Two-Eyed Cyclops

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You can probably tell, if you read me regularly, that I’ve been going through an older movie kick.  A lot of these are easier to find for free on streaming services, so that’s been the path of least resistance.  So it was that I came to watch Doctor Cyclops.  I’d completely forgotten that I’d watched it about fourteen years ago.  In any case, a kind of precursor to The Incredible Shrinking Man, it’s the story of the deliberate shrinking of five people by a mad scientist with an endless supply of radium at hand.  The movie made a splash because of the use of Technicolor in a horror film (with no blood, however).  The story is a touch dull and the shrunken people (three scientists among them) spend most of their down time running around and saying very little.  They do face an alligator, which is kind of fun, and the big hand that holds the pompous Dr. Bulfinch is distinctly unnerving.  The movie received an Oscar nomination for visual effects.

There’s something distinctly enjoyable about these early sci-fi horror films that don’t explain much but nevertheless manage to employ some impressive cinematography.  The use of oversized props and forced perspective make much of this possible, perhaps making up for the simplicity of the tale.  Even by 1940 the “scientist goes mad and must be stopped” narrative was getting old.  The Second World War was underway but nuclear power wasn’t yet harnessed either for bombs or energy.  Interestingly, the source of the mad doctor’s radium is pitchblende, which one of the characters notes, is a source of uranium.  Of course, many movies were to follow where radiation mutated life forms in various ways, including shrinking them.

Coincidentally—it was a rainy Sunday afternoon—I watched the Twilight Zone episode “The Little People” later in the day.  Here was another story about the large oppressing the small.  This one, however, has a stranded astronaut who discovers the little people thinking that he is their god because he has the power to harm them.  The message here is much more profound, even if told with more brevity.  No clear motive is given for Dr. Cyclops’ work beyond his interest in pure science.  By the way, his real name isn’t “Cyclops.”  That refers to his being a giant with one eye—the latter because one of his glasses lenses gets broken.  Don’t worry, the shrunken people learn that the effect is temporary—their brush with radioactivity leaves no lasting harm.  There is, however, a decided danger to desiring to return to a “simpler time,” as Mr. Serling steps in to remind us.

Mythology in Cinema and Belief

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My snow day activities yesterday would not have been complete without the viewing of a classic science fiction film for relief from my Mythology course prep. Still having mythology on the brain, I selected Dr. Cyclops, a 1940s movie that presages many of the concerns evident in the more famous members of the genre over the next decade. There were, even before the atomic bomb, clear concerns with radioactivity and its control by unstable elements of society. The fact that Dr. Thorkel is stereotypically Germanic would certainly resonate with audiences of the day. Given the title I focused on the classical elements and they eventually came through. As the radioactivity shrunk the cast, with the exception of Dr. Cyclops (Thorkel), Odysseus’ plight in the cave of Polyphemus emerged clearly. The doctor is symbolically blinded by the hiding and breaking of his glasses, and the shrunken prisoners escape like Odysseus’ crew. In one scene where the rival Dr. Bullfinch (surely no accident) addresses the much larger Thorkel the writers make it clear for the viewers that Bullfinch is really Ulysses (Odysseus).

Odysseus and Polyphemus

Presumably filmgoers in 1940 were still required to have read the classics in school so that such references would have been obvious from the start. Less obvious to viewers then and now is the fact that ancient mythology was a form of religion. Over the past week or so I’ve been participating in an exchange on Sabio Lantz’s blog, Triangulations, on the topic of metaphorical versus literal truth. I maintain that mythology reflects truth as perceived by ancient believers, whether they “believed” in an actual pantheon on Mount Olympus or not. Myths are intended to convey truth – although ancient religions were more often about correct practice rather than correct belief. Placating angry gods was the job of the priesthood, not the average citizen.

The question unanswered is when religion shifted from correct practice to correct belief. Correct belief can only truly apply in a monotheistic context – if there are many gods there are potentially many beliefs. With one god, one personality, the potential for believing incorrectly infiltrates a religion that is primarily concerned with keeping the many gods satisfied. So perhaps what Dr. Cyclops sees through his one good lens is a metaphor for seeking a single truth rather than the many. In the film, before he meets his demise in the radium mine, Dr. Thorkel is the only character with the stature of a god.