Displaced masculinity and global homelessness in Refuge England (Robert Vas, 1959)

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe present paper explores the notions of masculinity, migration and the modern city as they appear in Refuge England (Robert Vas, 1959), a British docu-fiction film presented at the first Free Cinema Screening in 1959, directed by and starring post-1956 Hungarian political refugees. The semi-autographical film, which narrates the first day in London of an Eastern European refugee, highlights the ways modernity, mobility and masculinity have been intertwined from the time of the first modern industrial societies. The paper argues that the Eastern European refugee’s journeys through London, as he desperately tries to find the address where he is promised refuge, can be interpreted as a figurative passage in which a succession of fantasies of the city appear in front of the eyes of the exhausted traveller. These fantasies reconfigure the matrix of the above-mentioned key concepts, as they mark the gradual emptying out of the protagonist’s subjectivity to bare life. Thus, my analysis aims to place the formal and narrative analysis of the film within this wider socio-cultural context, indicating the ways Refuge England can be understood as an early example of migrant cinema, and a powerful commentary of industrialised modernity and its mobile subjects.