Popular Culture Review Vol. 10, No. 2, August 1999 | Page 61

Jacques Tourneur’s World War II Films:
From Unity to Chaos
Jacques Tourneur, son of the legendary silent film director Maurice
Tourneur, worked for over 30 years in the Hollywood film industry. As a depend
able and versatile director he was assigned a variety of film projects, crossing
genres and ranging in budget and cast from “A” to “C”. Although best known for
his work in the horror and film noir genres {Cat People [1942], / Walked with a
Zombie [ 1943], The Leopard Man [ 1943], Curse o f the Demon [ 1956] in the former
genre; Out o f the Past [1947] and Nightfall [1956] in the latter genre), his career
was, in fact, more diverse, proving that he could produce competent films in most
genres. Tourneur’s westerns, thrillers and adventure films may not be as accom
plished and as startlingly good as the horror and noir films, yet they provide inter
esting material for any analysis of the relationship between films and their society.
Many of Tourneur’s films can be read as social texts: often a western
that seems to be apolitical due to its historical setting, its adherence to genre con
ventions, and its use of familiar plot structures can offer us an insight into America
in the 1940s and 1950s. Thus, Tourneur’s 1946 western Canyon Passage, which is
not, ostensibly, a political film, nevertheless uses its genre to offer a critique of
American capitalism in the Old West. In a similar way, Tourneur’s most famous
film. Out o f the Past, uses noir settings, conventions, and characters to introduce
us to the dark side of American capitalist society of the 1940s. One can apply a
socio-political reading to almost all of Tourneur’s films. However, two films in
particular — Days o f Glory [1944] and Berlin Express [1948] — invite such a
reading. These two films are overt political films: not only do they offer much
material for socio-political readings, they were specifically produced as films with
a message. Both films are examples of Hollywood’s use of popular film for overt
political proselytizing. What is perhaps the most interesting aspect of these films
is the way in which they impart their political message — in one sense the reason
for their being — in often ambivalent terms. Before I turn to a comparative analy
sis of the two films, it is perhaps pertinent to place them within broader sociohistorical and cinematic contexts.
When war broke out in Europe in 1939, the U.S. and Hollywood had at
first responded with caution, reluctant to commit to one side or the other. Although
most Americans were sympathetic to the Allies, there was a strong isolationist
mood in America as many believed that America should stay out of this “Euro
pean” war. At the same time, there was a growing faction tha t favored interven
tion: many of the intellectuals who called for American involvement in the war
had already seen the results of the Franco take-over in Spain in 1936. For inter