Refocus The Films of William Wyler John Price Editor All Chapter

ReFocus: The Films of William Wyler
John Price (Editor)

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ReFocus: The Films of William Wyler
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ReFocus: The American Directors Series
Series Editors: Robert Singer, Frances Smith, and

Gary D. Rhodes
Editorial board: Kelly Basilio, Donna Campbell,

Claire Perkins, Christopher Sharrett, and
Yannis Tzioumakis
ReFocus is a series of contemporary methodological and theoretical approaches to the interdisciplinary

analyses and interpretations of neglected American directors, from the once-famous to the ignored, in direct
relationship to American culture—its myths, values, and historical precepts.
Titles in the series include:
Preston Sturges Edited by Jeff Jaeckle and Sarah Kozloff
Delmer Daves Edited by Matthew Carter and Andrew Nelson
Amy Heckerling Edited by Frances Smith and Timothy Shary
Budd Boetticher Edited by Gary D. Rhodes and Robert Singer
Kelly Reichardt E. Dawn Hall
William Castle Edited by Murray Leeder
Barbara Kopple Edited by Jeff Jaeckle and Susan Ryan
Elaine May Edited by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Dean Brandum
Spike Jonze Edited by Kim Wilkins and Wyatt Moss-Wellington
Paul Schrader Edited by Michelle E. Moore and Brian Brems
John Hughes Edited by Timothy Shary and Frances Smith
Doris Wishman Edited by Alicia Kozma and Finley Freibert
Albert Brooks Edited by Christian B. Long
William Friedkin Steve Choe
Robert Altman Edited by Lisa Dombrowski and Justin Wyatt
Mary Harron Edited by Kyle Barrett
Wallace Fox Edited by Gary D. Rhodes and Joanna Hearne
Richard Linklater Edited by Kim Wilkins and Timotheus Vermeulen
Roberta Findlay Edited by Peter Alilunas and Whitney Strub
Richard Brooks Edited by R. Barton Palmer and Homer B. Pettey
William Wyler Edited by John M. Price
edinburghuniversitypress.com/series/refoc
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ReFocus
The Films of William Wyler
Edited by John M. Price
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Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish
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© editorial matter and organization John M. Price, 2023

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Contents
List of Figures vii

Acknowledgmentsx
Notes on Contributors xi
Introduction: William Wyler—Chariot Races and Flower Shows 1

John M. Price
Part I Style
1 Wyler’s Early Films: Evolution of the “Styleless Style” 25
John M. Price
2 More than Meets the Eye: Perspectives on William Wyler and
the Auteur Theory 54
Kyle Barrowman
3 Traumatic History and the Prosthesis of Myth in Wyler’s
The Best Years of Our Lives 68
Carol Donelan
4 Persistent Presence: Space and Time in the Films of William Wyler 88
Francis Mickus
Part II Collaboration, Genre, and Adaptation
5 Clash of the Titans: The Hidden Collaboration of William
Wyler and David O. Selznick on Carrie (1952) 109
Milan Hain
6 Narratives of Failure: Dead End (1937), The Desperate Hours (1955),
and Gangsters in Distress 127
Terrance H. McDonald
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vi contents
7 Wyler’s Wuthering Heights (1939): Genre, Transnationalism, and the

Adaptation of the Victorian Novel 143
Gabrielle Stecher
Part III Gender and Sexuality
8 William Wyler’s The Heiress (1949) and the Unknown Woman 161
Agustin Zarzosa
9 These Three: Wyler and his Two Adaptations of The Children’s Hour 176
Matthias Smith
Part IV War and Peace
10 A War of the People: Destruction, Community, and Hope in
William Wyler’s Wartime Films 191
Robert Ribera
11 Turning the Other Cheek: Wyler’s Pacifism Trilogy—Friendly
Persuasion (1956), The Big Country (1958), and Ben-Hur (1959) 208
John M. Price
Part V Global Wyler
12 William Wyler’s Voyage to Italy: Roman Holiday (1953), Progressive
Hollywood, and the Cold War 227
Anthony Smith
13 “Down Eros, Up Mars!”: Post-Colonialism, Imperial Violence, and
the Corrupting Influence of Hate in William Wyler’s Ben-Hur (1959) 244
Kaitlin Pontzer
14 “Life Isn’t Always What One Likes”: The Unbearable Lightness
of Royalty, and Other Stereotypes in Roman Holiday (1953) 258
Etienne Boumans
Filmography 278
Academy Awards for Acting under Wyler 281
Index 284
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Figures
I.1 Early Wyler staging-in-depth (The Shakedown, 1929) 8

I.2 Deep focus dialogue (Wuthering Heights, 1939) 8
I.3 Deep focus dialogue (The Little Foxes, 1941) 9
I.4 Deep focus dialogue (The Children’s Hour, 1961) 9
I.5 Deep focus demonstrating character’s reaction to significant
object (The Little Foxes, 1941) 10
I.6 Staging-in-depth without deep focus as to direct attention to
one part of frame over another (The Little Foxes, 1941) 13
1.1 Staging-in-depth (The Shakedown, 1929) 28
1.2 Staging-in-depth with character movement within a static shot
(The Shakedown, 1929) 29
1.3 Extreme staging-in-depth with static characters in the
foreground and moving characters middle- and background
(The Shakedown, 1929) 31
1.4 Fairly shallow staging-in-depth but with character arrangement
allowing for single shot dialogue (The Shakedown, 1929) 31
1.5 Shot composition that allows action–reaction in one shot
(The Love Trap, 1929) 33
1.6 Long take which allows actors to play the scene longer
1.7 Composition and shot length preventing the interruptions
of edit points (The Love Trap, 1929) 34
1.8 Staging-in-depth and frame within a frame composition
1.9 Staging-in-depth without deep focus, but with rack focus
between planes to shift attention (The Love Trap, 1929) 36
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viii figures
1.10 Staging-in-depth without deep focus, both characters in frame

but the emotion of only one is important (The Love Trap, 1929) 37
1.11 Staging-in-depth and frame within a frame (Hell’s Heroes, 1929) 39
1.12 Use of stairs (These Three, 1936) 41
1.13 Use of stairs (The Heiress, 1949) 41
1.14 Use of stairs (Ben-Hur, 1959) 42
1.15 The dynamic and confined nature of office activity displayed by
the crossing movement of characters (Counsellor at Law, 1933) 43
1.16 Spatial dimension created by movement toward and away from
camera and past other characters (Counsellor at Law, 1933) 44
1.17.1 The hectic nature of office activity demonstrated by movement
in and out of doors (Counsellor at Law, 1933) 45
1.17.2 The hectic nature of office activity demonstrated by movement
in and out of doors (Counsellor at Law, 1933) 45
1.18 Creating deep spatial reality without deep focus (Counsellor
at Law, 1933) 46–7
1.19 Use of proto-film noir lighting to express character’s dark
emotions (Counsellor at Law, 1933) 48
1.20 Use of staging and lighting to express characters’ emotional
separation (Counsellor at Law, 1933) 48
1.21 The mirror limbo from Citizen Kane (1941) antedates . . . 50
1.22 . . . Wyler’s use of the same effect in The Good Fairy (1935) 50
1.23 Staging-in-depth for humorous effect (The Good Fairy, 1935) 51
3.1 Character relations expose a postwar social reality premised in
hierarchies of class, gender, and race difference (The Best Years
of Our Lives, 1946) 75
3.2 Wyler maintains a relation between interiors and exteriors
(The Best Years of Our Lives, 1946) 76
3.3 Viewers see the protagonists as well as what the protagonists see,
simultaneously (The Best Years of Our Lives, 1946) 76
3.4 Wyler composes in depth, splitting viewer attention
3.5 Wyler invites viewers to construct meaning from character
relations, blocked and staged in deep space (The Best Years
of Our Lives, 1946) 79
3.6 Acting style and lighting contributes to the creation of an
expressionist reality, or inwardness, outwardly expressed
3.7 Wyler uses style to achieve a verisimilar appearance of inner
subjective reality (The Best Years of Our Lives, 1946) 84
4.1 The loneliness between the end of one life and the beginning
of another (Dodsworth, 1936) 91
4.2 The ominous nature of an extremely low angle (Dead End, 1937) 91
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figures ix
4.3 Multiple planes and multiple frames (Dead End, 1937) 92

4.4 Hemming in the characters (Detective Story, 1951) 95
4.5 Hemming in the suspect (Detective Story, 1951) 96
11.1 Staging-in-depth to demonstrate dissimilar views toward
violence simultaneously (Friendly Persuasion, 1956) 215
11.2 Fight scene shot with extremely long lens to express the
futility of violence (The Big Country, 1958) 218
11.3 God’s-eye expressing detachment from or disapproval of
human violence (The Big Country, 1958) 219
11.4 Staging-in-depth and deep focus expressing the futility of
kindness when faced with extreme violence . . . or perhaps the
exploitation of violence for good (Ben-Hur, 1959) 222
14.1 Life isn’t always what one likes (Roman Holiday, 1953) 263
14.2 Duty comes before pleasure (Roman Holiday, 1953) 266
14.3 Flâneurs are invisible to others (Roman Holiday, 1953) 269
14.4 “Positive” stereotypes of Italian locals (Roman Holiday, 1953) 270
14.5 The iconic Vespa ride from Roman Holiday (1953) lives on 271
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the ReFocus series editors, especially Robert Singer
whose support and assistance was indispensable to me. I would also like to
express gratitude to everyone at Edinburgh University Press, especially Sam
Johnson and Eddie Clark. A special thanks goes to Carol Donelan for her help
in collecting and preparing still images, as well as all the contributing authors,
not only for their efforts but also their enthusiasm for the works of William
Wyler and for the desire which they shared with me to make this “greatest
film director you’ve never heard of ” better known to all. Lastly, I wish to
acknowledge the debt this volume owes to my late wife, Theresa, whose enor-
mous love continues to inspire and guide me.
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Notes on Contributors
Kyle Barrowman has a Ph.D. from the Cardiff University School of Journal-
ism, Media, and Culture, an M.A. from the University of Chicago in Cinema
and Media Studies, and a B.A. from Columbia College in Film & Video. Dr.
Barrowman has taught World Cinema, and Film and Cultural Theory at Cardiff
University, Cinema Analysis and Criticism at Columbia College, and History
of Cinema at DePaul University. He has been published in Mise-en-scène: The
Journal of Film & Visual Narration 5.2 (2020), Media Res (2020), The Journal of
Ayn Rand Studies 18.2 (2018), and Offscreen 22.7 (2018).
Etienne Boumans is an independent scholar, researching popular culture and

the arts and their relationship to human rights, and is the chair of the evalua-
tion committee on the Arts Flemish Parliament Act, as well as the former head
of the European Parliament’s committee secretariat on culture and education
(2004–7). Boumans has published on European policies, human rights, film his-
tory and cultural heritage issues in Limina: A Journal of Historical and Cultural
Studies 25.1 (2020), The Quint: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly from the North, 12.2
(2020), The Apollonian – A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 5 (2018), and was
a contributing author to The Encyclopedia of Racism in American Films (2018).
Carol Donelan received her Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts-

Amherst in Comparative Literature (Film Studies), and her M.A. is in Film
Studies and Comparative Literature from the University of Iowa. She has
taught in the Department of Cinema & Media Studies at Carleton College
since 1999. She has been published in A Critical Companion to Stanley Kubrick
(2020), A Critical Companion to James Cameron (2019), Film Criticism 42.1
(2018), and Quarterly Review of Film & Video 35.1 (2018).
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xii notes on contributors
Milan Hain is an Assistant Professor and Area Head of Film Studies at the
Department of Theater and Film Studies at Palacký University in Olomouc,
Czech Republic. A former Fulbright visiting researcher at University of Cali-
fornia, Santa Barbara, Dr. Hain is the author of Hugo Haas a jeho (americké)
filmy [Hugo Haas and His (American) Films] and editor and co-author of
three other books on cinema. His most recent articles have been published by
Jewish Film and New Media 7.1 (2019) and Journal of Adaptation in Film and
Performance 13.3 (2020).
Terrance H. McDonald has a Ph.D. from Brock University (St. Catherines),

with a dissertation entitled “Mediated Masculinities: The Forms of Mascu-
linity in American Genre Film.” Dr. McDonald has taught Cinema Studies
at the University of Toronto Mississauga and he has been published
in Men and Masculinities, 21.1 (2018), and From Deleuze to Posthumanism:
Philosophies of Immanence (2022). Dr. McDonald also currently has a chapter
accepted by Edinburgh University Press for inclusion in Refocus: The Films
of Denis Villeneuve.
Francis Mickus works at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and is a current Doc-
toral Candidate in History at the University of Paris 1, Pantheon-Sorbonne.
Mickus holds a Masters in Art History from the Sorbonne’s Institut National
d’Histoire de l’Art (University of Paris IV) and a Maîtrise in Modern
Letters from the Sorbonne Nouvelle (University Paris III). Mickus has writ-
ten on American filmmakers such as Capra, Hitchcock, Welles, and Zemeckis,
as well as on King Henry V and the relationship between history and images.
He has been published in The Quint 13.2 (2021), A Critical Companion to
Robert Zemeckis (2020), and La revue du Cinéma 4 (2006). Mickus affords
this collection an integral international frame of reference toward an Ameri-
can filmmaker. Unlike the contributors who approach Wyler from a strictly
cinematic expertise, Mickus brings great credentials in Art History and there-
fore a unique frame of reference on Wyler’s visual style.
Kaitlin Pontzer received her Ph.D. from Cornell University in 2021.

Before pursuing doctoral studies at Cornell, she studied the history of early
modern England at Loyola University Chicago and Humanistic Studies at
Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame. Dr. Pontzer works on political culture
in early modern England and the British Empire. Her research interests
include partisan politics, rhetoric, empire, history of emotions, and gender.
She was a contributing writer for Synapsis, A Health Humanities Journal and
has taught courses on the early modern death penalty at Cornell University.
Her academic background in European History brings a unique perspective
to Film Studies.
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notes on contributors xiii
John M. Price has both a professional and an academic background in Film

and Literature. He has a Ph.D. in Film and Literature from Northern Illinois
University and a B.A. in English and Communications from the University of
Notre Dame. Dr. Price has taught English at both Northern Illinois University
and the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. He also has over twenty years of
professional film and television production experience as a producer, director,
scriptwriter, and lighting director. He has been published in The Performativity
of Villainy and Evil in Anglophone Literature and Media (2021), Literature/Film
Quarterly, 47:1 (2019), Critical Insights: Alfred Hitchcock (2017), Jonathan Swift
and Philosophy (2017), and Poli-Femo: Letteratura e Arti (2016).
Robert Ribera received his Ph.D. from Boston University, focusing on

Film Studies, Twentieth Century American History, and Twentieth Century
American Art History. Dr. Ribera teaches Race & Class in Contemporary
American Film, Animation History, Contemporary Female Directors, Film
History, Documentary Film Production, Documentary History, The Cinema
of Walt Disney, Contemporary and Classical Film Theory, Film Analysis,
Advanced Film Analysis, Narrative Film Production, and Documentary
Film of the 60s and 70s at Portland State University. He is the editor of
Martin Scorsese: Interviews (Revised and Updated) (2017) and has a chapter in
ReFocus: The Films of Paul Schrader (2020).
Anthony Smith received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in

American Studies and a B.A. from Boston College. He has been an Associate
Professor at the University of Dayton since 2010. Dr. Smith has been pub-
lished in Roman Catholicism in America: A Thematic History (2019), Rivista luci
e ombre, 3.4 (2016), and Catholics in the Movies (2008).
Matthias Smith currently works at the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam.

He has also worked at the UCLA Rare Book School and performed film
restoration for Columbus State University. He has taught Introduction to
World Cinema, the Woman’s Film genre, and Queer Cinema at the University
of North Carolina, from which he received his master’s in Art in Film Studies.
Smith has also studied Film and Art History at the University of Oxford and
spoken at the 2018 Stars and Screen Conference at Rowan University. His
current research project concerns the surprisingly ahead-of-its-time Anna
und Elizabeth (German, 1933), a lesbian drama, which has immersed Smith
in several European film archives. Smith’s academic interest include pre-
Stonewall queer cinema, Golden Age Hollywood, and the Women’s Film genre.
Gabrielle Stecher’s areas of academic expertise are eighteenth- and nineteenth-

century British literature and visual culture, museum studies, feminist literary
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xiv notes on contributors
criticism and art historiography, history, theory of the novel, and Victorian litera-
ture on film. She has presented at the American Society for Eighteenth-Century
Literature, the Dickens’ Universe Conference, and the British Women Writers
Conference. Her current manuscript in progress is Vanity Fair on Film. Stecher
received her Ph.D. in English in 2022 from the University of Georgia, and is
now part of the faculty at Indiana University Bloomington. Stecher’s expertise is
essential to this collection as a chapter dealing specifically with Wyler’s skills in
adapting literature to the screen.
Agustin Zarzosa has a Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles,
Department of Film, Television and Digital Media, an M.A. from New York
University in Cinema Studies, and is currently an Associate Professor and
the Chair of Cinema Studies, School of Film and Media Studies at Purchase
College. Dr. Zarzosa is the author of Refiguring Melodrama in Film and Tele-
vision: Captive Affects, Elastic Sufferings, Vicarious Objects (2012), and he has
also been published in Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image 2
(2011), New Review of Film and Television Studies 8.4 (2010), and Colloquy:
text theory critique 13 (2007).
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Introduction: William Wyler—
Chariot Races and Flower Shows
John M. Price
He was an ace professional, a perfectionist. Were he alive in full spade

today, we’d have rather better films than we actually have now.1
Every aspect of his films, he took great care over, probably at the
expense of promoting his own name. It’s extraordinary that his films are
so famous, and so celebrated, more so than William Wyler, the name.2
A broad range of experience and the skills to handle diverse situations is usu-
ally thought to be an asset. However, it seems that William Wyler’s mastery
of a wide variety of film genres is precisely what caused him to be devalued by
many film scholars. Indeed, the current status of and the problem with Wyler
is summed up by Jan Herman, “Today, despite his extraordinary accomplish-
ments, Wyler is hidden from view.”3 A similar assessment would lead columnist
David B. Green, in 2015, to christen Wyler, “the most famous director you never
heard of.”4 Wyler often proclaimed his desire to attempt every type of film. When
asked why he accepted the project of the 1959 version of Ben-Hur, he replied: “I
said it would be intriguing to see if I could make a Cecil B. DeMille picture.”5
The venue was not important to Wyler. The challenge for him was to tell a story
in the clearest and most understandable way for the audience, regardless of the
material. This diversity, however, worked against recognition as an auteur, for
when he did agree to helm Ben-Hur, the auteurists declared it a blatantly crass
attempt at simply making money.6 Wyler did nothing to assuage them; he stated
quite openly, “I thought this picture gonna make a lots of money, and maybe I’ll
get some of it.”7 A more serious reason for Wyler shepherding this project was
given by producer Sam Zimbalist who “wanted Wyler to give . . . the picture
what it needed—body, depth, intimacy—the sophisticated treatment for which
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2 john m. price
Wyler’s work was prized.”8 So, despite those who may see Wyler as only a gifted
craftsman and not a true artist, Zimbalist’s desire for Wyler’s hand was the rec-
ognition of the director’s most valued skill—breathing life into characters and
examining the complexities of human relationships.
In terms of Wyler’s diversity, André Bazin admits that “there is no con-
sistent motif in the work of Wyler.” 9 However, Bazin does not see this as a
stumbling block to Wyler appreciation: “I do not think that it is more difficult
to recognize the signature of Wyler in just a few shots than it is to recognize the
signatures of Ford, Fritz Lang, or Hitchcock.”10 Undoubtedly, Wyler detrac-
tors will point out that, unlike the cinematic auteurs previously mentioned,
Wyler did not focus upon a certain theme and explore it over and over to exam-
ine all its possibilities (e.g. suspense and Hitchcock). Bazin sees the Wyler sig-
nature as something different than specific genres in specific settings exploring
specific themes. “There is an evident fondness,” Bazin says of Wyler, “for psy-
chological scenarios set against social backgrounds . . . his work as a whole
leaves us with the piercing and rigorous impression of a psychological analy-
sis.”11 Wyler’s talents as a filmmaker fall into three distinct capabilities: the abil-
ity to adapt material from the stage or literature to the screen and do so with
cinematic vitality, the use of camera movement and staging-in-depth to create
a type of screen “realism,” and last, but perhaps most important, the gift of
collaboration. Such collaborations were often contentious, but these amalgams
generated some of the most awarded films of all time. Further analysis reveals
that Wyler’s collaborations also have three distinct strains: with producers,
namely Samuel Goldwyn; with technological artists, like Gregg Toland; and
with a wide range of performers.
Wyler felt that the genre should dictate the style. Therefore, in Wyler’s
opinion, a style of direction must be malleable in the face of each specific film.12
The result is that those who have denied Wyler status among an elevated ech-
elon of filmmakers have described his style as “styleless.” If such an epithet is
meant to suggest that Wyler’s style is not intrusive, then Wyler would agree:
The camera is a marvelous instrument [but] you have to use it with dis-
cipline . . . A director should not try to attract attention to himself [and]
away from the actors and away from the story. He should attract atten-
tion to himself by making great films, great performances . . . Don’t
detract from the story or the actors. That’s what the people have come to
see. They did not come to see what you can do with a camera.13
This declaration should not be seen, however, as just Wyler’s cinematic ethos. It
is, in fact, the very definition of classic Hollywood’s so-called “invisible style.”
This artistic propensity for self-effacement is of course a misnomer. Any film
technique is only “invisible” by comparison with other techniques and by the
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i n t ro d u c t i o n 3
smoothness of its execution. A camera movement may be less intrusive than a

violent edit point, but both are highly manipulative. While Wyler’s style empha-
sizes mise en scène over montage, the former and the latter are both constructs. The
classic Hollywood style is not “invisible” nor is Wyler’s style “styleless.” Due to
his beginnings in action-packed Westerns, Wyler developed early on a fondness
for moving the camera, but this proclivity would also become wedded to an affin-
ity for staging-in-depth and later deep focus. This volume of the ReFocus series
intends to explore the many facets of the Wyler canon which comprise this style.
Whatever opinion one holds of the Wyler style, there is no denying that his
formula for filmmaking yielded phenomenal success, not only at the box office but
also in accumulated awards. Wyler’s three Academy Awards for Best Director14—
Mrs. Miniver (1942), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), and Ben-Hur (1959)—are
second only to John Ford’s four wins for director. Wyler was also nominated for
Best Director an additional nine times and three times as a producer.15 He was also
nominated for Best Director by the Directors Guild of America seven times and
winning once for Ben-Hur.16 Perhaps even more telling than his own awards are
the myriad of acting Oscars that Wyler had helped his stars to achieve. No other
film director has ever shepherded more actors and actress to Oscar-winning per-
formances than Wyler—thirty-six nominations and fourteen wins, both in lead-
ing and supporting roles. Life-long friend, writer–director–actor John Huston17
said that Wyler had “a genius for getting the truth out of an actor.”18 The list of
his award-winning performers19 bears witness not only to the wide range of genres
that he mastered, but also to a proficiency with woman’s stories and characters’
psychology that few of his contemporaries possessed, and perhaps most signifi-
cantly a dedication to collaborative craftsmanship and a belief that cinematic tech-
nique is there to forefront performance and enhance the story.
Of the all the influences on Wyler’s style, no doubt one of the most forma-
tive was his immigrant experience. William Wyler was born Willy Wyler (the
William would be added later in America) on July 1, 1902, in the province of
Alsace-Lorraine, today part of France but then, and since France’s defeat in the
Franco-Prussian War, part of the recently unified Germany. Thus, at the time of
Wyler’s birth, his hometown was not known as Mulhouse, but Mülhausen. His
mother, Melanie, was German, born in Stuttgart, and his father, Leopold, Swiss,
and although his family and their town spoke German, Wyler’s mother insisted
that her family all spoke French as well. The family was Jewish and Wyler’s
mother, even before the advent of National-Socialism, felt that Germany had
a long-standing history of antisemitism. Alsace found itself contested for and
changing hands several times early in the First World War and young Willy was
a first-hand witness to the ravages of war. Indeed, the Wylers had to take refuge
in the cellar several times. Young Wyler was never a strong student, and showed
little talent or desire to succeed at the family haberdashery business. Even when
he was later sent to work in Paris, his strengths remained hidden and his mother
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4 john m. price
did not know what to do with him. Fate took a hand, however, in the person
of Wyler’s uncle, Carl Laemmle. Laemmle was one of the founding owners of
Universal Pictures, and he suggested that the family allow the young William,
now eighteen, to immigrate to the United States and work for him in the mov-
ies. So Wyler moved to America in 1920 and began a career in the film industry,
and after one year in New York with Universal’s publicity office, he moved on to
Hollywood, at age nineteen.
As his uncle’s life would attest, Wyler was not unique as an immigrant film-
maker. The influx of European filmmakers had a decided influence on early
Hollywood and the classic era. Yet, Wyler’s specific experience may explain at
least one thematic continuity in his films. While Wyler certainly valued his new
homeland—he became a US citizen in 1928—his films are not full of the overly
optimistic Americanism and belief in the individual and community to overcome
oppression of big government and big business that characterized the films of
another immigrant director, Frank Capra. Wyler’s films were not visually demon-
strative like German Expressionism nor concerned with exoticism like Josef von
Sternberg. His films were not as dark as Erich von Stroheim nor as cynically
humorous as Billy Wilder (a director whose name is often confused with Wyler).
The territorial turmoil that Wyler saw, in the First World War, seems to have
fostered films that deal with the individual struggling in circumstances that seem
beyond their ability to handle. In addition, Wyler’s “fascination with America and
things American” but seen through “European sophistication and temperament,”
and executed with a visual style which appears at times detached, “suggest[s] the
point of view of an interested, sympathetic outsider.”20 For Wyler, his insight into
his adopted country bestows a viewpoint very different from a native-born per-
spective. Gregory Peck would describe Wyler as having European sensibilities
but also a hundred percent American.21 Wyler’s characters are almost exclusively
Americans, and, while his explorations of the human condition surely have uni-
versal application, they are uniquely set in and derived from American society.
Even Dodsworth (1936), set largely outside of the United States, views European
culture and society through the eyes of an American.
Wyler’s early days in Hollywood, and the very nature of the business at that
time, would serve to create the craftsmanship that is at the core of his style.
Starting at the lowest level of moviemaking acquainted him with all aspects of
production, helping him to develop a variety of skills, and he quickly became
a third assistant director and then second assistant director. In fact, in a career
harbinger, Wyler served as an assistant on the 1925 silent version of Ben-Hur.
It was also in 1925, at the age of twenty-three, that Wyler got his first chance to
direct. It was a two-reeler, running approximately twenty-four minutes, enti-
tled The Crook Buster and was part of a group of Westerns called the Mustang
series. He would go on to direct twenty-one such “shorts” for Universal in
this series. Wyler himself would later describe this filmmaking situation as “a
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training school for directors . . . even girls . . . or any young fellow who showed
he was eager, ambitious, and wanted to get . . . to direct.”22 Wyler would direct
one of these Westerns every week, each with a total budget of $2,000. The rate
at which Hollywood “cranked out” these two-reelers—hundreds of them each
year—as well as their rudimentary narratives, fostered an emphasis on devel-
oping techniques that were subservient to and enhancing of the story.
In 1926, six months after The Crook Buster, Wyler graduated to directing
his first five-reeler, Lazy Lightning. As a five-reeler, Lazy Lightning is consid-
ered Wyler’s first feature-length movie. He would do six of these as part of
Universal’s Blue Streak series of Westerns. After the Blue Streak series, Wyler
did not wait long to expand his type of movies. His next three projects, all now
considered to be lost films, did include two more Westerns, Desert Dust (1927)
and Thunder Riders (1928), but the third, Anybody Here Seen Kelly? (1928),
was his first non-Western, his first comedy, and his first film with a running
length greater than an hour. It was also a film for which he was allowed to shoot
largely on location in New York City. This gave the film an almost documentary
appearance, and no doubt gave birth to the characterization of “Wyler realism.”
Wyler’s next film, The Shakedown (1929), was a “part-talkie,” in that it was
produced in both silent and sound versions. The Shakedown was once consid-
ered lost, but was found and restored in 1998. Wyler would then return to com-
edy with The Love Trap (1929), a film which also straddled the silent and sound
eras in that it was silent except for the last few scenes. In the opinion of Michael
Anderegg, it is The Love Trap that demonstrates Wyler’s “growing maturity and
self-confidence,” as the young director “transition[s] from outdoor adventure to
domestic intrigue with remarkable ease.”23 In The Love Trap, Wyler presents us
with a female lead character who is more than a match for the male characters,
“exposes sexual hypocrisy, [and] takes control of her life.”24 The deft handling
of such a strong heroine would prove great practice for his later collaborations
with Bette Davis and the development of her screen characters.
It would be the advent of sound, however, that would allow Wyler to further
develop his style and advance his sense of realism. Hell’s Heroes (1929) was not
only Wyler’s first “all-talkie,” but was also Universal’s first all-sound film. The
film was shot outdoors on location—clearly an opportunity for Wyler to enhance
realism. Furthermore, the story was told through the eyes of the “bad guys,”
which made it an unorthodox Western. This was an early and portending example
of what would become one of Wyler’s defining characteristics—the ability to take
a familiar situation and look at it from a different, and often unique, perspective.
As Sunday Times film critic, Stephen Armstrong, would put it, “Wyler would take
standard tropes, and give them a subtle twist, to make them unusual.”25
In 1933, Wyler made Counsellor at Law, his first adaptation of a play to the
screen, a talent that he would come to perfect throughout his career, and chal-
lenge him to find various ways to “open up” a stage presentation.26 Wyler felt
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6 john m. price
that “opening up” a play too much could destroy the vitality of the original
story, but just recording a stage production was not the answer either. Wyler’s
solution was to hold a high regard for the source material without the restric-
tive yardstick of pure textual fidelity. This approach, whether adapting a novel
or play, prevented his films from becoming static or monotonous. Anderegg,
in praising Wyler’s handling of theatrical material, opined, “that an unmoving
camera focused on an actor’s face can be as ‘cinematic’ as a cavalry charge.”27
The entirety of Counsellor at Law takes place, as the title suggests, solely
in the offices of a law firm. The cramped shooting space no doubt appealed
to Wyler’s love of realism, but also required that he develop more innovative
ways to work in camera movement, and to continue to exploit long takes, which
allow the actors to perform longer without cuts. Wyler’s masterful control of
the rapid-fire dialogue also adds to the film’s verisimilitude. This film was also
the first time that Wyler worked with a major Hollywood star, John Barrymore,
and the accompanying ego. Often seen as one of Barrymore’s better screen per-
formances, Wyler extracts from him that character complexity which became
Wyler’s signature. Despite great difficulties (Barrymore’s drinking), this would
lay the groundwork for his later collaborations with some of the biggest name
performers in Hollywood. Collaborations that, as stated previously, were more
successful than any other director–actor relationships.
Although Wyler’s teamwork with performers is the most famous aspect of
his style, troublesome work relationships were not isolated to actors. One of the
stormiest professional relationships of Wyler’s career was with one of his bosses,
the independent movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn. Wyler, despite having been given
his first opportunity at Universal, had gone about as far as he could with the stu-
dio. Wyler’s uncle had handed most of the decision-making responsibilities to
his son Carl Jr., a producer who was incredibly tight with a dollar. In 1935, Wyler
would make his last film for Universal, The Good Fairy, and it would be followed
by The Gay Deception (1935), his only film for Fox. Then Wyler would embark
on a new contract with Goldwyn. Despite their many disputes, their collabora-
tion would unarguably produce some the finest films in both men’s canons: These
Three (1936), Dodsworth (1936), Dead End (1937), Wuthering Heights (1939), The
Westerner (1940), The Little Foxes (1941), and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946).
Goldwyn would also bring in Wyler to replace Howard Hawks on Come and Get It
(1936)—a film that Wyler would disavow authorship of, saying that it was another
director’s film. When Goldwyn told Wyler that he was taking over for Hawks,
Wyler initially refused. Goldwyn became enraged and threatened that he would
see that Wyler never worked in Hollywood again. Wyler would relent and finish
the picture, mostly because he knew that Goldwyn had the power to do just that.28
One of the many disagreements between Wyler and Goldwyn was the sub-
ject of realism. Dead End,29 another stage adaptation,30 is a story that contrasts
wealthy city-dwellers with the slum life around them. Wyler had wanted to film
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this story on location for maximum reality. Goldwyn said “no” and built an elab-
orate set on a sound stage. When Wyler would “dirty up” the set to add more
realism, Goldwyn would come in and demand it be cleaned up. It was clear that
the difficulties between Wyler and Goldwyn stemmed from the fact that they
were too much alike—both perfectionists who were certain that their way was
the right way. Throughout their relationship, the debate among filmgoers was
whether the quality of their motion pictures was due to the “Goldwyn touch” or
the “Wyler touch.” Goldwyn seemed to answer this when he once uttered to a
reporter, “I made Wuthering Heights. Wyler only directed it.”31 There certainly is
no denying that Goldwyn offered Wyler the chance to get away from Universal
that he had sought, and the ability to tackle more prestigious projects, all with
a producer who, unlike Laemmle Jr., was not afraid to spend money, if he were
convinced it would equal high quality. However, it should also be pointed out
that Wyler was the only director to ever win Goldwyn an Oscar for Best Picture.32
Wyler’s first film for Goldwyn, These Three, would also be his first collabo-
ration with cinematographer Gregg Toland, a working relationship that would
codify the visual look of a Wyler film. Toland shot six of the seven films Wyler
directed for Goldwyn (seven of eight if you include Come and Get It), and
one of them, Wuthering Heights, resulted in Toland’s only Academy Award.
Needless to say, Toland is best known for his work on Citizen Kane (Orson
Welles, 1941), but it should be noted that five of Wyler–Toland’s collabora-
tions (six including Come and Get It) occurred before Toland worked on Kane.
Furthermore, Kane is often credited with techniques that Wyler and Toland
had already exploited. Moreover, Wyler had displayed his love for staging-in-
depth and expressive camera angles long before teaming up with Toland. This
is evidenced by this shot from The Shakedown (Figure I.1), which shows Wyler
staging deep shots even in his silent film days. What Toland added to Wyler’s
concept of shot composition was the ability to employ deep focus which, by
keeping all planes within the frame in focus, allowed Wyler to “have action and
reaction in the same shot, without having to cut back and forth from individual
cuts of the characters,”33 as superbly demonstrated by these shots from Wuther-
ing Heights (Figure I.2), The Little Foxes (Figure I.3), and from The Children’s
Hour (1961)34 (Figure I.4). While most often employed by Wyler to see two
characters’ emotions at the same time, it could also be used to show a charac-
ter’s reaction to the introduction of a significant object without cutting to each
in turn (Figure I.5). The sense in which Wyler and Toland’s technique is an
example of realism is that, by having different action take place on the screen
simultaneously, the spectator, making their own choices as to what to look at,
becomes the editor of the scene.35 This vision selection, of course, mimics the
way in which we view the world. This visual realism would support the wide
range of Wyler stories, which Ian Nathan, contributing editor for Empire mag-
azine, describes as, “Real people in real kinds of worlds.”36
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8 john m. price
Figure I.1 Early Wyler staging-in-depth (The Shakedown, 1929)
Figure I.2 Deep focus dialogue (Wuthering Heights, 1939)
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Figure I.3 Deep focus dialogue (The Little Foxes, 1941)
Figure I.4 Deep focus dialogue (The Children’s Hour, 1961)
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10 john m. price
Figure I.5 Deep focus demonstrating character’s reaction to significant object (The Little
Foxes, 1941)
Much less tranquil than Wyler’s collaboration with Toland, and more
famous as well, was his highly successful teamwork with performers. During
Wyler’s contract with Goldwyn, he was loaned out to Warner Bros. for Jezebel
(1938). This would be the first of three times that he would work with Bette
Davis. Their relationship would generate three great performances, one Acad-
emy Award for Best Actress, and an equally as tempestuous personal love affair.
When Davis won her second Oscar for Jezebel (1938), she said, “He made my
performance . . . It was all Wyler.”37 Even forty years later, at the American
Film Institute’s ceremony for Davis’s lifetime achievement award, she still
credited Wyler’s direction of her performance in that film as not only making
her a better actress, but also catapulting her to the status of superstar.38
However, Davis also acknowledged that Wyler was “an amazingly inarticulate
man.”39 This characterization would be backed up by Charlton Heston, who said
that during the filming of Ben-Hur, Wyler’s direction amounted to, “You gotta
be better.”40 Barbara Streisand would observe that “he couldn’t tell you how to
do it differently; he would just tell you to do it again.”41 He may not have been
able to convey to his stars what he wanted from them, but Wyler always said, “I’ll
know it when I see it.”42 The confrontations between performers and Wyler was
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due to his unrelenting perfectionism and his inability to express what he wanted
from an actor. Despite this inarticulation, his on-set repetitions would always
yield outstanding results, but it also led to his reputation as “forty-take Willy.”
Davis related that once after endless takes, which she felt had no distinctions, she
decided to look at the dailies, and not only was there clear, but subtle differences
between the takes, but that the take Wyler had proclaimed the best was in fact the
best.43 The perfectionist that was Wyler was the result of a strong eye for detail—
nothing escaped his scrutiny. His style was stern and uncompromising, taciturn
and reluctant to praise.44 Davis would describe Wyler’s style as “charming and
treacherous,”45 a “combination of sympathy and strength.”46
Davis recalls that Wyler was always saying that he was not running an act-
ing school. Laurence Olivier, whose strong stage background would lead him
to, in response to Wyler’s criticism during the filming of Wuthering Heights,
describe cinema as an “anemic little medium.”47 Years later, however, Olivier
would credit Wyler with making him into a screen actor, and he would even
work with Wyler again on Carrie (1952). Perhaps, Wyler had indeed been run-
ning a school for actors. In addition to Wyler’s berating of Olivier, he once
made Audrey Hepburn cry during her first film performance. Greer Garson,
because of Wyler’s reputation, did not want at first to do Mrs. Miniver. The
story is that she sent Wyler a velvet glove and a note that said, “to use on Miss
Garson.”48 Despite her hesitations at working with Wyler, she would win an
Oscar under his direction. The strangest relationship, however, was the war-
like conditions on the set of The Good Fairy (1935) between Wyler and leading
lady Margaret Sullavan. Such was their on-set animosity that all were shocked
when Wyler and Sullavan married. Unfortunately, but perhaps predictably, the
marriage would last only two years.
Wyler once said, “Mediocrity in films is the direct result of playing it
safe . . . A picture without an idea is a picture without vitality.”49 Fittingly,
as Wyler’s career progressed, there is an increasingly clearer “message” in
his works. With Dead End, for example, Wyler was thrilled to learn that his
gritty realism had instigated serious legislation for urban renewal. However,
in a Wyler film, social significance is not always tied to a social issue. Many
times, the social statement is simple observation of the human condition,
and, more specifically, how the individual struggles against what seems to
be overwhelming conditions. Wyler’s aim was to present these relationships
with considerable compassion. Wyler was certainly able to achieve this with
These Three.
These Three was based on Lillian Hellman’s play The Children’s Hour. This
play dealt with the story of a rich, brattish schoolgirl who ruins the lives of
her two schoolmistresses by accusing them of being lesbians. Both Goldwyn
and Wyler knew that such a topic would not make it past the censors of that
day, so the title was changed to These Three and the rumor the child starts
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12 john m. price
is a more conventional, heterosexual, triangular love affair between the two

ladies and the fiancé of one of them. Surprisingly, Hellman had no problem
with this change, as her work on the screenplay attests, because she felt the
play had never been about prejudice against homosexuals, but the destructive,
wildfire-like force that a malicious lie can be. Wyler would have a chance to
revisit Hellman’s original narrative when, twenty-five years later, he directed
his own remake, this time keeping the original title, The Children’s Hour. The
restoration of the lesbian aspect may well be simply the result of an increasing
societal acceptance of the topic and not an increasing boldness on the part of
Wyler toward difficult issues, but whichever it was, as Herman would say of
Wyler, he “managed to combine poetic truthfulness with social awareness,”
and do so with mass appeal.50 In fact, by 1939, it was said of Wyler that
His films steadily grow in stature: his content becomes deeper, his
execution more thoughtful, his problems more vital and relevant. Pur-
posefulness lifts his films higher and higher out of the ordinary . . .
[and] reveal[s] his increasing social awareness, sharper sensitivity and
penetration into character, and conscious effort at organic unity.51
Wyler had definitely achieved his major goal in leaving Universal: he was now
making prestigious pictures.
In addition to mastering successful adaptations of plays, Wyler would tackle
an adaptation of the Sinclair Lewis novel, Dodsworth. As a performer’s direc-
tor, Wyler would be reunited on this film with Walter Huston, whom he had
directed back in one of his earliest sound efforts, A House Divided (1931). In both
films, Huston’s performance is multi-layered, and for Dodsworth, he would be
nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor. This was also Wyler’s first nomination
for Best Director. Dodsworth was a serious, and at the time, uniquely penetrat-
ing examination of marital struggles, and in an example of art reflecting real
life, during this film, Wyler would begin to divorce his first wife Margaret
Sullavan. Two years later, he would marry his second wife Margaret Tallichet.
He would have five children with “Talli” and remain married to her until his
death.
After again successfully bringing page to screen, this time with Emily
Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Wyler returned to his origins with his first West-
ern since Hell’s Heroes, The Westerner. Wyler would again utilize gritty realism,
only now to give his old genre a new perspective—a deglamorized West. An
example of this is seen in one of the most realistic fight scenes in any Western.
The Westerner was also the first time Wyler worked with Gary Cooper, but it
was the supporting performance by Walter Brennan that took home the Oscar
for this film. This film also features another example of a reoccurring theme
for Wyler, the troublesome nature of male friendships.
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In 1940, Wyler would also work again with Davis in The Letter (an adapta-
tion of a Somerset Maugham novel), and the following year, work with her
for the third and last time in The Little Foxes (another adaptation of a Hell-
man play). During these films, Wyler’s reputation was continually enhanced:
“not only is [he] a proficient filmmaker but . . . [he] has an eye for character-
ization and human relationships.”52 It is interesting, for example, that in The
Good Fairy, Wyler “was roundly chastised for overindulging in closeups . . .
but his prodigal use of the same device in Wuthering Heights four years later
was accepted without a murmur.”53 Despite Toland’s augmentation of deep
focus to Wyler’s mise en scène, Wyler knew when and when not to make use
of it. Case in point is the famous scene (Figure I.6) in The Little Foxes where
Davis’s character sits unassisting her husband, whose heart is failing. He crawls
up the stairs in the background, out of focus. Davis, in the foreground, is in
sharp focus. Wyler, through Toland, could have had both actions in focus, but
he knew that the essence of the scene was in Davis’s face.
The Little Foxes can be seen as a great dividing point between two distinct
halves of Wyler’s career. As war in Europe raged on, many felt that Wyler’s
next film, Mrs. Miniver, was his attempt to inch the United States from its
isolationism. Wyler himself considered the film to be a call-to-arms. The
story of a supposedly average British family and their struggles to survive
Figure I.6 Staging-in-depth without deep focus as to direct attention to one part of frame over
another (The Little Foxes, 1941)
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14 john m. price
the Nazi blitz, which must have reminded Wyler of his own wartime experi-
ences as a child in Alsace, was more fortunate than such films as Sergeant
York (Howard Hawks, 1941).54 Unlike other films accused of war-mongering
propaganda, Mrs. Miniver was released in the summer of 1942, well after
Pearl Harbor. However, during the pre-production of Mrs. Miniver, there
certainly were concerns as to whether or not it would be seen as pushing the
United States into the war and therefore a violation of the Neutrality Act.
Being Jewish, Wyler was naturally concerned with Nazi aggression, but he,
like many studio executives, had to be careful not to be seen as advancing
a strictly Jewish cause. Despite these fears, Mrs. Miniver, as Neil Norman
characterizes it, “etched its way into the hearts of the public.”55
Mrs. Miniver was to win Wyler his first Academy Award for Best Director.
However, he would not be present to accept it; he had joined the US Army Air
Corps. During the war, he would fly on bombers, including during combat, and
make two documentary films for the military to show the public, The Memphis
Belle and Thunderbolt. Four other directors, Ford, Capra, John Huston, and
George Stevens would also leave Hollywood to lend their filmmaking skills to
the war effort. While all these men were greatly affected by their close interac-
tion with combat and its aftermath, and certainly their work after the war was
significantly altered, Wyler was also physically injured. The noise in the air-
crafts had caused him to go deaf. Wyler was certain this would end his career.
How could he direct if he could not hear? Toland came to the rescue and rigged
up for Wyler a special sound device that would allow him to hear dialogue.
Wyler did eventually regain partial hearing in one ear, but this experience as
a wounded war veteran was to prompt what many would consider his great-
est film ever, The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). This powerful story of the
struggles of returning veterans to assimilate back into their homelives would
be Wyler’s last film with both Goldwyn and Toland and would win Wyler his
second Oscar for directing.56 In 1945, fellow director, Frank Capra, had started
a production company for independent directors and producers called Liberty
Films and Wyler signed on. While Liberty would prove unsuccessful, only
producing two films, independent production was the inevitable wave of the
future, and on Wyler’s next seven films, beginning with The Heiress, he would
be producer as well as director.57
Despite the triumph of the human spirit which The Best Years of Our Lives
displays, there is no mistaking the fact that, after the war, Wyler’s films were
darker, not necessarily more pessimistic, but certainly his characters were
enduring ever greater seemingly insurmountable situations. In addition, an
element of ambiguity had been introduced to his films. In 1949, Olivia de
Havilland won an Academy Award for Best Actress in The Heiress (yet another
stage to screen adaptation), but her character leaves the audience, at the end of
the film, with some doubt as to whether she has triumphed or not. Increasingly
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dark, some have described Detective Story (1951) and The Desperate Hours (1955)
as Wyler’s foray into the genre of film noir, but this label is extremely debat-
able. They do both deal with crime, but so does Dead End. In terms of char-
acters, Kirk Douglas in Detective Story possesses some of the attributes of the
film noir “hero,” but neither film has what could be called a femme fatale. In
the end, these two films may again demonstrate Wyler’s propensity for altering
recognizable scenarios, or, as Norman puts it, Wyler was “being an innovator
in a genre that is already established.”58
This period of his career, however, was not without its lighter and brighter
moments as well. Wyler’s exceedingly popular romantic comedy, Roman
Holiday (1953), was not only the screen debut of Audrey Hepburn, but her
performance was also the fourth time that Wyler directed his leading lady
to an Oscar for Best Actress. In 1956, Wyler would make his first color film,
Friendly Persuasion. In 1958, he would make his first widescreen effort, The
Big Country. The adjustment to the 2.35:1 screen aspect ratio was not a small
hindrance to Wyler’s trademark composition.
Accustomed as he was to employing the screen as an area of three

dimensional space, with height, depth, and width, he found himself in
the late 1950s trying to deal with a screen image that seemed to eliminate
everything except width.59
Wyler’s typically tight narratives and tight shot composition would need to
be adapted, or even jettisoned, in the realm of a widescreen epic. How suc-
cessfully he did this in The Big Country is debatable, but there would be no
questioning the success of his next colossal production. Ben-Hur generated,
among its many awards, Wyler’s third statue for directing and would hold the
record for most Academy Awards until 1997 and then it was only tied. Further-
more, the box-office success of this unfamiliar genre for Wyler would also help
MGM to avoid bankruptcy.
In his last five motion pictures, Wyler would end one with a suicide, The
Children’s Hour; deal with a man so obsessed with a woman that he abducts
her in The Collector (1965); and attempt to combine suspense with racial com-
ment in his last film The Liberation of L.B. Jones (1970). The Collector, the
most anomalous and darkest of all his films, was a return to the more con-
fined visuality of early films like The Storm and Counsellor at Law, especially
after the wide-openness of The Big Country and Ben-Hur. Despite these
rather heavy ventures, Wyler still mixed in, among these darker films, a heist
comedy, How to Steal a Million (1966), his first comedy since The Gay Decep-
tion in 1935, and a musical Funny Girl (1968). Wyler, up to the very end of his
career, was obviously still trying to make as many different types of movies
as he could.
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16 john m. price
One would think that Wyler’s military service would have proved his dedi-
cation to his country beyond any question, but he would, as would many mem-
bers of Hollywood, experience strong challenges to his patriotism after the war.
Wyler’s history with blacklisting seems paradoxical. On one hand, he, John
Huston, and other Hollywood personages formed the Committee for the First
Amendment, which went to testify before Congress, but when suggestions of
“guilt by association” began to attach themselves to Wyler, he wrote a memo
making it clear that he was not a Communist nor would he work with any. This
proclamation, and the fact that his brother Robert worked on the rewrite of
Friendly Persuasion, tainted his efforts to not give screen credit to the origi-
nal, and blacklisted, screenwriter. Still, it must be pointed out that Wyler did
make an open declaration that, in his opinion, the House Un-American Activi-
ties Committee (HUAC) was not only destroying creativity in Hollywood but
inflicting their concept of Americanism on others.60 As for Wyler’s concept of
Americanism, Herman observes that Wyler’s films combined “a compassion-
ate honesty and a dramatic intensity in their vision of American life.”61 Wyler’s
Americanness, however, goes far beyond just his topics, settings, and themes.
Bazin states,
Wyler wants only to allow him [the viewer] . . . to see everything [and] . . .
make choices . . . This is an act of loyalty toward the viewer, a pledge of
dramatic honesty . . . Wyler aims at being liberal and democratic, like the
consciences both of American viewers and of characters.62
Bazin’s comment asserts that the Wyler style of filmmaking is the very embodi-
ment of what it means to be an American.
During his retirement, Wyler was given the Life Achievement Award by
the American Film Institute in 1976. Upon accepting this honor, he told the
audience that he had not stopped making films—his wife, Talli, and he trav-
elled greatly and he always took his home camera with him. He took that bit of
information as an opportunity to address the issue that had always dogged him
and still does to this day. “By no longer being burdened with great and famous
cinematographers . . . by doing everything myself, I have at last become the
complete and genuine auteur,” and while acknowledging that during his career,
he had not been an auteur, nonetheless, he was “one of the few directors who
can pronounce the word correctly.”63 William Wyler died in 1981 at the age of
seventy-nine; his legacy, a career in cinema that spanned over forty-five years
and included, depending on whose list you look at, thirty-seven feature films.
In identifying Wyler’s legacy, Stephen Armstrong would describe him
as quite simply a pioneer in storytelling.64 Herman says: “His pictures not
only resonate with poetry and humor, they offer psychological maturity and
sophisticated treatment of character more typical of literature than movies.”65
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Beyond these observations, the Wyler style contains something undefinable.

Fellow director, Billy Wilder, said that “there was an instinct in him that told
him when it was right, when it felt true.”66 Streisand may well have identi-
fied the secret to Wyler’s film instinct: “He was wonderful because he was the
audience.”67
In addition to providing an in-depth analysis of Wyler and his works, this
volume of the ReFocus series attempts to augment American views on an
American director with international perspectives as well. In the first part,
entitled “Style,” Chapter One, “Wyler’s Early Films: Evolution of the ‘Style-
less Style,’” looks at Wyler’s late silent and early sound films and points out
how the development of an embryonic style can be detected even at this stage.
Chapter Two defends not only the legitimacy of the auteur theory, but Wyler’s
rightful place among filmmakers who have achieved the moniker “auteur.” It
is entitled “More than Meets the Eye: Perspectives on William Wyler and the
Auteur Theory.” Chapter Three of this part is “Traumatic History and the
Prosthesis of Myth in Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives.” This chapter,
through a close study of Wyler’s first postwar film, will argue that Wyler reha-
bilitates classical Hollywood cinema through the use of, what Bazin termed,
“reborn realism.” The last chapter in this part is entitled “Persistent Pres-
ence: Space and Time in the Films of William Wyler,” which argues that the
past looms large in the films of William Wyler, that is, that many of Wyler’s
works, including Wuthering Heights, Mrs. Miniver, The Heiress, and Ben Hur,
are structured around an inescapable past.
“Collaboration, Genre, and Adaptation” is the second part and contains
Chapter Five, “Clash of the Titans: The Hidden Collaboration of William
Wyler and David O. Selznick on Carrie (1952).” This chapter suggests that
one of the reasons for the film Carrie’s critical and financial failure was the
interference of producer David O. Selznick, and that this relationship exem-
plifies the problematic nature of collaboration. Also in this part is Chapter
Six which is entitled “Narratives of Failure: Dead End (1937), The Desperate
Hours (1955), and Gangsters in Distress.” This chapter evaluates William
Wyler’s so-called gangster films in relation to existing discourses on the genre
and characterizes both films as narratives of distress, through which Wyler
reflects socio-cultural issues involving masculinity. Also in this part is Chapter
Seven, “Wyler’s Wuthering Heights: Genre, Transnationalism, and the Adapta-
tion of the Victorian Novel.” This chapter argues that Wyler’s film adaptation
of Emily Brontë’s classic serves as a fresh case study for the Victorian novel-
as-film relationship and through a transnational lens reveals the influence of
Wyler, a foreign-born director, on the adaptation of a quintessential Victorian
novel and yet within the Hollywood tradition.
Part III, “Gender and Sexuality,” contains Chapter Eight, “William Wyler’s
The Heiress (1949) and the Unknown Woman,” which asserts that The Heiress
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18 john m. price
caps Wyler’s significant role in women’s films during the 1930s and 1940s. This
chapter, in referring to a small subgenre, which Stanley Cavell calls, “the melo-
drama of the unknown woman,” suggests that The Heiress and this genre are not
concerned with the questions we associate with melodrama (the recognition of
virtue) but rather with stoicism (self-reliance, independence of mind, and free-
dom from the world). Chapter Nine, “These Three: Wyler and His Two Adap-
tations of The Children’s Hour” delves into the differences in each of Wyler’s
versions of Lillian Hellman’s play and his approach to queer representation in a
somewhat more liberated censorship of the early 1960s.
Part IV is entitled “War and Peace.” In it, Chapter Ten, by examining Mrs.
Miniver (1942), and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), as well as Wyler’s
wartime documentary films, The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress
(1944), The Fighting Lady (1944), and Thunderbolt (1945, released 1947), argues
that, rather than producing a muddled political message, the overall feeling of
Wyler’s wartime films, both his fictional narratives and his documentaries, is a
clear call to action—something must be done—and a call to a community—it
must be done together. This chapter is entitled “A War of the People: Destruc-
tion, Community, and Hope in William Wyler’s Wartime Films,” and asserts
that these films combine a sense of duty with the breaking down of social bar-
riers, and by finding the common ground of self-sacrifice, and the healing of
wounds both seen and unseen. Chapter Eleven, “Turning the Other Cheek:
Wyler’s Pacifism Trilogy—Friendly Persuasion (1956), The Big Country (1958),
and Ben-Hur (1959),” contends that Wyler’s “pacifism trilogy” presents audi-
ences with an insight into Wyler’s complex sentiments on non-violence, and
that over the course of these three films, there is an evolutionary trajectory in
the director’s depiction of pacifism and its efficacy.
This Introduction has stressed the influence of the European immigrant
experience on Wyler’s concept of Americanism. As stated previously, the
vast majority of his films deal with American characters in American situa-
tions, but in his later career, Wyler would adventure back to Europe in terms
of not only shooting on location, but also expanding to more international
themes. In addition to Roman Holiday, Wyler would also make The Collector
set in the UK and How to Steal a Million set in Paris. The final part of this
volume examines this adjusted perspective and is entitled “Global Wyler.”
In it, Chapter Twelve, “William Wyler’s Voyage to Italy: Roman Holiday,
Progressive Hollywood, and the Cold War,” explores the complex history of
Hollywood, politics, and transnationalism in Wyler’s Roman Holiday, and
argues for Wyler’s significance at the intersection of the central develop-
ments of postwar cinema, the rise of Hollywood on the Tiber, the eclipse
of neorealism, and the Red Scare in America. Chapter Thirteen provides a
post-colonial examination of Wyler’s Ben-Hur (1959). It demonstrates how
this widescreen epic presents commentary on Empire, both as a critique of
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imperial power and a warning against post-colonial cycles of violence. This

chapter applies scholarship in the academic field of History to Film Studies.
This chapter is entitled, “Down Eros, Up Mars!”: Post-Colonialism, Impe-
rial Violence, and the Corrupting Influence of Hate in William Wyler’s Ben-
Hur (1959).” The final chapter also examines Roman Holiday, but focuses on
the film’s pervasive stereotypical representations of, inter alia, royalty and
nobility, rich folk, servants, women, American gentlemen, and Italian locals
and locales. This chapter will also contextualize such stereotypes through
other films, such as The Bicycle Thieves (De Sica, 1948), Journey in Italy
(Rossellini, 1954), and, a recent remake of Roman Holiday, Rome in Love
(Bross, 2019). This chapter is entitled “‘Life Isn’t Always What One Likes’:
The Unbearable Lightness of Royalty, and Other Stereotypes in Roman
Holiday (1953).”
The arguably best observance of Wyler is in a 2020 article written by Kenneth
Lonergan for the Criterion Collection. The article describes the sentimental, yet
effective, presentation of a local flower contest in Mrs. Miniver. Lonergan points
out, as this introduction has, that Wyler was downgraded by many for “lacking a
personal stamp,” but that perhaps that was “to be expected when you can make
a flower show as exciting as a chariot race,” and that there certainly is “genius in
a director who can breathe life into either one.”68
notes
1. Derek Malcolm, film critic, in The Directors: William Wyler, directed by Lyndy Saville
(3DD Entertainment, 2018).
2. Neil Norman, film critic, in ibid.
3. Jan Herman, A Talent for Trouble: The Life of Hollywood’s Most Acclaimed Director,
William Wyler (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995), 4.
4. David B. Green, “This Day in Jewish History, 1981: The Most Famous Director You
Never Heard of Dies,” Haaretz (July 27, 2015), <https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/1981-
a-directing-great-dies-1.5379346> (last accessed July 28, 2022).
5. Directed by William Wyler, directed by Aviva Slesin. (Topgallant Prod., 1986).
6. Wyler said “All of the artistes, they will never forgive me for Ben-Hur. For me to have
made one of the most successful commercial pictures in the history of the business is an
unforgivable sin” (see Curtis Hanson, “William Wyler, Pt. 1. An Interview,” Cinema 3,
no. 5 (Summer 1967): 23).
7. Directed by William Wyler.
8. Herman, 395.
9. André Bazin, “William Wyler, or the Jansenist of Directing,” in Bazin at Work: Major
Essays and Reviews from the Forties and Fifties, trans. Alain Piette and Bert Cardullo, ed.
Bert Cardullo (New York: Routledge, 1997), 1. (Originally published as “William Wyler ou
le janséniste de la mise en scene,” in Revue du Cinéma no. 10 (February. 1948)).
10. Bazin, 2
11. Bazin, 1.
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20 john m. price
12. Hanson, 23.

13. Hanson, 28.
14. Wyler might well have won a fourth Best Director Oscar as he was originally slated to
direct The Sound of Music, but backed out. The film did go on to win Best Director for
Robert Wise.
15. For a complete list of Wyler’s films and his Academy Award wins and nominations, see
“Filmography” and “Academy Awards for Acting under Wyler” at the back of the book.
16. Wyler’s other Directors Guild of America (DGA) nominations, in addition to his win for
Ben-Hur, were for Detective Story, Roman Holiday, Friendly Persuasion, The Big Country,
The Children’s Hour, and Funny Girl. Wyler might have received additional nominations
for his earlier films, but the DGA only made their first award for directing in 1948.
17. John Huston would work as co-writer for three Wyler films: The Storm (1930), A House
Divided (1931), and Jezebel (1938).
19. For a complete list of performers who won acting Oscars under Wyler’s direction, see
“Academy Awards for Acting under Wyler” at the end of the book.
20. Michael A. Anderegg, William Wyler (Boston: Twayne, 1979), 21.
22. Hanson, 25.
23. Anderegg, 26.
24. Anderegg, 27.
25. The Directors: William Wyler.
26. “Opening up” a play means moving the story out of the confines of its stage-limited
locations.
27. Anderegg, 106.
28. Arthur Marx, Goldwyn: A Biography of the Man Behind the Myth (New York: W.W.
Norton & Co., 1976), 225.
29. Dead End would star Humphrey Bogart, at a time in his career when he was still playing
“bad guys,” and Bogie’s screen persona fit well this play about impoverished street gangs
and other criminals.
30. Dead End was another chance for Wyler to work with Lillian Hellman. This time she
would be the screenwriter for someone else’s play. The highly successful play Dead End
was written by Sidney Kingsley.
31. Roger Ebert, “The Directors,” Roger Ebert (January 21, 1968), <https://www.rogerebert.
com/roger-ebert/the-directors> (last accessed July 28, 2022).
32. Of the myriads of films that Goldwyn produced, only eight were nominated for Best
Picture, and of that eight, five were directed by Wyler.
33. William Wyler, “No Magic Wand,” The Screen Writer 2, no. 9 (February 1947): 10,
<https://archive.org/details/screenwriterjun102scre/page/n457/mode/2up> (last
accessed July 28, 2022).
34. Toland was not the Director of Photography for The Children’s Hour, which shows how
the effect of deep focus, by 1961, was within the purview of most cinematographers.
35. Wyler, 10.
37. Bette Davis, The Lonely Life: An Autobiography (New York: G. Putnam’s Sons, 1962), 177.
38. “Bette Davis Accepts the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1977,” American Film Industry,
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHiaRq3fpEc> (last accessed August 1, 2022).
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42. James Spada, More Than a Woman: The Intimate Biography of Bette Davis (New York:
Bantam Books, 1993), 131.
43. Spada, 131–2.
44. Spada, 139.
45. Spada, 135
46. Gary Carey, “The Lady and the Director: Bette Davis and William Wyler,” Film Comment
6, no. 3 (Fall 1970): 19.
47. Scott A. Berg, “Wuthering Heights,” The New York Times, February 19, 1989, 86.
48. Carey (“The Lady and the Director,” 19) considers this story to be apocryphal and
indeed different authors have related the story with slight variations in the details.
Herman (A Talent for Trouble, 231) says that the message was on a card that read,
“For the iron hand of William Wyler.” Axel Madsen (William Wyler: the Authorized
Biography, New York: Crowell, 1973, 215) related the same message Herman does, but
says that the words were actually engraved on the buttons of the gloves.
49. “Don’t Play ‘Safe’ on Pix-Wyler,” Variety 176, no. 5 (October 12, 1949): 20.
50. Herman, 85.
51. Jacob Lewis, The Rise of the American Film: A Critical History (New York: Harcourt, Brace
and Co., 1939), 490–1.
52. Lewis, 490.
53. Hermine Rich Isaacs, “William Wyler: Director with a Passion and a Craft,” Theatre Arts
31, no. 2 (February 1947): 21.
54. In 1941, the Nye-Clark Senate Committee accused Hollywood (Sergeant York and seven
other films) of violating the Neutrality Act by making propaganda films that promoted
US intervention in Europe. Sergeant York was initially released in the summer of 1941 and
because of the Committee was forced to pull the film from release. It would subsequently
be re-released to tremendous success in 1942.
56. The Best Years of Our Lives would also win Harold Russell an Oscar for Best Supporting
Actor. Russell was not an actor. He was a real-life war veteran who had lost both hands in
the war.
57. The selling of Liberty Films to Paramount would lead to a deal between Paramount
and Wyler to produce and direct five films: The Heiress, Detective Story, Carrie, Roman
Holiday, and The Desperate Hours.
58. The Directors: William Wyler
59. Anderegg, 200.
60. Gordon Kahn, Hollywood on Trial: The Story of the Ten Who Were Indicted (New York:
Boni and Gaer, 1948), 221.
61. Herman, 85.
62. Bazin, 9.
63. “William Wyler Accepts the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1976,” American Film
Industry. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xwf_ZNl3PY> (last accessed July 28,
2022).
65. Herman, 2.
68. Kenneth Lonergan, “Depth of Vision: The Grounded Cinema of William Wyler,” The
Criterion Collection (January 3, 2020), <https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6745-
depth-of-vision-the-grounded-cinema-of-william-wyler> (last accessed July 28, 2022).
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part i
Style
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chapter 1
Wyler’s Early Films: Evolution of

the “Styleless Style”
John M. Price
I think that the story dictates its own style rather than the director’s style
dictating the story.1
C lassic Hollywood, a period that helped to define cinematic grammar,

sought to help the audience forget that they were watching a movie. Cin-
ematic techniques were only supposed to serve the narrative, not draw atten-
tion to themselves, and certainly not to the director’s “brushstrokes.” This
approach to filmmaking, of course, stands in stark contrast to the Soviet school
of montage, which said that the essence of cinema was to “crash” one image
with another, and only then, when you have noticeably manipulated the form,
do you achieve the level of “art.” Such “formalism” conflicts with attempted
“realism.” In the case of the latter, André Bazin thought editing should be
limited and preferred reliance on mise en scène (composition of the shot) as the
primary cinematic tool for capturing the real world. This definition of realism
fostered what is called the “invisible style” of filmmaking which was meant to
hide the “brushstroke,” and achieve a verisimilitude. Editing was to be masked
by techniques such as cutting on motion. Staging-in-depth, which allowed for
action and reaction in a single shot, and therefore, presumably more closely
resembled reality, allowed individuals to choose what to view. “Wyler particu-
larly likes to build his mise en scène on the tension created in a shot by the
coexistence of two actions of unequal significance.”2 This is the essence of
William Wyler’s style, which this chapter argues is not the signature of a mere
journeyman technician.
Bazin states that “the realism of the cinema follows directly from its pho-
tographic nature,”3 and that “artificiality . . . is totally incompatible with the
realism which is the essence of cinema.”4 Bazin says of Wyler that he “tried
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26 john m. price
to find aesthetic equivalents for psychological and social truth in the mise en
scène.”5 In so acknowledging, Bazin believes that Wyler “deprives himself . . .
of certain technical means . . . [and] tends . . . [toward] neutrality. This mise en
scène seems to define itself through its absence.”6 Bazin praises this “absence”
as the realistic benefit of the Wyler style. “The depth of field of Wyler is . . .
the perfect neutrality and transparency of style, which must not interpose any
filter, any refractive index, between the . . . [audience’s] mind and the story.”7
Wyler said, however, that “a picture of reality alone is nothing . . . Only when
reality has been molded into a dramatic pattern can it hold an audience.”8 This
is a different kind of realism, one that is not just camouflage for the mechanics
of filmmaking nor simply the absence of intrusive cinematic techniques.
It would be the cinematography of Gregg Toland, and their seven film col-
laborations, that would perfect Wyler’s desire for meaningful staging by adding
deep focus to deep composition. A distinction should be made between stag-
ing-in-depth which refers to shot composition, specifically placing performers
(or objects) in various distances from the camera in order to convey a sense of
three dimensions within the two dimensions of the movie screen, and deep
focus, which, through the addition of increased lighting allows the cinematog-
raphy to stop down the iris and thus increase the range of objects that are in
focus. Despite the credit that is often given to Citizen Kane (1941), it should be
noted that deep focus had been experimented with before Toland and Orson
Welles. One of the most striking examples of this is Erich von Stroheim’s Greed
(1924). It should also be stated that deep focus was always possible in bright
daylight.
Unfortunately, this realism, or lack of artistic intrusion into the narrative,
led many film scholars to see classic Hollywood directors not as auteurs but
as mere technicians. This is the fate that befell Wyler. However, when serious
consideration is given to the immensely diverse genres in which Wyler worked,
certain visual and thematic tropes become apparent. Wyler may not have ever
referred to his filmmaking technique as the “invisible style,” but he certainly
espoused the philosophy that “the set and the camera are there only to permit
the actor to focus upon himself the maximum dramatic intensity; they are not
there to create a meaning unto themselves.”9 Despite his rejection of a direc-
tor directing attention to himself, Wyler’s camera movement, especially track-
ing, and his staging-in-depth are all intrusions into the narrative. These not so
transparent techniques helped to create a sense of realism and delivered many
of his early films from mawkish melodrama. The evolution of Wyler’s so-called
“styleless style” is clearly on display, beginning in his earliest works.
The characters in Wyler’s early Westerns would “all behave according to a
pattern . . . The stories were elementary. They were all formula.”10 It was up
to the individual director to be visually creative in some way if he wanted any
originality. Wyler would say, “I used to sit up nights trying to think of a new
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wyler’s “styleless style” 27
way to get on a horse.”11 The significance of this early work to his later style
cannot be underestimated:
For a long time, Wyler labored on obscure Westerns whose titles nobody
remembers. It is through this work on Westerns, work not as an aes-
thetician but as craftsman, that he has become the recognized artist . . .
[whose] only concern is to make the viewer understand the action as pre-
cisely and fully as possible. Wyler’s immense talent lies in this ‘science of
clarity’ obtained through the austerity of form as well as through equal
humility toward his subject matter and his audience . . . [in so doing] he
invented one of the most personal styles in contemporary cinema.12
It was in these extremely basic formulas that Wyler would develop his fondness
for camera movement. As he would later describe it, the more elementary the
story, the more it had to move. “One could learn a great deal doing Westerns
because it was an action film and you were dealing basically in movement, which
is the fundamental ingredient of motion pictures.”13 Such dedication to pac-
ing would earn him recognition from critics as having a “brisk style,”14 even
within the constraints of the Mustang series (two-reel Westerns). Furthermore,
in one of his five-reelers (feature length) for the Blue Streak series, he makes
Blazing Days (1927), which is worthy of note in that, amid the conventions of
an otherwise formulaic Western, Wyler chooses to focus on the relationship
between the two heroes. This focus on friendships, and the tensions within such
relationships, would time and again (The Westerner and Ben-Hur being two
major examples) be a major part of Wyler’s psychological examinations of
human relationships.
Wyler’s first two films, after the Blue Streak series, were still Westerns, but
in 1928, Wyler would take his first step away from his incubating genre. Wyler’s
first foray into comedy was entitled Anybody Here Seen Kelly? While this is
unfortunately lost to us today, this film was noticed, at the time, for having
a Wyler style; a Universal memo opined that Wyler’s work “shows a sense of
realism and pace that endows . . . it with charm.”15 There was on the horizon,
however, a development that was to play, as it would for many careers, a major
role in the evolution of the Wyler style. Wyler’s next two films were, what has
been termed, part-talkies: The Shakedown (1929) was made with two versions,
silent and sound, and The Love Trap (1929) is silent except for the last few
scenes.
The very first shot of The Shakedown is a rather unusual, only slightly moti-
vated, and very awkwardly executed camera move. It begins with a racked set
of pool balls at the end of the pool table closest to the camera, then tilts up
and over, with a substantial jerk, to two men, one of whom is about to break.
When the man, Dave Roberts (James Murray), shoots, the camera follows the
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28 john m. price
cue ball back to the break, and then back again up to Dave and the other man
who is now paying Dave; obviously, they had a bet on the break. Despite the
near home-movie quality of this move, it demonstrates Wyler’s love of camera
movement, and his favoring of it over cuts.
Early in the film, Wyler shows his affinity for staging-in-depth, but he also
infuses it with more movement, in this case, movement of the performers not
the camera. This shot (Figure 1.1) is an interior of a bar, including beer taps in
the foreground. Two men, Dave and Roff (George Kotsonaros), are making a
wager in the middle ground of the shot, and the onlookers behind them are in
the background. While the camera may be static, there is considerable charac-
ter movement within the shot. Dave and Roff have moved into their positions,
and more than one onlooker crosses through the shot, at various depths within
the frame, and in opposite directions. This movement helps to shape a three-
dimensional representation. While this shot is certainly not yet deep focus, it
is, nonetheless, a rudimentary example of multiple planes within a shot. In fact,
the depth of field, in this particular shot, becomes even more pronounced after
the wager, when the loser, Roff, returns to sit at the bar in the foreground, and
we can now even see street activity outside (Figure 1.2). Throughout this scene,
Wyler uses close-ups only when absolutely necessary.
Figure 1.1 Staging-in-depth (The Shakedown, 1929)
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Figure 1.2 Staging-in-depth with character movement within a static shot (The Shakedown, 1929)
Two noticeable tracking shots follow. The first one is a “side” tracking shot,
the camera moving parallel to the moving characters, as a young lady outside
the bar, after asking directions of Dave, walks away and up the street, across the
square, to sit on a park bench. She is being followed by Roff, who ends the track-
ing shot by accosting her on the bench. A side tracking shot like this allows us
to observe every moment of a particular character(s), but not really be a part of
it. We are not with them, just observing them. Such a lengthy move creates a
realistic sense of time. Unabridged by cutaways, screen time equals real time.
There is no temporal manipulation as with montage. The temporal unity of this
first tracking shot, however, is broken once when we cut to a close-up reaction
shot of Dave while he watches, with distain, Roff ’s pursuit of the young lady.
This is followed by a “lead” tracking shot of Dave, with no close-ups to break
up the camera move, as he follows in order to come to the aid of the lady. With
such a tracking shot, we are out in front of the moving character and backing up.
We travel the same path; we are with the character. Obviously, we are to identify
with Dave more than Roff. The intrusive nature of the close-up reaction shot in
the first tracking move is why Wyler, throughout his career, would try to keep
close-ups to a bare minimum. Wyler believed that the close-up “functions as
cinematic punctuation, an exclamation mark which contributes to the syntax of
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30 john m. price
the whole scene,”16 and not in some perfunctory breaking up of a scene. “I don’t
believe in overworking the close-up,” Wyler would say, “and only use it when I
want to make a point by excluding everything else from the audience’s view.”17
In other words, in a Wyler film close-ups are few and therefore more poignant.
The story moves to an oil boomtown where a gang of conmen intend to
perpetrate their next scam. Both Roff and Dave are part of this gang. The pre-
vious animosity between them was a prevarication intended to get the men in
the bar to bet more heavily. While ingratiating himself with the people of this
boomtown, Dave falls in love with a local woman, Marjorie (Barbara Kent),
and becomes a father figure to an orphan boy, Clem (Jack Hanlon). The latter
relationship leads the narrative into the stilted realm of melodrama, such as
when Clem prays, “God please make me a good guy like Dave,” but the gritty
reality of the oil derricks, the dingy bar, and other images of earthiness, in other
words, Wyler’s form of realism, serve to make the melodrama more palatable.
In addition to the realism of deep composition, Wyler also begins to use
humor to offset melodrama. Marjorie begins to admire Dave for taking in Clem
and making the boy better. Wyler cuts from Dave telling Marjorie that under
his care Clem will soon sprout wings to a tracking shot of Clem being chased by
the corrections officer. The irony of the edit point is followed by a staging-in-
depth shot which blends Wyler’s visual realism with Wyler’s sense of humor.
In a single shot, we see Dave and Marjorie seated on a swing in the foreground,
while Clem is hurtling the fence in the middle ground, and his pursuer, the
corrections officer, is in the background, still chasing Clem (Figure 1.3). Even
when the composition is not possessing of great depth, Wyler still prefers to
keep all the principles in one shot (Figure 1.4) so that their performances are
simultaneously viewable.18
There is another example of Wyler realism that occurs when Dave is at his
lowest point. Marjorie has learned Dave’s real purpose, to swindle the people of
this town by ingratiating himself with them, get them to bet on him, and then
throw a staged fight against Roff. She runs from the room and Dave runs after
her, leaving the camera statically staring at an empty room for what, in screen
time, seems like an eternity. After nine seconds of absolutely no action, Dave
finally and slowly comes back into the room unsuccessful in catching her. While
this realism runs the risk of alienating (boring) the audience, it definitely dem-
onstrates a young director who is dedicated to the creation of temporal reality.
Wyler’s next film, The Love Trap, is also a “transition” movie for the industry,
in that it is mostly silent, but has sound at the very end. It is also a transition for
Wyler from visual humor to comical dialogue. The Love Trap would also give
Wyler the opportunity to increase “his control over film syntax.”19 As with The
Shakedown, Wyler employs, early in this film, a marriage of actor’s movement and
camera movement.20 The film opens with Evelyn (Laura La Plante) fired from a
chorus line. As she enters the dressing room to collect her things, we dolly with
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Figure 1.3 Extreme staging-in-depth with static characters in the foreground and moving
characters middle- and background (The Shakedown, 1929)
Figure 1.4 Fairly shallow staging-in-depth but with character arrangement allowing for single
shot dialogue (The Shakedown, 1929)
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Another random document with
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CHAPTER II
CARMEL LEE had been told by everybody, ever since she could
remember being told anything, that she was headstrong and
impulsive. Her parents had impressed it upon her and, rather
proudly, had disseminated the fact among the neighbors until it
became a tradition in the little Michigan town where she was born.
People held the idea that one must make allowances for Carmel and
be perpetually ready to look with tolerance on outbursts of impulse.
Her teachers had accepted the tradition and were accustomed to
advise with her upon the point. The reputation accompanied her to
the university, and only a few weeks before, upon her graduation, the
head of the Department of Rhetoric (which included a course in
journalism) spent an entire valuable hour beseeching her to curb her
willfulness and to count as high as fifty before she reached a
decision.
So Carmel, after being the victim of such propaganda for sixteen or
seventeen years, could not be censured if she believed it herself.
She had gotten to be rather afraid of Carmel and of what Carmel
might do unexpectedly. Circumspection and repression had become
her watchwords, and the present business of her life was to look
before she leaped. She had made a vow of deliberation. As soon as
she found herself wanting to do something she became suspicious
of it; and latterly, with grim determination, she had taken herself in
hand. Whenever she became aware of a desire to act, she
compelled herself to sit down and think it over. Not that this did a
great deal of good, but it gave her a very pleasing sensation of self-
mastery. As a matter of fact, she was not at all introspective. She
had taken the word of bystanders for her impulsiveness; it was no
discovery of her own. And now that she was schooling herself in
repression, she did not perceive in the least that she failed to
repress. When she wanted to do a thing, she usually did it. The
deliberation only postponed the event. When she forced herself to
pause and scrutinize a desire, she merely paused and scrutinized it
—and then went ahead and did what she desired.
It may be considered peculiar that a girl who had inherited a
newspaper, as Carmel had done, should have paid so cursory a first
visit. It would have been natural to rush into the shop with
enthusiasm and to poke into corners and to ransack the place from
end to end, and to discover exactly what it was she had become
owner of. However, Carmel merely dropped in and hurried away....
This was repression. It was a distinct victory over impulse. She
wanted to do it very much, so she compelled herself to turn her back
and to go staidly to lunch at the hotel.
She ate very little and was totally unaware of the sensation she
created in the dining room, especially over at the square table which
was regarded as the property of visiting commercial travelers. It was
her belief that she gave off an impression of dignity such as befitted
an editor, and that a stern, businesslike air sat upon her so that none
could mistake the fact that she was a woman of affairs. Truthfulness
compels it to be recorded that she did not give this impression at all,
but quite another one. She looked a lovely schoolgirl about to go
canoeing with a box of bonbons on her lap. The commercial
travelers who were so unfortunate as to be seated with their back
toward her acquired cricks in their necks.
After dinner (in a day or two she would learn not to refer to it as
luncheon) she compelled herself to go up to her room and to remain
there for a full fifteen minutes. After this exercise, so beneficial to her
will, she descended and walked very slowly to the office of the Free
Press. Having thus given free rein to her bent for repression, she
became herself and pounced. She pounced upon the office; she
pounced upon the shop. She made friends with the cylinder press
much as an ordinary individual would make friends with a nice dog,
and she talked to the little job press as to a kitten and became
greatly excited over the great blade of the paper cutter, and wanted
Tubal to give her an instant lesson in the art of sticking type. For two
hours she played with things. Then, of a sudden, it occurred to her to
wonder if a living could be made out of the outfit.
It was essential that the paper should provide her with a living, and
that it should go about the business of doing so almost instantly. At
the moment when Carmel first set foot in Gibeon she was alone in
the world. Old Man Nupley had been her last remaining relative. And
—what was even more productive of unease of mind—she was the
owner of exactly seventy-two dollars and sixteen cents!
Therefore she pounced upon the records of the concern and very
quickly discovered that Old Man Nupley had left her no placer mine
out of which she could wash a pan of gold before breakfast. She
had, she found, become the owner of the right to pay off a number of
pressing debts. The plant was mortgaged. It owed for paper; there
were installments due on the job press; there were bills for this, that,
and the other thing which amounted to a staggering total....
She was not daunted, however, until she examined the credit side of
the affair. The year had brought the Free Press a grand total of five
hundred and sixty-one paid subscriptions; the advertising, at the
absurd rate of fifteen cents an inch, had been what politicians call
scattering; and the job work had hardly paid for the trouble of
keeping the dust off the press. The paper was dead on its feet, as so
many rural weeklies are. She could not help thinking that her uncle
Nupley had died in the nick of time to avoid bankruptcy.
It is worth recording that Carmel did not weep a tear of
disappointment, nor feel an impulse to walk out of the place and go
the thousand miles back to Michigan to take the job of teaching
English in the home high school. No. The only emotion Carmel felt
was anger. Her eyes actually glinted, and a red spot made its
appearance upon each cheek. She had arrived in Gibeon with a
glowing illusion packed in her trunk; unkind fact had snatched it
away and replaced it with clammy reality.
She got up from her desk and walked into the shop, where Tubal
was pretending to be busy.
“Gibeon is the county seat, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Yes ’m.”
“How many people live here?”
“We claim two thousand. Ol’ Man Nupley allowed the’ was four
thousand in the township.”
“Then” (her manner put Tubal in the wrong at once and compelled
him to fumble about for a defense) “why have we only a little more
than five hundred subscribers?”
“Wa-al, one thing or another, seems as though. Folks never took to
this paper much.... Mostly they take in the Standard from over to
Litchfield.”
“Why?”
Tubal shifted the blame to Gibeon. “Seems like this hain’t much of a
town.... It’s a dum funny town. I guess folks didn’t set much store by
this paper on account of Abner Fownes.”
“Abner Fownes? Who is he, and what has he to do with it?”
“Abner,” said Tubal, “comes clost to bein’ a one-man band. Uh huh!...
Owns the saw mills, owns half of Main Street, owns the Congo
church and the circuit judge and the selectmen, and kind of claims to
own all the folks that lives here.... Ol’ Man Nupley was a kind of
errand boy of his’n.”
Carmel’s intuition carried her to the point. “And the people didn’t take
this paper because they didn’t trust it. That was it, wasn’t it—
because this Abner Fownes—owned Uncle Nupley.”
“I calc’late,” said Tubal, “you’re twittin’ on facts....” He chuckled. “Las’
fall the folks kind of riz ag’in’ Abner and dum nigh trompled on him at
election time. Yes, sir. Made a fight fer it, but they didn’t elect nobody
but one sheriff. Good man, too.... But Abner was too slick for ’em
and he run off with all the other offices.... He holds a chattel
mortgage onto this plant.”
“Is he a bad man?”
“Wa-al I dunno’s a feller could call him bad. Jest pig-headed, like,
and got the idee nobody knows nothin’ but him. My notion is he gits
bamboozled a lot. The Court House crowd tickles his ribs and makes
him work for ’em. No, he hain’t bad. Deacon, and all that.”
“The local politicians flatter him and make use of the power his
money gives him, is that it?”
“You hit the nail plumb on the head.”
“Who is the real boss?”
“Wa-al now, that’s kind of hard to say. Kind of a ring. Half a dozen of
’em. Calc’late Supervisor Delorme is close to bein’ the queen bee.”
She could visualize Abner Fownes, smug, fatuous, in a place of
power which he did not know how to use, a figurehead and cat’s-paw
for abler and wickeder men.... It must be confessed that her interest
in him was not civic, but personal. He was, at that moment, of no
importance to her except as the man who held a chattel mortgage on
her plant and whose influence over her uncle had withered the
possible prosperity of the paper.
She was saying to herself: “I’ve got to find a way. I’ve got to make a
success of this. I can’t go back home and admit I couldn’t do it....
Everybody said I couldn’t run a paper. But I can. I can.”
The field was there, a prosperous town with a cultivated countryside
to the south and rich forest lands to north and west. There was a
sufficient population to support well a weekly paper; there was all of
Main Street, two dozen merchants large and small, whose
advertising patronage should flow in to the Free Press.
“What it needs,” she told herself, “is somebody to get behind and
push.”
As a matter of fact she was convinced the failure of the paper was
not due to Abner Fownes, nor to politics or outside influences, but to
the lack of initiative and ability of her uncle. So much of the town as
she had seen was rather pleasing; it had no appearance of resting
over subterranean caverns of evil, nor had the men and women she
saw on the streets the appearance of being ground down by one
man’s wealth, or of smarting under the rule of an evil political ring.
On the contrary, it seemed an ordinary town, full of ordinary people,
who lived ordinary lives in reasonable happiness. She discounted
Tubal’s disclosures and jumped to a conclusion. No, she told herself,
if she proved adequate, there was no reason why she could not
succeed where Uncle Nupley failed.
The telephone interrupted her reflections and she lifted the receiver.
“Is this the Free Press?” asked a voice.
“Yes.”
“Wait a moment, please.”
After some delay another voice, a large, important voice, repeated
the question, and Carmel admitted a second time the identity of the
paper.
“This,” said the voice, evidently impressed by the revelation it was
making, “is Abner Fownes.”
“Yes,” said Carmel.
“Are you the young woman—Nupley’s niece?”
“I am.”
“Will you step over to my office at once, then. I want to see you?”
Carmel’s eyes twinkled and her brows lifted. “Abner Fownes,” she
said. “The name has a masculine sound. Your voice is—distinctly
masculine?”
“Eh?... What of it?”
“Why,” said Carmel, “the little book I studied in school says that when
a gentleman wishes to see a lady he goes to her. I fear I should be
thought forward if I called on you.”
“Not at all.... Not at all,” said the voice, and Carmel knew she had to
deal with a man in whom resided no laughter.
“I shall be glad to see you whenever you find it convenient to call,”
she said—and hung up the receiver.
As she turned about she saw a young man standing outside the
railing, a medium-sized young man who wore his shoulders slightly
rounded and spectacles of the largest and most glittering variety.
The collar of his coat asked loudly to be brushed and his tie had the
appearance of having been tied with one hand in a dark bedroom.
He removed his hat and displayed a head of extraordinarily fine
formation. It was difficult to tell if he were handsome, because the
rims of his spectacles masked so much of his face and because his
expression was one of gloomy wrath. Carmel was tempted to laugh
at the expression because it did not fit; it gave the impression of
being a left-over expression, purchased at a reduction, and a trifle
large for its wearer.
“May I ask,” he said, in a voice exactly suited to his stilted diction, “if
you are in charge of this—er—publication?”
“I am,” said Carmel.
“I wish,” said the young man, “to address a communication to the
citizens of this village through the—er—medium of your columns.”
So this, thought Carmel, was the sort of person who wrote letters to
newspapers. She had often wondered what the species looked like.
“On what subject?” she asked.
“Myself,” said he.
“It should be an interesting letter,” Carmel said, mischievously.
The young man lowered his head a trifle and peered at her over the
rims of his glasses. He pursed his mouth and wrinkled one cheek,
studying her as a naturalist might scrutinize some interesting, but not
altogether comprehensible, bug. Evidently he could not make up his
mind as to her classification.
“I fancy it will be found so,” he said.
“May I ask your name?”
He fumbled in an inner pocket and continued to fumble until it
became an exploration. He produced numerous articles and laid
them methodically upon the railing—a fountain pen, dripping slightly,
half a dozen letters, a large harmonica, a pocket edition of Plato’s
Republic, a notebook, several pencils, and a single glove. He stared
at the glove with recognition and nodded to it meaningly, as much as
to say: “Ah, there you are again.... Hiding as usual.” At last he
extracted a leather wallet and from the wallet produced a card which
he extended toward Carmel.
Before she read it she had a feeling there would be numerous letters
upon it, and she was not disappointed. It said:
Evan Bartholomew Pell, A.B., Ph.D., LL.D., A.M.
“Ah!” said Carmel.
“Yes,” said the young man with some complacency.
“And your letter.”
“I am,” he said, “or, more correctly, I was, superintendent of schools
in this village. There are, as you know, three schools only one of
which gives instruction in the so-called high-school branches.”
“Indeed,” said Carmel.
“I have been removed,” he said, and stared at her with lips
compressed. When she failed to live up to his expectations in her
manifestations of consternation, he repeated his statement. “I have
been removed,” he said, more emphatically.
“Removed,” said Carmel.
“Removed. Unjustly and unwarrantably removed. Autocratically and
tyrannically removed. I am a victim of nepotism. I have, I fancy,
proven adequate; indeed, I may say it is rare to find a man of my
attainments in so insignificant a position.... But I have been cast out
upon the streets arbitrarily, that a corrupt and self-seeking group of
professional politicians may curry favor with a man more corrupt than
themselves. In short and in colloquial terms, I have been kicked out
to provide a place for Supervisor Delorme’s cousin.”
Carmel nodded. “And you wish to protest.”
“I desire to lay before the public my ideas of the obligation of the
public toward its children in the matter of education. I desire to
protest against glaring injustice. I desire to accuse a group of men
willing to prostitute the schools to the level of political spoils. I wish to
protest at being set adrift penniless.”
His expression as he uttered the word “penniless” was one of
helpless bewilderment which touched Carmel’s sympathy.
“Penniless?” she said.
“I am no spendthrift,” he said, severely. “I may say that I am
exceedingly economical. But I have invested my savings, and—er—
returns have failed to materialize from the investment.”
“What investment?”
The young man eyed her a moment as if he felt her to be intruding
unwarrantably in his private concerns, but presently determined to
reply.
“A certain gold mine, whose location I cannot remember at the
moment. It was described as of fabulous wealth, and I was assured
the return from my investment of five hundred dollars would lift me
above the sordid necessity of working for wages.... I regret to say
that hitherto there has been no material assurance of the truth of the
statements made to me.”
“Poor lamb!” said Carmel under her breath.
“I beg your pardon?”
Carmel shook her head. “So you are—out of a job—and broke?” she
said.
“Broke,” he said, lugubriously, “is an exceedingly expressive term.”
“And what shall you do?”
He looked about him, at his feet, through the door into the shop,
under the desk, at the picture on the wall in a helpless, bewildered
way as if he thought his future course of action might be hiding some
place in the neighborhood.
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” he said.
Carmel considered. Inexperienced as she was, new to the intrigues
of Gibeon, she was able to perceive how the professor’s letter was
loaded with dynamite—not for him, but for the paper which published
it. Notwithstanding, it was her impulse to print it. Indeed, her mind
was firmly made up to print it. Therefore she assumed an attitude of
deliberation, as she had schooled herself to do.
“If you give me the letter,” she said, “I will read it and consider the
wisdom of making it public.”
“I shall be obliged to you,” he said, and turned toward the door.
Midway he paused. “If,” he said, “you chance to hear of a position—
as teacher or otherwise—to which I may be adapted, I shall be glad
to have you communicate with me.”
He moved again toward the door, opened it, paused again, and
turned full to face Carmel. Then he made a statement sharply
detached from the context, and astonishing not so much for the fact
it stated as because of the man who stated it, his possible reasons
for making the statement, and the abruptness of the change of
subject matter.
“Sheriff Churchill has disappeared,” he said. Having made the
statement, he shut the door after him and walked rapidly up the
street.
CHAPTER III
CARMEL more than half expected Abner Fownes to appear in the
office, but he did not appear. Indeed, it was some days before she
caught so much as a casual glimpse of him on the street. But she
was gathering information about him and about the town of Gibeon
and the county of which it was the center. Being young, with
enthusiasm and ideals, and a belief in the general virtue of the
human race, she was not pleased.
She set about it to study Gibeon as she would have studied some
new language, commencing with elementals, learning a few nouns
and verbs and the local rules of the grammar of life. She felt she
must know Gibeon as she knew the palm of her hand, if she were to
coax the Free Press out of the slough into which it had slipped.
But it was not easy to know Gibeon, for Gibeon did not know itself.
Like so many of our American villages, it was not introspective—
even at election time. The tariff and the wool schedule and Wall
Street received from it more attention than did keeping its own
doorstep clean. It was used to its condition, and viewed it as normal.
There were moments of excited interest and hot-blooded talk.
Always there was an undercurrent of rumor; but it seemed to Carmel
the town felt a certain pride in the iniquity of its politics. A frightful
inertia resides in the mass of mankind, and because of this inertia
tsars and princes and nobilities and Tammany Societies and bosses
and lobbies and pork barrels and the supreme tyranny of war have
existed since men first invented organization.... Sometimes it seems
the world’s supply of energy is cornered by the ill-disposed. Rotten
governments and administrations are tolerated by the people
because they save the people the trouble of establishing and
conducting something better.
In a few days Carmel perceived a great deal that was going on in
Gibeon, and understood a little of it, and, seeing and understanding
as she did, an ambition was born in her, the ambition to wake up
Gibeon. This ambition she expressed to Tubal, who listened and
waggled his head.
“One time,” he said, “I worked fer a reform newspaper—till it went
into bankruptcy.”
“But look—”
“I been lookin’ a sight longer ’n’ you have, Lady.” At first he had
called her Lady as a dignified and polite form of greeting. After that it
became a sort of title of affection, which spread from Tubal to
Gibeon. “I been lookin’ and seein’, and what I see is that they’s jest
one thing folks is real int’rested in, and that’s earnin’ a livin’.”
“I don’t believe it, Tubal. I believe people want to do right. I believe
everybody would rather do right and be good—if some one would
just show them how.”
“Mebby, but you better let somebody else take the pointer and go to
the blackboard. You got to eat three times a day, Lady, and this here
paper’s got to step up and feed you. Look at it reasonable. What
d’ye git by stirrin’ things up? Why, half a dozen real good folks claps
their hands, but they don’t give up a cent. What d’ye git if you keep
your hands off and let things slide? You git the county printin’, and
consid’able advertisin’ and job work that Abner Fownes kin throw to
you. You git allowed to eat. And there you be.... Take that letter of
the perfessor’s, fer instance——”
“I’m going to print that letter if—if I starve.”
“Which is what the perfessor’s doin’ right now.... And where’s Sheriff
Churchill? Eh? Tell me that.”
“Tubal, what is this about the sheriff? Has he really disappeared?”
“If you don’t b’lieve it, go ask his wife. The Court House crowd lets
on he’s run off with a woman or mebby stole some county funds.
They would.... But what woman? The’ wa’n’t no woman. And
Churchill wa’n’t the stealin’ kind.”
“What do you think, Tubal?”
“Lady, I don’t even dast to think.”
“What will be done?”
“Nothin’.”
“You mean the sheriff of a county can disappear—and nothing be
done about it?”
“He kin in Gibeon. Oh, you keep your eye peeled. Delorme and
Fownes’ll smooth it over somehow, and the folks kind of likes it.
Gives ’em suthin’ to talk about. Sure. When the’ hain’t no other topic
they’ll fetch up the sheriff and argue about what become of him. But
nobody’ll ever know—for sure.”
“I’m going to see Mrs. Churchill,” said Carmel, with sudden
determination. “It’s news. It’s the biggest news we’ll have for a long
time.”
“H’m!... I dunno. Deputy Jenney and Peewee Bangs they dropped in
here a few days back and give me a tip to lay off the sheriff. Anyhow,
everybody knows he’s gone.”
Carmel made no reply. She reached for her hat, put it on at the
desirable angle, and went out of the door. Tubal stared after her a
moment, fired an accurate salvo at a nail head in the floor, and
walked back into the shop with the air of a man proceeding to face a
firing squad.
Carmel walked rapidly up Main Street past the Busy Big Store and
Smith Brothers’ grocery and Miss Gammidge’s millinery shop,
rounding the corner on which was Field & Hopper’s bank. She cut
diagonally across the Square, past the town pump, and proceeded to
the little house next the Rink. The Rink had been erected some
twenty-five years before during the roller-skating epidemic, but was
now utilized as a manufactory of stepladders and plant stands and
kitchen chairs combined in one article. This handy device was the
invention of Pazzy Hendee, whose avocation was inventing, but
whose occupation was constructing models of full-rigged ships. It
was in the little house, square, with a mansard roof, that Sheriff
Churchill’s family resided. Carmel rang the bell.
“Come in,” called a woman’s voice.
Carmel hesitated, not knowing this was Gibeon’s hospitable custom
—that one had but to rap on a door to be invited to enter.
“Come in,” said the voice after a pause, and Carmel obeyed.
“Right in the parlor,” the voice directed.
Carmel turned through the folding doors to the right, and there, on
the haircloth sofa, sat a stout, motherly woman in state. She wore
her black silk with the air common to Gibeon when it wears its black
silk. It was evident Mrs. Churchill had laid aside her household
concerns in deference to the event, and, according to precedent,
awaited the visits of condolence and curiosity of which it was the
duty, as well as the pleasure, of her neighbors to pay.
“Find a chair and set,” said Mrs. Churchill, scrutinizing Carmel.
“You’re the young woman that Nupley left the paper to, hain’t you?”
“Yes,” said Carmel, “and I’ve come to ask about your husband—if the
subject isn’t too painful.”
“Painful! Laws! ’Twouldn’t matter how painful ’twas. Folks is entitled
to know, hain’t they? Him bein’ a public character. Was you thinkin’ of
havin’ a piece in the paper?”
“If you will permit,” said Carmel.
In spite of the attitude of state, in spite of something very like pride in
being a center of interest and a dispenser of news, Carmel liked Mrs.
Churchill. Her face was the face of a woman who had been a faithful
helpmeet to her husband; of a woman who would be summoned by
neighbors in illness or distress. Motherliness, greatness of heart,
were written on those large features; and a fine kindliness, clouded
by present sorrow, shone in her wise eyes. Carmel had encountered
women of like mold. No village in America but is the better, more
livable, for the presence and ready helpfulness of this splendid
sisterhood.
“Please tell me about it,” said Carmel.
“It was like this,” said Mrs. Churchill, taking on the air of a narrator of
important events. “The sheriff and me was sittin’ on the porch, talkin’
as pleasant as could be and nothin’ to give a body warnin’. We was
kind of arguin’ like about my oldest’s shoes and the way he runs
through a pair in less’n a month. The sheriff he was holdin’ it was
right and proper boys should wear out shoes, and I was sayin’ it was
a sin and a shame sich poor leather was got off on the public. Well,
just there the sheriff he got up and says he was goin’ to pump
himself a cold drink, and he went into the house, and I could hear the
pump squeakin’, but no thought of anythin’. He didn’t come back,
and he didn’t come back, so I got up, thinkin’ to myself, what in
tunket’s he up to now and kind of wonderin’ if mebby he’d fell in a fit
or suthin’.” Carmel took note that Mrs. Churchill talked without the air
of punctuation marks. “I went out to the back door and looked, and
the’ wa’n’t hide or hair of him in sight. I hollered, but he didn’t
answer....” Mrs. Churchill closed her eyes and two great tears oozed
between the tightly shut lids and poised on the uplands of her
chubby cheeks. “And that’s all I know,” she said in a dull voice. “He
hain’t never come back.”
“Have you any idea why he disappeared?”
“I got my idees. My husband was a man sot in his ways—not but
what I could manage him when he needed managin’, and a better or
more generous provider never drew the breath of life. But he
calc’lated to do his duty. I guess he done it too well!”
“What do you mean, Mrs. Churchill?”
“The sheriff was an honest man. When the folks elected him they
chose him because he was honest and nobody couldn’t move him
out of a path he set his foot to travel. He was close mouthed, too, but
I seen for weeks past he had suthin’ on his mind that he wouldn’t
come out with. He says to me once, ‘If folks knew what they was
livin’ right next door to!’ He didn’t say no more, but that was a lot for
him....” Suddenly her eyes glinted and her lips compressed. “My
husband was done away with,” she said, “because he was a good
man and a smart man, and I’m prayin’ to God to send down
vengeance on them that done it.”
She paused a moment and her face took on the grimness of
righteous anger. “It’s reported to me they’re settin’ afoot rumors that
he run off with some baggage—him that couldn’t bear me out of
sight these dozen year; him that couldn’t git up in the mornin’ nor go
to bed at night without me there to help him! They lie! I know my man
and I trust him. He didn’t need no woman but me, and I didn’t need
no man but him.... Some says he stole county money. They lie, too,
and best for them they don’t make no sich sayin’s in my hearin’....”
“What do you think is at bottom of it all?”
Mrs. Churchill shook her head. “Some day it’ll all come out,” she
said, and her word was an assertion of her faith in the goodness of
God. There was a pause, and then woman’s heart cried out to
woman’s heart for sympathy.
“I try to bear up and to endure it like he’d want me to. But it’s lonely,
awful lonely.... Lookin’ ahead at the years to come—without him by
me.... Come nighttime and it seems like I can’t bear it.”
“But—but he’ll come back,” said Carmel.
“Back! Child, there hain’t no back from where my husband’s gone.”
Somehow this seemed to Carmel a statement of authority. It
established the fact. Sheriff Churchill would never return, and his
wife knew it. Something had informed her past doubting. It gave
Carmel a strange, uncanny sensation, and she sat silent, chilled.
Then an emotion moved in her, swelled, and lifted itself into her
throat. It was something more than mere anger, it was righteous
wrath.
“Mrs. Churchill,” she said, “if this is true—the thing you believe—then
there are men in Gibeon who are not fit to walk the earth. There is a
thing here which must be crushed—unearthed and crushed.”
“If it is God’s will.”
“It must be God’s will. And if I can help—if I can do one single small
thing to help——”
“Mebby,” said Mrs. Churchill, solemnly, “He has marked you out and
set you apart as His instrument.”
“I want to think. I want to consider.” Carmel got to her feet. “I—— Oh,
this is a wicked, cruel, cruel thing!...”
She omitted, in her emotion, any word of parting, and walked from
the house, eyes shining, lips compressed grimly. In her ears a
phrase repeated itself again and again—“Mebby He has set you
apart as His instrument....”
On the Square she met Prof. Evan Bartholomew Pell, who first
peered at her through his great beetle glasses and then confronted
her.
“May I ask,” he said, brusquely, “what decision you have reached
concerning my letter?”
“I am going to print it,” she said.
He was about to pass on without amenities of any sort whatsoever,
but she arrested him.
“What are your plans?” she asked.
“I have none,” he said, tartly.
“No plans and no money?”
“That is a matter,” he said, “which it does not seem to me is of
interest to anyone but myself.”
She smiled, perceiving now he spoke out of a boyish shame and
pride, and perceiving also in his eyes an expression of worry and
bewilderment which demanded her sympathy.
“No schools are open at this time of year,” she said.
“None. I do not think I shall teach again.”
“Why?”
“I don’t like school trustees,” he said, simply, and one understood
how he regarded the genus school trustee as a separate
classification of humanity, having few qualities in common with the
general human race. “I—I shall work,” he said.
“At what? What, besides teaching, are you fitted to do?”
“I—I can dig,” he said, looking at her hopefully. “Anybody can dig.
Men who dig eat—and have a place to sleep. What more is there?”
“A great deal more.... Have you no place to eat or sleep?” she said,
suddenly.
“My landlady has set my trunk on the porch, and as for food, I
breakfasted on berries.... They are not filling,” he added.
Carmel considered. In her few short days of ownership she had
discovered the magnitude of the task of rehabilitating the Free Press.
She had seen how she must be business manager, advertising
solicitor, and editor, and that any of the three positions could well
demand all of her time. It would be useless to edit a paper, she
comprehended, if there was no business to support it. Contrariwise,
it would be impossible to get business for a paper as futile as the
Free Press was at that moment in its history.
“How,” she said, “would you like to be an editor—a kind of an
editor?”
“I’d like it,” he said. “Then I could say to the public the things I’d like
to say to the public. You can’t educate them. They don’t care. They
are sunk in a slough of inertia with a rock of ignorance around their
necks. I would like to tell them how thick-headed they are. It would
be a satisfaction.”
“I’m afraid,” said Carmel, “you wouldn’t do for an editor.”
“Why not, I should like to know?”
“Because,” said Carmel, “you don’t know very much.”
She could see him swell with offended dignity. “Good morning,” he
said, and turned away without lifting his hat.
“And you have very bad manners,” she added.
“Eh?... What’s that?”
“Yes. And I imagine you are awfully selfish and self-centered. You
don’t think about anybody but yourself, do you? You—you imagine
the universe has its center in Prof. Evan Bartholomew Pell, and you
look down on everybody who hasn’t a lot of degrees to string after
his name. You don’t like people.” She paused and snapped a
question at him. “How much did they pay you for being
superintendent of schools?”
“Fifteen hundred dollars a year,” he said, the answer being surprised
out of him.
“Doesn’t that take down your conceit?”
“Conceit!... Conceit!...”
“Yes—a good carpenter earns more than that. The world can’t set
such a high value on you if it pays a mechanic more than it does
you.”
“I told you,” he said, impatiently, “that the world is silly and ignorant.”
“It is you who are silly and ignorant.”
“You—you have no right to talk to me like this. You—you are forward
and—and impertinent. I never met such a young woman.”
“It’s for the good of your soul,” she said, “and because—because I
think I’m going to hire you to write editorials and help gather news.
Before you start in, you’ve got to revise your notions of the world—
and of yourself. If you don’t like people, people won’t like you.”
Evidently he had been giving scant attention to her and plenary
consideration to himself. “How much will you pay me?” he asked.
“There you are!... I don’t know. Whatever I pay you will be more than
you are worth.”
He was thinking about himself again, and thinking aloud.
“I fancy I should like to be an editor,” he said. “The profession is not
without dignity and scholarly qualities——”
“Scholarly fiddlesticks!”
Again he paid her no compliment of attention. “Why shouldn’t one be
selfish? What does it matter? What does anything matter? Here we
are in this world, rabbits caught in a trap. We can’t escape. We’re
here, and the only way to get out of the trap is to die. We’re here with
the trap fastened to our foot, waiting to be killed. That’s all. So what
does anything matter except to get through it somehow. Nobody can
do anything. The greatest man who ever lived hasn’t done a thing
but live and die. Selfish? Of course I’m selfish. Nothing interests me
but me. I want to stay in the trap with as little pain and trouble as I
can manage.... Everything and everybody is futile.... Now you can let
me be an editor or you can go along about your business and leave
me alone.”
“You have a sweet philosophy,” she said, cuttingly. “If that is all your
education has given you, the most ignorant scavenger on the city
streets is wiser and better and more valuable to the world than you.
I’m ashamed of you.”
“Scavenger!...” His eyes snapped behind his beetle glasses and he
frowned upon her terribly. “Now I’m going to be an editor—the silly
kind of an editor silly people like. Just to show you I can do it better
than they can. I’ll write better pieces about Farmer Tubbs painting his
barn red, and better editorials about the potato crop. I’m a better
man than any of them, with a better brain and a better education—
and I’ll use my superiority to be a better ass than any of them.”
“Do you know,” she said, “you’ll never amount to a row of pins until
you really find a desire to be of use to the world? If you try to help
the world, sincerely and honestly, the world finds it out and helps you
—and loves you.... Don’t you want people to like you?”
“No.”
“Well, when you can come to me and tell me you do want people to
like you, I’ll have some hopes of you.... Report at the office at one
o’clock. You’re hired.”
She walked away from him rapidly, and he stood peering after her
with a lost, bewildered air. “What an extraordinary young woman!” he
said to himself. Carmel seated herself at her desk to think. Her eyes
glanced downward at the fresh blotter she had put in place the day
before, and there they paused, for upon its surface lay a grimy piece
of paper upon which was printed with a lead pencil:
Don’t meddle with Sheriff Churchill or he’ll have company.

Refocus The Films of William Wyler John Price Editor All Chapter

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ReFocus: The Films of William Wyler

John Price (Editor)

7972_Price.indd 1 03/02/23 12:24 pm

Series Editors: Robert Singer, Frances Smith, and

Editorial board: Kelly Basilio, Donna Campbell,

ReFocus is a series of contemporary methodological and theoretical approaches to the interdisciplinary

Titles in the series include:

Preston Sturges Edited by Jeff Jaeckle and Sarah Kozloff

Delmer Daves Edited by Matthew Carter and Andrew Nelson

Amy Heckerling Edited by Frances Smith and Timothy Shary

Budd Boetticher Edited by Gary D. Rhodes and Robert Singer

Kelly Reichardt E. Dawn Hall

William Castle Edited by Murray Leeder

Barbara Kopple Edited by Jeff Jaeckle and Susan Ryan

Elaine May Edited by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Dean Brandum

Spike Jonze Edited by Kim Wilkins and Wyatt Moss-Wellington

Paul Schrader Edited by Michelle E. Moore and Brian Brems

John Hughes Edited by Timothy Shary and Frances Smith

Doris Wishman Edited by Alicia Kozma and Finley Freibert

Albert Brooks Edited by Christian B. Long

William Friedkin Steve Choe

Robert Altman Edited by Lisa Dombrowski and Justin Wyatt

Mary Harron Edited by Kyle Barrett

Wallace Fox Edited by Gary D. Rhodes and Joanna Hearne

Richard Linklater Edited by Kim Wilkins and Timotheus Vermeulen

Roberta Findlay Edited by Peter Alilunas and Whitney Strub

Richard Brooks Edited by R. Barton Palmer and Homer B. Pettey

William Wyler Edited by John M. Price

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Edited by John M. Price

7972_Price.indd 3 03/02/23 12:24 pm

© editorial matter and organization John M. Price, 2023

Edinburgh University Press Ltd

Typeset in 11/13 Ehrhardt MT by

ISBN 978 1 3995 1046 2 (hardback)

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List of Figures vii

Introduction: William Wyler—Chariot Races and Flower Shows 1

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7 Wyler’s Wuthering Heights (1939): Genre, Transnationalism, and the

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I.1 Early Wyler staging-in-depth (The Shakedown, 1929) 8

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1.10 Staging-in-depth without deep focus, both characters in frame

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4.3 Multiple planes and multiple frames (Dead End, 1937) 92

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7972_Price.indd 10 03/02/23 12:24 pm

Etienne Boumans is an independent scholar, researching popular culture and

Carol Donelan received her Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts-

7972_Price.indd 11 03/02/23 12:24 pm

Terrance H. McDonald has a Ph.D. from Brock University (St. Catherines),

Kaitlin Pontzer received her Ph.D. from Cornell University in 2021.

7972_Price.indd 12 03/02/23 12:24 pm

John M. Price has both a professional and an academic background in Film

Robert Ribera received his Ph.D. from Boston University, focusing on

Anthony Smith received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in

Matthias Smith currently works at the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam.

Gabrielle Stecher’s areas of academic expertise are eighteenth- and nineteenth-

7972_Price.indd 13 03/02/23 12:24 pm

7972_Price.indd 14 03/02/23 12:24 pm

He was an ace professional, a perfectionist. Were he alive in full spade

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List of Figures vii

Introduction: William Wyler—Chariot Races and Flower Shows 1

I.1 Early Wyler staging-in-depth (The Shakedown, 1929) 8

4.3 Multiple planes and multiple frames (Dead End, 1937) 92