on Reign of Terror he proceeded to shape the visual design of the film. In an interview shortly before his death, Anthony Mann called Menzies "the most creative art director I ever worked with. . . . it was only through his ability that we were able to achieve any style, feeling, or period." The windmill locale early in Reign of Terror seems to be lifted from a famous Menzies set for Hitchcock Foreign Correspondent; the carriage attack and the portrayal of the Convention have also been attributed to Menzies. The budget reductions might have led some craftsmen to proceed with carelessness or resignation. However, Menzies prompted the crew on Reign of Terror to tackle the historical setting with imagination and bravado. The result was what Robert Ottoson has dubbed "as bizarre a period piece as one could find."
In addition to Menzies, John Alton and Anthony Mann made central contributions to Reign of Terror. These two craftsmen were the creative bedrock of Eagle-Lion studio. Before turning to Reign of Terror they had already worked on three urban crime films at the studio, T-Men, Raw Deal, and He Walked by Night. On these pictures Alton and Mann developed a visual style which made a noteworthy contribution to the vocabulary of what later became known as film noir.
Alton had earned a reputation for lighting from the floor and fast camera set-ups instrumental in holding down expenses. Though he later moved to M-G-M, where he won an Academy Award for cinematography on An American in Paris in 1951, his signature style is wedded to film noir. His oblique camera angles, extreme close-ups, and extensive shadows established a visual texture foreign to the historical spectacle. Alton's foreboding images express the fear of the Terror and camouflage the rudimentary sets by dressing Revolutionary Paris in the shade of a midnight alley. One of many striking example of his technique comes with the first meeting of the protagonists, Charles and Madelon. Madelon enters a darkened room to deliver a secret message to an unidentified agent. Through half the scene Alton keeps the two foreground figures in dark silhouette, employing a single light filtered through the wooden blinds of a window in the rear of the set. Finally a candle reflecting off a mirror becomes the diegetic light source for Alton to illuminate Charles and Madelon in softly lit close-ups. The dim lighting acts as a suspense device, increasing the tension of the encounter while at the same time masking the room and eliminating any need to dress the set. Silver and Ward have noted that "Alton created a portrait of eighteenth century France from shadows and silhouettes . . . that, in the noir manner, gives The Black Book the dark quality of a milieu mired in despair and turbulent with chaotic activity." Employing the claustrophobic style of film noir, Alton worked against the convention of the historical picture, which favored panoramic vistas and elaborate sets in order to emphasize the spectacular.
For the director, Anthony Mann, Reign of Terror came at a career crossroads between his crime films and a celebrated series of westerns starring James Stewart which were initiated in 1950 with Winchester '73. Mann's crime films and his westerns are noted for his expressive but contrasting treatment of setting. The crime films confine the action and enclose the characters, whereas the westerns establish an expansive landscape. His historical films from the 1960 s, El Cid and The Fall of the Roman Empire, testify to an interest in panoramic spectacle closer in style to the fifties westerns than the crime films from the forties. However, the economies at Eagle-Lion encouraged the film noir vocabulary for the Paris of Thermidor. The surging crowds and the imposing sets that Mann may have been encouraged to visualize when the production of The Bastille was announced in February were no longer possible in August.
Autuerists may look to Anthony Mann as the guiding force on Reign of Terror. No doubt the director made a major contribution to the production, and the noir vocabulary he developed with Alton serves as the foundation for the film's style. Nevertheless, Mann's chief advocates pass over Reign of Terror. Among those who praise the director's achievement, Andrew Sarris, Jim Kitses, and Robin Wood fail to mention Reign of Terror, and Jeanine Basinger, in the only extended monograph of Mann, dismisses the work as a formal exercise lacking in content, "a minor film." The striking qualities of Reign of Terror cannot be accounted for by any single contributor but grow from the multiple and contending elements in the production's evolution.
What does the change in subject from The Bastille to Reign of Terror imply? Both titles allude to important events in the French Revolution, but events of a distinct character. Significantly, the fall of the Bastille was a popular mass uprising against established authority, politically moving France to the left. Reign of Terror takes place five years later in 1794 after the radical party of the Revolution, the Jacobins, have seized power. In this case an oppressive government of the left falls to a political conspiracy organized from the right. The execution of Robespierre ushers in a period of reaction, Thermidor. Walter Wanger could play out antiauthoritarian themes in the context of both historical episodes, but the choice of events suggests a marked political turnaround. The change displays a different attitude toward the French Revolution and toward potential allusions in contemporary affairs. The Bastille, a symbol of oppression overcome by a popular uprising, would probably have celebrated the success of the Revolution of 1789. A feeling of optimism, democratic power, and political progress coalesces around the title. How different is Reign of Terror. Here the Revolution is discredited, the common people become a bloodthirsty mob, the historical attitude turns fearful and bitter. Apparently there was a change in the conception of the French Revolution.
So what motivated the change of setting from 1789 to 1794? The evolution of the production suggests a discomfort about the subject of the French Revolution. The treatment of popular insurgency and a revolutionary uprising was a volatile issue, especially in Cold War Hollywood. In a letter to Anthony Mann on October 1, 1948, after the principal shooting was completed Wanger sensed lingering difficulties. The producer congratulated his director on a "fine job" and left the picture in his hands for editing, but Wanger's memo expressed apprehension as well as satisfaction. "I am terribly concerned about the opening [moments of the film]," the producer wrote. "I feel that a great deal of the success of the picture will depend on the audience understanding the spirit of the Revolution-where everything gets out of control and where opportunism reigns supreme." Wanger describes this "spirit" as marked by "distrust, chaos and a carnival of lust."
In promoting Reign of Terror with exhibitors and the press further discomfort with the subject of the French Revolution emerged. Eagle-Lion initially marketed the film as a historical spectacle that portrayed "the spirit of the French Revolution". The studio press book synopsis began: "France in 1794. The blood-drenched Reign of Terror is at its height. Maximillien Robespierre, evil genius of the terror, has demanded absolute dictatorial powers," and went on to give a plot summary. Publicity described Reign of Terror as "a spectacular epic of the French Revolution in the great tradition of 'Marie Antoinette', 'A Tale of Two Cities' and 'The Scarlet Pimpernel.'" In addition Eagle-Lion urged exhibitors to link the movie to books set during the period and critical of the Revolution's excesses, particularly A Tale of Two Cities and Thomas Carlyle's History of the French Revolution. The studio touted "the exceptional authenticity of the French Revolutionary background" and suggested that exhibitors promote the picture with local schoolteachers.
On the other hand, the newspaper advertisements offered by Eagle-Lion were generalized and even ambiguous in evoking the historical setting of the film. Some ad designs used the guillotine as a central icon, but the copy displayed on opening day in the Los Angeles Times eliminated the guillotine altogether. The Times ad highlights the heroine under torture, half undressed and hanging by her wrists. The image evokes the historical spectacle with a collage of figures in period dress spread around her in frenetic activity. The promotional copy allies the production to the tradition of the epic by touting a sweeping panorama of revolution and the battle for empire. However, a note of hesitation is apparent. Instead of luring customers with specific information about the crisis of Thermidor, Eagle-Lion couches its ad copy in historical generality. The publicity seems uncertain about the implications of the French Revolution.
Reign of Terror opened during the week of Bastille Day, July 1949, at the Orpheum Theater and four other sites in Los Angeles. The first week's take of $29,700 was described by Variety as "okay"; however, in the second week the film's return dropped to "thin" as ticket sales declined to $11,900. Reign of Terror closed after four days of the second week. Subsequently, Eagle-Lion revised its promotion for the autumn release in New York City changing the title to The Black Book Central to the shift was a remarkable retreat from its historical subject.
The campaign for The Black Book eliminates any reference to history, not to mention the French Revolution. The revised synopsis speaks of the struggle against tyranny and despotism without even acknowledging the historical setting of the film. In marked contrast to the original synopsis, the revision offers few details about the plot. The new title and advertising iconography present the movie as a mystery and try to link its subject to the Eagle-Lion crime dramas of 1948. Anxiety and suspense rather than combat and torture are illustrated. Distressed female figures dwarf the surrounding males in the copy for The Black Book. The magnified close-ups of shadowed faces emphasize the psychological motifs typical of film noir rather than the expansive mass of tiny figures indicative of the historical spectacle. The Black Book keeps the words in its advertisement bold and simple in contrast to Reign of Terror, which gives greater emphasis to language, as if the historical subject required exposition. In the move from Reign of Terror to The Black Book, Eagle-Lion retreated from even a lame attempt to make the audience understand the spirit of the Revolution.
Nevertheless, the opening of The Black Book in New York proved less successful than Reign of Terror in Los Angeles. In a week and four days at the Globe the Wanger production only brought in $16,500. But the distributor had not given up marketing the historical spectacle. After a two-year release Reign of Terror returned its production and distribution costs and showed a small profit of $20,000. Its performance in comparison to the declining fortunes of Eagle-Lion, if not outstanding, was still commendable.
Reign of Terror was a project marked by division: division between Walter Wanger's aspirations and Eagle-Lion's resources; division between MacKenzie's historical spectacle and Yordan's playful crime film; division between its early revolutionary sentiments and its subsequent plotting as an apology for reaction. Though restricted by shifting goals and limited resources the production was driven forward by filmmakers with substantial talent. As a result the troubles rending the project were overcome, but divisions nevertheless mark the work.
"Don't Call Me Max"
Reign of Terror displays an unusual tension between a detailed incorporation of the historical record and a playful tone that undermines the solemn claims to authenticity typical of the genre. Journalists reviewing the movie dismissed the film's historical representation. However, examination reveals a notable attention to historical evidence, more than one finds in many major productions, such as Orphans of the Storm or A Tale of Two Cities. The division characterizing the production is evident in a split between a knowing incorporation of historical data and a jocular rendering of the period drama, reflecting the film's peculiar attitude toward history in general and the French Revolution in particular.
Reign of Terror follows Charles D'Aubigny, who is dispatched by Lafayette to join the plot to overthrow the Jacobin government in July 1794. Disguised as the infamous executioner of Strasbourg, Charles gains access to Robespierre while at the same time making contact with the opposition leaders, Tallien, Barras, and Fouche. To his surprise Charles also meets Madelon, his duplicitous exlover who is at the center of political intrigue. The plot against Robespierre depends upon fear of the Terror. The conspirators strive to build a coalition by uncovering the Black Book, Robespierre's secret list of those to be executed after the Jacobin gains dictatorial power. Though Charles captures the book and wins Madelon he must finally surrender the secret list to the unscrupulous Fouche in order to save his lover. Though Robespierre falls, Charles and Madelon must flee Paris.
Press response to Reign of Terror was favorable, if condescending. The critics generally agreed that the film matched technical achievement with a ridiculous history in order to produce commendable entertainment. The visual design made an impact. The trade press in particular praised the sets, photography, editing, and performances--Menzies, Alton, and Mann were regularly singled out. Cue went so far as to write that "the physical production of the film is as fine as any picture of its era yet come to the screen."
Nevertheless, the press criticized the screenplay and dismissed the historical representation as a "facade," which makes "no pretense at historical accuracy." Variety thought the film was "marred by the script's tendency to depict historical personages as caricatures without any realistic shading" which "almost backfires into comedy." The glib playfulness embedded in Reign of Terror disarms any appraisal of its treatment of the French Revolution. Robespierre's droll response to Fouche's irreverent wit, "Don't call me Max," embodies the comic voice of the movie, renouncing its claim on the historical record.
Examination, however, reveals that the plot and the central dramatic conceit are historically informed. Though the film reaches back to the spring of 1794 to include the condemnation of Danton, the narrative focuses squarely on the forty-eight hours leading to the execution of Robespierre from July 26 to July 28, 1794 (8 and 9 Thermidor according to the revolutionary calendar). The Jacobin leader's speech to the Convention on 8 Thermidor ignited fears among the representatives that brought Robespierre down. The fear that the leader of the Committee of Public Safety maintained a ledger, the notorious Black Book, with the names of those to be executed has the appearance of a preposterous Hollywood contrivance, but just such a fear is widely reported by historians. In discussing Robespierre's speech, the American scholar, R. R. Palmer, writes that the Jacobin leader, "threatened right and left, indulgents and exaggerated terrorists, as in the past; but when asked point blank to name the men he accused he evaded the question. The insinuation of Fouche and others thus seemed to be borne out; any man, for all he knew, might be on Robespierre's list." Georges Lefebvre notes that Robespierre's failure to disclose the names of those he accused "destroyed him, for it was assumed that he was demanding a blank cheque."
The historical literature does more than establish the central dramatic episode; it informs most of the characters. The familiar protagonists of the "Reign of Terror"--Robespierre, St. Just, Danton-are presented from a typically conservative point of view: Robespierre and St. Just as perversions of politics to be seen in contrast to Danton's humanity. More provocative because they are generally foreign to popular dramas are the men who lead the conspiracy of 9 Thermidor--Fouche, Barras, and Tallien. Fouche, the terrorist, was a coalition builder drawing together those of various political persuasions against Robespierre. Tallien is acknowledged as the first to speak out against Robespierre on 9 Thermidor. Barras, an officer in the National Guard, led the military contingent that guaranteed the ascendency of his allies. All three became prominent members of the Directory in the period that followed. Barras was probably the leading member of the French government from 1794 to 1799.
The divided attitude in the production surfaces in the troubled portrayal of leadership presented in the film's opening moments, which were added after the body of the picture was shot following Wanger's directive to convey the "spirit" of the Revolution. A newsreel-like voice announces the date, July 26, 1794, and describes Paris as in the grip of anarchy and fear. Then six characters are introduced in close-up head shots, harshly underlit over a background of flames. The first three are terrorists and villains:
" Robespierre: a fanatic with powdered wig and twisted mind.
St. Just: a connoisseur of roses and blood.
Fouche: the politician, always on both sides, never in the middle."
The last three are honorable men-
" Danton: soldier, savior of France.
Barras: citizen of France, an honest man fighting for the life of his country.
Tallien: another honest man."
One can dismiss this expressive treatment as growing from the caricatures that routinely transform historical complexity into popular legend. No doubt this is rhetoric of that genre, but it is meaningful in a curious way because it splits the figure of leadership in the historical film into two camps of multiple figures, all of whom are historical personalities. My attention is drawn to Tallien and Barras because the film's description is so contrary to either their historical character or their legendary status.
Hardly "an honest man," Tallien was tainted with political corruption and decadent habits (alluded to in the film's tavern and boudoir settings). Robespierre had denounced Tallien at the Jacobin Club as early as May 1794 for conspiring with foreign courts and international bankers. During the Thermidorian reaction his lavish salon life excited criticism and his politics discredited him both with the right and the left. His allegiances were as mercurial as Fouche's but not as gracefully orchestrated.
Barras was no more upstanding. The Historical Dictionary of the French Revolution describes the leader of the Directory as "an extreme example of the ruthlessness, corruption and venality that emerged during the Revolutionary period." Barras' political use of bribery seemed only to be outstripped by the bribes he accepted; his "devotion" to political principle prompted the politician on appropriate occasions to be a servant of the Revolution, the Empire, and the Throne.
In constructing a screenplay around the fall of Robespierre, MacKenzie established a cast of characters drawn from the historical episode. Yordan treated them with freewheeling disregard for historical evidence and a sense of gallows humor in order to shape the material into a self-deprecating action film. However, Reign of Terror's cynicism toward the conspirators, the French Revolution, and political activity in general strives to integrate the contending perspectives of MacKenzie and Yordan. The film's opening and closing episodes portray a cycle of political change with no indication of social benefit. The movie begins with Charles being commissioned by the exiled Lafayette, a leader during the early years of the Revolution. After Robespierre's execution Fouche stumbles upon the unknown officer, Bonaparte, in a foreboding reminder of the fall of those who have just assumed power. Although the historical reputation of Tallien and Barras is whitewashed, Fouche is presented as a witty but unscrupulous rascal whose cooperation is needed in order to undermine the Terror. As a result the film cynically alludes to the limitations, if not the corruption, of its political leadership.
The romantic couple as well as the political leadership presents a curious mixture of historical tradition and Hollywood convention. The heroine, Madelon, is a provocative figure because she appears to be based on the historical Theresia Cabarrus, daughter of a Spanish court banker. In the months before Thermidor she and Tallien became lovers. Then in the summer of 1794, she was arrested. Carlyle writes, "And now his fair Cabarus [sic], hit by denunciation, lies Arrested, Suspect, in spite of all he could do!--Shut in horrid pinfold of death, the Senhora smuggles out to her red-gloomy Tallien, the most pressing entreaties and conjurings: Save me; save thyself. Seest thou not that thy own head is doomed." With the fall of Robespierre, Cabarrus was freed, and in December 1794 she married Tallien. In the coming years, Cabarrus played hostess to a notorious salon which became a center for Thermidorian decadence and the political right. The French historian Lefebvre dubbed her "Our Lady of Thermidor," "a woman of easy virtue" who "set the tone for Parisian society." Eventually Cabarrus deserted Tallien for Barras and became an obstacle preventing the political cooperation of the two men.
Reign of Terror treats these allusions in a clever and knowing way. Madelon displays a lavish life while embroiled in political conspiracy against the Jacobin government. She is a fickle lover who has betrayed Charles, the protagonist, in the past. When Charles seeks a clandestine meeting with Madelon he must contact Tallien to gain access to her boudoir. Once there Barras surprisingly appears from behind her curtains. As the plot unfolds, Madelon is jailed by Robespierre's henchmen and her release is secured as a result of his fall. This reveals that the filmmakers were at least in part historically knowledgeable and self-conscious in shaping their material. Yet the studio press book failed to tutor journalists in the movie's veracity. Most historical films exaggerate their authenticity claims; Reign of Terror masks its allusions. The film's ambivalence toward historical representation speaks of its discomfort with the French Revolution.
Reign of Terror presents a peculiar division in its attitude. The plot, on face value, embodies an apology for Thermidor with a gesture toward Carlyle; however, the nightmare tone and the clever, almost ironical, manipulation of historical evidence throws the attitude into question. A consideration of the ethos of film noir sheds light on the paradoxical treatment.
Conventions in Contest: The Historical Spectacle in the Style of Film Noir
Robert Ottoson, Alain Silver, and Elizabeth Ward include Reign of Terror in their guides to film noir even though a contemporary setting is standard. The connections between this historical fiction and film noir are found in central elements of characterization and plot as well as visual style. Madelon is the duplicitous femme fatale, Durgnant "Black Widow." Basehart's Robespierre is the villain described in Paul Schrader "Notes on Film Noir," "the small time gangster [who] has now made it big and sits in the mayor's chair." Reign of Terror also takes its historical attitude from what Schrader cites as "the overwhelming noir theme: a passion for the past and present, but also a fear of the future. Noir heroes dread to look ahead, but instead try to survive by the day, and if unsuccessful at that, they retreat to the past. Thus film noir's techniques emphasize loss, nostalgia, lack of clear priorities and insecurity, then it submerges these self-doubts in mannerism and style." The filmmaker's lack of clear priorities, and the conflict between the generic demand of the historical subject and limited resources, all become submerged in the stylish constructs of Alton, Menzies, and Mann.
Charles D'Aubigny, the film's protagonist, is shaped like a familiar noir hero. Charles looked to the past, to Lafayette and the Revolutionary years of 1789 to 1791, for guidance after they were a spent force. When Charles looks to the future he sees Fouche as minister of police and nearly trips over Bonaparte as he exits from the drama. Nostalgia, loss, and uncertainty characterize his romance with Madelon.
They are lovers with a bitter past; Madelon has already deserted Charles once before their unforeseen reunion in the struggle against Robespierre. The motif shaping their romance is disguise and recognition. Charles and Madelon deceive at first each other and then their mutual enemies in their progress toward union. At the inn, the tavern, the prison, and the bridge Charles and Madelon initiate, reverse, and finally acknowledge their masquerade. At first Madelon must penetrate Charles' disguise as Duval. Later that night it is Charles who must overcome the obstacles of the tavern by seeing through the mask of a false Madelon in or-der to gain access to the woman he seeks. At the prison Madelon appears to the surprise of Charles as Madame Duval in order to confirm Charles' false identity as the executioner of Strasbourg. During the bridge crossing they cooperate in their masquerade as a husband and wife returning to their farm. Finally Charles must search for and find Madelon imprisoned behind a wall of black books. Near the climax Fouche poses an emblematic choice for Charles: He must decide between the Black Book, which represents knowledge, power, and political commitment, and Madelon, the competing figure who represents personal feeling and private life. The hero runs off to save his lover and abandons the struggle for power. He turns from the original object of his quest, the political goal of the film, in order to renew his romance apart from the entanglements of government. Though Charles and Madelon are united, the Theresia Cabarrus allusion implies that their union, like the coalition of Thermidor, has no future.
The spectacle in Reign of Terror serves as an embodiment of a historical attitude that is equally bleak. Historical films generally present panoramic landscapes, exotic locales, surging crowds--spectacles that express forces working in history. Hence the tendency is toward long shots and epic scope. Reign of Terror prefers narrow, dim studio streets, constricting enclosures such as the prison cell, the night carriage, or Robespierre's chamber beneath the bakery. Reign of Terror presents the antithesis of the historical spectacle and in that respect it is revealing. For though film noir looks to the past, it fails to find in the past an explanation, the causal relations that are the object of history. This is a sign of its scepticism. Reign of Terror suggests that the essential political struggles take place underground, among conspirators, in back rooms. Popular forces, political principles, and economic relations exert little influence. The underlying causes of history are submerged and largely inaccessible.
There are two memorable spectacles in Reign of Terror that express this attitude--the Convention meetings and Robespierre's inner office. Anthony Mann explained that William Cameron Menzies developed the image of the crowd at the Convention. The designer squeezed one hundred extras on a small rising gallery of benches, flooded the set with irregular shafts of light, photographed and enlarged the scale of the image. These shots were integrated through rear projection with the foreground of the Convention. The crowd fills the flat space of the background and spills limitless over the edges of the image. As a result the members of a national legislature appear to be an expansive mass closer to a stadium crowd than a deliberative body. Unstable, temperamental, and cruel, the delegates embody an immediate but strangely distant public whose collective brutality swallows any individual sentiment.
The full shots of the Convention emphasize two, at times three, distinct visual planes. The rear projection and harsh underlighting distort the features of the image and undermine the continuity of perspective as if a canyon separated the space between the visual zones. Clear and stable spatial relations are never established. In the background is the gallery of representatives. Before the crowd on the central podium stands Robespierre, who controls the plastic mass. An additional foreground space is occasionally established by sentries framing an entrance way or the dock initially occupied by Danton and later by Barras. The effect underlines the space between the people and their leader and further accents the spectators' distorted and uncertain perspective as if we were glimpsing a disorienting vision through the frame of history.
The second emblematic spectacle is Robespierre's inner office. Midway through the picture Charles realizes that Robespierre keeps the Black Book, his infamous death list, in his private chamber. Joined by Fouche, Charles breaks into the room, rifles the desk, and then illuminates the office. All four walls are covered from floor to ceiling with bookcases holding identical black books. "It will take forever to go through all of this," Charles cries. The promise of knowledge is thwarted by excess, multiplicity, the opaque. The spectacle of the room suggests that there is too much information, but also that the past is impenetrable, an understanding beyond reach. Humor diverts the audience, but an underlying scepticism emerges. A large hound appears and inadvertently leads the men to the treasured document. Upon finding the list Fouche and Charles immediately break their alliance and attack each other. The spectacle of Robespierre's library haunts the film. The rows of books contain the secrets for which men fight and die, but knowledge is hidden not by scarcity but in its abundance.
The climax of the film underscores the importance of these locales as the film concludes by crosscutting between the two sites. In the public arena at the Convention Robespierre's accusation of Barras backfires as delegates, now presented in a montage of lurching head shots, demand their leader's death after glimpsing the Black Book. Simultaneously Charles again breaks into Robespierre's office seeking the imprisoned Madelon. However, his lover is now hidden in a secret chamber behind the wall of books! Armed with a torch, the sign of his passion, Charles discovers the secret behind the library and frees his beloved. The crosscutting underscores the contrast between the public and the private sphere: the first corrupted by the struggle for power, the second purified by passion. The romance can only be thwarted by politics, and the lovers must flee in order to guard their union.
Political Ambivalence and the Trail of Allusions
Historical films are addressed to their contemporaries, and reference to the prevailing social context is fundamental to an understanding of their construction and reception. Between February 1948, when The Bastille was first announced, and the release of The Black Book in the fall of 1949, significant changes marked Hollywood and the world. The shift in the treatment of the Revolution reflects the political mood in 1948, a time in which fear, suspicion, and instability set the tone for public affairs.
Reign of Terror takes France for its subject and suggests parallels with the contemporary events in Europe. The film's insertion of three military leaders calls attention to another conspicuous French soldier, Charles De Gaulle. On three occasions the film refers to a military man whose integrity rises above the turmoil of politics and who is sympathetic to the right. Charles D'Aubigny is delegated by Lafayette, a figure invested with American sympathies and identified as a general in exile without an army. More surprising, Danton is called "soldier and savior of France." Though Danton's leadership may have engineered French military victories, he was trained as a lawyer, not a soldier. Finally, at the film's conclusion, Bonaparte appears as a foreboding figure threatening the ascendancy of Fouche. Each of these figures echoes De Gaulle's posture in contemporary France.
In the years following World War II, the Fourth Republic was dominated by a center left coalition attacked on the one hand by the Communists and on the other by the Gaullists. In Reign of Terror the attack on Robespierre is marshaled by figures from the left, the terrorist Fouche, and the right, the party of Barras. In 1947, the Communists were ejected from the governing coalition. Many saw in the strikes that followed in 1947-48 an attempt by the Communist party to undermine the Fourth Republic. In 1947 General De Gaulle also reentered politics with his new organization, Rassemblement du Peuple Français. The political group attracted a mass following and was under instructions from the general not to cooperate with the governing regime. During 1947-48, France presented a picture of instability with strong opposition to the constituted Republic from the right and the left.25 Reign of Terror with its triple allusions to a sympathetic general standing above the turmoil of partisan politics points to the stance of De Gaulle in 1948.
In the United States the Cold War intensified and politics moved dramatically to the right. 1947 brought the National Security Act, which reorganized the military establishment and institutionalized covert military operations in peacetime with the creation of the Defense Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Council. Freidel and Brinkley note that these acts "transferred to the President expanded powers over all defense activities, centralizing in the White House control that had once been widely dispersed. It enabled the administration to take warlike actions without an open declaration of war; and it created vehicles by which the government could act politically and militarily behind a veil of secrecy."26 These conditions seem analogous to the consolidation of power attempted by Robespierre in Reign of Terror. When the leader of the Committee of Public Safety hands Barras legislation to propose at the Convention, Barras cries, "Why, this would make you dictator of France. We didn't storm the Bastille to make any man dictator." One might object, and object persuasively, that such a parallel violates the portrait of the Jacobin as a mad tyrant hardly comparable with President Truman. No doubt the film is rife with contradictory impulses; nevertheless, I would contend that the production expresses anxiety over the growing concentration of authoritarian power.
Cold War fears escalated further in 1947 when Truman approved the Federal Employee Loyalty Program, which reviewed all federal workers for subversive tendencies. The sensational news coverage of the Alger Hiss case kept international subversion and undercover espionage firmly in the public mind. In the months immediately preceding the shooting of Reign of Terror, July and August 1948, Whitaker Chambers testified before HUAC against Hiss, a distinguished State Department officer, who was accused of passing secret information to Communist operatives in 1938. Tales of secret meetings, hidden documents, and international sabotage filled the newspaper headlines. The mood of conspiracy and betrayal sets the tone for Eagle-Lion's treatment of the French Revolution.
In these years the politics of the Cold War engulfed Hollywood, where the authority concentrated in the Motion Pictures Producers Association began to take on extraordinary powers. In October and November 1947, HUAC conducted public hearings on Communists in the motion picture industry. Ten prominent Hollywood professionals, suspected of Communist sympathies, were cited for contempt of Congress after invoking their constitutional right to remain silent. Industry leaders issued on November 26 of that year their famous Waldorf Statement, which established the practice of "blacklisting" motion picture workers tainted with a history of left wing activity who were unwilling to cooperate in the crusade against subversives.
In the political crisis that struck Hollywood, Walter Wanger at first attacked the anti-Communist extremists within the film industry but soon yielded to pressure and cooperated with the Cold War crusade. In September 1945 Wanger charged the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American ideals with making "unsupported charges of Communism in the motion picture industry." But by the fall of 1947 the producer participated in the meeting of industry powerbrokers that drafted the Waldorf Statement. In 1950, Wanger became head of the Los Angeles chapter of Crusade for Freedom, a group dedicated to exposing suspected Communist sympathizers. Wanger was eager to demonstrate his loyalty to the Hollywood establishment, but it seems likely that the longstanding liberal only grudgingly surrendered to the political tide washing over the film industry.
Wanger was clearly aware of the political connotations of Reign of Terror. Early in 1948, scriptwriter John Balderston read McKenzie's screenplay and advised Wanger against integrating the political analogy of the Revolution with contemporary events and the lowbrow appeal of a "rough-house sex-chase."28 After the film was completed in April 1949 Wanger suggested that studio advertising give a political slant to promotion: "I think the best way to make a lot of dough with this--I don't know whether you agree with me or not--would be to go all out and maybe have some of the ads warn the public that we will be going through a REIGN OF TERROR in this country if we don't watch out and that there is a REIGN OF TERROR all over the world. Let this be hailed as the Motion Picture Industry's effort to stop all kinds of totalitarianism." By this time, Wanger publicly aligned himself with Hollywood's anti-Communist crusade, and he tried to overcome suspicions growing from his former associations. However, one could surmise that divided political sympathies simmered within Wanger. Of course the producer was only one of many contributors to Reign of Terror, but others appeared to have liberal sympathies, like Philip Yordan, who is rumored to have served as a front for blacklisted writers, or the composer Sol Kaplan, who was later blacklisted. But the crew as a unit seems divorced from any political intent, rather directing their skill instead toward salvaging a profitable entertainment from limited resources. However, Wanger's position in the shifting currents of Hollywood politics illustrates larger trends within the industry and the nation that help to explain the peculiar tenor of Reign of Terror.
Some commentators do find resistance to the Cold War ethos in the work. Richard Maltby argues that an unconventional foregrounding of hyperbolic noir stylistics invests Reign of Terror with a subversive edge. More straightforward evidence also exists. For example, in the opening minutes of the film Danton responds to Robespierre's accusations, crying to the convention, "Open your eyes. Tomorrow it may be you standing here accused, condemned, unheard." From these words one may easily speculate that for those in Hollywood the Black Book alluded to the blacklist. However, Bernstein's assessment that ambivalence finally diffuses any serious political address seems more persuasive than Maltby's claims.
The Cold War reaction, economic pressures, and fear in Hollywood influenced Walter Wanger and his crew on Reign of Terror. Could the struggling Eagle-Lion studio risk a film celebrating the fall of the Bastille in such an atmosphere? Better to turn revolutionaries into villains and venal conspirators into "honest citizens" and wash the project in ironical humor and the despair of the film noir. In such circumstances one can understand why this peculiar production moved from the optimism of 1789 to the terror of 1794 and then denied its historical lineage to the popular audience.
To conclude that Reign of Terror is a unified text, deliberate in its intention and sowing implicit messages under the deft hand of master filmmakers, would be misguided. No single author set the agenda. Rather, I would suggest that the production absorbed prevailing influences and the contending sensibilities. The history of its production and the social circumstances from which Reign of Terror emerges provide a tale marked by division and ambivalence. Numerous motives intersect and often clash--Wanger's politics, Eagle-Lion's resources, MacKenzie's history, Yordan's pulp action, Mann's noir style. The motion picture gains its fascination from the tension among these elements.
You can view the movie here for free if you've never seen it (and have an hour and change to waste). Oh, and please do refrain from kicking the nearest kitten. Thanks.
Hollywood History and the French Revolution: From The Bastille to The Black Book
by LEGER GRINDON
For through this blessed July night, there is clangour, confusion very great . . .
-- Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution
FROM THE INITIAL CONCEPT TO THE PREmiere screening, a Hollywood film goes through a process influenced by financial pressures, social forces, and personal wills in which the shifts from cooperation to conflict constitute a drama often more revealing than the film itself. Though commanding figures such as Charles Chaplin, David O. Selznick, or John Ford have, at times, displayed the authority of an author, many films fail to express a unified and coherent view that can be attributed to a particular filmmaker. In such a case, understanding may be fostered not by looking to a single guiding presence but to the tensions that arose during the production. These difficulties may illustrate the social nature of Hollywood filmmaking and bear witness to forces at work within the industry and in society at large. The production of Reign of Terror ( 1949 ) is such a case. In the summers of 1794 and 1948 the fall of Robespierre was contemplated, first in Paris and later in Hollywood. Little seems to link the events, though if we can trust Carlyle, both periods were marked by confusion and uncertainty. Upon examination there should be little doubt that Hollywood's meditation upon Robespierre reveals more about its own time than about the course of the French Revolution.
On February 11, 1948 Variety announced the Walter Wanger production of The Bastille at EagleLion studio. By the screenplay's completion in June the title had changed to Reign of Terror, and before the exhibition run had ended a third title appeared, The Black Book. The shift in title raises questions about the evolution of this production, an eccentric hybrid of historical fiction and film noir that portrays the crisis of 9 Thermidor 1794.
The tradition of the historical film is one of pomp and solemnity--the lavish sets, thoughtful research, and high aspirations of Intolerance, Gone with the Wind, Ivan the Terrible come to mind. Films of the French Revolution such as Orphans of the Storm, Marie Antoinette, or La Marseillaise challenged the resources of various film industries. They were not, however, built out of the tawdry pulp of crime melodramas common to Eagle-Lion. Eagle-Lion, among the more disreputable of Hollywood factories, had never released a historical film. Nor would they ever again make the attempt. Georges Sadoul dismissed Reign of Terror as "the worst kind of pseudo-historical melodrama." More recently Robert E. Smith expressed the growing fascination with the movie he described as "the most bizarre and baroquely shot of French Revoltions." Though Reign of Terror offers a distorted view of France in 1794, the film reflects key elements in the relationship between the Hollywood motion picture industry and historical representation. The circumstances at Eagle-Lion and the studio's relationship with Walter Wanger begin to explain the initiation and transformation of the production.
Aspirations and Execution in a Divided Production
In the eighteen months between the announcement of the production in February 1948 and the premiere of Reign of Terror in July 1949, the film went through major shifts in its goals, resources, and personnel. These vicissitudes bred conflicts and compromises which threatened the coherence of the film and fostered the contradictory elements which give the work its special quality.
The Eagle-Lion studio was in operation for only five years, from 1946 to 1951. The enterprise was engineered by railroad magnate Robert Young, who began operations by purchasing the Producers Releasing Corporation, a low budget Hollywood studio which had churned out genre pictures since 1940. Young then struck an agreement with the J.
Arthur Rank organization of Britain whereby Rank products would be distributed by Eagle-Lion in the United States. The ambition of Young and his president of operations, Arthur Krim, was to establish a competitive studio on the order of Columbia or United Artists with a mixed program of quality and "B" films.
The first Eagle-Lion releases hit the screen in 1947 with limited success, but the seminal picture from the studio, T-Men, appeared in January 1948. T-Men, an urban crime film featuring police procedure and location shooting in the noir manner, garnered favorable reviews and earned a handsome $1.6 million on an investment of $424,000.5 The success provided welcome income for the struggling enterprise, which faced losses of $2.2 million in 1947. Eagle-Lion tried to duplicate their hit by producing similar crime films such as Raw Deal, Canon City, and He Walked by Night. Then the prospect of quality prestige pictures arose from an agreement between Eagle-Lion and the independent producer Walter Wanger.
In October 1947 Wanger signed an agreement to make two to four films for Eagle-Lion studio. As former president of the Academy of Motion Pictures and one of the leading independent producers in Hollywood with credits including Stagecoach, Foreign Correspondent, and Scarlet Street, Wanger brought prestige to a firm largely known for programmers. During the spring of 1948 Wanger was developing his initial Eagle-Lion projects: Tulsa and a film about the French Revolution, The Bastille.
Walter Wanger had many reasons for developing a film on the French Revolution. For one, he was a producer who brought his cosmopolitan sensibility and political convictions to the screen. As an internationalist, Wanger contested isolationist sentiment before World War II through public support for American intervention in European affairs and he dramatized that conviction in Blockade and Foreign Correspondent. Wanger worked regularly with émigré European directors, counting Fritz Lang and Max Ophuls as well as Alfred Hitchcock among his professional associates. Furthermore, the producer sought to increase Hollywood access to foreign markets and was generally interested in cooperative foreign ventures. The association between Britain's J. Arthur Rank and Hollywood's Eagle-Lion encouraged Wanger to strike an alliance with the fledgling studio. As a result, subjects with a European setting expressing transatlantic concerns were attractive to Wanger. In 1947 Wanger was already making a lavish historical spectacle, Joan of Arc, which he believed would strengthen Franco-American relations and attract European audiences. In addition the subject of the French Revolution potentially represented a popular struggle against an authoritarian regime. Both before and after World War II Wanger did not hesitate to trumpet antitotalitarian themes in his films.
A disparity soon became apparent between the resources of Eagle-Lion and the aspirations of Walter Wanger. In Hollywood, historical films were an expensive prospect and their costs carried commensurate prestige. Eagle-Lion, eager to gain recognition for an "A" product, found in the historical film a genre that said "quality." The problem for the struggling studio was raising the money. In the early months of 1948 the project was developed as an "A" film with Wanger considering Joan Crawford, Alida Valli, and Victor Mature for leading roles. In May, Wanger and Eagle-Lion negotiated one million-dollar-plus budgets for Tulsa and Reign of Terror. But one month later continuing financial losses forced the studio to cut back funding for the high quality productions Wanger planned. In order to protect funding levels for Tulsa, the producer had to accept restrictions on Reign of Terror. Though initially conceived as a big budget spectacular, Wanger's film of the French Revolution was soon restricted to the resources of a programmer. The historical spectacle was budgeted at $750,000, a paltry sum for such a picture. Wanger, disillusioned and pressed for cash, had to settle for Robert Cummings and Arlene Dahl as the headliners. In spite of limited resources an impressive group of craftsmen were assembled for the project. The key personnel included screenwriters Aeneas MacKenzie and Philip Yordan, producer William Cameron Menzies, cinematographer John Alton, and director Anthony Mann. Three of these five men were to receive the industry's highest honor, an Academy Award, during their career. Shooting on the film began on August 9, 1948, and was completed in early October.
The screenplay for Reign of Terror was composed in two distinct stages. First, the script was developed over a period of months by Aeneas MacKenzie, a writer specializing in period and historical films. His first screen credits were at Warner Brothers on their lavish productions from 1939, Juarez and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. His last credit came in 1956 on De Mille The Ten Commandments. The screenwriter was a veteran at integrating historical fact, popular legend, and dramatic action. In the early months of 1948, MacKenzie proceeded with the research and writing of a screenplay. But with the budget cut and the shift from an "A" production MacKenzie was out. Anthony Mann called in his friend Philip Yordan to transform the MacKenzie material from a historical spectacle to a more economical action picture. By comparison with MacKenzie, Yordan was a junior screenwriter with a string of minor credits; however, in the years to come he would write distinguished westerns and historical films for both Mann and Nicholas Ray ( Johnny Guitar, The Man from Laramie, El Cid, 55 Days at Peking, The Fall of the Roman Empire), as well as an Oscarwinning effort in 1954 , Broken Lance. Yordan claims to have made substantial revisions in the screenplay and completed his manuscript in a short period, possibly in the six days between June 12, 1948, when an Eagle-Lion memorandum reduced financing, and June 17, when Yordan submitted the text to Wanger. Yordan worked without conducting any historical research or consulting MacKenzie. In an interview, Yordan confirmed that Wanger had little interest in the picture at this point and gave no attention to the revised screenplay. The shifting agendas of MacKenzie and Yordan begin to explain the unusual hybrid of historical spectacle and film noir, and the jocular tone of the dialogue that often punctures the solemnity common to historical fiction.
Disillusioned and caught up with the shooting and release of his "A" pictures, Joan of Arc and Tulsa, Wanger delegated authority as the producer of Reign of Terror to William Cameron Menzies. In over twenty-five years of work, Menzies had gained a reputation as one of the outstanding art directors in the industry and in 1928 won the first Academy Award given in this category. Gone with the Wind was among his celebrated credits. When Menzies, the art director, assumed the duties of producer on Reign of Terror he proceeded to shape the visual design of the film. In an interview shortly before his death, Anthony Mann called Menzies "the most creative art director I ever worked with. . . . it was only through his ability that we were able to achieve any style, feeling, or period." The windmill locale early in Reign of Terror seems to be lifted from a famous Menzies set for Hitchcock Foreign Correspondent; the carriage attack and the portrayal of the Convention have also been attributed to Menzies. The budget reductions might have led some craftsmen to proceed with carelessness or resignation. However, Menzies prompted the crew on Reign of Terror to tackle the historical setting with imagination and bravado. The result was what Robert Ottoson has dubbed "as bizarre a period piece as one could find."
In addition to Menzies, John Alton and Anthony Mann made central contributions to Reign of Terror. These two craftsmen were the creative bedrock of Eagle-Lion studio. Before turning to Reign of Terror they had already worked on three urban crime films at the studio, T-Men, Raw Deal, and He Walked by Night. On these pictures Alton and Mann developed a visual style which made a noteworthy contribution to the vocabulary of what later became known as film noir.
Alton had earned a reputation for lighting from the floor and fast camera set-ups instrumental in holding down expenses. Though he later moved to M-G-M, where he won an Academy Award for cinematography on An American in Paris in 1951, his signature style is wedded to film noir. His oblique camera angles, extreme close-ups, and extensive shadows established a visual texture foreign to the historical spectacle. Alton's foreboding images express the fear of the Terror and camouflage the rudimentary sets by dressing Revolutionary Paris in the shade of a midnight alley. One of many striking example of his technique comes with the first meeting of the protagonists, Charles and Madelon. Madelon enters a darkened room to deliver a secret message to an unidentified agent. Through half the scene Alton keeps the two foreground figures in dark silhouette, employing a single light filtered through the wooden blinds of a window in the rear of the set. Finally a candle reflecting off a mirror becomes the diegetic light source for Alton to illuminate Charles and Madelon in softly lit close-ups. The dim lighting acts as a suspense device, increasing the tension of the encounter while at the same time masking the room and eliminating any need to dress the set. Silver and Ward have noted that "Alton created a portrait of eighteenth century France from shadows and silhouettes . . . that, in the noir manner, gives The Black Book the dark quality of a milieu mired in despair and turbulent with chaotic activity." Employing the claustrophobic style of film noir, Alton worked against the convention of the historical picture, which favored panoramic vistas and elaborate sets in order to emphasize the spectacular.
For the director, Anthony Mann, Reign of Terror came at a career crossroads between his crime films and a celebrated series of westerns starring James Stewart which were initiated in 1950 with Winchester '73. Mann's crime films and his westerns are noted for his expressive but contrasting treatment of setting. The crime films confine the action and enclose the characters, whereas the westerns establish an expansive landscape. His historical films from the 1960 s, El Cid and The Fall of the Roman Empire, testify to an interest in panoramic spectacle closer in style to the fifties westerns than the crime films from the forties. However, the economies at Eagle-Lion encouraged the film noir vocabulary for the Paris of Thermidor. The surging crowds and the imposing sets that Mann may have been encouraged to visualize when the production of The Bastille was announced in February were no longer possible in August.
Autuerists may look to Anthony Mann as the guiding force on Reign of Terror. No doubt the director made a major contribution to the production, and the noir vocabulary he developed with Alton serves as the foundation for the film's style. Nevertheless, Mann's chief advocates pass over Reign of Terror. Among those who praise the director's achievement, Andrew Sarris, Jim Kitses, and Robin Wood fail to mention Reign of Terror, and Jeanine Basinger, in the only extended monograph of Mann, dismisses the work as a formal exercise lacking in content, "a minor film." The striking qualities of Reign of Terror cannot be accounted for by any single contributor but grow from the multiple and contending elements in the production's evolution.
What does the change in subject from The Bastille to Reign of Terror imply? Both titles allude to important events in the French Revolution, but events of a distinct character. Significantly, the fall of the Bastille was a popular mass uprising against established authority, politically moving France to the left. Reign of Terror takes place five years later in 1794 after the radical party of the Revolution, the Jacobins, have seized power. In this case an oppressive government of the left falls to a political conspiracy organized from the right. The execution of Robespierre ushers in a period of reaction, Thermidor. Walter Wanger could play out antiauthoritarian themes in the context of both historical episodes, but the choice of events suggests a marked political turnaround. The change displays a different attitude toward the French Revolution and toward potential allusions in contemporary affairs. The Bastille, a symbol of oppression overcome by a popular uprising, would probably have celebrated the success of the Revolution of 1789. A feeling of optimism, democratic power, and political progress coalesces around the title. How different is Reign of Terror. Here the Revolution is discredited, the common people become a bloodthirsty mob, the historical attitude turns fearful and bitter. Apparently there was a change in the conception of the French Revolution.
So what motivated the change of setting from 1789 to 1794? The evolution of the production suggests a discomfort about the subject of the French Revolution. The treatment of popular insurgency and a revolutionary uprising was a volatile issue, especially in Cold War Hollywood. In a letter to Anthony Mann on October 1, 1948, after the principal shooting was completed Wanger sensed lingering difficulties. The producer congratulated his director on a "fine job" and left the picture in his hands for editing, but Wanger's memo expressed apprehension as well as satisfaction. "I am terribly concerned about the opening [moments of the film]," the producer wrote. "I feel that a great deal of the success of the picture will depend on the audience understanding the spirit of the Revolution-where everything gets out of control and where opportunism reigns supreme." Wanger describes this "spirit" as marked by "distrust, chaos and a carnival of lust."
In promoting Reign of Terror with exhibitors and the press further discomfort with the subject of the French Revolution emerged. Eagle-Lion initially marketed the film as a historical spectacle that portrayed "the spirit of the French Revolution". The studio press book synopsis began: "France in 1794. The blood-drenched Reign of Terror is at its height. Maximillien Robespierre, evil genius of the terror, has demanded absolute dictatorial powers," and went on to give a plot summary. Publicity described Reign of Terror as "a spectacular epic of the French Revolution in the great tradition of 'Marie Antoinette', 'A Tale of Two Cities' and 'The Scarlet Pimpernel.'" In addition Eagle-Lion urged exhibitors to link the movie to books set during the period and critical of the Revolution's excesses, particularly A Tale of Two Cities and Thomas Carlyle's History of the French Revolution. The studio touted "the exceptional authenticity of the French Revolutionary background" and suggested that exhibitors promote the picture with local schoolteachers.
On the other hand, the newspaper advertisements offered by Eagle-Lion were generalized and even ambiguous in evoking the historical setting of the film. Some ad designs used the guillotine as a central icon, but the copy displayed on opening day in the Los Angeles Times eliminated the guillotine altogether. The Times ad highlights the heroine under torture, half undressed and hanging by her wrists. The image evokes the historical spectacle with a collage of figures in period dress spread around her in frenetic activity. The promotional copy allies the production to the tradition of the epic by touting a sweeping panorama of revolution and the battle for empire. However, a note of hesitation is apparent. Instead of luring customers with specific information about the crisis of Thermidor, Eagle-Lion couches its ad copy in historical generality. The publicity seems uncertain about the implications of the French Revolution.
Reign of Terror opened during the week of Bastille Day, July 1949, at the Orpheum Theater and four other sites in Los Angeles. The first week's take of $29,700 was described by Variety as "okay"; however, in the second week the film's return dropped to "thin" as ticket sales declined to $11,900. Reign of Terror closed after four days of the second week. Subsequently, Eagle-Lion revised its promotion for the autumn release in New York City changing the title to The Black Book Central to the shift was a remarkable retreat from its historical subject.
The campaign for The Black Book eliminates any reference to history, not to mention the French Revolution. The revised synopsis speaks of the struggle against tyranny and despotism without even acknowledging the historical setting of the film. In marked contrast to the original synopsis, the revision offers few details about the plot. The new title and advertising iconography present the movie as a mystery and try to link its subject to the Eagle-Lion crime dramas of 1948. Anxiety and suspense rather than combat and torture are illustrated. Distressed female figures dwarf the surrounding males in the copy for The Black Book. The magnified close-ups of shadowed faces emphasize the psychological motifs typical of film noir rather than the expansive mass of tiny figures indicative of the historical spectacle. The Black Book keeps the words in its advertisement bold and simple in contrast to Reign of Terror, which gives greater emphasis to language, as if the historical subject required exposition. In the move from Reign of Terror to The Black Book, Eagle-Lion retreated from even a lame attempt to make the audience understand the spirit of the Revolution.
Nevertheless, the opening of The Black Book in New York proved less successful than Reign of Terror in Los Angeles. In a week and four days at the Globe the Wanger production only brought in $16,500. But the distributor had not given up marketing the historical spectacle. After a two-year release Reign of Terror returned its production and distribution costs and showed a small profit of $20,000. Its performance in comparison to the declining fortunes of Eagle-Lion, if not outstanding, was still commendable.
Reign of Terror was a project marked by division: division between Walter Wanger's aspirations and Eagle-Lion's resources; division between MacKenzie's historical spectacle and Yordan's playful crime film; division between its early revolutionary sentiments and its subsequent plotting as an apology for reaction. Though restricted by shifting goals and limited resources the production was driven forward by filmmakers with substantial talent. As a result the troubles rending the project were overcome, but divisions nevertheless mark the work.
"Don't Call Me Max"
Reign of Terror displays an unusual tension between a detailed incorporation of the historical record and a playful tone that undermines the solemn claims to authenticity typical of the genre. Journalists reviewing the movie dismissed the film's historical representation. However, examination reveals a notable attention to historical evidence, more than one finds in many major productions, such as Orphans of the Storm or A Tale of Two Cities. The division characterizing the production is evident in a split between a knowing incorporation of historical data and a jocular rendering of the period drama, reflecting the film's peculiar attitude toward history in general and the French Revolution in particular.
Reign of Terror follows Charles D'Aubigny, who is dispatched by Lafayette to join the plot to overthrow the Jacobin government in July 1794. Disguised as the infamous executioner of Strasbourg, Charles gains access to Robespierre while at the same time making contact with the opposition leaders, Tallien, Barras, and Fouche. To his surprise Charles also meets Madelon, his duplicitous exlover who is at the center of political intrigue. The plot against Robespierre depends upon fear of the Terror. The conspirators strive to build a coalition by uncovering the Black Book, Robespierre's secret list of those to be executed after the Jacobin gains dictatorial power. Though Charles captures the book and wins Madelon he must finally surrender the secret list to the unscrupulous Fouche in order to save his lover. Though Robespierre falls, Charles and Madelon must flee Paris.
Press response to Reign of Terror was favorable, if condescending. The critics generally agreed that the film matched technical achievement with a ridiculous history in order to produce commendable entertainment. The visual design made an impact. The trade press in particular praised the sets, photography, editing, and performances--Menzies, Alton, and Mann were regularly singled out. Cue went so far as to write that "the physical production of the film is as fine as any picture of its era yet come to the screen."
Nevertheless, the press criticized the screenplay and dismissed the historical representation as a "facade," which makes "no pretense at historical accuracy." Variety thought the film was "marred by the script's tendency to depict historical personages as caricatures without any realistic shading" which "almost backfires into comedy." The glib playfulness embedded in Reign of Terror disarms any appraisal of its treatment of the French Revolution. Robespierre's droll response to Fouche's irreverent wit, "Don't call me Max," embodies the comic voice of the movie, renouncing its claim on the historical record.
Examination, however, reveals that the plot and the central dramatic conceit are historically informed. Though the film reaches back to the spring of 1794 to include the condemnation of Danton, the narrative focuses squarely on the forty-eight hours leading to the execution of Robespierre from July 26 to July 28, 1794 (8 and 9 Thermidor according to the revolutionary calendar). The Jacobin leader's speech to the Convention on 8 Thermidor ignited fears among the representatives that brought Robespierre down. The fear that the leader of the Committee of Public Safety maintained a ledger, the notorious Black Book, with the names of those to be executed has the appearance of a preposterous Hollywood contrivance, but just such a fear is widely reported by historians. In discussing Robespierre's speech, the American scholar, R. R. Palmer, writes that the Jacobin leader, "threatened right and left, indulgents and exaggerated terrorists, as in the past; but when asked point blank to name the men he accused he evaded the question. The insinuation of Fouche and others thus seemed to be borne out; any man, for all he knew, might be on Robespierre's list." Georges Lefebvre notes that Robespierre's failure to disclose the names of those he accused "destroyed him, for it was assumed that he was demanding a blank cheque."
The historical literature does more than establish the central dramatic episode; it informs most of the characters. The familiar protagonists of the "Reign of Terror"--Robespierre, St. Just, Danton-are presented from a typically conservative point of view: Robespierre and St. Just as perversions of politics to be seen in contrast to Danton's humanity. More provocative because they are generally foreign to popular dramas are the men who lead the conspiracy of 9 Thermidor--Fouche, Barras, and Tallien. Fouche, the terrorist, was a coalition builder drawing together those of various political persuasions against Robespierre. Tallien is acknowledged as the first to speak out against Robespierre on 9 Thermidor. Barras, an officer in the National Guard, led the military contingent that guaranteed the ascendency of his allies. All three became prominent members of the Directory in the period that followed. Barras was probably the leading member of the French government from 1794 to 1799.
The divided attitude in the production surfaces in the troubled portrayal of leadership presented in the film's opening moments, which were added after the body of the picture was shot following Wanger's directive to convey the "spirit" of the Revolution. A newsreel-like voice announces the date, July 26, 1794, and describes Paris as in the grip of anarchy and fear. Then six characters are introduced in close-up head shots, harshly underlit over a background of flames. The first three are terrorists and villains:
" Robespierre: a fanatic with powdered wig and twisted mind.
St. Just: a connoisseur of roses and blood.
Fouche: the politician, always on both sides, never in the middle."
The last three are honorable men-
" Danton: soldier, savior of France.
Barras: citizen of France, an honest man fighting for the life of his country.
Tallien: another honest man."
One can dismiss this expressive treatment as growing from the caricatures that routinely transform historical complexity into popular legend. No doubt this is rhetoric of that genre, but it is meaningful in a curious way because it splits the figure of leadership in the historical film into two camps of multiple figures, all of whom are historical personalities. My attention is drawn to Tallien and Barras because the film's description is so contrary to either their historical character or their legendary status.
Hardly "an honest man," Tallien was tainted with political corruption and decadent habits (alluded to in the film's tavern and boudoir settings). Robespierre had denounced Tallien at the Jacobin Club as early as May 1794 for conspiring with foreign courts and international bankers. During the Thermidorian reaction his lavish salon life excited criticism and his politics discredited him both with the right and the left. His allegiances were as mercurial as Fouche's but not as gracefully orchestrated.
Barras was no more upstanding. The Historical Dictionary of the French Revolution describes the leader of the Directory as "an extreme example of the ruthlessness, corruption and venality that emerged during the Revolutionary period." Barras' political use of bribery seemed only to be outstripped by the bribes he accepted; his "devotion" to political principle prompted the politician on appropriate occasions to be a servant of the Revolution, the Empire, and the Throne.
In constructing a screenplay around the fall of Robespierre, MacKenzie established a cast of characters drawn from the historical episode. Yordan treated them with freewheeling disregard for historical evidence and a sense of gallows humor in order to shape the material into a self-deprecating action film. However, Reign of Terror's cynicism toward the conspirators, the French Revolution, and political activity in general strives to integrate the contending perspectives of MacKenzie and Yordan. The film's opening and closing episodes portray a cycle of political change with no indication of social benefit. The movie begins with Charles being commissioned by the exiled Lafayette, a leader during the early years of the Revolution. After Robespierre's execution Fouche stumbles upon the unknown officer, Bonaparte, in a foreboding reminder of the fall of those who have just assumed power. Although the historical reputation of Tallien and Barras is whitewashed, Fouche is presented as a witty but unscrupulous rascal whose cooperation is needed in order to undermine the Terror. As a result the film cynically alludes to the limitations, if not the corruption, of its political leadership.
The romantic couple as well as the political leadership presents a curious mixture of historical tradition and Hollywood convention. The heroine, Madelon, is a provocative figure because she appears to be based on the historical Theresia Cabarrus, daughter of a Spanish court banker. In the months before Thermidor she and Tallien became lovers. Then in the summer of 1794, she was arrested. Carlyle writes, "And now his fair Cabarus [sic], hit by denunciation, lies Arrested, Suspect, in spite of all he could do!--Shut in horrid pinfold of death, the Senhora smuggles out to her red-gloomy Tallien, the most pressing entreaties and conjurings: Save me; save thyself. Seest thou not that thy own head is doomed." With the fall of Robespierre, Cabarrus was freed, and in December 1794 she married Tallien. In the coming years, Cabarrus played hostess to a notorious salon which became a center for Thermidorian decadence and the political right. The French historian Lefebvre dubbed her "Our Lady of Thermidor," "a woman of easy virtue" who "set the tone for Parisian society." Eventually Cabarrus deserted Tallien for Barras and became an obstacle preventing the political cooperation of the two men.
Reign of Terror treats these allusions in a clever and knowing way. Madelon displays a lavish life while embroiled in political conspiracy against the Jacobin government. She is a fickle lover who has betrayed Charles, the protagonist, in the past. When Charles seeks a clandestine meeting with Madelon he must contact Tallien to gain access to her boudoir. Once there Barras surprisingly appears from behind her curtains. As the plot unfolds, Madelon is jailed by Robespierre's henchmen and her release is secured as a result of his fall. This reveals that the filmmakers were at least in part historically knowledgeable and self-conscious in shaping their material. Yet the studio press book failed to tutor journalists in the movie's veracity. Most historical films exaggerate their authenticity claims; Reign of Terror masks its allusions. The film's ambivalence toward historical representation speaks of its discomfort with the French Revolution.
Reign of Terror presents a peculiar division in its attitude. The plot, on face value, embodies an apology for Thermidor with a gesture toward Carlyle; however, the nightmare tone and the clever, almost ironical, manipulation of historical evidence throws the attitude into question. A consideration of the ethos of film noir sheds light on the paradoxical treatment.
Conventions in Contest: The Historical Spectacle in the Style of Film Noir
Robert Ottoson, Alain Silver, and Elizabeth Ward include Reign of Terror in their guides to film noir even though a contemporary setting is standard. The connections between this historical fiction and film noir are found in central elements of characterization and plot as well as visual style. Madelon is the duplicitous femme fatale, Durgnant "Black Widow." Basehart's Robespierre is the villain described in Paul Schrader "Notes on Film Noir," "the small time gangster [who] has now made it big and sits in the mayor's chair." Reign of Terror also takes its historical attitude from what Schrader cites as "the overwhelming noir theme: a passion for the past and present, but also a fear of the future. Noir heroes dread to look ahead, but instead try to survive by the day, and if unsuccessful at that, they retreat to the past. Thus film noir's techniques emphasize loss, nostalgia, lack of clear priorities and insecurity, then it submerges these self-doubts in mannerism and style." The filmmaker's lack of clear priorities, and the conflict between the generic demand of the historical subject and limited resources, all become submerged in the stylish constructs of Alton, Menzies, and Mann.
Charles D'Aubigny, the film's protagonist, is shaped like a familiar noir hero. Charles looked to the past, to Lafayette and the Revolutionary years of 1789 to 1791, for guidance after they were a spent force. When Charles looks to the future he sees Fouche as minister of police and nearly trips over Bonaparte as he exits from the drama. Nostalgia, loss, and uncertainty characterize his romance with Madelon.
They are lovers with a bitter past; Madelon has already deserted Charles once before their unforeseen reunion in the struggle against Robespierre. The motif shaping their romance is disguise and recognition. Charles and Madelon deceive at first each other and then their mutual enemies in their progress toward union. At the inn, the tavern, the prison, and the bridge Charles and Madelon initiate, reverse, and finally acknowledge their masquerade. At first Madelon must penetrate Charles' disguise as Duval. Later that night it is Charles who must overcome the obstacles of the tavern by seeing through the mask of a false Madelon in or-der to gain access to the woman he seeks. At the prison Madelon appears to the surprise of Charles as Madame Duval in order to confirm Charles' false identity as the executioner of Strasbourg. During the bridge crossing they cooperate in their masquerade as a husband and wife returning to their farm. Finally Charles must search for and find Madelon imprisoned behind a wall of black books. Near the climax Fouche poses an emblematic choice for Charles: He must decide between the Black Book, which represents knowledge, power, and political commitment, and Madelon, the competing figure who represents personal feeling and private life. The hero runs off to save his lover and abandons the struggle for power. He turns from the original object of his quest, the political goal of the film, in order to renew his romance apart from the entanglements of government. Though Charles and Madelon are united, the Theresia Cabarrus allusion implies that their union, like the coalition of Thermidor, has no future.
The spectacle in Reign of Terror serves as an embodiment of a historical attitude that is equally bleak. Historical films generally present panoramic landscapes, exotic locales, surging crowds--spectacles that express forces working in history. Hence the tendency is toward long shots and epic scope. Reign of Terror prefers narrow, dim studio streets, constricting enclosures such as the prison cell, the night carriage, or Robespierre's chamber beneath the bakery. Reign of Terror presents the antithesis of the historical spectacle and in that respect it is revealing. For though film noir looks to the past, it fails to find in the past an explanation, the causal relations that are the object of history. This is a sign of its scepticism. Reign of Terror suggests that the essential political struggles take place underground, among conspirators, in back rooms. Popular forces, political principles, and economic relations exert little influence. The underlying causes of history are submerged and largely inaccessible.
There are two memorable spectacles in Reign of Terror that express this attitude--the Convention meetings and Robespierre's inner office. Anthony Mann explained that William Cameron Menzies developed the image of the crowd at the Convention. The designer squeezed one hundred extras on a small rising gallery of benches, flooded the set with irregular shafts of light, photographed and enlarged the scale of the image. These shots were integrated through rear projection with the foreground of the Convention. The crowd fills the flat space of the background and spills limitless over the edges of the image. As a result the members of a national legislature appear to be an expansive mass closer to a stadium crowd than a deliberative body. Unstable, temperamental, and cruel, the delegates embody an immediate but strangely distant public whose collective brutality swallows any individual sentiment.
The full shots of the Convention emphasize two, at times three, distinct visual planes. The rear projection and harsh underlighting distort the features of the image and undermine the continuity of perspective as if a canyon separated the space between the visual zones. Clear and stable spatial relations are never established. In the background is the gallery of representatives. Before the crowd on the central podium stands Robespierre, who controls the plastic mass. An additional foreground space is occasionally established by sentries framing an entrance way or the dock initially occupied by Danton and later by Barras. The effect underlines the space between the people and their leader and further accents the spectators' distorted and uncertain perspective as if we were glimpsing a disorienting vision through the frame of history.
The second emblematic spectacle is Robespierre's inner office. Midway through the picture Charles realizes that Robespierre keeps the Black Book, his infamous death list, in his private chamber. Joined by Fouche, Charles breaks into the room, rifles the desk, and then illuminates the office. All four walls are covered from floor to ceiling with bookcases holding identical black books. "It will take forever to go through all of this," Charles cries. The promise of knowledge is thwarted by excess, multiplicity, the opaque. The spectacle of the room suggests that there is too much information, but also that the past is impenetrable, an understanding beyond reach. Humor diverts the audience, but an underlying scepticism emerges. A large hound appears and inadvertently leads the men to the treasured document. Upon finding the list Fouche and Charles immediately break their alliance and attack each other. The spectacle of Robespierre's library haunts the film. The rows of books contain the secrets for which men fight and die, but knowledge is hidden not by scarcity but in its abundance.
The climax of the film underscores the importance of these locales as the film concludes by crosscutting between the two sites. In the public arena at the Convention Robespierre's accusation of Barras backfires as delegates, now presented in a montage of lurching head shots, demand their leader's death after glimpsing the Black Book. Simultaneously Charles again breaks into Robespierre's office seeking the imprisoned Madelon. However, his lover is now hidden in a secret chamber behind the wall of books! Armed with a torch, the sign of his passion, Charles discovers the secret behind the library and frees his beloved. The crosscutting underscores the contrast between the public and the private sphere: the first corrupted by the struggle for power, the second purified by passion. The romance can only be thwarted by politics, and the lovers must flee in order to guard their union.
Political Ambivalence and the Trail of Allusions
Historical films are addressed to their contemporaries, and reference to the prevailing social context is fundamental to an understanding of their construction and reception. Between February 1948, when The Bastille was first announced, and the release of The Black Book in the fall of 1949, significant changes marked Hollywood and the world. The shift in the treatment of the Revolution reflects the political mood in 1948, a time in which fear, suspicion, and instability set the tone for public affairs.
Reign of Terror takes France for its subject and suggests parallels with the contemporary events in Europe. The film's insertion of three military leaders calls attention to another conspicuous French soldier, Charles De Gaulle. On three occasions the film refers to a military man whose integrity rises above the turmoil of politics and who is sympathetic to the right. Charles D'Aubigny is delegated by Lafayette, a figure invested with American sympathies and identified as a general in exile without an army. More surprising, Danton is called "soldier and savior of France." Though Danton's leadership may have engineered French military victories, he was trained as a lawyer, not a soldier. Finally, at the film's conclusion, Bonaparte appears as a foreboding figure threatening the ascendancy of Fouche. Each of these figures echoes De Gaulle's posture in contemporary France.
In the years following World War II, the Fourth Republic was dominated by a center left coalition attacked on the one hand by the Communists and on the other by the Gaullists. In Reign of Terror the attack on Robespierre is marshaled by figures from the left, the terrorist Fouche, and the right, the party of Barras. In 1947, the Communists were ejected from the governing coalition. Many saw in the strikes that followed in 1947-48 an attempt by the Communist party to undermine the Fourth Republic. In 1947 General De Gaulle also reentered politics with his new organization, Rassemblement du Peuple Français. The political group attracted a mass following and was under instructions from the general not to cooperate with the governing regime. During 1947-48, France presented a picture of instability with strong opposition to the constituted Republic from the right and the left.25 Reign of Terror with its triple allusions to a sympathetic general standing above the turmoil of partisan politics points to the stance of De Gaulle in 1948.
In the United States the Cold War intensified and politics moved dramatically to the right. 1947 brought the National Security Act, which reorganized the military establishment and institutionalized covert military operations in peacetime with the creation of the Defense Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Council. Freidel and Brinkley note that these acts "transferred to the President expanded powers over all defense activities, centralizing in the White House control that had once been widely dispersed. It enabled the administration to take warlike actions without an open declaration of war; and it created vehicles by which the government could act politically and militarily behind a veil of secrecy."26 These conditions seem analogous to the consolidation of power attempted by Robespierre in Reign of Terror. When the leader of the Committee of Public Safety hands Barras legislation to propose at the Convention, Barras cries, "Why, this would make you dictator of France. We didn't storm the Bastille to make any man dictator." One might object, and object persuasively, that such a parallel violates the portrait of the Jacobin as a mad tyrant hardly comparable with President Truman. No doubt the film is rife with contradictory impulses; nevertheless, I would contend that the production expresses anxiety over the growing concentration of authoritarian power.
Cold War fears escalated further in 1947 when Truman approved the Federal Employee Loyalty Program, which reviewed all federal workers for subversive tendencies. The sensational news coverage of the Alger Hiss case kept international subversion and undercover espionage firmly in the public mind. In the months immediately preceding the shooting of Reign of Terror, July and August 1948, Whitaker Chambers testified before HUAC against Hiss, a distinguished State Department officer, who was accused of passing secret information to Communist operatives in 1938. Tales of secret meetings, hidden documents, and international sabotage filled the newspaper headlines. The mood of conspiracy and betrayal sets the tone for Eagle-Lion's treatment of the French Revolution.
In these years the politics of the Cold War engulfed Hollywood, where the authority concentrated in the Motion Pictures Producers Association began to take on extraordinary powers. In October and November 1947, HUAC conducted public hearings on Communists in the motion picture industry. Ten prominent Hollywood professionals, suspected of Communist sympathies, were cited for contempt of Congress after invoking their constitutional right to remain silent. Industry leaders issued on November 26 of that year their famous Waldorf Statement, which established the practice of "blacklisting" motion picture workers tainted with a history of left wing activity who were unwilling to cooperate in the crusade against subversives.
In the political crisis that struck Hollywood, Walter Wanger at first attacked the anti-Communist extremists within the film industry but soon yielded to pressure and cooperated with the Cold War crusade. In September 1945 Wanger charged the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American ideals with making "unsupported charges of Communism in the motion picture industry." But by the fall of 1947 the producer participated in the meeting of industry powerbrokers that drafted the Waldorf Statement. In 1950, Wanger became head of the Los Angeles chapter of Crusade for Freedom, a group dedicated to exposing suspected Communist sympathizers. Wanger was eager to demonstrate his loyalty to the Hollywood establishment, but it seems likely that the longstanding liberal only grudgingly surrendered to the political tide washing over the film industry.
Wanger was clearly aware of the political connotations of Reign of Terror. Early in 1948, scriptwriter John Balderston read McKenzie's screenplay and advised Wanger against integrating the political analogy of the Revolution with contemporary events and the lowbrow appeal of a "rough-house sex-chase."28 After the film was completed in April 1949 Wanger suggested that studio advertising give a political slant to promotion: "I think the best way to make a lot of dough with this--I don't know whether you agree with me or not--would be to go all out and maybe have some of the ads warn the public that we will be going through a REIGN OF TERROR in this country if we don't watch out and that there is a REIGN OF TERROR all over the world. Let this be hailed as the Motion Picture Industry's effort to stop all kinds of totalitarianism." By this time, Wanger publicly aligned himself with Hollywood's anti-Communist crusade, and he tried to overcome suspicions growing from his former associations. However, one could surmise that divided political sympathies simmered within Wanger. Of course the producer was only one of many contributors to Reign of Terror, but others appeared to have liberal sympathies, like Philip Yordan, who is rumored to have served as a front for blacklisted writers, or the composer Sol Kaplan, who was later blacklisted. But the crew as a unit seems divorced from any political intent, rather directing their skill instead toward salvaging a profitable entertainment from limited resources. However, Wanger's position in the shifting currents of Hollywood politics illustrates larger trends within the industry and the nation that help to explain the peculiar tenor of Reign of Terror.
Some commentators do find resistance to the Cold War ethos in the work. Richard Maltby argues that an unconventional foregrounding of hyperbolic noir stylistics invests Reign of Terror with a subversive edge. More straightforward evidence also exists. For example, in the opening minutes of the film Danton responds to Robespierre's accusations, crying to the convention, "Open your eyes. Tomorrow it may be you standing here accused, condemned, unheard." From these words one may easily speculate that for those in Hollywood the Black Book alluded to the blacklist. However, Bernstein's assessment that ambivalence finally diffuses any serious political address seems more persuasive than Maltby's claims.
The Cold War reaction, economic pressures, and fear in Hollywood influenced Walter Wanger and his crew on Reign of Terror. Could the struggling Eagle-Lion studio risk a film celebrating the fall of the Bastille in such an atmosphere? Better to turn revolutionaries into villains and venal conspirators into "honest citizens" and wash the project in ironical humor and the despair of the film noir. In such circumstances one can understand why this peculiar production moved from the optimism of 1789 to the terror of 1794 and then denied its historical lineage to the popular audience.
To conclude that Reign of Terror is a unified text, deliberate in its intention and sowing implicit messages under the deft hand of master filmmakers, would be misguided. No single author set the agenda. Rather, I would suggest that the production absorbed prevailing influences and the contending sensibilities. The history of its production and the social circumstances from which Reign of Terror emerges provide a tale marked by division and ambivalence. Numerous motives intersect and often clash--Wanger's politics, Eagle-Lion's resources, MacKenzie's history, Yordan's pulp action, Mann's noir style. The motion picture gains its fascination from the tension among these elements.
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