ABSTRACT
In this chapter, masculinity studies and film reception theory are brought together in order to engage with VadimGlowna’s revision of the threatened masculinities of Joseph Conrad’s Swedish Heyst and his continued resistance to self-determination as well as Vadim Glowna’s German Escher and his transformation from a mutually destructive “rabid dog” willing to fight to the death in the process of self-defense against the antagonist Mr. Jones, to an active agent who determines his future and secures the safety of not only himself, but also other central characters. Both Heyst and Escher must battle a destructive fatherly influence that represents a capitulation to fate in deference to empire and the tyranny of National Socialism; however, while Conrad suggests that the value of masculine self-determination can be recognized too late, Glowna’s revision of the story argues that postwar West German masculinity cannot founder in the stasis of indecision, it must choose between confronting the enemy and survival or facing the zero sum outcome of mutual destruction.
