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Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal. Sophie Treadwell. Born in 1885 in Stockton, CA. Went to UC Berkeley, where she began acting and writing plays. Began writing for the San Francisco Bulletin as a journalist in 1908.
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Sophie Treadwell • Born in 1885 in Stockton, CA. • Went to UC Berkeley, where she began acting and writing plays. • Began writing for the San Francisco Bulletin as a journalist in 1908.
As a journalist, wrote a serial in which she disguised herself as a homeless prostitute to expose the conditions such women faced. • Went to Europe to cover WWI, making her one of the first female American war correspondents. • In 1921, conducted an exclusive interview with Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa while he was in hiding.
The Ruth Snyder Trial • In 1927, Treadwell attended the trial of Ruth Snyder, the true story upon which Machinalis based. She had attended such trials as a journalist in the past, but she wasn’t covering this one. • Ruth Snyder, a housewife from New Jersey, killed her husband in collaboration with her lover, Judd Gray. • The couple botched the murder quite badly. Allegedly, Snyder had attempted and failed to kill her husband 7 times before. They staged the murder as part of a burglary, but did not make it look convincingly like the house had been broken into. The “stolen” property was found hidden in the house. • Both Snyder and Gray were easily convicted.
Snyder and Gray were sentenced to death by the electric chair. • Snyder’s 1928 execution marked the first time a woman was killed by electric chair in the US. • The event was captured on film by a reporter’s hidden camera, and this photograph appeared on the cover of the New York Daily News the next morning.
Snyder’s trial and execution provoked lurid curiosity and national scandal. • Treadwell’s interpretation appeared within a year of the execution, but she wasn’t the only writer to use it as a source of material. • The crime novel Double Indemnity (1943) by James Cain and its film version (1944) were also based on the trial. • The portrayal of the murderess in Double Indemnity differs from Machinalby emphasizing the fact that she took out an insurance policy for accidental death on her husband right before the murder…
Expressionism • Machinal is one of the best examples of Expressionism in American theater. • “Its central feature is a revolt against realism. […] The expressionist artist or writer undertakes to express a personal vision—usually a troubled or tensely emotional vision—of human life and human society” (Abrams). • It is also opposed to “impressionism.”
“The Desperate Man,” a realist self-portrait by Gustave Courbet.
Classic Expressionist Films • Expressionism began in Germany, and was at its height there from 1910-1925. • Classic examples of German expressionist film include Robert Wiene’sCabinet of Dr. Caligari, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, and Friedrich Murnau’sNosferatu.
Expressionist Drama • In film and drama, expressionist techniques include: • “representing anonymous human types instead of individualized characters, • replacing plot by episodic renderings of intense and rapidly oscillating emotional states, • often fragmenting the dialogue into exclamatory and seemingly incoherent sentences or phrases, • and employing masks and abstract or lopsided and sprawling stage sets” (Abrams).
