Scene Sunday: A Place in the Sun

I'd been meaning to see A Place in the Sun for a long while, but during a spontaneous perusal of the university library's impressive DVD collection a few days ago, I suddenly felt drawn to it, impelled to watch it. I haven't been watching classic films outside of my course recently and something had to be done about that horrendous fact. Of course, it helps to have Shelley Winters in a film: how I do adore her! Incidentally, since Shelley is not to be found in the scene I'll be looking at, I must mention now how absolutely terrific she is here. Possibly the film's best performance, and that's saying something. But let us move closer, now, children, and admire the dazzling central duo of Monty and Liz...

George Eastman (Montgomery Clift) has finally been noticed by his uncle and invited to one of their posh soirees. But George doesn't know no one, so he retreats to a deserted room with a pool table, and proceeds to show off his impressive, cheeky skills with a cue...

But who is that coming by the door? Why, it's Angela Vickers (Elizabeth Taylor), laughing with the friends she leads past the door... but at the clunk of George's cue, Angela reappears at the door and peeks in with interest. Director George Stevens never cuts away or zooms in on Angela as she passes the door, letting the audience notice even as the eye is with George as he does his party trick (which no one is there to appreciate... yet.)

As the ball clunks into the pocket, Stevens finally cuts to Taylor, her mouth slightly open, her eyes strangely transfixed, and she lets out a single, breathless word: "Wow."

Startled, George looks up- and so does Angela, both looking as surprised and faintly intrigued as the other. George slowly removes the cigarette that's been dangling in his mouth. Smiling coyly, Angela greets him with a sly "Hello."; quickly, he gives a cursory "Hello." back in a deep, slightly formal voice. George, it seems, is still in party mode, which means distant formality for this outsider.

Stevens cuts back to the long shot on the level of the pool table as Angela enters the room proper, leaving the door ajar and slinkily walking away from George, hand trailing lacksadasically upon the table as she breezily starts to chat. Taylor captures Angela's coy seductive tone beautifully here, head freely looking both at and away from George; her voice is light and teasing. "I see you had a misspent youth."

Still slightly wary, George seems to warm up slightly with his reply- an uninspired "Yes, it was."- and Angela starts to amp up the seductiveness, eyes innocently looking downward for a second as she asks, "Why all alone? Being exclusive?"

She gives him a coy look, her head bent as she lazily picks a nibble from the dish, and continues with her teasing. "Being dramatic?"

And, slowly coming to a rest before him, she finishes her list of suggestions for his loneliness with "Being blue?" Delivered by Taylor with a warm yet sultry smile, another slightly coy inflex of the head and a voice that needles both concern and suggestion, this words seem to disarm George for a second. "I'm just fooling around," he finally says, and then throws a little jibe of his own back: "Maybe you'd like to play."

But Angela's having none of it. Taylor leans against the wall with yet more breezy suggestion, nibbling self-consciously on her treat and looking over at him with a cool feeling of power. She's the one who'll do the disarming, thank you. "Oh, no. I'll just watch you. Go ahead."

Trying not to be put off, George puts the cigarette back in his mouth and bends down to play... but he just can't concentrate, Clift's eyes flicking back, his back stiffening. Angela watches with a trace of amusement but more still with continued suggestion in mind- she's all too knowledgeable about the power she has over him. "Do I make you nervous?"

George gives up the charade, standing, turning and looking up at her with embarassment, admitting with a shy laugh, "Yes." But still, Angela plays it cool and slow, on her own terms. "You look like an Eastman. Are you one of them?" she asks, keen interest in Taylor's tone as she has Angela interlace her fingers and place them innocently before her stomach.

"Uh-huh," replies George, seeming to warm up in his tone now he's stopped trying to battle her, "a nephew. My name's George."

"I'm Angela," she replies, walking forward and giving another of her coy looks to the table, picking at the cue chalk. "Vickers," George finishes for her, gaining a surprised whip round of the head from Angela. "I saw you here last spring." Here, while Clift is positioned at right angles with the camera, facing Angela, Taylor's body is facing the camera, her head turned so she can talk to George. Keen with honest interest, Angela comments, "Oh, I don't remember seeing you before." Taylor's body turns just slightly, a little more angled towards Clift as Angela is drawn into conversation.

George laughs and says softly, "No, you wouldn't," briefly echoing her coy looks with a shy look down. "You've been away, haven't you? Took a trip with your parents."

This seemingly intimate knowledge gets Angela to turn slightly again as she asks, "How did you know?"

"I read about you in the papers," replies George, and Clift's eyes seem to shine with adoration, roaming across Taylor's face as he speaks. Smiling slightly, Taylor shifts more noticeably now, perhaps projecting a conscious decision on Angela's part as she moves to face Clift directly, and Angela moves back to the suggestive: "What else do you do?"

Stevens now cuts away to a mid-shot of Clift, who smiles with slight bemusement and continued adoration as George rather uselessly replies, "The usual things."

And here, perhaps, is this scene's crowning glory: in a marked difference from the mid-shot of Clift, still in context of the slightly blurred door and wall, Stevens shoots Taylor's shot closer, in dreamy, beautiful soft focus, and she doesn't seem to be existing in any known world at all. This both reinforces the idea of this as George's story (Angela seen through his gaze), but also the foregrounding of Angela's beauty as what makes George fall in love with her, and with Taylor's existence as a glamorous movie star. In the same movie, we have Clift, the method actor, the realist, and Taylor, the beautiful, idealized movie star. Bizarrely enough, they do not retract from each other, but compliment.
"You look unusual," Angela compliments softly, a statement which Taylor prefaces with the most enticing pause as she cocks her head slightly. The words come from her mouth like honey, seductive yet honest.

And this disarms George so much that he can't even look at her for embarassment, laughing and looking down at the floor again. "That's the first time anybody ever said that."

"You keep pretty much to yourself, don't you?" Angela asks, still in dreamy focus, voice still a seductive whisper. "Yes, sometimes," replies George, with a touching acknowledgment in Clift's voice, as though George is just realizing Angela's statement is true. Stevens has cut back from his singular shots to the familiar mid-shot of the two facing each other. Already, we sense their time together is about to be cut short.

"Blue?" asks Angela, repeating her earlier words. With a coyness that seems more honest this time, she looks down at her hands and says "Exclusive?". Without really expressing anything verbally, Taylor quickly conveys that Angela has moved from surface interest to a deeper intrigue, now truly interested in how George feels, and why he was alone at the pool table.

"Well, neither right now-" George starts to say, leaning in slightly and smiling, but, in classic fashion, someone has to cut short the budding romance. "Oh, here you are, George!" interrupts his uncle genially, and the pair look round.

Scene Sunday: The Purple Rose of Cairo

Okay. So, although I got no comments, the first post in this new series was actually mentioned elsewhere in the blogosphere with some nice words, so that means that it wasn't a total disaster. So I present the second edition. I was planning to pick a scene from 2007 release Yella, but, through a combination of workload and procrastination, I haven't actually watched it yet, so that flew out of the window. So, in its place, I've instead picked a bonefide classic. (And I've sheared the screencaps of those ugly black borders this time, too!)

The Purple Rose of Cairo may be my favourite Woody Allen film. Perhaps Annie Hall and Manhattan are more auspicious both technically and script-wise, but I think Purple Rose is closest to my heart. It's most likely because the film, like me, is so in love with the movies- oh, it recognizes the danger of escapism and the effect it can have on your life, but it also rejoices in the magic, and its the combination of these two elements, surely familiar to any cinephile, that make the film itself so warm and connectable. And, for this week's scene, I've picked the epitome of this movie's magic: the moment where a film character actually walks off the screen and into real life.

Cecilia (Mia Farrow) has just been fired from her waitressing job. So, as she always does, she retreats to her comfort food: the movies. She may have already seen it twice, but we quickly cycle through two scenes from 'The Purple Rose of Cairo' (the film within the film)- including a hilarious one where the maid (Annie Joe Edwards) asks Rita (Deborah Rush) whether she'd like her bath of "the big bubbles or the asses' milk"- and then seem to be repeating the first again. Only this time it's slightly different.

Mia Farrow looks at the screen with such wistful longing, so transfixing a stare, that it's obvious without words that Cecilia is utterly besotted with this film she's been watching for hours on end. She's on her third straight viewing and there is no trace of fatigue or boredom in Farrow's eyes- Cecilia would be nowhere else for anything in the world.

Henry (Edward Herrmann) and Rita are progressing through the scene as normal, but when we reach Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels)...

He moves across the room, looking around him with slight awe. "Well, I am very impressed. I really am. You have yourself quite a place here." He chuckles quietly to himself.

"You know, I still can't get over the fact that twenty-four hours ago I was in an Egyptian tomb, I didn't know any of you wonderful people-" Here, Baxter suddenly, inexplicably, flicks a hopelessly obvious, slightly bewildered and maybe just a bit fascinated look into the audience, and his speech slows. Allen, for his part, has so far kept both Cecilia and the movie screen embedded within his frame, grounding both within the context of the movie theatre- Tom is still just part of a movie, and Cecilia just part of the audience.
"- and here I am now, I'm on the verge of a madcap... Manhattan... weekend." He finishes almost reluctantly, now staring abandonly at Cecilia. She, baffled, even looks behind her, as if so derogatory of herself that while she can believe that a movie character is suddenly breaking the fourth wall, she can't fathom that he might be looking at her.

But Baxter's words can't apply to anyone else. "My god, you must really love this picture."

"Me?" Cecilia asks squeakily, causing the other members of the sparse audience to turn in surprise.

Tom smiles. "You've been here all day, and I've seen you here twice before."

Allen finally closes in on his heroine, emphasizing Farrow's innocent, perplexed expression. "You mean me?"

He closes in on Tom too, omitting the entire frame of the movie screen. The film has suddenly cut out the peripheral, has engaged in the romantic duet we think we're embarking upon. "Yes, you, you... this is the fifth time you're seeing this!" Tom explains, a sly bit of snide amazement apparent in Daniels' tone.

But Baxter isn't the only character who can break the wall. Allen keeps close-in on a short cut to Rita, as she hisses "Henry! Come here, quickly!", accompanied by a lovely mixture of shock and possible fear in Rush's expression.

"I gotta speak to you," declares Tom, and then the line between fiction and reality is broken, irreparably:

Tom literally seems to step off the screen, black-and-white becoming colour before our eyes, and although this transition is clearly illogical (he was enormous on-screen yet is regularly sized as he walks down the aisle), it reinforces the blurring of the two worlds, mystifies the process.

The expected gasps, screams and an "Oh my god!" are heard but not seen, although Allen treats us to the quick comic moment of the above woman screaming and doing a dead faint sidewards.

"Listen, old sport, you're on the wrong side!" calls Henry, but Tom doesn't look back as he walks towards Cecilia, dismissing his fellow character with "Hang on, I wanna have a look around, go on without me." Even Henry's response- "We can't continue with the story!"- is cut across by Tom's question to Cecilia, as Allen tightens the frame, focusing our attention solely on our central couple. Side-lit by the projector, Tom still seems romanticized- our (and Cecilia's- though they are much one and the same) ideal romantic hero.

"Who are you?"

Amazed, baffled, stunned, but still rather besotted, Farrow looks up at her movie hero with wide-eyed adoration, and answers with a stutter: "C-Cecilia."

Allen inputs another comedic little aside here: the usherette (Juliana Donald) does a fantastic little staccato action, announcing dramatically: "I'll go get the manager!"

Background still blurring out all others, Tom suggests "Let's get out of here and go somewhere where we can talk." Well, suggests, but he waits for no response as he pulls Cecilia up the aisle and out of the theatre, dismissing her weak protestation- "But you're in the movie!"- with a dramatic, liberated little exclamation:

"Wrong, Cecilia, I'm free! After two thousand performances of the same noxious routine, I'm free!"

And, illuminated from behind by the glow of the screen, Tom and Cecilia escape the cinema, Allen's camera still back where it had been when Cecilia had been sitting down. They might be escaping, but Allen's going to hang around for a second...

Rita vainly calls after Tom, and, in a fantastic comic moment- but also one that quickly establishes the internal 'laws' of this suddenly different universe- she pushes her face up against the screen, trying to follow him out. No such luck.

Scene Sunday: Sense & Sensibility

It's the start of a new, and hopefully longlasting, series here at Victim of the Time. This time, in keeping with my newly analytical mindset for this blog (I've never been too great at the celebrity news or the humour stuff, as you may have noticed), I'll be taking a look at a single scene from a movie each Sunday- a newly released movie (on DVD, natch), one I've just discovered from the archives or just a favourite that's been on my mind. Let me know whether the post is interesting or if you think the whole idea is total tosh- I just want to know if people are reading!

It's of that last variety that today's introductory scene comes from. The BBC recently screened a new, Andrew Davies-penned version of Jane Austen's Sense & Sensibility, but, good as it was, I couldn't help remembering Ang Lee and Emma Thompson's 1995 feature film version of the same story. So I dug it out.

Now, you all know- or you should- how big a fan of Kate Winslet I am. While watching the new version of Sense and Sensibility, it came to the scene where Marianne's illusions concerning Willoughby are shattered- and immediately the same scene from the '95 version shot into my head. I may be alone here, but there is one line from the '95 version of the scene that sticks in my head. I know not whether it comes from the book or not, not having read it, but Davies wisely omits it from the new version. It is Winslet's delivery of the line- which I'll reveal as we go through the scene- that made it stick in my head, repeating itself like a broken record until I actually sat down to watch it. But enough chatter. Let's take a closer look.

Marianne Dashwood (Kate Winslet) has just recieved a letter from the object of her wilful heart, John Willoughby (Greg Wise). Excited, she exits the dinner-table to read it in her room. But her sister Elinor (Emma Thompson) knows something is wrong, and, after a rather cutting aside to her own love rival, Lucy Steele (Imogen Stubbs), goes after her sister.

Cut to Marianne's white, frozen face staring blankly at the letter, clasped loosely in her hand. On Elinor's arrival in the room, she begins to read.

Winslet has Marianne read Willoughby's cold, dismissive words in an empty, hollow voice, never letting it break as if in heartbreak- Marianne does not even seem to be in shock, more a detached emotionless state, her blood not having reached her heart yet, instead in some kind of empty, listless chamber. Behind her, Thompson's Elinor looks, listens and her breath catches, tensing then shoulder slumping in realization.

Finished, Marianne smoothly stands and walks to her bed, and Elinor follows, along with cinematographer Michael Coulter in a short, fluid tracking shot. The scene, for all its focus on Marianne, clearly makes it stand with the more pragmatic Elinor.

The movement seems to have jolted Marianne's heart, for Winslet's face moves from cool passivitity to a slow, heaving glumness, eyes staring downwards in some kind of mixture of shock and shame. Even now, before her brain seems to know, her body realizes her own mistake, her head bowed. Elinor, scrambling for the silver lining, stands behind her sister and grasps the bed-post, closing in on her sister as best she can.
"Oh, Marianne. Dearest... it is best to know what his intentions are at once. Think of what you would have felt if your engagement had carried on for months and months before he chose to put an end to it."

Quick as a flash, Marianne replies with an almost scornful,
"We are not engaged."

"But you... you wrote to him, I thought then he must have left you with some kind of understanding..."

"No. He is not so unworthy as you think him."
Marianne may have been swept coldly aside by Willoughby but Winslet makes it clear with the low-key anger she uses to undercut Marianne's reply: she loves him, and he did no wrong.

"'Not so unworthy...'", Elinor echoes in disbelief... the camera once again moves with her as she swiftly skirts the corner of the bed and sits across from her sister, forcefully grabbing her arms.

"Did he tell you that he loved you?"
Thompson's eyes go wide, forcing Marianne to look at Elinor and tell her the truth.

"Yes..." Marianne replys quickly... then Winslet looks down, and there follows a quivering, shamed, "No. Never absolutely."

The realization shows on Thompson's face; and here comes the line, delivered by Winslet with such quavering shock and resigned realization that has made it stick in my head all these years:

"It was everyday implied but never declared."

"Sometimes I thought it had been, but it never was. He has broken no vow."

But Elinor will not let her sister take all the shame. Clutching ferociously at Willoughby's letter, Thompson waves it desperately, insisting that "He has! He has broken faith with all of us, he made us all believe he loved you."

And Marianne has had enough of defending Willoughby, and even trying to cope. "He did... he did!" she cries, her voice cracking open like a muscle shell, her reddening face unable to hold itself up any more... and Winslet has her face crumple, screwing it up with fierce tears, and her hand moving up in a vain attempt to hold herself together. "He loved me as I loved him!" Marianne wails as her final words, body falling onto the bed in a wrack of sobs.

Winslet spends the remainder of the scene lying on the bed, cries quiet but continually broken, as Mrs Jennings (Elizabeth Spriggs) enters and offers her kind but gossiping words to Elinor. Winslet, indeed, spends her time flat against the bed, her lips formed into some kind of perverse clownish smile, though of course it is no smile at all.

Mrs Jennings leaves the scene with a final note of humour, perhaps telegraphing further how that this, finally, is Marianne's 'punishment' for being so wilful, open and impulsive. "Does she care for olives?" Mrs Jennings asks caringly, prompting an amusingly comic reaction of bemused bewilderment from Thompson; eventually Elinor replies "I cannot tell you", and we leave Marianne to her tears as the new scene has her problems airily criticized by her acidic sister-in-law and her brother.