My Man Godfrey and The Great Depression

Gregory La Cava’s My Man Godfrey (1936) was released in the midst of the Great American Depression. Like many other films of this time, My Man Godfrey served as an escapist solution for the lower classes that struggled with unemployment, specially that the hero was someone they could relate to. My Man Godfrey points the finger at the government and the snobbish higher class, as the main reason for financial hardships and It offers an amusing comedy that concludes in the prosperity of the poor.
The Depression’s social consequences, such as unemployment, bankruptcy, poverty, and clashes of social classes, are some of the main elements that shape the narrative. My Man Godfrey looks at the Depression from the perspective of the rather elite class. On one hand the film is extremely critical of the high society and it represents them as “empty-headed nitwits” through a comic portrayal, and on the other hand it reveals the people in the dump, who are tagged “forgotten” by the rich, as what Godfrey (William Powell) calls: “the society of really important people.”My Man Godfrey is formed around the comic divergence of Godfrey Parks with the negligent upper-class Bullock family. The Bullock family is symbolized as the mindless partying, irresponsible elite who belong to a class that are too occupied by leisure and are somewhat the answer to the unemployment. Mrs. Bullock (Alice Brady) is portrayed as an unintelligent “amusing” person who supports his protégé Carlo (Mischa Auer) , a pianist whose responsibility in the family is rather that of a royal joker. The cold monstrous older daughter Cornelia (Gail Patrick) is described by Godfrey as:
the Park Avenue brat. A spoiled child who's grown up in ease and luxury, who's always had her own way, and whose misdirected energies are so childish... that they hardly deserve the comment even of a butler on his off-Thursday.
The childish and naïve Irene (Carole Lombard) steals a horse from a cab and leaves it in the family library. Mr. Bullock (Eugene Pallette) however seems to be the most rational of all, yet a shareholder whose mediocre understanding of the stock market almost results in his bankruptcy.
The bullock family’s involvement in the scavenger hunt is also to emphasize their idiocy. The inanity of the game and their treatment of the poor illustrate the boredom and silliness of the high society of the time and comically criticize its snobbish intellectualism. The scavenger hunt creates a contrast between the two extreme social classes, the poor in the dump and the elite. While the rich are in search of “something that nobody wants-a forgotten man” just as a matter of amusement, the poor must also scavenge among the rubbish, rather as means of survival. The destiny of those who participate in this game is clear, when Irene explains to Godfrey that not all of them are hunters, but some are receivers, he suggests: “Sounds like a bankruptcy proceeding.”
The film criticizes the wealthy class and holds them somewhat responsible for the misfortunes of the poor, not because of their wealth but rather their arrogant, irresponsible behaviors. For instance in the scene where Godfrey for the first time as the butler serves Mrs. Bullock’s breakfast, she is unable to recall him:
- What's your name?
- Godfrey.
- Are you someone I know?
- We met last night at the Waldorf Ritz.
- Oh, yes, you were with Mrs. Maxton's party at the bar. Or were you?
- I'm the forgotten man.
- So many people have such bad memories.
It is suggested that people like Godfrey have become “forgotten” mainly due to the negligence of the ignorant upper class that are deeply involved in their leisure life. Another example would be Mr. Bullock’s suspicious first encounter with Godfrey. Even though Godfrey is well dressed and relaxed, Mr. Bullock identifies him as a burglar, which indicates not only Mr. Bullock’s suspicious nature but also his superior power over Godfrey. Cornelia’s constant act of humiliating Godfrey to the extend of setting him up for a theft of her pearl necklace, was also along the lines of snobbish higher class cruelty towards the poor. Even Irene, who is in love with Godfrey, finds herself in a superior position over him. She stubbornly obliges Godfrey to love her throughout the film and at the end she marries him by force. By mostly framing her higher and on the left of the Godfrey, the dynamic forces of power are suggested.
The film is also critical of the government interference in the crisis, and shows a preference for laissez-faire instead. In the very opening scene a tramp complains to Godfrey about the police intrusion in his business: “ If them cops would stick to their own racket and leave honest guys alone, we’d get somewhere without all this relief and stuff.” We see that at the end the survival of the forgotten men from unemployment is because of Godfrey’s project which does not involve any welfare or governmental funding. My Man Godfrey also deals with the notion of tax in wealthy families. In the scene where Mr. Bullock warns the family about their spendings, so that he would be able to pay the taxes, the family reacts to the high percentage of the tax taken by the government. Mrs. Bullock argues: “Well, why should the government get more money than your own flesh and blood?” what is evident in this scene is that the wealthier families are also being effected by the Depression, where at the time it is not taken seriously by the family members, as they are far detached from reality, living in their world of leisure.
The film offers a rather capitalist conclusion to the crisis. Godfrey, with the help of his friend Tommy Grey, finances a project where he not only provides jobs for the forgotten men in the dump, but also saves the Bullock family from bankruptcy, due to his understanding of the market. The conclusion suggests that it is Mr. Bullock’s wrong decisions that result in his bankruptcy rather than the harshness of the stock market. By transforming the dump into a nightclub, Godfrey creates the means to earn money and benefit the poor, out of the snobbism and desire for leisure of the high society. The very act that through out the film was demonized and held responsible for the forgotten men’s misfortunes has become their survival solution.
According to Peter Roffman and Jim Purdy, Godfrey’s psychological state is a metaphor of the country’s condition. He has coped with his Depression by joining the common people in the dump. Godfrey describes his experience to his old time college friend Tommy Grey:
when you begin to feel sorry for yourself. And boy did I feel sorry for myself! I wandered down to the East River one night, thinking I'd just slide in and get it over with. But I met some fellows living there, on a city dump. They were people who were fighting it out and not complaining. I never got as far as the river.
The character of Godfrey Sympathizes with, and praises those who struggle through financial difficulties and poverty, mainly due to the Depression. His perfection at work and his effort in being a “GOOD butler,” shows not only his disciplined attitude, but emphasizes his need for the job as well. While visiting the dump with Tommy, which looks even filthier in the daylight, Godfrey stresses the importance of the employment: “the only difference between a derelict and a man is a job.”
Apart from the fact that movies like My Man Godfrey were an escapist solution for the audience, from their troubles and financial difficulties, they provided characters that people could relate to. While everybody blamed a different person or organization for their financial hardship, My Man Godfrey depicts a certain class and points the finger at them and the government state. Following the destiny of a poor forgotten man, the film fulfills the lower class’s fascination with the wealth, by setting the plot mainly in luxurious locations. The film concludes in a way that provides hope, the capitalist solution, which seems to be the only way of having everybody, both wealthy and poor, happy.

New Look, New Policies

Dear Visitors,

I appreciate all your support. I know I don't have that many frequent visitors, and I know the reason. As my variety of submissions are very wide, I get a lot of one time visitors and not many returning ones. So as of now I will categorize the postings in different genres, which are: Cinema, Music, Visual Arts, and Philosophy.

I am happy to have visitors from as far as Saudi Arabia, and Chile. I hope you find the material here helpful to your research and/or curiosity.

There had been also a funny incident. Something like 4 month ago I had a posting on Guerrilla Girls, and in that post there was a non explicit image which was called nude.gif, now because of this image the traffic to my blog has been almost tripled. So a special thanks to perverts for boosting my google location! :)

A historical Look at the production of Munau's "The Last Laugh"

The Last Laugh which had the original German title of Der Latzte Mann- Like the French title Le Dernier des Hommes- was an exteremely well appreciated and valued Film at the time. Bioscope called it: “the greatest film ever made” or referring to The Times, it was “unusually good.” It was the collaboration of three men, F. W. Murnau, Carl Mayer and Karl Freund, which resulted in a picture that with almost no inter-titles managed to be still intriguing and simulating.
The Last Laugh is a portrait of an elderly doorman, who identifies himself with his uniform. Once this uniform is taken away from him due to his age incapability, he finds himself depressed, destroyed and low. Especially that he is transferred to lavatory services, forced to wear a new mediocre white coat.

The story of The Last Laugh is simple, yet the context, in which it is represented in, is complex. The social cruelty that the film criticizes is not presented in the plot, rather in the impressions that the whole complex cinema visualization will leave on the mind, as well as social consciousness. “It is less a narrative of occurrences than a record of psychological experience.”
Although at the time of the screening of The Last Laugh, most of the credits were given to Murnau, scenarist Carl Mayer played an important role in the development of the film. Mayer wrote Scherben and Sylvester, the first two of the Kammerspielfilme trilogy, both directed by Lulu Pick. His disagreement with Pick resulted in Murnau directing The Last Laugh. Quoting Barton Palmer: “Murnau more than Pick was able to realize Mayer’s ideas about dynamic and flexible point of view.” Because of Murnau and Mayer’s understandings of each other The Last Laugh as an outcome was both technically and aesthetically brilliant.
More than anything else this film has been praised for its great use of mobile camera, a concept very new at the time. The Last Laugh’s reputation for great cinematography was a result of Mayer’s concern in writing for camera, describing in details perspectives, positions and movement , also, Murnau’s awareness of camera aesthetics and Karl Freund’s techniques. The utilization of a fully automatic camera, capable of all sorts of movements, enables Murnau to create Mayer’s desired fluidity in the title-free narrative structure.
Murnau and Karl Freund introduced the entfesselte or the “unchained camera”. Murnau employed this technique to create the famous drunk scene, illustrating porter’s distorted, dreamy vision. Freund achieved this kind of picture by attaching the camera to his chest using straps and staggering around the set. In the opening scene, the camera descends in the elevator, goes through the hall way and then exits the hotel entrance to where porter stands, having it all in a long traveling shot. According to Palmer: “Freund achieved this effect by mounting the camera on a bicycle. Another extraordinary shot was the passage of the camera through the glass wall, which was achieved by a discreet dissolve in the montage. Murnau also beautifully showed the movement of sound through camera: the trumpeter turns towards the camera, in a way that the opening of his horn fills the frame, then the camera tracks backward quickly, as if the sound of the trumpet was flying. Same method was used in the scene where the doorman’s neighbors shout the news of his degradation.

The Last Laugh’s set was entirely studio-built, and the whole film, except for the shot in the railway station interiors, was staged there.
What Mayer called ‘in Licht und Glanz’ in Sylvester, which means ‘luminous and resplendent’, was dramatically taken to another level by Murnau: The movement of flashlights, the reflective black oily and wet raincoat, glass surfaces with glitter, shinny coat buttons or the lighted windows of the apartments. Quoting Marc Silberman:
“Light here is not the reflection of an outside source or even an ornamental element but rather suggests in its intensity and dispersal another world, he unseen world of darkness and shadows opposed to such clarity.”
The objects as part of the mise-en-scene play an important role in the narrative structure of the film. For instance the doorman’s obsession with mirrors and the constant act of checking himself in them, which signals his crises over the notion of self-knowledge, or the use of swinging door for creating the ‘expressive framework of the protagonist’s actions’ . But more than anything else it was the doorman’s uniform that contributed to the narrative. Served as a symbol of authority, power and respect, it determined the doorman’s high “rank”(Stand) even though he was from a lower “class”.

Emil Jannings who played the role of the doorman, received a large amount of publicity at the time. Jannings, who was already well known in UK and US for his performances, was a key factor in the plot progression, especially that there was no inter-titles and everything must have been acted out.
One of the interesting instances that happened during the production of The Last Laugh was Hitchcock’s encounter with Murnau. Hitchcock who visited Berlin as an assistant director of an Anglo-German production, filming The Background at the UFA studios, was situated in the neighboring set to Murnau. Hitchcock carefully observed Murnau at work, and was fascinated by his methods. In an afternoon that Murnau and Hitchcock spent together, Murnau “proceeded to point things out” to Hitchcock, such as the use of the perspective.
It was Murnau’s Sense of direction, along with Mayer’s imagination and Freund technical creativity that created the appropriate fluidity in a film with no inter-titles. The mobile camera was a great asset in creating the flow, in a narrative story that was simple, yet complex in context.