Liminality in The Naked Prey and Run for the Sun

Abstract

This article analyzes Cornel Wilde’s The Naked Prey against the background of mainly American adventure films, with a special focus on Run for the Sun, a 1956 feature starring Richard Widmark and Jane Greer. Using the template of Victor Turner's ideas about liminality, the article places the films in their socio-historical contexts and looks at how liminal transitions of film characters reflect changes in racial and social hierarchies. Naked Prey is the culmination of trends in adventure filmmaking that originated in the immediate postwar years. Run for the Sun, a film that exemplifies features of liminality during the heyday of lavish Hollywood location shooting abroad, forms a secondary focus. Using Turner's writings and secondary assessments of his work, the article seeks to establish a new understanding of these films in particular and other expatriate adventure films we have proposed as a subgenre.