In Valley of Peace (1956),
a Black American pilot and two Slovenian children head towards a valley in
which the boy’s uncle lives—a valley of peace. In military terms, the valley has
been designated as a “no-man’s” land, which means it is off limits to both the
Nazi army and that of the Slovenian partisans. As such, the peace of the valley is something
more down to earth than the Biblical Garden of Eden. Even so, this ideal is a leitmotif
in the film. For one thing, the two children repeatedly characterize that valley
as not just where the boy’s uncle lives, but also as a utopia. I contend that
the film makes a theological statement regarding the fallen world and the
Garden of Eden. While only implicit, this statement is still more central to
the film than is the significance of the race of the American pilot. I turn
first to the fact that the American pilot who survives parachuting from a
shot-up plane is Black.
The pilot’s name is Jim, which also
happens to be the name of the escaped slave in The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn (1939). Both Jim-characters are fleeing violent people: Nazi troops
and Southern slave hunters, respectively. Both characters are seeking freedom,
so liberation is indeed a theme in The Valley of Peace. Even so, the Jim
of this film, which was made after Huckleberry Finn, differs
significantly from the ex-slave, who although moral did not show the strength
of leadership and fight that the American pilot shows. The latter, for
instance, fights along with a White partisan (Slovenian) soldier on an equal
basis, whereas the ex-slave is never portrayed as commensurate with the Caucasians.
So I think the emancipation theme is muted in Valley of Peace. Moreover,
that theme is not central to the film, so claims to the contrary may be more about advancing an ideology than in being true to the film on its grounds.
More salient than the race of one of the characters is the contrast of
the world of aggression in which the two children and Jim are trying to flee
and the idyllic valley of peace that seems so utterly beyond strife that war
could never interlard the serene mountain scenery shown in the last scene. The
war-torn lives of the two children does not exhaust the aggression; even a dog
bites the head off of the girl’s doll. This expansive application of aggression in an already war-torn film-world is more important than Jim coloring a doll-head black for the White girl. To be sure,
the fact that she hugs that doll sets off American society by contrast, as does
the fact that a partisan soldier quickly, almost instinctively welcomes Jim to
the fight, in a “Hi . . . hi” quick exchange. But such cultural differences
should be seen as being within the same paradigm: that of a fallen, deeply aggressive
world where violence extends to other species (i.e., the dog decapitating the
girl’s doll).
Step back from the internecine conflicts within cultures that themselves can be characterized as aggressive, and the wider chasm can be seen in the valley that lies between the fallen world and the mythic Garden of Eden. The film makes the point that the aggressiveness in the fallen, war-prone world that is populated by human beings is so strident that not even a valley of peace can withstand it and hold on for long. For the two armies do battle at the uncle’s farm in the valley of peace. The German commander says that the valley was merely a no-man’s land and, just like that, it is no longer off limits. The caprice of a mere decision can open the flood-gates of war over the hills into the valley of peace.
The human instinctual urge of aggression must surely be salient in human nature, whereas any instincts supporting religiousity, which studies have shown are impacted by genetics (e.g., studies of biological and adopted kids), must sure pale in comparison. The Garden of Eden is itself just a no-man’s land in the film except to a child’s imagination. That archetypal emotion (peace)/image (fecund garden) is no match for the human propensity for violence. This, I submit, is the underlying message of the film. The valley of the (decapitated) doll dominates the valley of peace, which, it should be noted, is desolate. The horse is alone, and the uncle is gone.
The implication is that peace is only possible where human interaction, and thus society, are absent. But it is not a case of moral man, immoral society, for the human being is an aggressive species, closely related to the chimp. Even within society, people can be isolated due to it.
In Fassbinder's film, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974), Emmi and Ali are isolated by the hostility of their neighbors, friends, and even family due to auslander (foreigner) prejudice (he is Turkish), agism (she is older than him), and racial prejudice (he has dark skin). In that film, the nature of prejudice does play a major role. The passive aggression from all sides gets to Emmi, whose adult children won't even speak to her upon hearing of her intermarriage to a much younger man, so the couple vacation to get away from all of the anger surrounding them yet at a distance.
Being alone within society is not like being alone in the valley of peace, yet in both cases the verdict runs against our aggressive species. If our species is a social animal, then perhaps only within a narrow compass. Whether we like it or not, strife is the human condition, as constituted by 1.8 million years of hunting and gathering and populating, over whose vast expanse natural selection gradually adapted our species to an environment not at all like our modern society with its artificial institutional security.
Subordinate plotlines and depictions of characters should not be hyperextended at the expense of the central leitmotif of a film. In the case of Valley of Peace, an ontological truth regarding the human condition transcends emancipation. Of course, as far as the human race is concerned, Christians insist that the stain of original sin mutes or limits any real liberation but for salvation in the risen Christ. The film obviously does not venture that far, but stays with the leitmotif of an aggressive world and a valley of idyllic peace that eludes the two children and us. We will never (again?) enter into the mythic Garden of Eden.
Even contending ideologies on race, which can stimulate the illusion that race is the central theme or intent of a film, are and have been mere fodder for the human instinctual urge of aggressiveness. That urge itself, plastered on the walls of a paradigmatic world known as the fallen world, can be juxtaposed with the calmer, peaceful inclinations that project a mythic place, whether that be the Garden of Eden or Oz, but the latter elude us as if separated from us by, as Augustine wrote of revelation reaching us, a darken church window made of distortive colors. I once looked up at golden angels in a high stained glass church window as the sun shined one Sunday morning, but then I looked down at the other people in the choir.
In the last scene of The Wizard of Oz (1939), Dorothy wakes up back in Kansas, shown in black and white rather than in color. The witch has been melted in Oz, so peace is presumably permanent there, but Miss. Gulch is presumably still alive in Kansas and she will most likely bike over again to take Dorothy's little dog, Toto, to the sheriff. Once when I was young, I saw the actress in person sitting on a giant rainbow chair on a lawn. Margaret Hamilton looked like any grandmother—no hint of Oz even in its dark side. The Emerald City was of course nowhere to be seen.
