1. Citizen Kane - Orson Welles (1941)
2. The Maltese Falcon - John Huston (1941)
3. The Devil and Daniel Webster - William Dieterle (1941)
Three sides of the same coin. By 1941, America had just recovered from the devastating effects of the Great Depression. War, once more, was on the horizon. And, while some dreamed of a renewed prosperity, there came after the Great Depression a discernable disillusionment. America had roared with wealth in the twenties only to have been rewarded by a decade of the worst poverty known to the modern age.
From these tumultuous times came a disenchantment from the prosperity which America had for so long idealized. In 1941, as a new wave of directors were making their mark on Hollywood, this disenchantment seeped its way onto film in the form of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon, and William Dieterle’s The Devil and Daniel Webster. Each of these three films embodied America’s growing apprehension over the prosperity promised by the American Dream.
In Orson Welles’ directorial debut, Citizen Kane, Charles Foster Kane is a character who feels hindered by his inherited wealth. Kane longs for the tenderness of his youth while becoming increasingly embittered with life until the power of his wealth transforms him into a megalomaniac monster.
John Huston’s debut, The Maltese Falcon, the American Dream itself has been distilled into a tangible object, the icon of the American eagle transformed into the priceless Maltese falcon. The characters in the film lie, steal, and murder to get their hands on the promise of wealth which the falcon offers.
Finally, in William Dieterle’s Faustian tale The Devil and Daniel Webster, Dieterle depicts a poor, desperate farmer who sells his soul to the Devil for prosperity. Here, money itself, not only Mankind’s reaction to it, has become an evil force aligned with the Devil and paving the road to Hell.
Each of these three films signaled a new voice in America, disenchanted, portraying an increasingly darker side of America, a voice which questioned both the ideals of America as well as the aesthetics of American film. American cinema is an epic. This survey, like an epic, begins in media res, ‘in the middle of things.’ 1941 isn’t the beginning of American film however, it is a landmark year which heralded an American cinema coming into its own as a refined and significant art form.
-Devon Gallant
