UNHERALDED, POPULIST MOVIE CLASSIC?
APPRARENTLY, IT HAPPENED TO JANE
Greetings loyal readers, as mentioned in the last post, I was feeling a little bit of burn-out following the completion of the book. Then, within days of its official launch I fell ill for a while: perhaps not entirely unrelated facts. So, I’ve been down and out for several days. During my convalescent, though, I watched some old movies to fill the time that, if I’d been feeling better, would have been spent reading some old books. (Whatever.) And I came across one, which I’d never heard of before, but I immediately recognized as thoroughly Americana populist.
Regular readers here will know that I’ve on several occasions provided more historically specific and theoretically nuanced explanations for North American populism than the usual platitudinous mumblings of standard hackneyed managerial class denunciations. Those efforts are all now collected and integrated into a methodical argument about (among other things) the history and significance of populism, today, in my (new, must read!) book, A Plea for Time in the Phenotype Wars. As I’ve emphasized, North American populism’s most creative and organizationally impactful era was the late 19th (in the U.S.) and early 20th (in Canada) centuries. And hallmarks of this era was the agrarians and their rural and small town communities and associations joining forces to fight government and big business that sought to rob them of their rightful earnings through the latter’s monopoly(ish) powers: typically accused being the Feds, the banks, and of course the railroads.
The lesson of populism was that individual farmers could not hope to win against the established, entrenched interests of power and money; their hope was to band together, as a community, to create the very kinds of strong intermediary institutions that have always sustained temporalist values and culture, against spatialist power and expansion. (If you don’t know what is meant here by temporalist and spatialist, again: going to have to read my new book.)
It Happened to Jane, contemporizes the story (at least to its own time, released in 1959). And I guess one could debate about whether or not Jane was a farmer; in the story, she has just launched a lobster farming business. But there’s no doubt about who is the villain. The railroad, initially out of sheer corporate indifference almost kills off her business before it can even get started, then once she decides to fight back, uses every legal and operational weapon at its disposal to destroy her.
Perhaps, in the early going, the movie can be misinterpreted as another liberal ode to the cliches of American rugged individualism. Strictly speaking, this is never true. Jane is the leader of the fight undoubtedly, but even her early successes rely upon others, especially her rather underachieving country lawyer friend. But in the end, her final success is only made possible by the entire community rallying around her. That was a lot coal they had to collect.
Now, it is a Hollywood movie, so you have to be prepared for a bit of all that. Particularly, the late innings sudden uprising within the railroad company as one after another of Malone’s inner circle resign over his malicious efforts to sabotage her, seems a little Hollywood. The quintessential Hollywood moment though comes at the very end when it turns out that the ruthless railroad tycoon is really a grinch who does have a heart after all. Yeah, yeah, whatever. But, on the other hand, being a Hollywood movie, it delivers a pretty political message wrapped in charm and humor.
And anyway, up until those final too-Hollywood moments, this film is hitting all the high points of Americana populism: small producers fighting monopolists, townhall Tocquevillian democracy, and the virtues of small town values and community. It also hits the themes of the importance of lend-a-hand neighborliness and the nuclear family. I wonder if Robert Nisbet ever saw or commented on the movie. It was released the same decade as his pioneering The Quest for Community. I’m guessing our old boy Nisbet wasn’t much taken with Hollywood movies, but then what do I know? If he had watched it, I do think he’d have recognized something important about its implications for the times: something his own book had lamented. And, he’d have respected it, as Nisbet always emphasized the importance of not sugarcoating temporalist community; the movie does show its always potential dark side.
The low point of the movie for the protagonist (is that the end of the second act, I’ve never really understood how those acts work) is when the town members suddenly turn on her when the implications for their town of yet another railroad retaliation against Jane is appreciated. It’s beautifully captured in the townhall scene, which I thought was really nicely done, depicting in microcosm this attitudinal shift. (It got so dark, I thought maybe someone would get up and denounce her as a witch. In spatialist propaganda, that’s probably what really would have happened.) In great Americana fashion, though, the underachieving lawyer finally rises to the occasion and gives a stirring speech that reminds them of their (temporalist) values and brings them back to the populist fight.
I should warn you there is a gratuitous — but happily, trivially attended to — love triangle. Its perhaps one redeeming aspect was the opportunity for the film to nicely punctuate the value of the nuclear family at the center of all this community and cooperative association. And, I have to admit I found the “proposal” across the coal car kind of sweet, but I’m an old sentimentalist that way. Hey, its a Hollywood movie! Doris Day. Jack Lemmon. Ernie Kovacs.
I think I may look into the making of this movie. The people who made it, particularly the writer and director. Is there an interesting track record there? But maybe a bit more into the specific context. After all, 1959, as I posit in my (that’s right, my new, must read!) book, is just on the cusp of what was probably (to slightly twist a helpful metaphor) the “phase transition” of America from temporalist to spatialist hegemony.1 It might be interesting to explore the culture industry production of that time and see how such tensions were playing out. Let me know if you think that would be a fruitful investment of effort.
I watched It Happened to Jane for free on YouTube. I have embedded the link below, but I have no idea how long it will be available there for free. Still, one way or another, if you have an opportunity to see it, I’d be curious to hear your thoughts.
And if you’re anxious for more of these observational gems, not to mention, eventually, penetrating theoretically analysis, and haven’t yet, please…
And if you know anyone else who would benefit from improbable populist-themed movie recommendations, please…
Be seeing you!
For Jack Lemmon fans, its interesting that this movie was released just one year before the release of one of Lemmon’s most memorable and beloved portrayals, as C.C. Baxter in Billy Wilder’s classic The Apartment: not just one of the great films of American cinema, but an unflinching expose of the urban morality that takes grip when the temporalist values — celebrated and promoted in It Happened to Jane — are abandoned. It’s almost as though these two movies serve as back to back comparisons of what was at stake in this decisive moment of American history, the aforementioned phase transition.