Western-Noir: Devil’s Doorway
The director Anthony Mann, after years into film noir, took the revival of the Western genre in the 1950s to direct his first multi-genre film — western and noir — Devil’s Doorway. This film has a unique scope of Native Americans through a noir style, that in some ways resemble Broken Arrow in its sympathetic vision of Indians, but with much more criticism and realism of the actual situation of race in the decade in which the film was set. Thematics such as land ownership, cross-racial romance, scenarios of separation and return, are presented throughout the film. Devil’s Doorway approaches these themes in a way that makes the audience question stereotypes of race and gender, humanizing Native Americans, and exposing conditions that these minorities have to live in the 19th century. At the same time. it correlates in importance to the decade that the film was shot, being meaningful nowadays, and almost covering 150 years (1860’s — 2017).
Devil’s Doorway tells the story of an Indian (Native-American) in the character of Lance Poole, who after fighting in the American Civil War in 1865 and being decorated with the Congressional Medal of Honor, goes to Wyoming to reunite with his tribe. The story is set on the third phase of the Federal Indian Policy, known as removal and reservation (1829–86) where the American government forced tribes into reservations and excluded them from the property of land outside its borders. Inflamed by hate and discrimination towards Native-Americans and his ambition towards the fertile land of our protagonist, a lawyer called Verne groups some sheepherders convincing them to use Lance’s land, with the excuse that he doesn’t own the land, for he is an Indian. The conflict rises to push our protagonist to search for help from a female lawyer named Orri Masters, who also is a victim of sexism. Their efforts are in vain, leading Lance to fight for his land against the white man. The end is tragic succeeding in a massacre of Native Americans by the American troops, with whom Lance fought side-by-side in the war. Anthony Mann’s film has a very impressive accomplishment in the portraying of minorities, concerning discrimination and the fight for their rights, through a perspective that is not common for a western movie.
Western Attributes
To understand Devil’s Doorway, first, it’s important to clarify the characteristics of the western genre, and its intersection with the subject of Native Americans. The western film genre has been commonly associated with the old wild west, the gold rush, cowboys, guns, bounty hunters and fights against the “uncivilized” man. One of the key main themes in westerns is the meaning of “land” as property, the concept of home, and the natural frontier. There is always a conflict between nature/wild and the civilized world, and the search for a piece of earth to be claimed: the promise of land, a home. In Devil’s Doorway, we see this concept in his return to his land, where he needs to fight against the white man thought the law, as also through physical conflict. Elements such as cowboys, male dominance and excessive guns in the wild west, are some of the keys to defining Devil’s Doorway as a western.
The concept of land leads to racial conflicts between the white “civilized” man and the tribal man, that is wild in spirit, more animal than man. Normally in westerns, the Native-Americans are portrayed as the enemy (the other, the non-white character), those who do not belong in the same group of the protagonist, or the worst case a silent stereotypical lover of the voodoo arts, a bugler, or even a charlatan healer. There, the film is groundbreaking making the Native Americans the protagonist, showing the film through the eyes of the underrepresented and oppressed minorities, exposing several issues. For instance, in Devil’s Doorway, Lance is denied a drink at the bar for being an Indian, no matter he is a decorated war hero. Also, the land could only be the property of white men, for Indians have the reservation to live; making Lance lose the ownership of his land.
Another issue in the western genre is that it is oversaturated with stereotypes of masculinity. Male characters are commonly associated with man’s jobs, showing aggressiveness in contrast with the feminine passivity, and the suppression of “feminine” feelings on man, as a form of weakness. The relationship between Lance and Orri Masters at the beginning of the film shows the normal treatment women received from male characters. The female lawyer has to hide her first name avoiding being recognized as a woman, to be rather recognized as a lawyer over her gender. In the film, Lance seems surprised once entering in contact with her to discover that the “O. Masters” is a female lawyer. She acts as a mediator throughout the movie and in some ways holds a position of power, even not succeeding in its role. As Rollins and O’Connor said, “two victims of discrimination are linked in a storyline, a woman and an Indian”, making Mann’s film a very interesting object of study about discrimination.
Noir Characteristics
On the other hand, the Film noir genre has very specific characteristics in Devil’s Doorway. A characteristic worth mentioning is related to the values of the protagonist, in here, as a secret or a guilt feeling living inside the character. For example, Lance carries a burden that alienates him from the rest of the community, in this case, his ethnicity. Common on westerns, the hero confines his burden to himself, which outcasts him from the rest of the community. The interesting in Devil’s Doorway is the change in Lance’s personality about his “burden”. For instance, at the beginning of the film, he wears soldier clothes. To the average viewer, he could be mistaken as a white man, ignoring his dark makeup. As the movie progresses and his ethnicity becomes the reason for the main conflict, Lance assumes his identity and heritage changing his clothes to a point at the final battle where he is dressed completely as an Indian, to only at the end to take his civil war coat, forming a blend of race and nation, which literally gives meaning to the word: Native American.
Another noir quality found in Devil’s Doorway is the concept of the doomed hero or antihero. Our main protagonist is doomed to a terrible fate: to fight the society he defended in the war, but now turns to be his enemy. The film ends with death and extermination of an entire tribe, with that noir mood of depression and melancholy. Different from movies like Broken Arrow — that shows a more optimistic vision of reconciliation between Indians and Whites — Devil’s Doorway shows the raw situation that Native Americans faced, the injustice of the system and the humiliation these people suffered. According to Rollins and O’Connor, Devil’s Doorway “suggests a similarly conflicted positioning of the viewer as both an investigator of genocidal frontier violence and a conscientious eyewitness, ready to intervene in the name of social justice.” Therefore, the sad and realistic ending of Devil’s Doorway contributes to the audience to create empathy towards race through an understanding of historical facts.
Devil’s Doorway is considered a perfect textbook on the noir-western genre, lacking only the femme fatale and the flashbacks according to David Meuel. However, the high contrast of shadows in black and white is a determinant and usually most recognizable feature in a film noir and it’s omnipresent in Devil’s Doorway. Most scenes take place inside dark spaces or during the night, both noir characteristics that Devil’s Doorway mastered. In the bar scene where Lance is denied a drink for being an Indian, the lighting used makes shadows on the faces of those who oppose Lance, distorting these figures. The enemies occupy a considerable part of the frame, making them look huge and threatening. As in the film noir genre, Lance attacks suddenly towards the camera, redefining spaces prior carefully established. The intersection between the western style and the film noir gave Devil’s Doorway a unique approach to western themes through the noir sensibility and spectrum.
Time Relevance
However, the relevance for Mann’s film is not only in aesthetics and content but also in the context of the decade it’s born. According to Rollins and O’Connor, Devil’s Doorway exposes some social problems of the 1950s, particularly related to the treatment of minorities. The segregation and alienation inherited from WWII were clear throughout the world. For example, the Japanese concentration camps in the USA, the holocaust in Nazi Germany and the segregation of the African-Americans that have lasted far beyond the ’50s. In the case of Native Americans, Hollywood has a history of substituting them, as we could see by the main character being a Native American, but being portrayed by a white actor in the film.
Nevertheless, Devil’s Doorway stands for “the film has been discussed as an allegory for early civil rights,” and it brings light to reminiscent conditions of this century as the return of Native Americans from WWII, conditions of reservations, and government reintegration of Native American lands. In the ’50s was set the fifth phase of Federal Native American policy named termination (1946–60). This intended to move Native-Americans from reservations to Urban Cities with the excuse that they should be subject to the same laws and entitled to the same privileges and responsibilities as applied to other citizens of the United States. Devil’s Doorway born in this cultural, racial and social turmoil as an epithet depicting Native-Americans striving to find a place among the American society with their migration way and back to reservations.
Pro Native American
In this context, it’s valuable to quote that some western films that are sympathetic to Native Americans portrayed what Joanna Hearne called scenarios of separation and return caused by the Federal Native American Policy and the Civil War. These films show the odyssey of Native youth that goes back home to their families or are expelled from their homeland. Lance is a Native American that fought in the Civil War, is a perfect example of this trait in the western. Scenarios of separation and return trigger an emotional response in the audience showing the identity of the Native American community, humanized characters, and sometimes asserted in realism. Devil’s Doorway approaches these concepts through a Native American perspective.
MGM delayed the premiere of Devil’s Doorway fearing that the Pro-Indian theme would be accused as liberal propaganda and would not be accepted well by conservative audiences culminating in a failure in the box office. These Pro-Indians in Devil’s Doorway consists of a sympathetic vision of the Native American culture, the Indian as an American. But the most alarming was the cross-racial ambiguity relation between Lance and Orrie. This last issue on Devil’s Doorway could be better explained as the negation of an interracial romance between an Indian and a White woman. It’s not uncommon on westerns for a white man to marry an Indian woman, as Basinger describes as white-man-loves-Pocahontas cliché. However, Devil’s Doorway denied it, making clear that the characters could not be together at the end, showing a more realistic scene of the 19th century. but also relevant considering anti-miscegenation laws were still an issue in the 1950s.
Conclusion
Devil’s Doorway stands unique for several reasons of social and aesthetic relevance. The film is innovative in its style merging two genres, western and noir, telling through darkness and melodrama the story of a man fighting for his land in the wild west. Notwithstanding, the film defies old concepts of race, making Native American protagonists of their own story. Devil’s Doorway imaging their struggle with the government, the prejudice they face daily and depicts their culture as being as valuable as the culture of the white man. Also, Devil’s Doorway was meaningful in the decade it was created, for even after 100 years (the 1950s) when the movie was set (1860’s), it was still relevant for the Native American community. Lance said in a memorable line:
“Don’t Cry, Orrie. A hundred years for now it might have worked”
Maybe, it would have worked, but the legacy of Devil’s Doorway stands far more than 100 years, and probably will continue for the next generations.
