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1 2010

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Visions and Revisions: Hollywoods Alternative
Worlds

Review: James Walters (2008) Alternative Worlds in Hollywood Cinema:
Resonance Between Realms. Bristol: Intellect.

David Sterritt
Long Island University

Near the beginning of Alternative Worlds in Hollywood Cinema: Resonance
Between Realms, media scholar James Walters cites the observation by film-
philosopher Stanley Cavell that Hollywood movies have always had a taste
for contrasting worlds of the everyday with worlds of the imaginary, which
Cavell sees as playing on the two primordial possibilities of film, realism and
fantasy (10; Cavell 2005, 345). This statement covers an enormous amount
of film-historical ground, and Walters takes it as an invitation to consider
the vast array of contrasting-world movies as a metagenre that can be
systematically organized and analyzed. Setting to work, he elaborates on the
notion of cinematic worlds via assorted film-theoretical concepts. One
starting point is Edward Branigans idea that a narrative films visual and
aural components are experienced in two ways: virtually unshaped on a
screen as well as apparently moving within, reflecting and issuing from, a
world which contains solid objects making sounds (17; Branigan 1992, 33).
Another is V.F. Perkinss contention that the relationships between reality
and illusion, object and image in narrative cinema derive their complexity
from every films need to forge a synthesis that both records what has been
created and creates by its manner of recording (20-1; Perkins 1993, 61-2).
Still another is David Bordwells account of the forking path or what-if
story, which aims to create resonance between one world and another,
reversing or revising key details in order to communicate the weight and
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purpose of certain decisions and directions, as Walters paraphrases it (34-5).
Other antecedents cited by Walters include Peter Wollens description of the
multiple-diegesis movie, la Jean-Luc Godard, and Jane Feuers work on
dream worlds and dream stages in the Hollywood musical.
Walterss survey has two appealing features. One is its way of putting
theoretical ideas into play with one another, as when Branigans concern
with the three-dimensional depth of the cinematic world is contrasted with
Cavells explication of an implied world extending beyond the cameras
scope (17). The other stems from Walterss wish not to engage in theory for
theorys sake but rather to study how alternative movie-worlds can matter
in specific and distinctive ways, exploring questions of individual self-
awareness and fluctuating self-identity (13) that affect us in the audience as
well as characters in the films. This part of the book also has two
weaknesses, however. Not all of the ideas Walters cites are equally pertinent
to the films he goes on to examine none of them has much (or anything) in
common with Wollens counter-cinema paradigm, for instance and some
of his conclusions are rather obvious, as when he deduces that the world in
film is a complex amalgamation of real and fantasized elements, but
crucially the existence of both does not compromise our definition of the
fictional world as a world (25). True enough, but hardly a revelation.
Having set up his theoretical framework, Walters goes on to deploy his
tripartite scheme for classifying alternative-world movies. Films in Category
1 present Imagined Worlds, dreamed or hallucinated by characters who
otherwise dwell in familiar-seeming environments; those in Category 2
present Potential Worlds, transformed or distorted versions of the characters
usual milieus; and films in Category 3 present Other Worlds, wholly different
from and discontinuous with the characters normal habitations. The book
introduces each category with a chapter using several films as examples, and
then probes the classification more deeply in extended analyses of two or
three movies. In one of his most successful strokes, Walters opens his
investigation of Imagined Worlds with Let Me Dream Again, a 1900
comedy by British filmmaker George Albert Smith wherein a man makes
movie-style love to a frisky young woman in what appears to be his living
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room, and then after a moment when the image slips out of focus
abruptly finds himself in bed, attired in a nightshirt, and accompanied not by
the young playmate but by an older, less attractive female that we take to
be the mans wife, as Walters puts it (44). Along with subsequent examples
ranging from the film-within-a-film in Sherlock Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924) to
the Salvador Dal sequence in Spellbound (Alfred Hitchcock, 1945), Smiths
antic dream-movie provides an apt introduction to the extended close
analyses that follow.
These analyses focus on The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939) and
The Woman in the Window (Fritz Lang, 1944), which exemplify how two
movies can seem diametrically different at first glance but reveal uncanny
resemblances when even briefly examined.
1
They also shore up Walterss
thesis that effective Imagined World movies are those where the worlds
inflect and resonate with one another in epistemologically and
psychologically meaningful ways. Judy Garlands Dorothy and Edward G.
Robinsons Dr. Wanley both hail from colourless environments an
unexciting Kansas farm for her, a monotonous professorship (assistant! at his
age!) for him and both fall into dreams, one of Oz and one of murder, that
carry the force of reality while theyre unfolding and leave the dreamers
with (normative, obedience-inducing) life lessons after theyve faded.
Walters unpacks the films similarities in useful and sometimes creative ways,
closing with the accurate observation that these characters have always
been ill-suited to the waking worlds in which they actually live, and that
whatever forms their lives might take in the future, neither film has
givenmuch hope to build upon (77). He then applies his Imagined World
model to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004),
showing that the model is flexible enough to illuminate a movie that, unlike
the Lang and Fleming films, makes the characters and audience continually
aware that much of the action is occurring within the protagonists
hyperactive, and acutely imperilled, mind.

1
Or maybe not so uncanny; see Langs masterly The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (Das
Testament des Dr. Mabuse, 1933) for evidence of his interest in L. Frank Baums
popular Oz fantasy six years before Flemings film appeared.
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Next up is the discussion of Potential Worlds, beginning with brief
considerations of several relevant films including Donnie Darko (Richard
Kelly, 2001), Back to the Future (Robert Zemeckis, 1985), and The Last
Temptation of Christ (Martin Scorsese, 1988); pointing to the next chapter,
about Its a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1946), Walters reinforces his
theme of resonating realms by quoting a newspaper critic who likened
Scorseses biblical epic to an upside-down version of Capras depression epic.
The expansive analyses of Its a Wonderful Life and Groundhog Day
(Harold Ramis, 1993) flesh out the concept of Potential World films, in
which protagonists enter different versions of their usual environments; of
Walterss three categories, this is the one most directly in sync with the word
alternative in the books title. I also find it the most artistically compelling,
since the movies it subsumes generally avoid the easiest narrative tricks, such
as dream sequences, and it is the most philosophically rich as well, offering
fertile territory for the explorations of identity and consciousness that
Walters wants to highlight. This said, his analyses of the Capra and Ramis
films have pretty much the same outcome, finding their carefully detailed
alternative worlds to be mechanisms for little more than educating and
uplifting the protagonist, leading in Capras drama to Georges rescue and
resurrection and in Ramiss comedy to an unexpected reinvention of Phils
life, to quote the final words of their respective chapters. Its too bad that
the interpretive energy of Walterss close readings do not bring about more
original conclusions. A discussion of the problem of other minds, the
philosophical topic raised by every frame of Groundhog Day and very
germane to the concept of alternative worlds, would have been welcome
too.
Other Worlds are just that worlds entirely apart from the characters
habitual surroundings and Walters efficiently sets the scene with concise
treatments of such films as The Others (Alejandro Amenbar, 2001), A
Matter of Life and Death (aka Stairway to Heaven, Michael Powell and
Emeric Pressburger, 1946), and The Purple Rose of Cairo (Woody Allen,
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1985); the most intriguing are Flatliners (Joel Schumacher, 1990), not a
great movie but a fascinating conceit, and Langs 1934 version of Liliom,
which Walters could (and should its a missed opportunity) have compared
with Frank Borzages astonishing 1930 version. The chapter-length analyses
that follow are devoted to Brigadoon (Vincente Minnelli, 1954) and
Pleasantville (Gary Ross, 1998), which certainly present Other Worlds but
hold little narrative or cinematic interest in themselves. In the books
conclusion, Walters reiterates his desire to present readings that support the
value of his chosen films as works of fantasy which are pertinent to the
human condition in ways both complex and profound (213). My critical
judgements arent necessarily more valid than his, but nothing in Walterss
extended studies of Minnellis flat, laboured musical and Rosss
inconsequential teen-pic persuaded me that complexity and profundity are
afoot. This would be a better book if its primary objects of study were works
of more aesthetic and philosophical substance.
2

I also wish Walters had incorporated the philosophical notion of
possible (and incompossible) worlds in his discussion; the Imagined,
Potential, and Other Worlds that he identifies, classifies, and scrutinises have
powerful resonances with ontological and epistemological issues linked to
the legacy of Gottfried Leibniz, and philosophically informed reference to
the polyvalent interrelationships among actual, virtual, possible, potential,
necessary and their discursive kin could have broadened and deepened his
project in many ways. Missing too is a discussion of the connections between
Walterss alternative-world schema and the ever-expanding domain of
virtual reality; the book is fundamentally about the virtual realities cooked

2
If ever Walters decides to expand further on alternative worlds, perhaps looking
beyond Hollywood, my suggestions would include Vampyr Der Traum des Allan
Grey (Carl Th. Dreyer, 1932), When Worlds Collide (Rudolph Mat, 1951),
2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968), Hot Tomorrows (Martin Brest,
1977), Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985) for its terrifying final scene, Jacobs Ladder
(Adrian Lyne, 1990), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Terry Gilliam, 1998)
because drug experience should surely play a part in this discourse, Mulholland
Dr. (David Lynch, 2001) for its unprecedented spin on dream-world aesthetics, the
Matrix trilogy (Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski, 1999-2003), for a long
list of reasons, and 25
th
Hour (Spike Lee, 2002) for its sublime and visionary
ending.

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up by an industry whose technical armamentarium and means of distribution
grow exponentially from year to year, and while Walters has every right to
focus his energies on Hollywood theatrical films, his avoidance of even
glancing remarks about such topics as digital imaging, interactive
telecommunications, and the teeming realms of cyberspace is regrettable.
These matters aside, I find James Walterss alternative-world paradigm
to be useful as an analytical tool and valuable as a springboard to further
discussion along the lines he has imaginatively opened up. There is one more
problem with the volume, however, and its a major one for me, although
some readers (not too many, I pray) may find it just a quibble. Much of the
book is badly written not badly in the sense of pretentious or jargon-ridden
or obscure, but badly in the sense of frequently displaying an insecure grasp
of the English language. Intellect Books must share the blame; still, a
scholarly author should be able to steer clear of malapropisms, solecisms, and
the like. The phrase being as is not an acceptable substitute for since (49);
one follows the regimens of everyday existence, not the regiments thereof
(213); using gender-neutral language is well and good, but when youre
referring to a male character played by a male actor, its well and good to
write the character himself, not the character themselves (34); an element
of mise-en-scne might distract, not detract, our attention from what the
characters are doing (63); the pronouns he and him are not
interchangeable (passim); ditto for she and her (passim); in the phrase
concert-standard pianoforte (35), the hyphenated words constitute an
adjective, not a verb, and while some people may still say pianoforte, they
probably arent referring to Bill Murray tickling the ivories in Groundhog
Day. Et cetera. Errors like these detract from the books persuasive power,
and its best ideas are too interesting to warrant such slipshod prose. I
respectfully suggest that all involved with producing Alternative Worlds in
Hollywood Cinema fine-tune their future projects with more care. They and
their readers will be much better served.

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Bibliography
Branigan, Edward. (1992) Narrative Comprehension and Film. London:
Routledge.
Cavell, Stanley (2005) The Good of Film in Cavell on Film. Ed. William
Rothman. New York: State University of New York Press, 333-348.
Perkins, V.F. (1993) Film as Film: Understanding and Judging Movies. New
York: Da Capo Press.

Filmography
Allen, Woody (1985) The Purple Rose of Cairo. USA.
Amenbar, Alejandro (2001). The Others. USA/Spain/France/Italy.
Borzage, Frank (1930) Liliom. USA.
Brest, Martin (1977) Hot Tomorrows. USA.
Capra, Frank (1946) Its a Wonderful Life. USA.
Dreyer, Carl Th. (1932) Vampyr Der Traum des Allan Grey.
France/Germany.
Fleming, Victor (1939) The Wizard of Oz. USA.
Gilliam, Terry (1985) Brazil. UK.
Gilliam, Terry (1998) Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. USA.
Gondry, Michel (2004) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. USA.
Hitchcock. Alfred (1945) Spellbound. USA.
Keaton, Buster (1924) Sherlock Jr. USA.
Kelly, Richard (2001) Donnie Darko. USA.
Kubrick, Stanley (1968) 2001: A Space Odyssey. UK/USA.
Lang, Fritz (1933) The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (Das Testament des Dr.
Mabuse). Germany
Lang, Fritz (1934) Liliom. France.
Lang, Fritz (1944) The Woman in the Window. USA.
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Lee, Spike (2002) 25
th
Hour. USA.
Lynch, David (2001) Mulholland Dr. France/USA.
Lyne, Adrian (1990) Jacobs Ladder. USA.
Mat, Rudolph (1951) When Worlds Collide. USA.
Minnelli, Vincente (1954) Brigadoon. USA.
Powell, Michael, and Emeric Pressburger (1946) A Matter of Life and Death
(Stairway to Heaven). UK.
Ramis, Harold (1993) Groundhog Day. USA.
Ross, Gary (1998) Pleasantville. USA.
Schumacher, Joel (1990) Flatliners. USA.
Scorsese, Martin (1988) The Last Temptation of Christ. USA.
Smith, George Albert (1900) Let Me Dream Again. UK.
Wachowski, Andy and Larry Wachowski (1999) The Matrix. USA.
Wachowski, Andy and Larry Wachowski (2003) The Matrix Reloaded.
USA.
Wachowski, Andy and Larry Wachowski (2003) The Matrix Revolutions.
USA.
Zemeckis, Robert (1985) Back to the Future. USA.