Graham Greene & Esperanto (7): Confidential Agent (film) revisited

I already blogged about the film Confidential Agent (1945, 118 min.) and posted the trailer along with it. (For more information on the film see the IMDb site.)

For the novel Graham Greene created the character Dr. Bellows, naive creator of the artificial international language Entrenationo. You can find the video clip featuring Entrenatio and a few others here:

Confidential Agent -- (Movie Clip) Mr. Contreras

Here is the video clip in which Entrenationo appears:



Dr. Bellows, the naive inventor of this language, has no idea that his institute serves as a dangerous meeting ground for international intrigue and a life-and-death struggle.

In the novel, Greene creates an effective portrayal of an artificial language movement completely ineffective and oblivious to the real dangers of the world. Greene probably saw a parallel between Bellows/Entrenationo and Zamenhof/Esperanto. And while Esperantists have often parodied their own foolishness, and in some cases have criticized Zamenhof's political limitations, Zamenhof was no Bellows, and some Esperantists were politically astute, including those who fought fascism in the Spanish Civil War, which though not named serves as the backdrop for Greene's novel.

Graham Greene & Esperanto (5): The Confidential Agent

Here is the first installment of excerpts from The Confidential Agent pertaining to the artificial language Entrenationo:

Graham Greene’s Entrenationo (1)

Two more installments are to follow.

Here are a few specimens of literary criticism pertaining specifically to this novel:

The Modern World through the Luminous Path of Prose Fiction: Reading Graham Greene’s A Burnt-out Case and The Confidential Agent as Dystopian Novels by Ayobami Kehinde

Graham Greene's Heroes: Regeneration Through Experience by Francisco John Sabine
 

Graham Greene & Esperanto (4): Confidential Agent (film)

Segments of the film Confidential Agent (1945, 118 min.) could once be found on YouTube, and the entire film was once available via the Online Movie Database, but no more. One sequence no longer viewable on YouTube was with Peter Lorre speaking in Entrenationo.

The film cannot at this time be obtained through Netflix, but a DVD does exist; it was released earlier this year and is part of the Warner Archive Collection. Here is a DVD Savant review by Glenn Erickson, 4 May 2011. Here is one paragraph from this review:

Confidential Agent has a number of inspired touches, the most amusing being a pathetic language school where Peter Lorre works. Ian Wolfe has invented an Esperanto-like international language and is convinced that world peace can be achieved if everyone simply learns to talk in the new tongue. Lorre is hilarious, conducting absurd language lessons that will never amount to anything. The scene nails the desperation of an intelligent man working a job that belongs in Alice's Wonderland. Lorre's efforts will also be amusing to language teachers.

Several reviews can be found online. Here are two more, neither of which mention Entrenationo:

The Cineaste's Lament

Casablanca's Dark Angel: Confidential Agent (1945) (Critics at Large)

Graham Greene & Esperanto (2): The Confidential Agent

Graham Greene's novel The Confidential Agent (1939) contains an obvious parody of Zamenhof and Esperanto.

Kafejo.com : Auxlang Mentions : The Confidential Agent

Here we find a few quotes and samples of Entrenationo, the artificial language of Dr. Bellows, who greets his visitors in his language: "Me tray joyass."

There is an entry on Graham Greene in Vikipedio, the Esperanto version of Wikipedia, but no mention of Greene's references to Esperanto in several of his novels.

The Confidential Agent was watered down beyond recognition in a 1949 Escape radio adaptation, which you can listen to online. No Dr. Bellows here.

The novel was made into a film in 1945, in which the character Dr. Bellows appears. I have not seen this.

Greene's novel is mentioned in passing in this article:

Esperanto and the ideology of constructed languages
By Donald Broadribb, International Language Reporter, 2nd Quarter 1970, pp. 1-9.

The blog Running like hell in the land of overkill has an entry that begins:

June 5, 2003 Brookline
Up at seven A.M., Boston time. I weigh 184 pounds. Went downtown for an interview at the language school. Such an odd air to all of those places, captured perfectly by Graham Greene in one of his novels. Always remember the Esperanto teacher in his rubber shoes, poking his nose into classrooms.

Greene portrayed the informal (but high pressure) sales pitches that all these schools employ. It's quasi-religious. Remember how, returning from Rome to Paris, I saw an Esperanto school from the metro somewhere near Place d'Italie. What qualifications must one have to work there. Are there any native speakers of Esperanto, for example?

This article by a noted linguistics scholar gives us the most information on Greene's attitudes about language:

Going Especially Careful in The Third Man: A Linguistic Exploration by David Crystal.
Paper given to the Graham Greene Festival, Berkhamsted, September 2009.

Crystal finds the danger-signals in Greene's novel often connected with language. Artificial languages are markers of especially ominous developments.