The Hunted Man & the PI in WWII

Introduction

Based on the following film noir reference books, from 1940-1944, there are only five private eye film noirs: The Maltese Falcon (1941), Grand Central Murder (1942), Quiet Please, Murder (1942), Time to Kill (1942), and Murder, My Sweet (1944).

Michael F. Keaney, Film Noir Guide: 745 Films of the Classic Era, 1940-1959 (McFarland & Company, Inc., 2003)

Andrew Spicer, Historical Dictionary of Film Noir (The Scarecrow Press, 2010); 796 films

Spencer Selby, The Worldwide Film Noir Tradition (Sink Press, 2013); 796 films

To this group I add one more from 1942, which I analyze in the page Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror.

This is substantial evidence that the PI has scant significance in the early years of film noir. For a presentation on the overall absence of the private eye in film noir, 1940-1959, see the page The Missing PI in Film Noir.

The character who dominates in these years is the hunted man. However, as I will show, because he is a specific type of hunted man, there is additional evidence that the private detective scarcely matters in this historical period of film noir.

Presentation

In Martin Green’s fascinating book, Seven Types of Adventure Tales: An Etiology of a Major Genre (The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991), the penultimate chapter is, “The Hunted Man Story – The Seventh Type.”

It begins as follows.

“The Hunted Man adventure story is often included in the more amorphous ‘thriller’ category as a subgroup. That is appropriate. The idea of being hunted is an important part of most thrillers, perhaps of most adventures, at some point, and if some thrillers contain a lot of other material, too, the Hunted Man story has exerted a certain hegemony over the rest.

“We can distinguish between two kinds of Hunted Man story: the conservative and the liberal. The first is the British thriller of the kind written by John Buchan [such as The Thirty-Nine Steps, featuring Buchan’s recurring adventurer, Richard Hannay]; the second is the American kind written by Raymond Chandler [such as The Big Sleep, with Chandler’s recurring private eye, Phillip Marlowe]…

“The protagonist of this adventure type is, superficially, an anti-romantic figure, who sees himself as ordinary. He may have adventurous experience behind him, but no desire for any more. He wants, allegedly, to be an ordinary person, but he has greater than ordinary capacity for action – with his fists, his guns, his cunning, his connections to other men of force, keepers or breakers of the law – and a greater than ordinary sense of responsibility. Sometimes he is, or has been, a detective or an attorney; sometimes he is strictly a private citizen. In any case, he is effectively alone when he stumbles across a clue, an inexplicable incident, which leads him to find other clues, and ultimately to unravel a puzzle, a plot, a conspiracy.” (186-187)

Green is describing what he believes is the preeminent type of adventure story in the twentieth century, if not also the twenty-first. Based on these quoted paragraphs, it might seem that he is also reinforcing the perspective, which is held by exponents of the hardboiled paradigm, about the significance of the private eye in film noir. What needs to be kept in mind, however, is that Green is analyzing literature, not cinema. For example, he focuses his discussion of the prototype of the American hunted man on several of Chandler’s novels, not films based on those books.

If the hardboiled paradigm’s claim for iconic status of the private eye in film noir were legitimate, wouldn’t the PI frequently appear in the years, 1940-1944, when there are many hunted man film noirs? Wouldn’t the character who is the hunted man be a private detective in many if not most of these film noirs?

But the hunted man in film noirs during WWII isn’t a private eye. Instead, he is, in Green’s words, “strictly a private citizen.” (For much greater background about this type of hunted man, see the page Film Noir Plot Elements: WWII vs. Postwar.)

The private detective slightly appears after WWII, and then rapidly vanishes. (See the page The Missing PI in Film Noir.

Since puzzles are rare in postwar film noir plots, it stands to reason that the PI isn’t useful as the central figure. Without mysteries, people may be hunted, but it is known by the audience and their on-screen pursuers that they are guilty. Further removed from the private eye, film noirs of the later Forties and the Fifties feature professional, public law enforcement, which is typically federal or state, rather than local.

Yet why is the private detective absent from film noirs during the early Forties, when there are puzzles? Because a private citizen is more appropriate as the protagonist. He is falsely accused of murder. Even if he isn’t jailed by the local police, and is still at large (a hunted man), he can’t prove his innocence by himself. He needs an ally. And, over and over again, he teams up with a woman, who has a job, and who helps him identify the real killer.

Martin Green’s explanation of the politics of the Hunted Man story parallels what I present in my essay on “the war noir.” He says that this adventure type “promise[s] the reader that the unaided individual can take on large organizations and conspiracies that are subverting the state or the nation and can triumph over them. This is an exhilarating message, and in some sense a democratic one, even though the hero works against the institutions set up by and for citizens.”

In the years of the war noirs, the U.S. was in peril from the threat of the Axis. There was no need for the heroes in the war noirs to find, in Green’s words, “at the heart of the conspiracy…a social monster, an organization, sometimes totally legal, sometimes apparently respectable, that threatens the life of his city or his nation.” (188) War noirs didn’t need an imaginary social monster; fascism was real.

The threat to the hunted man in a war noir may be “only” a prison sentence, rather than a threat to his nation. But in the circumstances of the world war, the political message that private citizens “can triumph” is delivered strongly when the hunted man and a working class woman clear his name and set him free (and then become a romantic couple). In the plots of war noirs, he and she don’t have to save their country. Actual private citizens – in the armed forces, fighting, and in factories, building ships, planes and weapons – would do that. At other times, these private citizens are in the movie theaters, watching the hunted man and his female ally solve a murder mystery and, thereby, overcome adversity.

During WWII, the hunted man in film noir only needs to save himself. His success is personal. But, through displacement, it is also social. The triumph of private citizens in a war noir is a displacement for the promise of victory by civilians in uniform – and in overalls – against the Axis. In this historical context, the private eye isn’t appropriate as the hunted man. Accordingly, the PI is absent in film noir for nearly all of WWII.

Below is a list of film noirs with a hunted man from 1940-1944. When a woman is cited, it is a war noir.

Film Noirs with a Hunted Man: title, date, hunted man (actor), female ally (actor)

Double Alibi, 1940, Stephen Wayne (Wayne Morris), Sue Casey (Margaret Lindsay)

Framed, 1940, Henry T. “Hank” Parker (Frank Albertson), Phyllis Sanderson (Constance Moore)

Stranger on the Third Floor, 1940, Michael (John McGuire), Jane, (Margaret Tallichet)

They Drive by Night, 1940, Joe Fabrini (George Raft)

Among the Living, 1941, John Raden (Albert Dekker)

I Wake Up Screaming, 1941, Frankie Christopher (Victor Mature), Jill Lynn (Betty Grable)

Man Hunt, 1941, Captain Alan Thorndike (Walter Pidgeon), Jerry Stokes (Joan Bennett)

Meet Boston Blackie, 1941, Boston Blackie (Chester Morris), Cecelia Bradley (Rochelle Hudson)

Pacific Blackout, 1941, Robert Draper (Robert Preston), Mary Jones (Martha O’Driscoll)

Rage in Heaven, 1941, Ward Andrews (George Sanders), Stella Bergen (Ingrid Bergman)

All Through the Night, 1942, “Gloves” Donahue (Humphrey Bogart), Leda Hamilton (Kaaren Verne)

Fly-By-Night, 1942, Dr. Geoffrey Burton (Richard Carlson), Pat Lindsey (Nancy Kelly)

The Glass Key, 1942, Paul Madvig (Brian Donlevy)

Little Tokyo, U.S.A., 1942, Michael Steele (Preston Foster), Maris Hanover (Brenda Joyce)

Saboteur, 1942, Barry Kane (Robert Cummings), Patricia “Pat” Martin (Priscilla Lane)

Street of Chance, 1942, Frank Thompson (Burgess Meredith), Ruth Dillon (Claire Trevor)

This Gun for Hire, 1942, Philip Raven (Alan Ladd), Ellen Graham (Veronica Lake)

The Gorilla Man, 1943, Captain Craig Killian (John Loder), Patricia “Pat” Devon (Marian Hall)

Hangmen Also Die!, 1943, Dr. Franticek Svoboda/Karel Vanek (Brian Donlevy), Masha Novotny (Anna Lee)

Journey into Fear, 1943, Howard Graham (Joseph Cotton), Josette Martel (Dolores del Rio)

Two Tickets to London, 1943, First Mate Dan Driscoll (Alan Curtis), Jeanne (Michèle Morgan)

The Conspirators, 1944, Vincent Van Der Lyn (Paul Henreid), Irene Von Hohr (Hedy Lamarr)

Ministry of Fear, 1944, Stephen Neale (Ray Milland), Carla Hilfe (Marjorie Reynolds)

Phantom Lady, 1944, Scott Henderson (Alan Curtis), Carol Richman (Ella Raines)

When Strangers Marry, 1944, Paul Baxter (Dean Jagger), Mildred Baxter (Kim Hunter)