Secret Beyond the Door (1947) Freud, Lang, the Dream State, and Repressed Poison

SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR (1947)

"Most people are asleep."

"Wind was there and space and sun and storm"¦ everything's beyond the door."

Fritz Lang's psychological film noir, Secret Beyond the Door (1947) is suggestive of a dream state, from which the characters never quite emerge. The film draws blurry lines between what is latent and obvious desire. The doors are symbolic of the compartmental anxieties within the dark recesses of the mind. Secret Beyond the Door is steeped in metaphor, sunless and surreal, and an evocative score by MiklÃ³s RÃ³zsa. Cinematography is by Stanley Cortez, who is responsible for another dream like milieu in Night of the Hunter (1955). It was Joan Bennett, who insisted on using Cortez as cinematographer.

The film co-stars marvelous character actorÂ Anne RevereÂ as Mark’s sister Caroline, Barbara O’Neil, Natalie Schafer, and Paul Cavanagh.

Bosley Crowther, ""¦ Lang is still a director who knows how to turn the obvious, such as locked doors and silent chambers and roving spotlights, into strangely tingling stuff"¦ For all its psycho-nonsense, this film is mildly creepy."

The screenplay by Sylvia Richardson is based on Rufus King’s novel Museum Piece No. Thirteen, and also appeared in the December 1945 issue of Red Book.

Long ago I read a book that told the meaning of dreams. It said that if a girl dreams of a boat or a ship she will reach a safe harbor, but if she dreams of daffodils she is in great danger. But this is no time for me to think of danger. This is my wedding day. "“Celia Lamphere

The film opens with a voice-over by Joan Bennett. Celia Lamphere, (Bennett) journeys through her surreal and sleepy addiction to her new husband, architect Mark Lamphere (Michael Redgrave). Celia's obsessed with the suspicion that Mark is hiding hideous secrets, she plans to succumb to his murderous compulsions. But Mark is not the only one with creeping psychosis. Celia herself is driven by a troubled, neurotic psyche that initially drew her to his enigmatic nature.

Celia wanders through a corridor literally and metaphorically, first in a reverie and then a shadowy nightmare. She first meets Mark on a trip to Mexico when she is mesmerized by the power of passion which can drive two men to fight each other to the death for a woman (Donna Martell). "How proud that woman must be to cause death in the streets." She realizes that Mark is watching her excitement in this, his eyes like fingers. At that moment, Celia has a taste for danger. Like Mark, the thrill of death represents a strong aphrodisiac for her.

Celia: Suddenly I felt that someone was watching me. There was a tingling at the nape of my neck as though the air had turned cool. I felt eyes touching me like fingers. There was a current flowing between us… warm and sweet… and frightening, too, because he saw behind my make-up what no-one had ever seen. Something I didn’t know was there.

Throughout the film Celia strays from reality and finds herself adrift within a conscious flowing daydream. Her voice-over shows she is controlled by the intense beating of her heart. She relates the feeling to drowning "When you are drowning, your whole life flashes before your eyes."

British actor Michael Redgrave made his U.S. film debut as Mark. Initially Lang wanted James Mason in the lead role. Mark turns dark and brooding soon after he marries his new bride. He has been married before and his first wife has died under curious circumstances. Also part of the plot is his serious young son David — who blames him for his mother's death.

There is also, his strangely loyal secretary Miss Robey (Barbara O'Neil) who wears a scarf over one side of her face having been disfigured In a fire. One thinks of Rebecca later on. The film co-stars character actor Anne Revere as Mark's sister Caroline.

Celia:Â I heard his voice and then I didn’t hear it anymore, because the beating of my blood was louder. This was what I’d hunted those foolish years in New York. I knew before I knew his name or touched his hand and for an endless moment, I seemed to float like a feather blown to a place where time had stopped.

Mark:Â You were living that fight. You soaked it all in – love, hate, the passion. You’ve been starved for feelings – any real feelings. I thought: 20th Century Sleeping Beauty. Wealthy American girl who has lived her life wrapped in cotton wool but she wants to wake up. Maybe she can.Â
Celia:Â Is it as hard as all that?Â
Mark:Â Most people are asleep.Â

Mark shows all the telltales signs that he is delusional, having a preoccupation with several murder rooms and one locked door #7 in his estate. He's filled with macabre declarations, "I have a hobby collecting "˜felicitous’ rooms", (Celia mistaking the word for happy, not "˜apt' for murder) "the way a place is built determines what happens in it", "certain rooms cause violence even murders."

Mark Lamphere takes his guests on a tour of his murder rooms.

"As an architect Mark Lamphere gives particular credence to the influence of space and human lives. He repeatedly uses the word "felicitous" to describe his theory that elements of particular space make certain human actions possible. And therefor "˜apt' for that locale." "” The Dark Mirror Psychiatry and Film Noir by Marlisa Santos

Redgrave understands how to walk that fine line between innate intensity and male hysteria — one just needs to see his performance as Maxwell Frere in Dead of Night's (1945) segment The Ventriloquist's Dummy, where he wrestles with his "˜dummy partner' Hugo.

Mark is fascinated by the connection between the action of murder and the significance of his locked rooms as psychological theatre. The film utilizes production design by Max Parker (Chandu, the Magician 1932, Arsenic and Old Lace 1944) who creates a dreamworld of disruptive psychosis. It's within this fairytale steeped in misogyny that Redgrave wants to act out his fantasist murderous impulses. Secret Beyond the Door is a retelling of Bluebeard, the archetype of the serial killer who desires to annihilate women who dominate him. We see a hint of Mark's roiling demons when he takes a group of party guests on a tour of his rooms as curios — original replicas of historic murders. One of his guests, a psychology major, associates the murder of a wife or lover to "unconscious hatred for the mother."

Celia confronts Mark, "It was the way you immersed yourself in those stories you were almost happy about their deaths."

"Probably the most overt Freudian depiction of noir psychosis is found in Secret Beyond the Door, a film that features various re-castings of fairy tale patterns bound up with the psychoanalytic interpretations of childhood trauma and sexual relationships. From the start, the film makes no artistic attempt to submerge its psychoanalysis frame ["¦] all of Celia's fears and desires are open for scrutiny from the time that she first encounters Mark."Â "” The Dark Mirror Psychiatry and Film Noir by Marlisa Santos

She takes a subconscious journey both surreal and substantive as she navigates her new relationship with Mark and her awakened death wish.

During their honeymoon Celia unleashes Mark's sinister urges when she locks the door to their room. This catalyst brings his childhood trauma to the surface. As a young boy he perceived a painful transgression by his mother. His recollection of this seemingly insignificant incident turned into hatred of all women, that has carried throughout his life. These machinations bring him to homicidal delusion. His memories are locked away just as his morbid rooms are show pieces.

Celia embraces her husband's impulses, setting herself up within the replica frozen in time of the death room #7 meant for her. But she desires to unlock Mark's subconscious as well as his locked room.

Celia- "This is my room, waiting for me"

She waits with lilacs, waiting to trespass on the madness that has led him to this dark place. The link between love and death becomes interwoven as Celia prepares to sacrifice herself to Mark if she cannot save him from his tortured sickness. Kelly Oliver and Benigno Trigo cover Freud's fascination with Eros/Thanatos in in their analysis of Secret Beyond the Door, drawing this connection between love and death. WhichÂ "according to the film's logic, death is love's uncanny double."Â

"Inasmuch as closed space can be interpreted as "˜cave', "˜the grave', a house, woman"¦ entry into it is interpreted on various levels as "˜death', "˜conception' "˜return home' and so on: moreover all these acts are thought of as mutually identical".-Teresa de Lauretis

Mark's voice-overs wrestle with the urge to strangle Celia if left alone with her. He imagines what he will say when asked if the murder was premeditated. Redgrave is framed within the scene by the prominent energy of his twisting a scarf as if he is preparing to strangle Celia. Holding the scarf, the murder weapon from Don Ignacio's room, his voice-over gives us the sense of the film's prowling subconsciousness.The darker counterpart to Celia's dream-like twists and turns.

Mark:Â There’s something in your face that I saw once before in South Dakota. Wheat country. Cyclone weather. Just before the cyclone, the air has a stillness. A flat, gold, shimmering stillness. You have it in your face – the same hush before the storm and when you smile it’s like the first breath of wind bending down the wheat. I know that behind that smile is a turbulence that…Â

Mark's Freudian Oedipal struggle with hatred for his mother and all women with latent murderous desire is never quite explored as deeply as it could be in the film. In flashback we understand that he has been shut out of his mother's affection in one scene. Though here, murder seems to be an expression of male exasperation, one wonders if this was consequential in creating such a conflicted and disturbed monster?

"The symbolism of shutting Freud's psychological door is present yet after all the Freudian iconography, the basic motivation lies still in the darkness, with one door closed, leaving us outside the "˜Interior turmoil.'" (Marlisa Santos)

*From Women in Film Noir Edited by E. Ann Kaplan

"In the threatening family mansions of the gothic, or in The Haunting's evil old Hill House, a door, a staircase, a mirror, a portrait are never simply what they appear to be, as an image from Fritz Lang's paranoid woman's film' Secret Beyond the Door. The title sums up the enigma of many of these films in which the question about the husband's motives becomes an investigation of the house (and of the secret of a woman who previously inhabited it.)Â

Freud believed dreams were masks that disguised wish fulfillment. They are metaphorical inroads that point to our subconscious desires. And dreams"” like folklore and images in art"” are used as symbolism manifesting these unconscious emotional conflicts. Director Fritz Lang very often infused his films with an appetite for expressionist symbolism. With recurring iconography of doors and corridors, Secret Beyond the Door is perhaps one of his most pronounced visions of Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams cloaked in the cinematic vogue of film noir.

Some Men Destroy What They Love Most!

This is your EverLovin’ Joey saying, there are no secrets between us, here at The Last Drive In! See ya soon!

THE BIG VIOLENCE OF FRITZ LANG'S THE BIG HEAT (1953)

"Lang's almost musical control of violence deferred both apprehension and catharsis" –Carlos Clarens

"The "heat" in this instance is the appalling cruelty; but the "big heat" is criminal slang for a large-scale investigation and an allusion to the hellish state of the city." "”David Thomson

The Big Heat (1953) is perhaps one of Fritz Lang's most violent noirs. It is an explosive noir masterpiece filled with striking images of the urban milieu that is often the site of Lang's allegorical urban war. But here there are also themes of revenge, obsession, sexual hostility, and corruption. The nightmare exposed as realism in the everyday spaces of the city.

"Violence is the most consistent motif in the film noir; virtually no noir is without it. Its importance is complicated and often explained in sociological terms to justify its aesthetic power. As a statement in itself, violence in noir cinema a distinctive use. Whereas its purpose in the pure gangster film has often been to explain the sociopathic breeding and greed of thuggish personalities who reach power and control, violence in the noir is less explicable and more arbitrary less a matter of historical cause and effect than an unexpected and intense exercise of rage. ["¦] The Big Heat"”each has moments of violence that jar us by their cold-bloodedness, occasionally terrify us in their perverseness. suggest a darker cruel impulse."
"”From Violence In The Noir Street With No Name: A History of the Classic American Film Noir by Andrew Dickos

The film's cold dimensions come from Sidney Boehm's script (based on the novel by William P. McGivern) which conveys perhaps the most ferocious rage in the noir canon. It opens with a gunshot. A corrupt police records sergeant, Tom Duncan, blows his brains out, leaving a suicide note which reveals how gangster Mike Lagana (Alexander Scourby) "”a first-generation immigrant"” has risen to power, holding the city in the clutches of highly organized criminals. Just as Homicide Detective Dave Bannion (Glenn Ford) who is a working class family man, Lagana is an upper-class family man, worshiping the memory of his mother and doting on his daughter. In contrast, Lagana made his money through shady dealings. Duncan's suicide sets forth a chain of events in where the narrative of the film pivots on it's violence.

JEANETTE NOLAN & GLENN FORD Film ‘THE BIG HEAT'(1953)Directed By FRITZ LANG 1Oct. 1953 CTJ27877Allstar/Cinetex COLUMBIA

Duncan's widow Bertha (Jeanette Nolan) shows no emotion over her dead husband's lifeless body and stashes the letter. She telephones Lagana, cleverly signaling the implications of her husband's suicide. Now that she possesses evidence that can expose the syndicate boss who runs the city from his palatial mansion, Bertha proceeds to blackmail Lagana. She is thinking of providing for herself a better lifestyle than a cop's salary.

When Bannion comes to the door she must pretend to be the grieving widow. Bertha gazes at herself in the mirror, the camera holding mirrors in the background as symbols of deceit. And it's a premonition of Bannion's fractured morality as he is about to go on a mission of retaliation. The noir iconography of mirrors depicts duplicity and fragmentation. Charles Lang's cinematography transforms the ordinary environment, texturing it with anxiety.

Lagana lives against skyscrapers and a starry city night scene, but in his home, there are antiques and expensive artwork, a hive of servants, and classical music: this riles Bannion. "Cops have homes, too. Only sometimes there isn't enough money to pay the rent, because an honest cop gets hounded off the force by your thievin' cockroaches for tryin' to do an honest job."

Bannion refuses to drop the investigation into Duncan's suicide. His domestic bliss is shattered when his wife Katie (Jocelyn Brando) first gets an obscene call. This leads him right to the door of Lagana's opulent home to threaten him. When Bannion insults Lagana's pride, he plants a bomb in Bannion's car that accidentally kills his wife. The violent act itself happens offscreen, but the brutal aftermath of such evil becomes the center of the film, a cautionary tale of human behavior and corruption.

The film juxtaposes scenes of the domestic innocence of Bannion's family yet with the explosive violence he is capable of when he is driven to bring people down. He's transformed into an avenging angel. He goes on a personal crusade against Lagana, resigning from the force after he's warned by corrupt Commissioner Higgins (Howard Wendell) to lay off. He tosses his badge, but not his .38, simmering "That (gun) doesn't belong to the department, I bought it."

Bannion's life is now bleak with his private war to expose Lagana's grip on the city and the corruption within the police. He leaves the wholesome suburban home he shared with his wife, now empty except for his daughter's baby carriage in a barren room. With no future before him, he leaves his former home without a trace of his once blissful life.

It is this desolation that springs the violence to come. Bannion rampages through the screen, threatening and intimidating poker-playing bullies as he invades with vigilante fantasy Lagana's corrupt landscape. Bannion, once an average man, turned into the bitter vision of a noir hero who is being pushed to his capacity for violence. Bannion becomes obsessed with vengeance against the Syndicate boss and his chief thug, the sadistic Vince Stone (Lee Marvin). He roughs up hired gunman (Adam Williams), just short of killing him.

Bannion hunts down Duncan's mistress, a B-girl Lucy Chapman (Dorothy Green) who knows where the bodies are buried and she tries to salvage Duncan's reputation. But Bannion accuses her of "a shakedown," walking out of the bar feeling morally superior to Lucy.

She is found the next day outside of town, tortured and murdered by sadistic criminals. The brutal murder takes place off-camera but we still hear the horrifying account in the coroner's report. The morgue attendant asks "You saw those cigarette burns on her body?", "Yeah, I saw them. Every single one of them." As he crushes his cigarette into the ashtray, a nod to his culpability in her death.

Hirsch claims that few film noirs can or even try to sustain the pitch of these intensely violent moments. "These privileged moments are isolated from the rest of the films in which they occur by their special intensity but not by their content: the best film noir thrillers "˜earn' and can absorb these moments of visual and theatrical virtuosity; the violence and mania that are highlighted in these passages of kinky vaudevillian cinema flow directly from the noir milieu." – From Film Noir The Dark Side of the Screen by Foster Hirsch

Vicious Vince Stone, a vicious deranged hoodlum who gets off on torturing women, using one of them as an ashtray, burning a cigarette into a barfly Doris' (Carolyn Jones) hand "” a disquieting show of cruelty. Gloria Grahame is sexy, incendiary, and delightful as Stone's girl, Debbie Marsh. Debbie is a smart-mouthed girl drifting amid the macho posturing of the gang. She becomes an ally of Bannion's after she realizes her life palling around with criminals is aimless and dangerous. Bannion gives her a gun for protection, "the big heat falls for Lagana, for Stone, and all the rest of the lice." The big heat purifies Debbie and Bannion in the climax.

As Debbie, Gloria Grahame possesses a sharp wit, moral ambiguity (half of her face is covered with bandages, two distinct profiles she presents), and enigmatic sensuality. "I'll have to go through life sideways"¦" "I've been rich and I've been poor. Believe me, rich is better." Looking around Ford's hotel room, "I like this. Early nothing." Debbie's a positive counterpoint to the materialistic middle-class Mrs. Duncan, who pushed for her husband to lie down with Lagana, and eventually, kill himself.

Debbie becomes Bannion's agent of death, blasting open the whole corrupt system. She shoots Bertha Duncan at the same desk her husband committed suicide. In this pivotal moment, she exposes the depth of evil in the narrative by handing over the suicide letter.

Just before Debbie shoots Bertha, "You know Bertha, we're sisters under the mink." Hailing from the gutter, Debbie's only complicity with Bertha and her corruption is that they share the same symbol of greed and luxury. And they are both marked for a fall and a noir fate.

The Big Heat has some of the most virulently aggressive attitudes and scenes, not least of which is the iconic moment when Lee Marvin splashes a scalding hot pot of coffee in Gloria Grahame's face, scarring her for what's left of her life on screen. After she is savagely injured when in a jealous rage, Debbie retaliates at her ex-boyfriend by scalding his face the same way. In the escalating crescendo of Debbie's dramatic demise, Vince shoots her in the stomach. Debby dies looking for love and approval from Bannion, her gruesome scars are obscured by her beloved mink coat. As she dies, she is redeemed and her morality is restored.

Toward the end, Bannion can't look at Debbie's face until their one intimate moment before she dies. He confesses wanting to kill Bertha Duncan, acknowledging his rage and finally seeing her in himself. The shadow patterns projected onto them by the window suggest a symmetry in their relationship. Bannion maintains his moral superiority and doesn't submit to his murderous temptations.

All of the women in Bannion's life meet with a tragic end. Bannion is unselfconscious of the victims he leaves in the wake of his mission. Most are women, with four dying violent deaths during the film, suggestive of Lang's streak of misogyny.

"Lang's almost musical control of violence deferred both apprehension and catharsis. Quiet, intimate moments were invested with characteristic threat through the intrusion in the frame of a lampshade or even a potted plant, empty rooms seemed to lie in wait for people. The tension was so expertly set up that when the picture finally let go with the violence, the viewer was ready"”indeed rooting"”for it." "” From Crime Movies by Carlos Clarens

This is you EverLovin’ Joey sayin’ stay out of trouble, will ya!

Recurring Iconography-The Cinematic Mirror

**Vivien Leigh as Blanch Dubois in Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire 1951**

IsobelaCorona is Sara the witch-the witches mirror — **Isobela Corona is Sara the witch-The Witches Mirror 1962**

Repulsion- Catherine — **Catherine Deneuve as the demented Carol in Roman Polanski’s Repulsion 1965**

Bette Davis in Deception — **Bette Davis as Christine Radcliffe in Irving Rapper’s Deception 1946**

Robert Cummings in The Chase — **Robert Cummings is Chuck Scott in Arthur Ripley’s The Chase 1946**

citizen-kane-1941-orson-welles- — **Citizen Kane-1941-Orson Welles**

Corridor of Mirrors 2 — **Terence Young’s Corridor of Mirrors 1948 Edana Romney as Mifanwy Conway**

**Paul Henreid’s Dead Ringer 1964 starring Bette Davis & Bette Davis as twin sisters Margaret DeLorca / Edith Phillips**

**Jack Bernhard’s film noir classic Decoy 1946** **Herbert Rudley as Dr. Craig**

fritz lang's M — **Fritz Lang’s M (1931) starring Peter Lorre**

Ida On Dangerous Ground — **Ida Lupino is blind Mary Malden in Nicholas Ray’s On Dangerous Ground 1951**

Jane Wyman Stage Fright — **Jane Wyman is Eve Gill in Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller Stage Fright 1950**

Jean Simmons and Dan O'Herlihey Home After Dark — **Jean Simmons is Charlotte Bronn and Dan O’Herlihy as Arnold Bronn in Mervyn LeRoy’s psychological melodrama Home Before Dark 1958**

jean-marais-Orpeus '50 — **Jean Cocteau’s Orpheus (OrphÃ©e)1950 starring Jean Marais**

Kiss Before The Mirror '33 James Whale — **The Kiss Before the Mirror 1933 directed by James Whale** **Gloria Stuart and Paul Lukas**

**Robert Montgomery is Phillip Marlowe in Lady in the Lake 1947**

Marilyn Don't Bother to Knock-mirror — **Marilyn Monroe is the disturbed babysitter Nell Forbes in Roy Ward Baker’s Don’t Bother to Knock 1952**

Psycho-Janet Leigh Marion Crane — **Janet Leigh plays the ill fated Marion Crane in Hitchcock’s classic horror Psycho 1960**

Renoir's The Rules of the Game 39 — **Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game 1939**

She Wolf of London — **June Lockhart is Phyllis Allenby in Jean Yarbrough’s She-Wolf of London 1946**

sin in the suburbs — **Joe Sarno’s Sin in the Suburbs 1946**

Somewhere in the night Hodiak — **Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Somewhere in the Night 1946 starring John Hodiak as George Taylor and Nancy Guild (rhymes with Wild) as Christy Smith**

**Gloria Swanson is the sensational Norma Desmond and William Holden is Joe Gillis in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Blvd. 1950**

**Robert Mitchum is Lt. Duke Halliday and William Bendix as Capt. Vincent Blake in Don Siegel’s The Big Steal 1949**

**Olivia de Havilland & Olivia de Havilland star as Terry and Ruth Collins in Robert Siodmak’s The Dark Mirror 1946**

**Rita Hayworth is Elsa Bannister in Orson Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai 1947**

The Queen of Spades mirror — **Yvonne Mitchell is Lizaveta Ivanova in Thorold Dickinson’s The Queen of Spades 1949**

Thomas Mitchell in The Dark Mirror — **Thomas Mitchell is Lt Stevenson in Robert Siodmak’s The Dark Mirror 1946**

what ever happened to baby jane — **Bette Davis is the outrageous Baby Jane Hudson in Robert Aldrich’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? 1962**

Here’s looking back at ya!-Your ever lovin’ monstergirl

Hyper-Masculinity/Hidden Frailty: The Robert Ryan Aesthetic in Film Noir

In honor of the 40th anniversary of Robert Ryan’s death July 11, 1973 with a special nod to Karen & The Dark Pages for their spectacular tribute to this incredibly real man!

“Ryan was unfailingly powerful, investing his tormented characters with a brooding intensity that suggests coiled depth. Cut off from the world by the strength of their ‘feelings’ his characters seem to be in the grip of torrential inner forces. They are true loners. Ryan’s work has none of the masked, stylized aura of much noir acting. He performs with emotional fullness that creates substantial, complex characters rather than icons.” –Foster Hirsch-FILM NOIR: The Darker Side of the Screen

Clearly Robert Ryan’s infinite presence in film and his numerous complex characters manifest an embracing universal ‘internal conflict’ of masculinity. I tribute certain roles the actor inhabited during his striking career. Though he was cast more often in the part as the imposing heavy, the depth and breadth of Ryan’s skill with his rough-hewn good looks should have landed him more roles as a lead male capable of such penetrating levels of emotion. He had a depth that suggests a scarcely hidden intensity smoldering at the surface.

Crossfire-wPaulKelly — **Robert Ryan as Montgomery in *Edward Dmytryk’s* Crossfire 1947.**

Act of Violence Ryan — **Robert Ryan in Act of Violence ’48**

A critic for the New York Times reviewingÂ Act of Violence (1948) Â wrote about Robert Ryan’s persona as the madly driven veteran bent on revenge, Joe Parkson calling him “infernally taut.”

Frank Krutnik discusses ‘Masculinity and its discontents’ in his book In A Lonely Street, “In order to make the representation of masculinity in the noir thriller, there follows a schematic run-through of Freudian work on the determination of masculine identity.” Claiming Freud’s work can be co-opted into film with an emphasis of its relevance to analysis of the cultural machinery of patriarchy.” He discusses patriarchal culture which relies heavily on the maintenance of a gender-structured ‘disequilibrium’ with its roots in the myth of the Oedipal Complex. Involving not only the power-based hierarchy of male service to masculine power but the established normative gender values which inform both the male and female figure.

act of violence ryan and leigh — **Act of Violence Robert Ryan as Joe Parkson co-starring Janet Leigh**

Many of the characters in Ryan’s noir world are informed by a cultural ‘determinacy of the phallus’ that authorizes toughness and strips the limits of desire as an obligation to masculine identity. The patriarchal power structure predetermines a fixed and limited role that creates a destiny of submission and impotence in Ryan’s characters. But within the framework of these extreme male figures lies an intricate conflict of varying degrees of vulnerability and fragility.

Ryan manifests this duality within hyper-masculine characters. Outwardly physical, confrontational, and hostile, Ryan is a master at playing with men who suffer from alienation and inferiority surrounding their own ‘maleness’ and self-worth. He was never just a dark noir brute or anti-hero but a complex man actualized through layers of powerful dramatic interpretation. His performances suggest a friction of subjugated masculinity bubbling within.

Ryan and Stanwyck in Clash By Nightjpg — **Ryan as Earl Pfeiffer and Barbara Stanwyck in Fritz Lang’s Clash By Night.**

The trajectory of the male through the Oedipus Complex encompasses male subjectivity which is a principal issue in the noir ‘tough-thriller.’ The ‘existential thematic’ link to the Oedipus myth concerns questions of male desire and identity as they relate to the overarching law of existing patriarchal culture substituted for the original fearsome ‘divinity.’ This element is one of the driving psychological themes underlying any good classic film noir.

In this post, I put my focus primarily on Ryan’s characters within the framework of each film and while I discuss the relationship between him and the central players I do not go as in-depth as I usually do discussing his co-stars or plot design.

I apply this thematic representation to many of the roles engendered in the films of Robert Ryans‘ that I’ve chosen to discuss here. A patriarchal power structure establishes the tragedy of man’s destiny, a fixed and limited role in the character’s own destiny as there is a predominant power that threatens them into submission and sheds light on their own impotence. So many of the noir characters in a Robert Ryan noir world are shaped by a cultural authority structured through ‘determinacy of the phallus’ that authorizes toughness in the male identity that strips away the limits of desire, as an obligation to ‘masculine identity.’

the_set_up — **Ryan’s stoic boxer Stoker in Robert Wise’s The Set Up.**

I’m focusing on particular Ryan’s roles within a noir context that depict archetypal hyper-masculine tropes and the problematic strife within those characters. Whether Ryan is playing the deeply flawed hero or the tormented noir misfit, his characters are afflicted with an inherent duality of virility and vulnerability, inner turmoil, alienation, persecution, and masochism. It’s a territorial burden that Robert Ryan so effortlessly explores.

These films show Ryan’s trajectory through forces of menacing restraint and poignant self-expression. Within a noir landscape, the schism of stark virility and tenuous masculinity exposes the complexity of alienation, masochism, and frailty. Robert Ryan’s performances are a uniquely fierce and formidable power.

I’m discussing: The Woman On the Beach (1947) haunted & emasculated coastguardsman Lt. Scott Burnett, Caught (1949) neurotic millionaire Smith Ohlrig, The Set-Up (1949) noble over-the-hill boxer Bill ‘Stoker’ Thompson, Born To Be Bad (1950) misanthropic & masochistic novelist Nick Bradley, Clash by Night (1952) cynical misogynist projectionist Earl Pfeiffer, Beware, My Lovely (1952) morose psychotic vagrant handyman Howard Wilton, On Dangerous Ground (1952) unstable, alienated violent cop Jim Wilson, Odds Against Tomorrow (1959) racist persecuted ex-con Earle Slater.

Within the framework of these ‘extreme’ male figures lies an intricate conflict with varying degrees of vulnerability & fragility within the male psyche. The narratives don’t necessarily flesh out this conflict plainly, but Ryan’s performances certainly suggest and inform us about the friction of this subjugated theme bubbling to the surface as he manifests the duality within his hyper-masculine characters. Robert Ryan was a master at playing men who suffer from alienation and inferiority surrounding their own ‘maleness’ and self-worth.

Ryan is never just a dark noir ‘brute’ or anti-hero but moreover, a complex male who is actualized through layers of powerful dramatic interpretation. A complexity of stark virility and ‘tenuous maleness’ as the narrative witnesses Ryan’s trajectory transforming him through various dynamic forces of menacing restraint and poignant self-expression. Outwardly physical, confrontational, hostile, and ultimately masculine, and the schism that is inwardly emotional, alienated, self-deprecating, masochistic, and fragile within the film noir landscape. Robert Ryan’s performances still maintain a uniquely fierce and formidable aesthetic of the ‘suffering-marginalized man.’

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