censorship, (18)

Blackout

132

wcrc both spicy and economical. Rita Hayworth’s seductive attire in Gilda, shot during the nylon and girdle shortage, liberated womens bodies from constrictive intimate apparel, cleverly draping the torso of gowns to con-ceal the fact that the star had recently had a baby.

Because Harrison’s mentor, Hitchcock, had worked at Germany’s UFA studio early in his British career, bringing a somber vision to his films, Har-rison was credited with Hitchcock’s bleak stylistic predilection by associa-tion, especially sińce Phantom Lady had such a beautifully black visual style. As creative Hollywood studio executive, Harrison’s remarkable female pro-duction coup and her Hitchcock lineage were so heralded in the film’s publicity and critical reception that its director, UFA alumnus Robert Siodmak, was barely mentioned. Siodmak’s first film had been a realistic German doc-umentary, Menschen am Sonntag (People on Sunday, 1928), a collaboration with brother Curt, roommate Billy Wilder, Edgar Ulmer, Fred Zinnemann, and Eugen Schufftan. While in Germany, Siodmak even worked for famed UFA producer Erich Pommer (who produced The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) and “discovered” Emeric Pressburger while working as a writing talent scout. Siodmak left Germany specifically because of Nazi objections to his racy films. Goebbels condemned Siodmak’s last UFA film for its illicit sex affair, which the propaganda minister perceived as corrupting German fam-ilies. Like other emigrć filmmakers, Siodmak found work in France. Join-ing a prominent German-exile community in Paris, that included Fritz Lang and, Billy Wilder, Siodmak directed many of the era’s major French film stars, such as Danielle Darrieux, Maurice Chevalier, and Charles Boyer. Several of Siodmak’s French films have been cited as precursors to his American films noir, especially Cargaison Blanche (French White Cargo / Traffic in Souls, 1937) and Piiges (Snares, 1939), a crime film starring Pierre Renoir, Erie von Stroheim, and Maurice Chevalier. Fleeing the war and wartime occupation, Siodmak departed for the United States the day be-fore Hitler and the Nazis marched into Paris in 1940. In Hollywood Siodmak directed Son of Dracula in 1943, and Universal signed him to a seven-year contract before he collaborated with fellow ćmigrć writer-producer Harrison on Phantom Lady. A veteran craftsman, Siodmak’s rich expres-sionist style no doubt aided Harrison’s film. In fact, when auteur critic An-drew Sarris reconsidered Siodmak’s contribution in exporting his UFA stylistic background to the United States, Sarris actually argued that Siodmak’s 1940S American films, with shadowy interiors and dark night settings, were morę “Germanie” and expressionistic than his earlier European films.¹⁷

Completed just prior to Double lndemnity, Phantom Lady is a unique wartime effort by these European expatriates and influential as a prototype

\

Rosie the Riveter Goes to Hollywood

133

for film noir. Fuli of thematic duplicity and dark visual stylization, the un-usual crime film ends with the female protagonist communicating via the office Dictaphone with her boss (used as a murder confessional device in Double Indemnity). Both films were submitted to the PCAon the sameday, and the salacious and censorable content of Phantom Lady was approved two days before Double Indemnity. Phantom Lady, like Double Indemnity, started filming in September 1943, with tight wartime production con-straintS, electricity rationing, and a blacked-out skyline during the darkest period in the history of the Los Angeles basin. It is no wonder both films were so recognized for their definitive noir style. Phantom Lady was consid-ered the “last great burst of expressionism in Hollywood” by Raymond Durgnat and Andrew Sarris.¹⁸ Consistent with wartime bans on daytime location filming, most of the film is shot at night on a dark studio sound stage or tarped backlot. Studio publicity cites the filrns uniąuecinematog-raphy, attributing its “unusual ‘minor key’ photography” to the“artistry” of famous noir cameraman Elwood “Woody” Bredell, who, according to Warner Bros. editor George Amy (Air Force, Objective Burma), could al-legedly “light an entire football stadium with a single match.”¹⁹ Just months after Fritz Lang’s chiaroscuro in Ministry of Fear, Siodmak and Bredell cap-tured and epitomized film noir style in Phantom Lady, using extreme low-key (nearly pitch-black) lighting of a silhouetted couple meeting in jail, rear-lit via a single barred window—a stark image that became iconic of the dark 1940S trend. Siodmak achieved mood in the film by using silence on the sound track and filming almost all the action at night—certainly consistent with and facilitated by wartime daylight shooting limitations. Studio publicity noted that a “pre-war canvas shades ‘Phantom’” in con-structing and utilizing the “biggest” 810-foot black tarpaulin set at Univer-sal “in years” (with a forty-two-foot ceiling) for night exterior shots on the back lot—alluding to the well-known production shortages and recycling of sets over the course of World War II, heightened by actual external location limitations by day and blackout/dimout regulations by night. Filming almost entirely on a sound stage, emulating exteriors rather than navigat-ing the production “mine-fields” of wartime location restrictions, compli-cations and disruptions certainly justified this canopying over “two inter-secting ‘brownstone streets’” on the “tented” studio back lot to facilitate greater control over shooting during the war.²⁰

As the Phantom Lady project commenced, Universal’s Maurice Pivar ini-tially submitted a script to Joseph Breen on September 1,1943! Two days later Breen declined Production Codę approval. He cited “excessive drink-ing” and banned references to sex, suggestiye dancing, any condoning of di-