v. Class Battles on Screen:
Reading and Decoding Cinematic Ideology

Conservative Attacks

The ideological sympathies of labor-capital films changed dramatically during World War I and the postwar eras as fears of Russian invaders and labor militancy swept the nation. Nearly half the labor-capital films produced before the war were liberal and only a third conservative. Between April 1917 (when the U.S. entered the war) and 1929 (when the silent era effectively ended), 64% of labor-capital films were conservative and only 22% liberal. Not a single radical movie was made by a commercial film company.

Films of the postwar era played an important role in shaping, not just reflecting, people's ideas about the nature of unions, union leaders, strikes, radicals, and mass movement. And they did so in subtle and not so subtle ways. Filmmakers conveyed their messages about radicals and about "good" and "bad" workers through the use of makeup, costumes, casting decisions, the choreography of crowd scenes, and a variety of other techniques.

In The Courage of the Commonplace (1917), recent Yale University graduate and newly appointed coal mine superintendent Johnny McLean (the boss' son) confronts union workers who are hanging out in a saloon (note the way in which the miners are dressed and their obvious European origins; in the film, the miners are also given dirty faces) (fig. 72).

fig 72:The Courage of the Commonplace (1917)

In another scene, Johnny meets with the "good" workers--people who dress cleanly, drink lemonade, like to sing songs, and do not belong to unions. Contrast this to the previous image. Look at the facial expressions of actors in both scenes: union workers scowl, while non-union workers are clearly a happy lot (fig. 73).

fig 73:The Courage of the Commonplace (1917)

The filmmaker also conveys his ideological message through the use of intertitles (the dialogue cards that are flashed on the screen to express the words of characters or narrate the action). In this instance, union workers speak in broken English while non-union workers are grammatically, as well as politically, correct.

While labor radicalism was of great concern to many Americans, the "Bolshevik Menace" proved far more frightening. Scores of American films played upon popular fears that Russian leader Vladimir Lenin was sending secret agents to foment strikes and stir up revolution in America. These films rarely tried to explain the causes of revolution or union militancy. Instead, they offered visual stereotypes designed to strike fear into the hearts of all decent Americans (fig. 74).

fig 74:Bolshevism on Trial