Meanings morphed by the movies. By Talia Felix, Assistant Editor.
What’s in a name – or a title? Ever since studios realized they could show their films around the world, movies have shaped culture. They have added to the stock of words and phrases we use. Sometimes, film titles themselves become words or phrases in daily language.
In 1921 the film The Sheik introduced a now-archaic word for a ladies’ man, a lover, or a seducer. Played by then-26-year-old Italian actor Rudolph Valentino, the film’s title character kidnaps the heroine and, it is implied, rapes her till she gets to like it and she chooses to stay with him. Also, to ensure the audiences wouldn’t be clutching their pearls at the idea of miscegenation, the film spontaneously adds the detail that Sheik Ahmed is not actually an Arab, he’s just a European guy who was adopted by a Sheik.
A contemporary article remarked, “Certain critics assailed it, but the public placed upon the production its seal of approval, which is the final test.” And what more approval can there be but to turn the very title sheik into a term for seductive men or even into a verb for the act of wooing (He’s up in his Latin and Greek/But in his sheiking he’s weak in Helen Kane’s warbling of 1929.)
The 1933 film Bombshell (also known as Blonde Bombshell) popularized if it didn’t even create the modern sense of bombshell to mean an extremely attractive woman. Played by Jean Harlow, the title character was recognized at the time as an obvious satire of silent film star Clara Bow, famously called the “It Girl.” For this film, the It Girl’s counterpart is instead called the “Bombshell.”
The film chronicles the actress’s madcap efforts at a normal life all while she is being manipulated by family and managers. The movie was a success, and soon the phrase came to be applied to real life actresses, and from there to any highly attractive women.
The seemingly inexplicable tradition of screaming the name “Geronimo” when jumping from a great height, especially out of an airplane, seems to trace to the 1939 film Geronimo! (Yes, the exclamation mark is part of the title.)
A few of its action scenes include characters wailing the name “Geronimo!” before they get murdered or race away to find help. This is said to have inspired a soldier by the name of Aubrey Eberhardt to cry the name as a way to prove his fearlessness to comrades when he parachuted out of an airplane – evidently the word was chosen for no reason other than that he had recently watched the film. After this example, his entire unit adopted the practice of screaming Geronimo when jumping from planes.
The story of the movie itself is actually a convoluted historical family drama involving a military general and his son who never meets him till adulthood. Geronimo (who lived 1829 to 1909) in the film is a plot device whose motivations are explained but which don’t matter; he is mostly being manipulated into evil acts by an American arms dealer who is profiting from the trouble.
In 1940 we got His Girl Friday. The title is ultimately a reference to the 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe, in which the title character has for a servant/companion a man (named) Friday. From this, the term Man Friday had already become an expression meaning an excellent and helpful servant (usually metaphoric; for instance, electricity being a Man Friday.)
The 1940 film is a screwball comedy in which a determined newspaper editor manipulates his ex-wife and star reporter into covering one last story as a means to prevent her from remarrying and settling down. The film was criticized for being a romantic remake of an already popular film, Front Page (1931), but it proved to have legs enough to co-opt the term Man Friday so that Girl Friday instead became the more common expression. The moniker designates someone reliable and versatile, who often takes on a role of providing support or assistance in a wide range of responsibilities.
1944 brought us Gaslight, also spelled Gas Light. The film is set in Victorian times, when gaslighting – precursor to electrical lighting – was in common use in houses.
The heroine, Paula, is the heiress of a famous opera singer, and soon after receiving her inheritance she is caught in a whirlwind romance and married to an aspiring composer. The couple move into her old family home, but soon Paula appears to be going insane, doing things she forgets, and seeing things that aren’t real.
In what was originally a twist ending, it’s revealed that her husband is deliberately making her think she is insane to cover up his own criminal activities. The dimming of the home’s gaslights whenever he secretly goes into the attic to hunt for hidden treasure is the clue that finally uncovers his crimes.
Soon the film’s title became a term for tricking someone into thinking themselves crazy; over time it evolved to mean dismissing or discrediting a person’s viewpoints, usually with a suggestion of malice attached to the action.
In 1950, the Italian film Stromboli came on the scene. The story is about a displaced European woman who, hoping to escape from a refugee camp, marries a guard who takes her to his home island of Stromboli – which only proves to be a new kind of prison. It was not actually a very successful film, but the scandal of its lead actress Ingrid Bergman’s affair with director Roberto Rossellini, resulting in the birth of son Robin Rossellini, made it a notorious talking point.
The title became a popular “Italian” word for a time, being applied to 1950s food menu items without any real regard for the meaning. It now survives mostly as the name for a type of pizza or rolled sandwich.
The 1955 film Rebel Without a Cause took its title from a nonfiction book that had no relation at all to the eventual movie plot. In the film, the new kid in town, played by James Dean, is tormented by bullies and by trying to prove himself in their eyes he creates increasing amounts of trouble that result in dead teenagers and police shootouts. It’s also somehow depicted as all being his father’s fault.
The film’s serious portrayal of teenagers struck a chord with young audiences in an era when “teen movies” were typically about happy, carefree days and zany, trivial plotlines. Paired with the real death of up-and-coming star James Dean shortly before the release of the movie, and the Oscar attention afforded to teen actor Sal Mineo, it became an absolute phenomenon. Thus “rebel without a cause” became a phrase used to describe angsty young people and people who are generally troublemakers.
La Dolce Vita indicates a lifestyle of high-energy hedonism and glamour. The term comes from the 1960 film by the same name, which depicts through episodic sequences the daily activities of the main character, Marcello, and how he experiences the highs and lows of the "sweet life," including love affairs, parties, intellectual discussions, and personal tragedies.
The film title was probably chosen to be somewhat ironic, but the phrase is usually meant sincerely whenever someone mentions living la dolce vita.
In the 1962 thriller The Manchurian Candidate, a US soldier held captive in the Korean War has been brainwashed to blindly follow assassination orders without afterward recalling that he committed the murders.
The film produced a belief in the possibility of such a scenario occurring in real life, and various conspiracy theories now exist about politicians and celebrities being secret “manchurian candidates.” The phrase is also sometimes used of mechanical devices that might be similarly programmed to perform nefarious tasks in secret, as well as (jokingly) to describe people who perform actions without remembering them, or who claim not to remember them.
In 1970, the anti-military comedy Catch-22 came to the world. It had already been a successful novel, but it was with the movie that the title term really caught on. The “catch” is that a pilot is crazy to continue flying endless assignments, but if he doesn’t want to fly he must ask to be relieved of duty, and only a sane person would do that, ergo by doing that he is proven sane enough to continue flying. The film’s title became a general term for any unwinnable situation or paradox.
The 1972 film The Godfather was immediately regarded as a masterpiece, and proved to be an enormous financial success. It is a drama about the life of a young man born into a mafia family. The movie brought us many famous tropes like the horse head in a bed, “an offer he can’t refuse”, and giving fish as a “Sicilian message.” It also popularized the term Godfather as meaning a mafia person – indeed it is practically the only sense the word is used for nowadays, unless an actual quasi-familial relationship is meant. (Take the joke: What do you get when you cross a lawyer with a Godfather? An offer you can’t understand.)
A bit of real life Cold War terminology was a so-called “Star Wars Defense system.” The nickname, which was considered disparaging at the time, was the press term for the Strategic Defense Initiative under US President Ronald Regan (1911 - 2004).
The technology never manifested – just as the nickname implied, it was science fiction.
The name was derived from the 1977 film Star Wars (later retitled A New Hope after a series of sequels, spin-offs and prequels were produced under the collective name Star Wars.) The story is a sci-fi fantasy in which an evil wizard-pilot-military leader, played by a bodybuilder and voiced by James Earl Jones, controls an enormous laser gun large enough to blow up entire planets. He has a beautiful princess as a hostage, and certain mishaps cause an unqualified but enthusiastic young man named Luke Skywalker to take it upon himself to learn the ways of the “Jedi knights” in order to rescue her. The movie was extremely successful and well-loved before someone re-edited it so that Greedo shot first.
In 1984 we got another sci-fi classic called The Terminator. The story is about a woman who discovers she is destined to give birth to a hero who will defeat evil robots in a future robot war; she learns this because a time-traveling robot in an Austrian disguise begins trying to kill her, to prevent her pregnancy and its consequences. The film’s title added to the English vocabulary the -inator suffix, which is usually employed to indicate extreme or ultimate versions of the element it is appended to (e.g. Trogdor the Burninator) after Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ruthless and capable mechanical character, which is credited only by the name Terminator.
1986 gave us a new word for a disastrous project that continuously eats up finances: a Money Pit, after the movie of the same name. In this comedy picture, a couple are persuaded to purchase a large, beautiful house in which (they learn too late) absolutely everything needs repair or replacement.
In 2010, a documentary film provided us with a popular new word. Catfish is about a New York photographer, Nev, who initially thinks he has befriended online a child prodigy and her older sister, but, in a twist discovered late in the film, he finds that these personas were the fictitious creations of a woman who had learned about him after seeing his photography in a magazine, and who tricked him into a long-distance romance by pretending to be these (and several other) people.
The film’s title comes from a story, repeated by the woman’s husband, about a catfish put into a shipment of live cod in order to keep the fish stimulated in transit – it is used as a metaphor for troublesome people and why they are ultimately good for the world. The documentary got a certain amount of attention at film festivals, but it was really the television spin-off in which Nev tried to help others discover if they were also being “catfished” that widely popularized the word as a term for this situation.
These movie titles have become ingrained in our vocabulary, illustrating the profound impact cinema has on language evolution. As we continue to enjoy and explore new films, we can expect more expressions and words to emerge from the captivating stories told on the silver screen.
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