Chapter 17

By 1941, Cary Grant had his pick of films. Almost everything was offered to him and everyone wanted to work with him. Wary of being typecast, he resisted making more screwball comedies. Instead, he made the gentle “weepie” Penny Serenade (1941) with George Stevens directing and Irene Dunne co-starring. His performance, including a tearful moment when he must plead with a judge to maintain custody of an adopted child, brought his first nomination for an Academy Award. He made an even more dramatic departure from his established image playing the wayward, possibly murderous Johnny Aysgarth in Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion (1941). The making of this film was rocky, not least because of on-the-set friction between Grant and co-star Joan Fontaine, but Grant’s relationship with Hitchcock was strong both personally and professionally. His relationship with director Frank Capra, with whom he made Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), was not as strong. Grant hated his own manic performance in this slapstick comedy. Although the film was a big success at the time and still has many admirers, he always cited it as the least favorite of his films.

Chapter 18

When the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the Second World War, Cary Grant finally felt able to apply for US citizenship and then to serve in the US military. He also married Barbara Hutton, and they were dubbed “Cash and Cary” in the press. While he waited for his citizenship papers, he continued making films. In George Stevens’ The Talk of the Town (1942) he vies with co-star Ronald Colman for the affections of Jean Arthur. Anxious that Stevens was favouring Arthur, Grant was unhappy making this film. Afterward, he embarked on the Hollywood Victory Caravan, a fundraising tour of American cities, and he was touched to see the public’s affection for him. With director Leo McCarey and co-star Ginger Rogers, he made Once Upon A Honeymoon (1942). The original story, co-written by McCarey, appears in some respects to be an apologia for Barbara’s Hutton’s previous marriage to a Prussian-born aristocrat who served in the German army during the First World War. Still eager to serve in the military, Grant made one more film at the behest of RKO. Mr Lucky (1943) is a “conversion narrative” in which he plays an initially cynical gangster who ultimately volunteers to serve his country. While making it, the military ruled that no one over the age of 38 could enter the services. Grant, who turned 39 as Mr Lucky was completed, would not be able to serve his adopted country.

An American Kipling: Colonial Discourse, Settler Culture and the Hollywood Studio System in George Stevens’ Gunga Din

Serious scholarly attention to Gunga Din(1939) has largely been neglected as allegations of condescending and one-dimensional depictions of its Indian characters have disrupted its reputation as one of the greatest epics of the studio era.However, George Stevens’ adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s poem extends its source text’s colonial ambivalence to American anxieties stemming from the death rattle of Manifest Destiny and the traumas of the Great Depression. Seizing upon the popularity of late Victorian Empire narratives, Hollywood integrated its own ideology into a final product that was a hybrid of imperial narrative and American western. This chapter argues that the film’s loose resemblance to its source material demonstrates a fissure in the American valorization of British culture. Gunga Din completely dismantles Kipling’s poem, recreating it as an example of a uniquely American form: the seamless studio system product that led to Hollywood’s international dominance in cultural production. While the politics of the adaptation resemble textual strategies of resistance common in postcolonial texts, the film’s retention of colonial literature’s representations of its native characters addresses an America beginning to assert a distinct national culture while positioning itself as a future imperial power in the tradition of the faltering British Empire.

El Seminario de la Ética a través del cine

Reseña de "El Seminario de la Ética a través del cine. Lecturas lacanianas de Charles Chaplin, Jules Dassin, Federico Fellini, Woody Allen, Alfred Hitchcock, Vince Gilligan, Krzysztof Kieslowski, George Stevens, Pedro Almodóvar y los hermanos Marx"