Anthony Mann's Devil's Doorway (Cinema Ritrovato 2024)
an indictment of Hollywood’s prohibition against showing relationships between white people and non-white people — even those played by white people.
A major theme that developed through the Hollywood films that I saw at Cinema Ritrovato was what I guess you could call well-intentioned racism. I’ve already written about this phenomenon in terms of Lady for a Night and Blues in the Night, but while both of those films were revelatory to me in certain ways, when it comes to the paradox of wanting to make a statement in support of non-white people while also perpetuating racism against the same people, they’re clumsy and crude compared to the Anthony Mann western, Devil’s Doorway. This is a movie that exists to make a bold statement against the inherent bigotry, cruelty and greed of westward expansion, but it’s still a movie made in midcentury Hollywood (by MGM, no less) and institutional racism and capitalist imperatives are woven into, and to some extent devalue, the attempt at a progressive agenda.
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