Down the Rabbit Hole with Miss Blandish and Temple Drake

No Orchids for Miss Blandish (1948)

The Story of Temple Drake (1933)

The Grissom Gang (1971)

When I first read No Orchids for Miss Blandish (1939) by James Hadley Chase, I had no idea what I was in for. After all, this is the crime novel that set George Orwell back on his heels, as he described in his famous essay of 1944, “Raffles and Miss Blandish.“

So much for Raffles. Now for a header into the cesspool. No Orchids for Miss Blandish, by James Hadley Chase, was published in 1939…

Several other points need noticing before one can grasp the full implications of this book. To begin with, its central story bears a very marked resemblance to William Faulkner’s novel, Sanctuary. Secondly, it is not, as one might expect, the product of an illiterate hack, but a brilliant piece of writing, with hardly a wasted word or a jarring note anywhere...

…The book contains eight full-dress murders, an unassessable number of casual killings and woundings, an exhumation (with a careful reminder of the stench), the flogging of Miss Blandish, the torture of another woman with red-hot cigarette-ends, a strip-tease act, a third-degree scene of unheard-of cruelty and much else of the same kind. It assumes great sexual sophistication in its readers (there is a scene, for instance, in which a gangster, presumably of masochistic tendency, has an orgasm in the moment of being knifed), and it takes for granted the most complete corruption and self-seeking as the norm of human behaviour.

I read the Orwell piece years ago, before I encountered Mr. Chase (whose real name is René Lodge Brabazon Raymond), so I read it over again after reading the novel and was puzzled by some of his remarks. A gangster has an orgasm before being knifed? I didn’t read that in the book. Did Orwell read the book, or just go on what he had heard about it? That was before I found out about the complicated publishing history of the novel, detailed in this exhaustive blog post. The violence and sex in the book caused such an uproar that subsequent editions toned down some of it, but Orwell knew only the Ur text. Chase himself, in the early sixties, revised the text to make it seem less dated, so there is a scene in which the gangsters sit watching large television sets, and another in which police helicopters take part in a rescue…while everything else is circa 1935! Getting a hold of that original edition is an expensive proposition, but I’m on the case! I’d also like to know the source of the title, but I’ll get back to that.

The central theme of the story is the rape/abduction of a young woman by disreputable thugs. The rape theme is ancient, of course. The word used to refer to forcible abduction, for purposes of gaining wives, concubines, or slaves, not the violent act of sexual assault, which may have followed the taking, of course. We have the Sabine women being raped, Zeus raping Europa,

Abduction of the Sabine Women – Nicolas Poussin

innumerable other seduction/rapes of women by Zeus, and perhaps most relevant, the abduction/rape of Persephone by Hades. For it is into a modern mythical/realistic underworld that Temple Drake and Miss Blandish are dumped.

Sanctuary (1931) by William Faulkner, is built around the stuck up, superficial flirt, Temple Drake, who finds herself abandoned to the desires of Popeye, a sickly, impotent, psycho, and his family of half-wits, booze runners, and semi-human beasts. Faulkner later claimed he wrote it for money, and quickly, and the first draft was rejected by his publisher as too indecent. He thought better of it soon after, but then Faulkner went to work again on the text: Today, it is possible to read the original text as well as the published version, shades of James Hadley Chase and Miss Blandish.

The book was praised by some, but for most, it was a moral outrage to be denounced and banned. However discreet and indirect Faulkner was in his prose, Temple is in fact raped by the impotent Popeye with a corn cob, a rather disturbing image when all is said and done.

I think the theme of Popeye’s rape of Temple is echoed in the 1944 stupendous film noir, “Laura,” when Waldo Lydecker, gay or impotent, not sure which, tries a symbolic rape murder of Laura with a shotgun, but she’s too quick for him.

Whatever else he may have had in mind while he was writing it, the book does blow the lid off many aspects of Southern “gentility,” social hypocrisy, the criminal justice system, and maybe the whole idea of civilization itself, a pretty neat trick for any novel.

The novel has been adapted for the movies several times, but the most famous, or notorious I should say, since it is not well known, is the first, “The Story of Temple Drake” (1933), with a sensational Miriam Hopkins playing the flirty, clueless, seductive and stupid Temple who falls into the world of a bunch of backwoods bootleggers dominated by a slick city gangster named Trigger. This film has brilliant, dark, expressionistic cinematography, and the rape scene by Trigger, standing in for the Popeye half-wit,is truncated with a scream, but the lead-in makes clear what is going on. Corn cobs are all around to clue in those literate enough to have read the original text. Hopkins said, “...if you can call a rape artistically done, it was,” but art or not, the film led to the Hays Code having real teeth so that subsequent films dared not go where Temple had gone. Linking all this together, Trigger was played by Jack La Rue, who reappears in the Miss Blandish film as the murderous Slim.

Miriam Hopkins as Temple awaiting her fate

Jack La Rue as Trigger

At the conclusion, Temple is called to testify in the murder trial of an innocent man whom she can clear if she reveals her dishonored state. After a struggle, she does so, and faints dead away. Faulkner’s Temple perjured herself, leading the innocent man to be lynched.

Fourteen years separate the Temple Drake/Hopkins film from the Miss Blandish/La Rue film, and in between, there was the super best seller, No Orchids for Miss Blandish, a reworking of the Sanctuary story line. This was Chase’s very first novel, and though he was a Brit, he set it in America. That was part of what got Orwell seething; the importation of American low-class vulgarity into the British cultural landscape, but they loved it! The novel completes the transformation of the abductors from a community of backwoods low lifes to an urban crime gang, this time lead by a murderous woman, perhaps inspired by Ma Barker.

Early paperback, original text? (1941)

First American paperback, revised text

Different title, revised text

Another later paperback edition

In Chase’s story, some small-time hoods get wind of a roadside club where Miss Blandish (she’s never named, I believe) is going to go out slumming with her beau, while wearing her diamonds worth fifty grand.  They catch up with the drunken partyers but the snatch goes bad when the boyfriend plays the chivalrous knight and knocks down a high-strung thug whose response is to beat him to death.  Now with a murder rap hanging over them, the hoods run for their hideout, planning to extort a ransom for the girl, kill her, and make their escape.  Their plans are derailed when some members of the infinitely more violent and competent Grisson Gang (Grissom in subsequent tellings, and hereafter in this blog) spot them, put two and two together, and trail them to their hideout.

The goings on at the hideout are grim – that’s where the masochistic crook has his pre-knifing orgasm – and the small timers are rubbed out by the Grissom Gang, led by the murderous, psychopathic, and emotionally childlike Slim.  They return to their headquarters with the girl and the jewels.  Ma, the brains of the outfit, realizes that the authorities have no reason to suspect their involvement; all the evidence leads to the small time thugs, whose bodies have been carefully hidden and the gang murders several inconvenient people who might have information tying them to the kidnapping.  Ma executes a ransom collection for several hundred thousand dollars, planning to kill the girl upon receiving it, but Slim has other plans.  Despite having never shown an interest in the opposite sex, Miss Blandish’s beauty has led him to an awakening.  He wants to be her Beast…forever, whether she wants him or not.  Ma is troubled by this new complication – killing the girl is so much simpler – but her murderous son is not to be crossed or the entire gang could be torn apart. 

After beating Miss Blandish into submission, Ma instructs her in her new role in life, to please Slim.  With the help of drugs administered continually by a former doctor in the gang, Slim has his sex slave.  Ma disposes of the hot ransom money at a discount and seizes a local nightclub from its terrified owner, turning it into a “legit” front for their outfit, and raking in the real money.  Miss Blandish is kept in a locked chamber where Slim visits her regularly.

All good things must come to an end.  A pesky detective working for Mr. Blandish figures out what went down with the jewel snatch and kidnapping, and locates Miss Blandish.  The Grissom Gang is expunged in a hail of bullets, but not before taking out a lot of coppers.  Miss Blandish is freed, but throws herself out of a window to her death at the first opportunity.  Orwell, perhaps speaking as a typical clueless male of his era, says that she had grown so accustomed to Slim’s caresses that she could not live without them, but to me it is obvious that Miss Blandish was psychologically devastated by her months of being raped, and ended her life out of shame and despair.

After WWII, after Orwell had his hissy fit in “Raffles and Miss Blandish,” we get to a film treatment of the novel.  The film is British, and most of the actors in it are as well, and they sound it too, despite that the film is set in the United States.  Jack La Rue, the only American actor in the film, casts off Trigger to reappear as Slim, transformed into a slick urban gang leader in the prohibition era USA.  Instead of playing with switchblades, he works out his inner demons by endlessly throwing a pair of black dice.  In fact, “Black Dice” was considered as a possible name for the film, and it is the name the gang gives to the club they take over.  But we are in a different moral universe with this film, derived from a successful stage treatment of the book, and one far removed from Faulkner and James Hadley Chase.

Yes, the Grissom Gang trails the small timers to their lair, there is a gunfight, and the gang takes possession of the jewels and the girl, but these two are already connected.  The movie  opened with Miss Blandish in the lap of society luxury, receiving yet another enormous vase of orchids in celebration of her engagement, but this one has for a card only a note with two black dice and the words, “Don’t do it!”  She tells the servant to send them back.  “There will be no orchids for Miss Blandish today.”  The title of the novel is never explained in the text:  I take it to be an ironic existential comment on her fate.

Linden Travers as Miss Blandish

Ma Grissom

Slim’s gang catches up with the small-timers

Miss Blandish at home in a different sort of society

Once Miss Blandish overcomes her shock at being abducted, she calms down and eventually realizes that Slim was the source of the orchids urging her to not get married.  And now they are together!  How exciting!  She feels alive, truly alive for the first time after a stifling existence among the upper crust.  Slim is not the deviant half-wit of the source texts, but a smooth operator, attractive, seductive, a bit violent at times, but wonderful to be with.  In one scene, Miss Blandish says, “Oh, I know you’ve killed people. You’re cold, you’re hard, you’re ruthless — but …”  All in self-defense:  they embrace rapturously.  Their lips crunch together in a heavy kiss that set a record for duration at that time in cinema.  The end comes in the same way – slick or not, they are gangsters – and Miss Blandish kills herself, this time, for precisely the reason Orwell suggested:  She cannot bear to return to society life and be without Slim’s caresses.  I wonder if Orwell would have enjoyed seeing his misinterpretation of the novel’s text used to conclude what a number of critics have called the worst movie ever made?

At last, we come to “The Grissom Gang” (1971) by Robert Aldrich. (More than fifty years ago! Time for a remake?) We’re back in the USA, Depression Era, but the film is in painfully full color. Everyone sweats, a lot. Ma and her gang mean business, and Slim is back to being a sadistic, emotionally stunted mama’s boy, but he is humanized, a bit. The book’s plot has been snipped here and there to streamline the story, but the brutality of the gang is dark as the night. Mr. Blandish, payer of the ransom, is played by the Aldrich stalwart, Wesley Addy, and is given a truly nasty character more in keeping with the world of Sanctuary than Miss Blandish: He’d rather his daughter be retrieved dead than alive and thoroughly soiled by the ordeal.

Slim and Miss Blandish

Ma preparing for the end

Sweaty and angry Miss Blandish

Daddy Blandish reunited with daughter

Ma and the gang have died in a blaze of gunfire – Ma enjoying every minute of it – and Slim is trapped with Miss Blandish in a barn surrounded by the cops. He declares his love for her; after all, if not for him, Ma would have bumped her off long ago. But he does truly love her in whatever simple and twisted fashion is possible for him, and now it’s time for her to return to her home, so there’s nothing in the world for him but to go out and face the bullets and die. Miss Blandish, who has never become hardened to the killing around her during her ordeal, begs him not to go. “Don’t die for me Slim. I’m not worth it.” She realizes that Slim’s wretched love is the only love she has ever had, and she is grateful for it. But he does go, and he is shot to pieces.

Miss Blandish mourns her abductor, rapist, and worshipper

After gazing on Slim’s corpse for a few moments, Miss Blandish is confronted by her father who is clearly disgusted to see her in such a state. She tries to explain: “I was just trying to stay alive. He loved me…” Dad doesn’t understand. He stalks off, telling her that Mr. Fenner, the detective who cracked the case, will see to her. The final scene shows the two of them driving off in a car, she looks back at the barn, bewildered. They’re off to that hotel Fenner has arranged for her, away from the prying press. Will she jump out of the window as she did in the book? Aldrich doesn’t tell, but it certainly seems a good bet.

Kubrick’s “2001” is 50!

What did you think we were doing out there, Miss Fellowes?…

Life goes on, right here in Teaneck.  In an area that used to be a soggy wetland, then became a debris repository for concrete fragments (from what, I don’t know) associated with the construction of the NJ Turnpike, there is now the Teaneck Creek Conservancy.  I have highlighted the path of the creek.

This time of year, the White Suckers make their way upstream to spawn.  We spy on them and snap pictures.

When I was a boy, late one night I watched the film adaptation of Tennessee Williams’  The Night of the Iguana.  I was keen on iguanas then too, but of course, that’s not what the story is about.  Watching it again a year ago, I couldn’t stay with it, but this scene is still a hoot.

… Spawnining?

Richard Burton and Sue Lyon return to land

Revolutions, Large and Small

The Russian Revolution, and the Italian Risorgimento:  two different revolutions.  One, cataclysmic; one, not so much. Transforming Russia from a backward agrarian society into a totalitarian industrial giant.  Transforming the Italian peninsula from a motley of states into a unified “modern” nation.  I indulged my abiding interest in Josef Stalin by watching The Inner Circle (1991) by Andrei Konchalovsky, and I’m prepping for a trip to the Piedmont region of Italy, where The Risorgimento originated, by watching Visconti’s The Leopard (1963) again, and re-reading the novel by Lampedusa on which it is based.

Konchalovsky, who was quite successful within the Soviet cinema world, relates that he offered a bottle of brandy to a projectionist if the man would tell him the opinions of the state censors for whom he was screening his latest film.  The man revealed that he had lots of stories to tell about what Stalin used to say about films!  He was the Kremlin projectionist for years:  Konchalovsky was ready to listen, and The Inner Circle is the story of this Kremlin functionary.

The film has some odd things about it, including a score that seems to grow loud and sentimental at the worst moments, and the fact that all the dialog is in English spoken with Russian accents.  Seems a bit hokey at times.  The problem of subtitles and translation was handled more creatively in The Hunt for Red October, about the only good thing I recall from that film.  Tom Hulce plays the projectionist, and he holds onto his pure country-bumpkin good-Ivan characterization a bit too long, but to anyone familiar with Russian history, he’s still believable.

There is a scene where the film breaks during a screening for Stalin, and the projectionist explains that the projector is a poor copy of an excellent German machine – the head of the Cinema Bureau, responsible for these  things, is standing right there – and has an inferior spring part that caused the break.  Stalin uses the incident to indulge his sadistic bent, lightly bandying with the bureau chief who is sweating profusely, while Beria – head of the secret police – notes sarcastically that someone wasn’t doing their duty.  This is the sort of thing that can end with a bullet to the head administered some random dead of night.  It’s a chilling set-piece of Stalin’s daily modus operandi.  If you want a sense of the brutal moral degradation imposed on the Soviet citizenry by Stalin, apart from the mass murder itself, this is not a bad film to see.

Meanwhile, back in Sicily, The Prince is speaking dubbed Italian in Visconti’s adaptation of The Leopard.  Panned at first, it is now highly rated:  Martin Scorsese, not surprisingly, rates it among the greatest of all films.  Why no surprise?  Because Scorsese, as one critic noted, is no great sociologist, and naturally he is entranced by Visconti’s lush nostalgia for a period of elegance decayed.

Starting to read the novel again, I noted right away that the author’s tone is sharper, more harsh, than the elegiac sentiment of Visconti.  The film is an aesthetic response to the politics of the Risorgimento.  You can say that Visconti was a Marxist (he joined the Communist Party after WWII) but how much of one could he be having made this film?  He loves those aristocrats, their clothes, their nobless oblige, and he loathes the upstart middle class.  He was, of course, the scion of a hugely important Italian aristocratic clan.  And in the end, the film is an adaptation, not a copy of the book – he chooses to emphasize the theme of the Prince dealing with his own mortality, as well as the end of his era, a more personal story. A fine film, a wee bit too long, and I think his talents were better suited for Senso.

The Leopard is often referred to as Italy’s “Gone With The Wind,” a comparison that is an insult to Visconti’s considerable talents and highly developed sensibility.

Dream Sequence: Ivan meets Joe

Dream Couple: Delon and Cardinale

Not Noir, but Pretty Dark

Netflix classified The Lineup (1958) as a film noir, which it most certainly is not, but it’s pretty dark nonetheless, and a crackerjack crime film that I thoroughly enjoyed.  Great location shots in San Francisco, an excellent high-speed chase long before McQueen did Bullit, a full rogues gallery of outlaw characters, and some great dialog:  just  hold on through the pretty dull first thirty minutes of  police procedural until Eli Wallach, as hit-man Dancer, makes his entrance, and enjoy the ride.

It’s called The Lineup, because it’s based on a TV show that ran in the early fifties under that name.  The episode with an actual lineup is quite a small part of the story.  The film is an expanded treatment of one story from the series, and it’s directed by Don Siegel.  One of the posters for the film says, “Too hot for TV!”

Before the credits role, we are in the action as a porter rips off a passenger’s bag, and throws it into a cab which then races away.  As they say, a chase ensues, and the cabbie, after running down a cop who dies later, is hit by a lucky shot.  The luggage contains a statuette stuffed with high-grade heroin, part of a shipment run by a secretive outfit headed by The Man.  The Man thinks things out thoroughly, and he foists junk on unwitting overseas tourists who work as his mules without their knowledge.  Once they reach the States, the gang gathers up their souvenirs in whatever way they must.

Here, the police do their work methodically, checking in with the head of customs, whom the Lt. initially blames for the cop’s death.  After all, why didn’t they catch that heroin in the statue?  The customs man shows a map and calmly explains that there is just too much territory, too many ships for him to handle.  Pretty routine stuff, but I like the guy on the left, although I could not find his  name.

Our first glimpse of the bad guys, Robert Keith as Julian, and Eli Wallach as Dancer.  Julian is Dancer’s handler, coaching him on ‘delivery’ verbal and ballistic.  He wants Dancer to improve his grammar so as to be able to move more easily among his victims.  Their first dialog is a discussion of the subjunctive.  Dancer is incredulous that anyone would say, “If I were…,” rather than “If I was…”  He’s not alone, but Julian is firm with him.  After the fiasco with the cabbie, The Man brought them in to clean up things.

Julian knows that Dancer is a cold-blooded psychopath, filled with hate.  he says as much to another gang member.  Dancer later reveals that like everyone else, he had an old man once, except that he never knew him.  Is Julian his father-figure, or is there a homo-erotic attachment here..?

Sandy is “their boy,” designated driver, except that he has a liking for drink.  Julian slaps his bottle to the ground, and calls him “Dipso” from then on.  But Sandy has a souped-up auto, and he can drive it, fast!

The three get to know one another on their way to get initial instructions on who the marks are they have to see to retrieve the smack.  The information session is placed down by the docks.

I love the way Siegel took advantage of the location to add this bit of action:  as the car drives up, the boat is pulling out to sea.

One of many nice SF shots, as Dancer gets his info – he never writes anything down – from the contact.

The one to see is a seaman on the boat who was given a hollowed out antique horse.  They are told to find him in the steamroom in the Seaman’s Club.  Two guys in a locker room…wearing hats.   Dancer is convinced that this whole job is going to be a sticky one because the first shipment went awry, while Julian insists, no, it’s going to be an easy one.  All done by 4:30pm.

Dancer undresses to go meet the man, and Julian offers to fold his clothes.  He tells him “Go easy…,” but the contact figured out that he was being used as a mule, so he asks for a few grand to make it worth his trouble.  Did they think he would believe that line about just carrying some art to a friend in the city for a favor?  Big mistake for them, and for him too.

Meanwhile, the police trudge on…

…while Dancer explains the facts of life to the upstart seaman.  He does it silently, shall we say.  Their driver asks if he really had to kill the guy, and Julian responds, “When you live outside the law, you have to eliminate dishonesty.”  Bob Dylan may have taken note.

Next up, a set of fancy cutlery with powder stowed in the ivory handles needs to be repossessed from a rich pillar of society.  The butler is not comfortable with the story of an accidental mix up of shipments.  Dancer tries to talk his way out using his newly acquired gift for upper-class gab, but is not successful…

Get your hands off that silverware!

The butler runs to call the man of the house, but Dancer nails him.  It looks as if he’s shooting wild until you realize that you only see the butler in a mirror on the wall.
 

Time to get out of there, and another SF location shot…

The final mark is a woman who was on the boat with her daughter:  the stuff is stashed in the kid’s doll.  They catch up with them at the aquarium.  That Julian, he must love kids!

Dancer does a fine job at trying, but not too hard, to pick up the woman.  She has a sad story about hoping that her divorced husband would have the decency to meet them at the dock to see his little girl, but no dice.  He’s lonely too…  He’s pretty convincing.  Good enough to get her to an accept an offer of a drive with his friends to her hotel so she doesn’t have to bother with all those packages.

Once in the room, when mom leaves for a moment, they go for the doll, not the kind you carry around all the time.  The stuff isn’t there, and under threat of death for her mom, the kid reveals that she found the powder and used it to freshen up the doll’s face!  “That’s the most expensive face powder you could have used, kid.”

Well, all the veils have fallen.  “Get out, now!”

Julian does not like being told what to do by a woman, no sirree bob!

But he’s not about to let the enraged Dancer finish the conversation by shooting the two females, although that’s what Dancer is set to do. Interesting logic here, and strangely compelling:  The Man is going to be mightily upset at getting a short shipment, and will likely conclude that Dancer and Julian did a little business of their own on the side.  That will not be good for the duo, who will be dead in short order, so Julian concludes that they must force the ladies to go with them, to meet The Man, so that he will see that their explanation, which would be hard to believe, don’t ya’ think, is for real.  It’s their only chance.

So they all drive to the coast, to Sutro’s Maritime Museum, all that’s left of the legendary Sutro’s Baths, an early 20th century amusement center, and another great SF location.  Julian waits in the car with the ladies while Dancer goes in to meet The Man.  He is repelled by their weakness, and explains “that is why there are so few women in the crime world.  You just don’t understand the criminal’s need for violence.”  He’s very thoughtful…

Meanwhile, The Man doesn’t find his package, but sees Dancer watching him.

Dancer sees that he sees him, and goes over to make the drop, a bit short, it’s true, and to explain the situation.

The Man doesn’t care for explanations.  “You’re dead,” he says.  “Nobody sees me.  You’re on borrowed time now.”

His last words – Julian likes to record the last words of their victims in a little book he carries – are “Get out!”  Then he slaps Dancer hard.

Dancer won’t take that crap.  He pushes him off the ledge onto the rink below.  It’s a great scene.

Sandy is a driving kind of man, and his skills are now in demand since the cops have finally caught up with the three crooks.

The pursuit scenes through the streets of SF are surprisingly effective given that they were all done in a studio in front of a projection screen.

Sandy can drive, but he doesn’t always go the right way.  They end up at an elevated dead end on a freeway under construction.  Love that!

Dancer is not impressed.  “Get us out of here if you want to live!”

Sandy does a quick turn, and complies…

…but he gets caught in an off-ramp going nowhere, and can go no further.  Dancer conks him over the head; Julian tries to surrender, but Dancer will have none of that!

Put those last words in your little book!

The cops get Dancer, Mom and daughter are okay, and it’s all in a day’s work for these two unexciting guys.

More things in heaven and earth…

…than are dreamed of in your philosophy.  That’s what Svengali keeps telling people in this movie – I guess he liked Hamlet, and he does have strange powers.

Svengali (1931) was based on the very popular late 19th century novel, Trilby, by George du Maurier that went through several incarnations on the stage and film, including a recent production not yet released.  The most famous is this one, with John Barrymore and Marian Marsh.  Of course, Svengali has become a byword for an evil charismatic figure.  His character in the novel was clearly a standard anti-semitic stereotype, and elements of that are still present in this film, although he is simply presented as an exotic and bizarre eastern-European, albeit with a Yiddish-sounding accent.

The film was made before The Code took force, so it contains a few spicy bits of dialog, as well as some daring views of Marsh.  In the image below, Svengali is riding with Tribly, whom he has abducted, and he gently covers her bare leg:  the scene gives the impression that he has sexually violated her as well as taken her away.

Trilby is an innocent cleaning girl who can’t sing a note, despite her marvelous “sounding board, and a roof of her mouth like the Pantheon.”  Under Svengali’s spell, she sings like a diva, and becomes one:  they are the toast of Europe, playing to packed houses everywhere.

Evil mad genius though he is, he falls in love with Tribly who cannot reciprocate:  she still pines for little Billee, the Englander who courted her in Paris.  Svengali asks her, what does he have that Svengali lacks, he with his silly paints?

He hypnotizes her into feeling love for him…

It works!  She says she loves him!

But he’s no fool.  He pushes her away…

Her voice is only her master’s voice talking to himself.

Tribly is pursued by Billee, which disrupts Svengali’s concerts.  He cannot maintain his spell over her when Billee is present, so his fortunes fail, and he is reduced to playing cafes in French Morocco.  Billee follows on, and Svengali confronts him.  He knows he is beaten, and the end is near.  When he dies in mid-concert, Tribly collapses onstage.  Cradled in Billee’s arms, her last word is “Svengali!…”  True love after all.

[The film is in English, but the sound was so poor, I used sub-titles.]

L’avventura

Michelangelo Antonioni’s film of 1960:  one critic said of it that no film has subverted expectations and conventions so elegantly as this one. I guess that’s why it received boos at its first showing in Cannes, although it was later awarded a jury prize.  I first saw it in college – I loved the images – but I wasn’t sure I understood what it was all about.  Is it about anything?  Of course, there’s Monica Vitti!!

In short, some rich parasites who lack social grace take a boat trip to a Mediterranean volcanic island.  One of their party, Anna, goes missing:  nobody seems overly concerned.  They do the right thing and get the authorities, but, well, maybe she was just bored, and ran off somehow.  The story centers on Sandro, Anna’s boyfriend, and Claudia, her best friend along for the ride.  They have an affair.  Seems pretty weird, doesn’t it?  After all, Sandro and Anna were to be … married, weren’t they?

Before the boat trip, Sandro goes to get Anna.  She takes him upstairs to make love.  “Your friend is waiting,” he says.  “Let her wait!”  That’s Claudia through the window.  The characters, and the audience, will do a lot of waiting in this film.

Monica Vitti’s presence dominates the film.  She became a superstar after its release.  Here, she waits, while her friends make love upstairs.

Anna is a mercurial type.  She ends a pleasant dip in the sea by the boat when she claims to have seen a shark.  Is there something between these two ladies?

They go ashore on a dramatic little island.  Sandro and Anna argue. The stupid boat passengers pick among the rocks.

Time to leave, and no Anna.  They all go searching.  The scenery is awe-inspiring.

Still, guys like this are barely affected by the beauty around them.  He just goes on making fun of his scatter-brained wife and everything else in the world.  Not an endearing portrait of the denizens of la dolce vita. As a critic remarked, in Fellini’s film they at least seem to be having fun:  these people are just bored by everything.

Claudia and Sandro are of this group, but outsiders in a way.  We learn that he was an aspiring architect at one point, with ideas, and that as a boy he wanted to be a diplomat or a romantic, starving genius.  Now, he’s just rich, with houses in Milan and Rome.  Claudia remarks at one point that she had a “sensible” childhood, that is “without any money.”  Sandro found his way into this circle of decayed noblemen and parasites through business, but we have no clue about Claudia.  I guess being so beautiful might open a few doors, especially in a totally sexist society.

Claudia is genuinely distraught over Anna’s disappearance while Sandro seems to take it all very calmly.  Moreover, he seems uncomfortably interested in Claudia…  And she is not comfortable with her own attraction to him…

An encounter on the boat before they set off for the mainland to deal with the police and continue the search for Anna: Claudia doing her hair…

…Sandro coming aboard for his suitcase…

He makes his move…impulsive…”Yes, absurd…so what?”  He has all the existentialist crap for excuses to her objections that it is just not right, not now…

He follows her onto a train to try and convince her to go away with him.  She overhears a young provincial coming on like gangbusters to a pretty country girl, and she laughs at the crudeness of his attempts at seduction.  She begs Sandro to leave her be, and he does.  But they get together not long afterwards, continuing their desultory search for Anna.

Not much to value between men and women.  Here, one of the boat passengers, now in a palace in Sicily, flirts with a young prince to make her husband jealous, a futile endeavor.  The guy’s artwork, simply a device to get women, is utter junk.

Claudia is rather disgusted by the whole business…

We may wonder why a sensible and beautiful woman like Claudia hangs out with these creeps, but it’s 1960, and what was her upbringing..?  She is a strong female character, but in a world hostile to women.  In the most powerful, terrifying in a way, scenes of the film, she waits for Sandro while he makes inquiries in a hotel.  Suddenly, she realizes that as a woman unescorted by a male, she is open game for anything with pants.  They eye her like a whore strutting her stuff in a bordello.

Sandro has his own emotional issues.  He wants to view a church interior, but the town is not set up for tourists.  A local man informs him that “they got a few French here, but they just wanted to go to the beach,” and the locals told them they were not welcome.  Presumably, they were not properly dressed.  Nobody cares about architecture…

,

Except for one young man doing a sketch in the piazza…  Hmm…not bad.

Not bad at all.  Too bad it got ink knocked all over it…  The young man confronts Sandro, but a friend intervenes.  Such is the generosity and spiritual fullness of Sandro’s inner life.

The school lets out and a stream of young boys in black… some see it as the equivalent of the ink on the paper.  Is that what ruined Sandro’s psychology?  Or is that a better way, now ignored?

Who knows?  Who cares?  Should we care..?  Well, the film is stunning to watch even if we don’t like the people much.

Poor Claudia.  She’s tired, so she doesn’t go down to enjoy an evening of schmoozing with the glitterati at the hotel they pitch up in, but Sandro goes, and stays late.  Claudia goes in search of him through the now-empty rooms, littered with party junk.  He is engaged with a young woman (aspiring actress?  prostitute?  both?) on a couch.  Claudia is shocked and disgusted.  Should she be surprised?

She runs outside, and Sandro follows.  He sits on a bench and weeps. The film ends with a depressing chord, and Claudia taking his hair in her hand in a gesture of comfort.  This is what she is stuck with, I guess. Pretty sad for all of them.

Let us count the dead men: Johnny Guitar

Johnny Guitar (1954), Nicholas Ray.  Joan Crawford… Man, what else can I say?  This western is unlike any other I know.  Martin Scorsese calls it an opera, and he’s right.  That is the only way to make sense of it – the stagey-ness, the set-pieces, the slow paced emotional confrontations, the melodrama of killing, and the claustrophobic sense that there is no real world outside of what’s going on in the frame right in front of us.  Most of the action takes place in one location in town – Three Unities anyone?

You can read many analyses of this film’s political ‘symbolism’ of lynch mobs representing the contemporary HUAC activities. Or the sexual role reversal – all the men are weaklings:  the women do the heavy lifting.  Or the lesbian barely-subtext:  Vienna (Joan Crawford) as a powerful dominatrix, forcing men to cower, and engaging the adolescent love-hate of Emma Small (Mercedes McCambridge).  Vienna wears tight pants, leather, men’s brightly colored shirts and scarves with jeans, and, at one point, confronts the town’s menfolk bent on hanging her while playing a piano wearing a wedding gown – Emma, repressed harpie wears only black and grey.  Read about that elsewhere – I just want to count the men who die for this masculine femme fatale.

There’s Turkey, the young boy-outlaw who has a sort of crush on Vienna.  He gets caught by a the posse of men in black, and is terrorized into implicating Vienna in a bank robbery he was part of.  That’s cause to hang ’em both!  The men promise him if he just talks, tells the truth, he won’t hang.  He lies, and says Vienna was in on the heist,  They take them both out to hang, but only Turkey dies, screaming protests at his betrayal.  Ah, just a kid.  What does he know?  Johnny Guitar is in hiding and manages to cut the noose rope that’s around Vienna’s pretty neck:  he couldn’t save them both, could he?  It’s actually a pretty brutal portrayal of mob murder.

Then there’s Old Tom (John Carradine).  When Vienna pays off her staff and tells them to scram before the posse comes for them too, he hides and stays.  When he witnesses the mob trying to drag Vienna off to be lynched, he shoots and is shot.  Dying in her arms, Vienna asks him, “Why, why Tom – why didn’t you go like I told you?”  The men in black crowd around – “Look, everyone is looking at me now.  It’s the first time I ever felt important.”  Vienna has that effect on men.

Then there’s the Dancing Kid and his gang, of whom Turkey was one.  Bart tries to make a deal with Emma to turn in the gang, and he kills one of mates when the guy won’t go along with the plan.  After he plants a knife in the man’s back he says, “Some guys just won’t listen.”  Johnny Guitar, an ex-gunman, kills Bart, the only man he kills in the film.  He really is done with shooting – prefers to sing and play.  That leaves The Dancing Kid, leader of the gang, and Vienna’s main squeeze before Johnny blew into town.  Emma shoots him as he rushes to protect Vienna from Emma in the climactic scene.  He dies, a bullet in his forehead, his arms raised, seeking transcendence as he calls out Vienna’s name.

And then there’s Emma herself, shot by Vienna, but she is a woman, albeit one of confused sexual identity.

Vienna’s scheme is to hold onto her property until the railroad comes through, and then sell out for piles of cash.  She’s in good with the railroad management.  Her saloon is burned down, but she still owns the land, so I guess she and Johnny will have a comfortable retirement.

Wuthering Heights

Revisiting my high school days, I watched Wuthering Heights (1939) and read Emily Brontë’s novel again – better than I remembered!  Well, not entirely:  This bit was no less fantastic then than now.

How she does stare! It’s odd what a savage feeling I have to anything that seems afraid of me! Had I been born where laws are less strict and tastes less dainty, I should treat myself to a slow vivisection of those two, as an evening’s amusement.’

What is this book?!  It is unlike any other I know, and I have read a lot of 19th century gothic romances.  Wuthering Heights trades in some features of the gothic – the supernatural, the barren and forbidding setting, weird, demonic characters – but compared to it, stories such as Melmoth the Wanderer and the like are child’s play.  The horror and the fright in Wuthering Heights is all born out of psychology, twisted and implacable.  More likely, the book has provided the template for a host of latter-day gothic horror stories set in windy inhospitable places filled with creepy dangerous people, and houses filled with sadistic perversity.

There is so much to this novel:  the role of women of course; the place of servants; sexual perversity bordering on necrophilia; and psychopathology.  For the surrealists, it was a touchstone of l’amour fou, although the film adaptation by the master, Luis Bunuel, The Abyss of Passion (not to be confused with the current telenovella of the same name!) misses the mark widely.  [Note (2022):  I have changed my mind about the Bunuel adaptation!  I think I was basing my assessment on my memory of seeing the Bunuel film twenty-five years earlier.]

The story involves two households and two families on the moors of northern England.  Local color is given by the deep Yorkshire dialect of Joseph, the insufferably pious hypocrite and loyal house servant.  There are no towns nearby – the action is all local, except when the characters charge out of the novel’s frame to elope, or emigrate to America to gain a fortune, and reports of their doings filter back by letter or word of mouth.  The family trees get tangled, and it’s a good idea to have a clear one before you when you read the story since there is Catherine Earnshaw, and Cathy Linton, and Healthcliff (no other name, as in Cher, or Sting) and Mr. Heathcliff, his despised son, and so forth.  Heathcliff wreaks havoc on them all.

The demonic Heathcliff is adopted informally to the family by Mr. Earnshaw who finds him homeless on the streets of Liverpool during a business trip.  His act of generosity is the undoing of his descendants and community:  is there a moral here?  Heathcliff and Cathy develop an intense bond as children – is this unhealthy? – and Cathy’s brother is jealous of his prerogatives as the heir to the manor.  When kindly Mr. Earnshaw dies, Heathcliff is banished to the stables.

The book is filled with servants, telling as it does the tale of local country gentry.  In fact, the main characters are surrounded by people, but most of them are never seen.  Stableboys, field hands, servant girls, all toiling to produce the wealth that sustains the Earnshaws and the Lintons.  Heathcliff runs away to escape the humiliation heaped upon him as one without a lineage or property, and he returns rich:  where did he get his money?  Nobody knows.  He seeks vengeance on the landed proprietors that cast him out.  No wonder this book was popular with Marxists literary critics!

In the end, Heathcliff appears to be successful in his quest:  He lost Cathy to an early death, but he is assured of being  buried next to her, an essential arrangement for him.  In fact, he can barely restrain himself from embracing her corpse that he has ordered exhumed in one of the more bizarre episodes of the book.  He has driven Cathy’s brother to ruin, pushed her husband into an early grave, financially and emotionally emasculated his former tormentor, the son of his benefactor, and is on the way to thoroughly degrading the  son of Cathy’s brother, who should be the heir to the Heights, but doesn’t even realize he’s being cheated of his birthright.  Oh, and Heathcliff has a son, whom he despises, born of Cathy’s sister, who was idiotically attracted to his dark, handsome prospect, and was quick to realize she had practically married Satan.  She, at least, had the good sense to flee.

But Heathcliff is undone by love.  His own obsessive love for the dead Cathy haunts him to distraction.  And the genuine love and affection that springs up between Cathy and Hareton, despite his best efforts to turn them against one another, irritates him beyond endurance.  Cathy has inherited the stubbornness and defiance of her mother, and turns it, with love, against Heathcliff.  He just dies…

And then there is Nellie, the servant who narrates most of the book.  She is often in the position of doing something that she doesn’t think is quite right, and that she would not do for her own family, but which her subservient position compels her to do.  And then, sometimes she just concludes that it’s not worth the effort to try and oppose the wishes of her masters:  after all, they are the masters, and she just a servant, even though she knows she is right and they are wrong.  I wonder if she is, after all, the voice of Emily in the book.

Man, what an imagination that woman had!

The 1939 adaptation with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon is very fine in its Hollywood-romantic way, although it deals only with the first generation of pain in Wuthering Heights, ending with the death of Catherine Earnshaw.  Olivier is wonderful in embodying the dark attraction of the Heathcliff as well as his frenzied, obsessional love.  And his supercilious blank stares when he is playing cat and mouse with his gentry opponents is brilliant.