Hello there! Thanks for your patience during my short blog sabbatical. Since a sabbatical is technically “a period of paid leave granted to a university teacher or other worker for study or travel” and, honestly, I didn’t get paid nor did I study film during my absence, I’ll just call it what it was and say I had a fine VACATION. And now, let’s get back to it!

Some have called it the paramount American film, others simply the greatest movie of all time. Here’s a clue (whisper this creepily in your heads): “Rosebud.” That’s right! Citizen Kane, that classic of the cinema, was nominated for nine Academy Awards in 1942; but it only took home one little golden statue. And it wasn’t for Best Picture. No, Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, definitely one of the foremost films to have never won the Academy’s highest honor, only collected an Oscar for Writing (Original Screenplay). Instead, this week we are focusing on the film that actually won Best Picture for 1941, How Green Was My Valley (1941, 20^th Century-Fox), a movie that eclipsed Citizen Kane in both Oscar nominations (10 total, including Sound Recording, Music [Music Score of a Dramatic Picture], Film Editing, Writing [Screenplay], and Actress in a Supporting Role for Sara Allgood as the matriarch Mrs. Morgan) and wins (5 total: Outstanding Motion Picture, Art Direction [Black-and-White], Cinematography [Black-and-White], Directing, and Actor in a Supporting Role for Donald Crisp as the patriarch of the Morgan family).

A scene in the green valley

The film How Green Was My Valley was based on the 1939 novel of the same name written by a man who called himself Richard Llewellyn and who claimed to be Welsh and a coal miner, in addition to serving in the British army and working as both a journalist during the Nuremberg Trials and a screenwriter for MGM studios. Years after his death in 1983, however, it was revealed that much (if not most) of Llewellyn’s personal history had been fabricated. His real name was Richard David Vivian Llewellyn Lloyd; and though his parents were of Welsh descent, he himself was not born in Wales as he had maintained and only resided there briefly. Instead, the stories he claimed to know about coal miners actually belonged to a family who ran a bookshop in London that Llewellyn frequented. (You can read more about Llewellyn’s fake life in this cleverly titled article, “How Phoney Was My Welsh Valley”: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/dec/05/tracymcveigh.theobserver.)

Anyhow, any negativity aside regarding the imaginary world of authors…How Green Was My Valley was nearly denied its night of Oscar glory due to two real-life (totally documented and undeniably true), very tragic events: the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the death of superstar actress Carole Lombard in a plane crash on January 16, 1942. Initially, the Academy determined that the Oscar ceremony, which was scheduled for February 26, 1942, should be cancelled altogether. But after further deliberation, the event was held as planned, though under more subdued conditions than usual: no formal attire was permitted, the searchlights outside the venue were scrapped, and the occasion was labeled a “dinner” instead of the typical “banquet.” Photos of the ceremony show actors and actresses who appear dressed in mourning attire (though the clothing is still rather swanky, of course).

Married to Hollywood’s leading man, Clark Gable, at the time of her death (together the “Brad and Angelina” of their day), Lombard was one of the first Hollywood starlets to embark on a tour to rally support for the war cause (raising funds by encouraging people to purchase war bonds). Her untimely demise at the age of 33 during her return home to California from such a tour riveted the nation for weeks and crushed Gable. Conspiracy theories abounded (and still do!) regarding the possibility that the plane on which she was a passenger had been sabotaged by the German enemy, who had declared war on the United States only a little over four weeks earlier. (For more on Lombard’s death, check out this article: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/carole-lombard-killed-in-plane-crash.)

Clark Gable and Carole Lombard

The fact that World War II, only in its early stages in the U.S., is so connected to the tragedy of Lombard’s death demonstrates in part just how quickly and deeply the war infiltrated every part of American life. Not only were over two thousand people killed in the attack in Hawaii, but everyday occurrences such as travel within the continental U.S. were viewed with the suspicion of possible foul play and the expectation that additional attacks were likely. The present darkness of the last days of 1941 and the early days of 1942 had reduced the verdant past to memory, an idea emphasized immediately in the opening of How Green Was My Valley when Huw, the ten-year-old narrator of the tale, reflects:

Memory. Strange that the mind will forget so much of what only this moment has passed, and yet hold clear and bright the memory of what happened years ago – of men and women long since dead. Yet who shall say what is real and what is not? Can I believe my friends all gone when their voices are still a glory in my ears? No. And I will stand to say no and no again, for they remain a living truth within my mind. There is no fence nor hedge round Time that is gone. You can go back and have what you like of it, if you can remember.

Those words, though written prior to the Pearl Harbor bombing, seem to capture the nation’s emotions in the early days of 1942–and perhaps that is why we are not discussing Citizen Kane this week.

For more thoughts on How Green Was My Valley and its significance, please check out the full post this weekend!

Good afternoon, All!

I just wanted to let all of FlicksChick.com’s followers know that I’m taking a short sabbatical from the blog for about two weeks. Posts for the next film, How Green Was My Valley, will resume the week of June 25. Thanks for all your support!

In the meantime, here’s something to discuss if anyone so desires. As I’ve been viewing the Best Picture winners, I’ve been ranking the films according to my own humble opinion of them. Here is my list so far:

1. Gone with the Wind
2. You Can’t Take It with You
3. All Quiet on the Western Front
4. It Happened One Night
5. Rebecca
6. Mutiny on the Bounty
7. The Great Ziegfeld
8. The Life of Emile Zola
9. Cavalcade
10. Wings
11. Cimarron
12. The Broadway Melody
13. Grand Hotel

Please feel free to share your own opinions on my rankings and/or your own hierarchies of these classics. Here’s a funny fact to start the conversation: Grand Hotel, though last on my list, has actually received the most views for its Weekday Warm-up. Go figure.

Best regards,

Sarah

Who am I? Who/What determines who I am? Am I able to assert my own identity? Can I change my identity? Can another force his/her identity upon me and overwhelm my own? Does my identity originate from a title or position I hold? What are the connections between place and identity?

These can be pretty tough questions to answer; and, indeed, in our own time different people respond differently to these questions, depending on their worldviews. But in this week’s film, Rebecca, identity is a big deal. Readers of du Maurier’s novel will have noticed this fact sooner than viewers of the film—the story’s protagonist is nameless. She is not Rebecca. The name that holds the story’s title and dominates it throughout is that of one who is dead. Yet even in death, Rebecca reigns supreme over all the people and goings-on at Manderley, including her widowed husband and his new wife. While the new wife remains basically nameless, her husband has a “very impressive array of first names, George Fortescu Maximilian,” Maxim for short. Along with his lengthy identity, though, Maxim possesses a secret about Rebecca and his relationship with her that colors his own identity and gives him a callous and fearful personality. He is overly sensitive regarding himself, lacking sensitivity regarding his new wife, controlling, and emotionally absent—characteristics which stem (supposedly) from his relationship with his previous wife and his perceived role in her demise.

Maxim’s new wife is almost his opposite. She is constantly absorbed with how best to please him, consistently relinquishing any control she might be allowed to exercise and yielding to the threatening assumed power of Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper. Lacking her own personal name, Maxim’s wife is usually the recipient of endearments such as “dear” and the affection-less “you.” Mrs. Van Hopper, the brash American for whom the protagonist works as a hired companion at the beginning of the film, provides the first identity for the film’s main character when she calls her “Mrs. Sir Manderley” upon learning of her whirlwind engagement to Maxim. This title, while demonstrating the ignorance and uncouthness of Mrs. Van Hopper regarding British titles, also bases the protagonist’s identity on two factors: her future husband and her new home—in other words, another person and a place. Upon taking up residence at Manderley as the lady of the house, the protagonist fails to identify herself by her new name. When she answers a phone call requesting “Mrs. de Winter,” she responds, “Mrs. de Winter? Oh, I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake. Mrs. de Winter’s been dead for over a year. Oh, I mean…” Whether her married name is too new for her to recognize or whether she is hesitant to assume her rightful position, the new Mrs. de Winter at first refuses the only identity offered to her, one based on her husband’s identity. Only later in a bold, yet fruitless attempt to fill her role as head of household, she declares vehemently to Mrs. Danvers, “I am Mrs. de Winter now.” But again, this announcement does not give the protagonist a personal name like “Rebecca,” but only an indication of her marital status and place in the household hierarchy. Yet soon after, the new Mrs. de Winter is tricked by Mrs. Danvers into dressing in the same costume Rebecca did for a ball at Manderley, in effect unintentionally indicating that she wishes to usurp Rebecca’s identity as well as her place in the house. It is in this dress that the poor new wife chases down Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca’s former rooms and is nearly persuaded to commit suicide by jumping to her death on the rocks near the sea below the window.

“Why don’t you go? Why don’t you leave Manderley? He doesn’t need you. He’s got his memories. He doesn’t love you – he wants to be alone again with her. You’ve nothing to stay for. You’ve nothing to live for really, have you? Look down there. It’s easy, isn’t it? Why don’t you? Why don’t you? Go on. Go on. Don’t be afraid!”

For Rebecca, identity is simple. She is who she is—or she is who she was. As mentioned in the Weekday Warm-up, Rebecca dominates every scene, seemingly claiming ownership of Manderley and all its inhabitants and objects—whether through the words of other characters, the way the household continues to run in the manner she dictated, or her embroidered initials on various objects from her stationery to the handkerchief in her former husband’s pocket. Not only does Rebecca still “own” items in the great house and dictate how the house is run, she also retains a firm hold on the loyalty of Mrs. Danvers. When the protagonist first sees a human form in the window of the supposedly abandoned West Wing, what she discovers upon investigation is the dark, malevolent housekeeper in Rebecca’s old rooms. Disturbingly, Mrs. Danvers gives the new Mrs. de Winter a morbid tour of the rooms, which have been left exactly as Rebecca “liked it.” Her clothes remain; her bed has been made up; her toiletry articles are arranged precisely on her vanity. Furthermore, Mrs. Danvers speaks of Rebecca as of an old lover—even revealing the lingerie kept under the pillow embroidered with a conspicuous R. This is, for me, the most disturbing scene in the film. Not only has Mrs. Danvers preserved Rebecca’s earthly belongings, but she has maintained her identity within the house in both name and practice. Additionally, Mrs. Danvers attempts to recruit her new mistress into the belief that Rebecca’s ghost still haunts Manderley: “Sometimes, when I walk along the corridor, I fancy I hear her just behind me, like a quick light step. I couldn’t mistake it anywhere, not only in this room, but in all the rooms in the house. I can almost hear it now. Do you think the dead come back and watch the living?” Although the new Mrs. de Winter answers in the negative, it is clear what Mrs. Danvers believes; and she allows the memories of her late lady (almost human in their ghostly prevalence in the house) to usurp her own identity. Mrs. Danvers does nothing—is nothing—on her own. Her entire self is determined by the late Rebecca’s wishes.

In the end (spoiler alert!), Rebecca still wins, it seems. She has manipulated and used everyone—even from the grave. Though Maxim’s new wife seems to find herself in her support of her husband, there is more than a little doubt that her husband is not as innocent as he claims to be and her new-found courage and purpose are wasted on a mess that dwarfs her. She remains nameless to the end, despite her resolution to renew her marriage and move on with her life. Maxim himself comes to the shocking realization that his life has been affected more than he dreamed by his first wife and her death. Even his guilt and the emotional instability which threaten his marriage to the protagonist have been ordained by Rebecca. And for Mrs. Danvers, supposedly finally recognizing the extent to which Rebecca manipulated her, the only solution is in a Bertha-like conflagration of Manderley, suicide in the rooms of the deceased woman who refused to allow anyone an identity other than what she chose for him/her.

Do “Nameless” and Maxim actually get their happy ending?

For Me Then…

This film leaves me thinking that maybe the only person who truly knew herself—and all those around her—was Rebecca. She discerned exactly what to say and do every single moment—how to get Maxim to marry her, how to get him to allow her to live her immoral lifestyle and still retain her place as the perfect wife and hostess, how to balance her multiple lovers, how to win the undying love and loyalty of Mrs. Danvers, how to die when and as she wished, how to ruin any future life Maxim would have, how to leave those who knew her in her debt and under her spell—perhaps even how to lead Mrs. Danvers to her fiery end and the destruction of Manderley. One gets the sense that during the entire film Rebecca is somewhere close, laughing from the grave at her diabolical success.

And yet, where is Rebecca? How much of the pain and suffering (and the downright creepiness) that afflicts those who knew her is of their own making? By allowing the identity of Rebecca to dominate their lives, the other characters have sacrificed themselves and their own happiness. In that sense, this eerie movie is kind of a tragedy. And, pity for us, we don’t really get to find out if there are happier days ahead for “Nameless” and Maxim—or are they forever haunted by Rebecca and the memory of her?

I love the past, and so I often dwell on it. But that’s not always healthy! Who of us does not have regret or doubt regarding what has already taken place? Who of us doesn’t desire to change something that we did or that was done to us? These thoughts can really weigh us down. In effect, such regret can damage who we are in the present and how we relate to others. There needs to be a balance between a healthy respect and love for the past—which leads to learning how to deal with the present and the future—and putting the past behind us so as not to continue to relive painful memories that cause anxiety or regrets that just build guilt. For me, my favorite Biblical passage about the past and how to deal with it is Isaiah 46:9-10, “Remember the former things, those of long ago; I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me. I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: ‘My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.’” So for me, the past is God and the present is God and the future is more of God because He is the Beginning and the End. And as a child of God, I can rest in the assurance that my identity is complete and secure in God, regardless of others’ attempted manipulations or indiscretions.

The master of terror himself, Alfred Hitchcock

“No! I will not hide in the fruit cellar!” Ugh. Still creeps me out! My introduction to Alfred Hitchcock’s work came in my second year of college when my roommate had a hankering to watch Psycho. She had seen the film a few times before. I had not. I will not deny that I was pretty into the movie; it definitely held my attention. But afterwards, I struggled with showering. Don’t worry, I didn’t deteriorate into a dirty, smelly mess; but I did refuse to close my eyes while in the shower and not infrequently gathered my courage for a quick peek outside the curtain to see if any knife-wielding cross-dressers were about to finish me off.

So it was with a little trepidation that my sister and I sat down last night to watch this week’s Best Picture winner, Rebecca (1940, Selznick International Pictures). Alfred Hitchcock’s first American film and only BP winner, Rebecca was nominated for 11 Academy Awards (including Directing, Music [Original Score], Film Editing, Actress [Joan Fontaine], Actress in a Supporting Role [Judith Anderson], Actor [Laurence Olivier], Art Direction [Black-and-White], Writing [Screenplay], and Special Effects) and won 2 Oscars (Outstanding Production and Cinematography [Black-and-White]).

1940 was a year in which a contingent of films based on literary successes snagged a decent percentage of Oscar nominations. In addition to Rebecca, an adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s best-selling 1938 novel, 1940 produced film adaptations of such classics as Pride and Prejudice, Our Town, The House of the Seven Gables, Swiss Family Robinson, and the legendary The Grapes of Wrath with Henry Fonda. It’s interesting to me that in the year following one of the biggest blockbuster films of all time in Gone with the Wind (itself an adaptation), many of the nominated films in 1940 seemed to go back to the drawing board of established success with scripts based on notable novels—in other words, works that already had garnered respect and large fan bases.

In the case of Rebecca, an oft-overlooked almost-classic, it is intriguing that the film provokes both familiarity and anxiety in its viewers—while watching the movie, I had this constantly growing feeling that something terrible was going to happen and that I had experienced this story before. I kept thinking how this film is like a mix of Jane Eyre and Beauty and the Beast. I thought I knew what would happen at certain parts of the film, but I wasn’t completely accurate most of the time. And I just couldn’t shake the downright creepy feeling I had.

One reviewer of the film connects this macabre sensation to the atmosphere created by World War II, which had only just begun during the making and release of Rebecca. In 1940, there was a universal sense of impending doom—though it hadn’t been given a name yet (the Holocaust)—and a worldwide sensation that something good had been lost. These impressions are indeed mimicked in the film Rebecca. Over the entire movie stands the invisible presence of something malevolent that reaches out from the grave to terrorize the inhabitants of Manderley. That evil personage has a name: Rebecca, the late wife of Maxim de Winter, the lord of Manderley. While du Maurier claimed her novel was “a study in jealousy,” the film goes beyond even that personal emotional torment and reflects the upheaval of a world just coming to grips with the reality of a lost innocence (albeit a false one) and a horrible premonition of imminent disaster.

Manderley, almost a character in its own right in Rebecca

In that way, Rebecca is a golden example of the horror/suspense movie genre (although it’s more creepy than terrifying) and demonstrates just how and why scary movies appeal to us. (Well, they usually don’t appeal to me, and I’m really dreading having to watch The Silence of the Lambs when we get to BPs of the ‘90s.) Viewers at the time of its release already lived with premonitions of danger and threats to their well-being–physically, emotionally, and psychologically. The film’s moody atmosphere and dark overtones were already their reality. For me in the present time, although Rebecca is not the scariest movie I’ve ever seen (my brother made me watch Saw once—long story about that incident…horrible movie, but pretty good plot twist!), I find it definitely psychologically disturbing, like Psycho, but less grotesque. And, goodness gracious, we certainly deal with enough psychologically disturbing images/events in real life these days that we can identify them/with them when they occur on the screen.

So, what appeals to us in these types of films? In his Poetics, Aristotle said that a good tragedy should provoke pity and fear in its viewers (more about that when we get to Hamlet in a few weeks). But, what makes a movie good if it just promotes fear? What makes a film frightening for me is the realization that what the story depicts could happen to me myself. There’s a realism that can’t be easily ignored or dismissed. There are no actual ghosts in Rebecca, but it feels like the dead Rebecca is present in every scene (the film is named after her after all!). That way the story is entirely believable because I can recognize legitimate situations and characters’ psychological struggles in the film that I encounter in my daily life–without the distraction of unrealistic elements such as demonic dolls, per se. In other words, with this film there’s no safe barrier between me and the horrors that I am watching on the silver screen. I become vulnerable, just like Rebecca‘s protagonist.

Such films hold a morbid fascination for us human beings. We’re like the moth that is drawn to the fatal candle. We can’t resist danger, things that set our hearts racing and adrenaline pumping. There’s a part of us that likes the thrill of fear. Terror reminds us that we are still alive. Watching other people’s fright in films can make us feel like the survivors, like we have overcome something even though we have not. Alfred Hitchcock knew this, and he was the master of psychological twistedness and the exploitation of people’s fears. And, whew, I’m both a fan and a downright coward in regard to his work.

For more thoughts on Rebecca and its significance, please check out the full post this weekend! For more information on Daphne du Maurier and her novel Rebecca, check out this interview with her son Kits Browning: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10248724/Daphne-du-Maurier-always-said-her-novel-Rebecca-was-a-study-in-jealousy.html.

Although Gone with the Wind addresses the issues of war, death, love, hate, racism, sexism, the past, the future, obsession, regret, rivalry, and jealousy—any and all of which we could discuss in this post—when asked about the theme of her novel, Margaret Mitchell summed it up by saying: “If Gone with the Wind has a central theme, I suppose [it] is the theme of survival. What quality is it that makes some people able to survive catastrophes and others, apparently just as brave and able and strong, go under?…It happens in every social upheaval, in wars, in panics, in revolutions. It’s happened all the way down history from the time the barbarians sacked ancient Rome…What qualities are in those people who fight their way through triumphantly—that are lacking in those who do go under? What was it that made our Southern people able to come through a war, a Reconstruction, and the complete wrecking of all our social and economic systems? I don’t know. I only know that the survivors of the Civil War used to call that quality ‘gumption’.”

Scarlett O’Hara, the heroine of Gone with the Wind, certainly has gumption. She is a survivor. A remnant of the old South—the essence that has been swept away by the wind—she refuses to go quietly into the realm of past glory and present irrelevance. However, for nearly the duration of the film, Scarlett is obsessed with what she believes is her love for Ashley Wilkes, a man who shares Scarlett’s Southern plantation upbringing and values—in other words, the stereotypical Southern gentleman. What is clear to the movie’s viewers, though, is that Scarlett’s feelings for Ashley are juvenile, shallow, and not fully requited. Scarlett really loves Rhett Butler, her (third) husband, although it takes her the entire movie—almost four whole hours—to realize it.

Rhett and Ashley, Scarlett’s two loves

What I find really interesting about Scarlett’s two loves is how Ashley seems to represent the Old South, the life that is “gone with the wind,” thanks to the Civil War, while Rhett appears to stand for a New South, one that is forward-looking, realizing the weaknesses of the Old South and willing to work with others of different backgrounds to advance in the new world. So, Scarlett thinks she loves the Old South—which is her past and deeply connected to her identity—but in truth she loves the New South—which she molds herself into as well, smashing social and racial and gender roles as she picks cotton, runs her own business, drives her own buggy, and defends her plantation from carpetbaggers and a Yankee ruffian. With the aim of survival—which, for Scarlett, at first means escaping Sherman’s torching of Atlanta, then avoiding starvation at Tara, and finally accumulating enough wealth that she will never be hungry again—Scarlett transports herself from Ashley to Rhett—or, from the Old South to the New South.

“As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again.”

But there’s yet another dimension to the story: “Frankly, my dear…” That last infamous line of Rhett’s in which (spoiler alert!) he leaves Scarlett all alone in their huge Atlanta mansion leads Scarlett to conclude that there is nothing else for her to do except to go home to Tara, her family plantation. At each mention of Tara and during every scene for which the O’Hara plantation is the setting, the film’s viewer recalls the glorious image at the beginning of the film during which Scarlett and her father stand at sunset under the spreading tree with Tara in the background and Max Steiner’s timeless score soaring on the wind. Mr. O’Hara has just reprimanded Scarlett for saying she doesn’t care about Tara because “plantations don’t mean anything.” He continues with one of the best lines of the film: “Why, land is the only thing in the world worth workin’ for, worth fightin’ for, worth dyin’ for, because it’s the only thing that lasts…It’ll come to you, this love of the land.” And Mr. O’Hara proves right in the end. Scarlett does come to love and value her plantation—she even sees it as a mode of somehow making right all the wrongs in her life—for instance, she tantalizes viewers with the idea that returning to Tara will allow her to somehow get Rhett back. She is so absolutely sure that this reunion will happen via Tara that viewers can’t help but feel the same hope and love for Tara that Scarlett expresses. Furthermore, the image of Scarlett on the hill under the tree at the close of the film reinforces one last time the concept that land is everything—it’s the only thing one can truly possess. People can be manipulated and deceived. People can die. But land continues on. Just as Scarlett does.

Ashley, Rhett. Old South, New South. Scarlett, Tara. The theme of survival. Is Gone with the Wind about Scarlett’s survival or Tara’s? Scarlett’s loves don’t really survive the film—Ashley is lost to his grief over Melanie, and Rhett vanishes into the fog with his final snide remark. Yet Scarlett and Tara endure. Perhaps they need each other to survive—a collision, or a collusion, of past and present, old and new. The land survives; and through the land, the past survives as well.

Tara

For Me Then…

I’m one of those odd people who never really liked this movie—that is, until this most recent viewing. I used to find the character of Scarlett barely tolerable, Ashley pathetic, and Rhett funny (though a little bit creepy and womanizing). Yet, I was just dazzled when I recently saw the film again after several years. The way it plays with the past and the present, good and evil, permanence and the ephemeral really moved me. I’ve always loved the past, and a lot of my archaeological studies have focused on the meaning and importance of place. Something about place is connected to identity; and for the South in particular during the Civil War, to lose one’s land to people who were at times literally brothers was traumatic, to say the least. It was like being separated from one’s identity.

Then, to think of the timing of Gone with the Wind’s release and all the European people who were forcibly displaced from their homes—millions of whom would never return. The land itself, though it survives, does not remember them. But they are still not forgotten. As evidenced in the recent observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day, the present remembers the past. In that respect, maybe the past is the survivor in Gone with the Wind. And that idea of the continuing presence of the past can’t be phrased any better than how William Faulkner did it in Requiem for a Nun:

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity. Haunted by wrong turns and roads not taken, we pursue images perceived as new but whose providence dates to the dim dramas of childhood, which are themselves but ripples of consequence echoing down the generations. The quotidian demands of life distract from this resonance of images and events, but some of us feel it always.”