Duel

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

I have been showing films and leading discussions at my housing development. The most recent movie was one made for television in 1971. It’s entitled Duel, and it’s the film that put Steven Spielberg on the map. His directorial ability to build suspense here shows how he was ready to make Jaws.

Richard Matheson wrote the story, and he is a respected writer of horror and science fiction stories, including I am Legend and Hell House. He wrote several episodes for the original Twilight Zone series. This tale involves the character of David Mann (Dennis Weaver) who is on a business trip driving on a fairly desolate prairie road that looks like it belongs in the Old West. He passes a slow-moving truck, and that’s when things go badly for him. The trucker plays a cat-and-mouse game with him, zooming past, slowing down, and preventing him from passing. The harassment escalates as he waves David on when there is oncoming traffic which almost gets David killed. The trucker starts to bang into the back of David’s car and even tries to push him into the way of a train.

The theme of this movie deals with old-fashioned masculinity and emasculation. David’s last name is “Mann,” which implies he stands for a modern male who doesn’t live up to his name. His wife tells him on the phone that she is upset with him because he didn’t confront someone who made a pass at her. She says the fellow tried to “rape” her, but David implies it was more like making a pass at his wife and says he wasn’t going to get into a fistfight with the guy. David listens to a talk radio show and the man calling in says he is not the head of the house any longer because he stays at home, takes care of the house and the babies, and his wife is the breadwinner. A gas attendant says, after David notes he doesn’t need to get a hose fixed, “You’re the boss.” To which David says, “Not in my house.”

The title of the film suggests a deadly old-fashioned confrontation between two combatants. In this case, the weapons have been updated to motor vehicles. The setting is rural and primitive, as if we are dealing with an occurrence at the O.K. Corral. We never see the driver of the truck, only a hairy arm, a cowboy hat, and cowboy boots. He is symbolic of the idea of a rugged, individualistic male of the Old West. The truck he drives is a fuel tanker with the words “Flammable” written on the back. It’s like the truck is announcing its ferocity and making a challenge. At one point the truck sits under a dark underpass, and when its headlights come on it appears like a ferocious animal waiting for its prey.

Let’s get back to that hose that needs repair. It is one of several phallic symbols in the movie. The gas attendant carries the gas nozzle around, suggesting the male organ. On the radio there is a man who plays music on such things as a bicycle pump. The trucker tries to run David down while he is at a rattlesnake farm. And there is that train (think of the end of North by Northwest). All these male symbols stress how David’s manhood is in jeopardy, and how he must try to win it back.

David drives a Plymouth Valiant, the name of the car suggesting that there is that fierceness inside of David, waiting to be released. He does in fact confront the trucker at the climax of the story. He aims his car, damaged after attempting several escapes and with that hose bursting, at the oncoming truck near the edge of a cliff. He transforms his unimposing briefcase into a combatant’s tool and uses it to hold down the gas pedal so his Valiant will ram the truck. The collision causes flames, obscuring the trucker’s view. He is unable to halt his forward movement, and the truck and car tumble over the edge. Spielberg lets the camera linger on the destroyed truck until its wheels no longer turn. It’s like witnessing the death of a modern, menacing, stalking beast.

Mann jumps for joy as he celebrates the primal male urge to vanquish the enemy.

Playing for Time

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

I’m analyzing a television movie for a change. Playing for Time (1980) is a horrifying, yet inspiring award-winning telecast based on a true story set in the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. The production won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama (Special) and Best Teleplay by the great Arthur Miller. It also received the prestigious Peabody Award.

The opening credits are shown against a sketch of a swastika overlaid with the abbreviated outline of a woman. We also hear a woman singing. The outline then is superimposed onto the singer played by Vanessa Redgrave (she received the Best Actress Emmy for this role). She portrays Fania Fenelon, a Jewish cabaret performer in Paris. The image suggests the main character of the story is trying to eclipse the despicable nature of the Nazis.

While she sings the film depicts German soldiers and a swastika decorated train invading Paris, disrupting the soothing calm of Fania’s singing. She is then in one of the suffocating cattle cars with so many others, including children, headed for the concentration camp. The editing shows how quickly evil can destroy a free society.

The film intersperses actual footage throughout to stress the reality of the tale. The car has only a bucket for the passengers to relieve themselves. A man dies in the car due to the horrid conditions. When they arrive at the camps the dehumanization shifts into full force. They must strip. The Germans cut off their hair, and they are reduced to being identified by tattooed numbers, like cattle.

The German soldiers crowd the prisoners into cramped barracks and show them smoke from the ovens where the bodies of dead fellow travelers were burned. The prisoners must perform hard labor and endure physical abuse. Fania tells a story to her young friend, Marianne (Melanie Mayron), about a princess to distract her from the presence of the dead woman next to them. The film here introduces the theme of how art can help one face the horrible acts of reality.

That drama enhances that theme when the inmates are asked if anyone can sing Madame Butterfly. Fania now finds a way to make a pact with the devil to survive. The guards bring her to the camp’s orchestra which is comprised of women. Amid this place of horror there is a seed of civilized culture because the Nazi monsters like to think their heinous acts do not infringe on their right to appreciate the arts.

The conductor is the stern Alma Rose (Jane Alexander, winner of a Best Supporting Actress Emmy for her portrayal). Fania must audition for Alma, which is difficult given the physical deprivation she has endured. But her enthusiasm for one of the opera’s beautiful arias overcomes her torment. Lagerfuhrein Maria Mandel (Shirley Knight), who oversees the women at the camp, interrupts her moving rendition showing how the Germans have control over the beauty of the music here. Fania uses her leverage with Mandel to get Marianne to sing with the orchestra, which shows how art can sometimes save those who seem lost. (Marianne acts like a child often, wanting or taking things to satisfy her own needs. She wants to place Fania in the role of a mother who tends to all her wants, which Fania tries to resist).

Mandel wants the orchestra members to look the part, so she gets them clothing that has been confiscated. To the Nazis, the musicians are like puppets that are to perform for the captors’ pleasure. The orchestra’s poor rehearsing is due to it originally being a marching band, Alma yells at the performers, telling them that “music is the holiest activity of mankind.” That description is to stress that there can be heavenly hopes in such a hellish place. The members discover that Fania can orchestrate the music to ensure that all play their parts to create a successful rendition. Alma is happy to learn this fact, but warns Fania that she can’t just have the goal of creating good music. She says they must please the Nazis, and that their jailers’ whims can change rapidly. So, artistry must allow for pragmatism for Alma. Fania has a difficult time realizing how much the Nazis hate her for being a Jew. Alma tells her there is only room for life and death in the camp, and other feelings must be put aside.

The incarcerated orchestra improves greatly and has a concert before Nazi soldiers, who may admire the music but will not condescend to give applause. They simply walk out when the show is done. It is not to be praised but to avoid disapproval, and its consequences, that is the goal.

Fania is willing to share her possessions, but the other inmates can’t seem to get rid of their prejudices despite being objects of discrimination. One, a Catholic, is anti-Semitic and the Polish women are segregated from the rest. What brings them together is music (art is again the savior) as Fania and Marianne sing “Stormy Weather” which conjures up shared feelings about lost romantic loves. However, music can be perverted to accompany vicious behavior as the band is used to produce marching music to exhort the women to do exhausting and degrading labor. At night Fania hears the screams of those either tortured or sent to the gas chambers.

Fania declares she will not descend into becoming an animal. Marianne becomes cynical quickly and prostitutes herself for some food. Fania catches her and tells her she shouldn’t degrade herself. But after the girl leaves food on her desk, Fania’s basic needs win out over her morality, and she eats the food. Fania starts out as controlled and calm. As time goes on, it becomes very difficult for her to witness the atrocities. It starts to make her numb in contrast to the feelings of one of the girls who loves another there. Fania says it is a blessing to have any emotion in such a place.

When Fania gets to sing the Madame Butterfly aria she is very impressive. One of her admirers is, of all people, Dr. Joseph Mengele (Max Wright), who performed grotesque experiments on inmates. In one scene we have such beauty and such horror. Fania makes sure they understand that someone who is Jewish can sing so well when she says her father’s name was Goldstein and that she should be called Fania Goldstein.

For her performance, Fania receives supplies. As the women rummage through the new possessions, one of the musicians says that she must live so she can go to Israel and produce Jewish children to fight for Jewish empowerment. Another wants communism to rise out of the ashes of Germany. While the others see only that the problem is the Nazis, Fania says that the real problem to solve is what would make people who would otherwise be admired become sadistic creatures. Her question is pertinent to the scene where Alma screams at one of the musicians and hits her when she can’t produce the right result. Can circumstances turn anyone into someone brutal? After the incident, Alma tells Fania she was in love with a man in Vienna, but he became a Nazi soldier, and she was arrested for being Jewish. She cries at the heartbreak she endured. Fania admits that Alma’s strength has saved them, but she can’t accept the harshness from her. Alma urges Fania to back her up so they can all survive. She says that Fania must shut out what is going on outside and concentrate on perfecting the music. Alma says it is not that she can’t see what’s going on in the camp, it’s that she refuses to. She is saying that the music and the artistry to make it come alive must be their escape, mentally and hopefully, physically.

Fania and Marianne are half-Jewish which means they should not be gassed. They are told to remove half of the Jewish Star of David sewn on their clothing. Marianne gladly does it, but others in the orchestra ridicule Fania and Marianne for what they see as a capitulation to antisemitism. Fania yells that she doesn’t care about cultures and backgrounds, only that the Nazis have reviled her as an individual. She wavers between feelings about group persecution and the desecration of the individual. She sews the part of the star back on showing how she does not want to turn her back on what makes her who she is. She keeps trying to hold onto her humanity and clashes with Alma when the conductor holds back rewards of food as an incentive to perform well. But Fania also voices the fear that it may be “too late for the whole human race.”

A handyman, Schmuel (Will Lee), tells Fania how they are gassing 12,000 prisoners a day. But, he does not become distressed. He rationalizes the holocaust by saying the victims are all angels who will report to God. The movie suggests that each person either despairs or finds a way to survive the hell he or she is in. That same man gives a message to Fania that the Allies have landed, which means the start of D-Day. The women also learn that the translator who was so useful to the Nazis and would not be intimidated, had escaped with a man. They play the Wedding March showing the joy that music holds. There is some hopeful news arriving amid the bleakness. But that joy is short-lived because the soldiers catch the translator and her male friend and bring them back to the camp to be hanged.

An example of the complexity of the human spirit appears in the scene where the Lagerfuhrein delights in a small blond child, doting on him and letting him play in the orchestra room. Some of the musicians see a human side to her, but another points out how she took the child from the mother, and that wrongful act should not be wiped away. The stark contrast in human behavior is emphasized outside as the Lagerfuhrein plays ball with the child amid corpses on the ground.

Commandant Kramer (Clarence Felder) demonstrates the complete control he has over the women. He takes one girl away to watch his children, removes the piano for the officers, yet still expects the orchestra to meet his expectations. A male Jew is to show one of the female musicians how to play a piece on the cello. As he touches her in silence, placing his hands on hers, there is a poignant moment how much physical affection no longer exists for these captives. The diabolical Mengele intertwines his music appreciation with deviant scientific whims as he wants the orchestra to play Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony for the mentally ill so he can observe the effects on the patients. He will then have the patients gassed. The story continues the contrast between what is creative and what is destructive as real footage of the Nazi forces continuing their concentration camp activities offsets the classical music, and the jarring sounds of screams and gunshots in the background punctuate the elevated music of the great composers.

One of the Polish musicians tells Fania people like to talk to her because she has no causes and only acts like an individual human being with strong feelings. Fania, however, says she can’t help others because she is “dying by inches,” and is starting to develop a failure to thrive, not being interested in eating. She tells the Polish woman that they are not more valuable to save than others. Fania sees the world as beyond salvation now since its sins have been so nullifying.

Alma is overjoyed that she is getting out of the camp to play for the fighting soldiers. She rationalizes that she will not be playing for the murderers who run the camp but for “honorable” men. Fania is angry because Alma doesn’t seem to realize that she will be entertaining those who are fighting for the Nazi way of life. Frau Schmidt (Viveca Lindfors), one of the camp officers, congratulates Alma, and invites her to dinner. Alma wants to believe that Schmidt, who she says has wanted off the camp, has the decency to have kind words for her. It’s as if Fania is now the one who is the more cynical of the two. Fania is right. Schmidt wouldn’t let a Jew get out before her. Mengele (an admirer of Alma’s musical abilities) and other officers gather the orchestra members together and the women find Alma in a coffin. The rumor is that Schmidt poisoned her.

The orchestra descends into anarchy without the strength of Alma, who said she wanted Fania to be the new conductor. However, a frantic and irrational Olga (Christine Baranski) wants to be the leader, and the discordant sounds that the musicians produce under her conducting mirrors the lack of harmony among the women. Marianne has prostituted herself with the camp executioner and the other women scorn her. However, Fania says they have all changed and should not be judgmental because they have learned that each person has the potential to act immorally. Fania takes on the survivalist role of Alma and promises Mengele that the orchestra will strive to perform to Alma’s expectations.

However, there is also a bit of humanity even within the hearts of some of the villains. The Lagerfuhrein has lost the child she took from her mother and now cries as she asks for another rendition of the Madame Butterfly aria to soothe her distress. As has happened often, the sounds of war interrupt the beauty of the music, and the officer reverts to savagery as she shoots a disruptive inmate.

As the Allies attack, the soldiers evacuate the camp in a vain attempt to maintain their lost dominance. The Allied soldiers liberate them from a crowded barn. But, Marianne has lost her soul and injures Fania as she joins her captors with whom she had previously joined sexually. She now can’t remain with the other Jews since she has so compromised herself.

A journalist asks the shaking Fania to say something. Appropriately the story ends with her singing, music being the only way she can exist in a world of horror.

Peeping Tom

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

Peeping Tom (1960) came out the same year as Psycho, and both films show up in Roger Ebert’s book, The Great Movies. They are both daring artistic psychological works that explore homicidal behavior linked to parent-child dysfunction. They also implicate the audience in wishing to participate in the main character’s perversion through voyeurism. Peeping Tom is even more focused on the connection between filmmaking and watching the private and sometimes gruesome experiences of others.

The first images of the film are of a target with arrows shot at a bull’s eye. We immediately have a weapon present and a phallic symbol in the form of the arrow that penetrates and, in this case, is also linked to danger. We then see a human eye (remember Janet Leigh’s dead accusing look at Hitchcock’s audience), which adds to the theme of voyeurism, amplified by the man who is secretly filming a woman in front of a shop window. The sexual aspect is evident when she announces her price, which reveals her to be a prostitute. He follows her to her place, and we see things through the viewfinder of the camera which stands in for the view of the predator (not the first time we see events from the killer’s perspective and certainly not the last in films). We hear the sound of a knife (the same phallic weapon that Norman Bates uses) being unsheathed and then witness the horror of the woman as she is attacked.

The killer is Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm), and he returns to the scene of his crime, filming the aftermath, pretending to be a photojournalist. He records his excursion (he later says he is making a documentary) into this dark realm of fear as the police are there, removing the victim from her home, appropriately covered in a red blanket. He works at a store that contains adult material where he photographs young women in sexy outfits. He repeats what the proprietor has told him that magazines that sell are “those with girls on the front covers, and no front covers on the girls.” So, voyeurism is a business that is profitable, and part of society, although people may not want to acknowledge its presence. Thus, a customer receives his nudie pictures in an envelope marked “educational material.”

When Mark goes into a backroom to do his work one of the models says that her fiancé caught her with another man, and she tells Mark to make sure that her bruises don’t show in the photos. The film shows the seedy side of life and how we try to cover it up, which is what the mainstream movie industry has done in its past. When he takes a while to take her picture, the model, Milly (Pamela Green) asks if he has a girlfriend hidden under the camera’s drape. She is kidding, but she is correct because Mark’s lover is the camera, and his intimacy presents itself in a voyeuristic fashion.

The other model we see only in profile at first. She looks lovely, but then she turns to face Mark and reveals a facial deformity on her right side. She wants the disfigurement to stay hidden, but Mark takes out his own camera and says he wants to shoot her as she is. He does not shrink from the unpleasant side of things. The film may be saying we may kid ourselves that life is not tainted, but that is not reality.

The next scene is at Helen Stephens’s (Anna Massey) apartment where she is celebrating her twenty-first birthday with other tenants. She is attractive and one would think innocent, although her blind mother (Maxine Audley) grunts when a guest expresses a compliment about Helen. Those present see Mark peering in from outside a window. He looks like, well, a Peeping Tom. The lattice work of the window looks like a viewfinder, adding to the connection between film, Mark, and us. Mark lives upstairs, and Helen greets him in the hall, inviting in the outsider, but he declines.

Later there is a knock at Mark’s door, and he immediately does what we all do, try to make the place look presentable, not wanting others to see that we don’t live in a messy home. Only Mark’s dirtiness includes his tapes of his sordid activities. He’s an extreme extension of everyday people. Helen is bringing him a piece of cake. He is awkward with others because of his anti-social personality. He reveals that he has lived in that building his whole life. He inherited it from his father, so, he is the landlord, although nobody knows this fact. As the model Milly noted, he is a puzzle. He seems so shy and gentle on the surface (like Norman Bates, whose name sounds like “normal”). He asks if the rent is too high and is willing to lower it. When she says not to tell the others that he is willing to lower the cost, she says the renters will give him no “peace.” He repeats the word, as if not knowing what it means, implying he has had none.

He admits that he works in photography and hopes to direct a film (director Michael Powell possibly making the link between voyeurism and filmmaking. Mark even has a director’s chair). Helen is perceptive since she must have heard his projector as she asks if he was watching a movie reel. He admits that he was, and she asks if it was his own work. She asks to see it, as a sort of birthday gift. He seems willing to let her view his work and maybe feels that he has found someone with whom he can share his secrets. He lets her see his dark room that she admits is huge. The size suggests that there is a vast subconscious, shadowy world below the surface of Mark’s outwardly benign appearance. She stumbles there, implying that the underside of the human psyche can be scary.

He almost shows her what he was looking at, the removal of the girl he murdered, but he decides not to be that open with her. He instead displays a film of himself as a child, which his father, a scientist, took. The implication is that his father was the influence on Mark’s interest in photography, which is confirmed when there is a scene of his father giving him a camera, the one he still has. The home movie shows how his father experimented on him to see his reaction to fear. He would shine a bright light into young Mark’s eyes which caused him to cry. He dropped a lizard in his bed to frighten him. He also filmed the child looking at two lovers kissing and embracing in the park. He also documented Mark’s reaction to his dead mother and her burial. Helen is obviously upset by these images. Mark now wants to record Helen as she looks at the home movie. His father taught Mark to live life through observing and recording people in distress, and it’s as if Mark is continuing his parent’s scientific studies. Director Powell’s camera shows Mark looking through the turning reel of the film, stressing how he is tied to seeing life through the camera.

As Helen questions him about what this all means, Mark strokes the camera, a masturbatory action again linking how he can only get excited by way of his voyeurism. There is the image of Mark’s young stepmother coming out of the water on the beach, scantily clad in a two-piece swimsuit. We have arousal in an inappropriate way displayed here by means of observation. He calls her the “successor,” as if this woman dethroned the queen in Mark’s life only six weeks after his mother passed away.

After Helen sees how disturbed Mark is, she tells him to turn off the camera. She moves him away from the dark room, as if she is getting him out of his dark state of mind, into the lit outer room, where she wants to shed light on what she saw. Mark tells her his father was a biologist and wanted to know how fear registered on the nervous system, especially with children. We see volumes of his father’s books on the topic. Mark says he had no privacy since his father was always filming him. Thus, he has no problem invading the privacy of others based on his upbringing. Mark seems to rationalize that his father learned from him, and some benefitted from his father’s work. However, Helen doesn’t buy the excuse.

There is then a quick cut to a film set (called The Walls are Closing In, a foreshadowing) where Mark works, but the impression is that we have stepped out of the story and are witnessing the filming of the movie we are watching. It is a deliberate attempt to link imaginary reel life with actual reality. There is a discussion of whether a movie is commercial enough to be made, which fits the making of this controversial work we are watching. There was a criticism of Powell using himself and his son for the characters of young Mark and his father given the disturbing material of the story. The movie takes the joining of fictional and actual characters to a daring level.

The stand-in actress in the movie Mark is working on, Vivian (Moira Shearer), is supposed to have a secret meeting with Mark about her dancing after the end of the workday. She stays behind to meet him after the set shuts down, but she encounters a dark studio (like Mark’s dark room?). Then spotlights turn on her just the way Mark’s father used bright lights on Mark. He has the place set up with props and marks like a director. He tells Vivian that they will be doing a shoot, which allows him to present the guise of a film piece to manipulate her. He says he wants her to play frightened, which ironically, she says she doesn’t feel afraid. He tells her to imagine that someone is approaching her to kill her, which is what he is actually doing. He agrees that the killer is a madman, and says, “but he knows it, and you don’t.” Mark here seems to realize his mental illness but can’t stop his pathology. He removes the cover at the end of the camera tripod revealing a knife attached to the end. He then records Vivian’s fear as he moves forward amid her screams and kills her. The image of the lethal tripod leg merges Mark’s voyeurism with that of the audience as we vicariously participate with the character in this crime, linking us with Mark’s perversion. Just like Norman Bates, the knife becomes a demonic form of sexual deviance, used for penetration that also destroys.

Mrs. Stephens is a despondent woman who drinks alcohol to excess. However, even though she is blind she senses the suspicious nature of the photographer living upstairs. She says, “I don’t trust a man who walks quietly,” and that his footsteps are “stealthy.” She does condone Helen visiting him. Mark gives her a pin and when she moves the placement of where she might affix the gift, Mark moves his hands to the same places on his upper body. Ebert says Mark here becomes a camera himself, recording what he sees through his own lenses. Again, he seems to only exist by way of what he observes. She tells him she is a librarian working in the children’s section of the library and has had short stories published. She recently had a book accepted about a magical camera and wants him to help her add photos as part of her story. He is thrilled but adds a chilling note that sometimes he photographs some things for no charge. The contrast of the innocence of children and Mark’s dark side is implied here.

While shooting on the movie set, an actor must move a trunk, which is especially heavy. We realize from the deadly encounter with Mark that Vivian’s body is in the trunk, which is discovered in short order. The police, who are also investigating the prior murder of the prostitute, notice the same look of terror on the body of Vivian as they saw on the hooker. As they interview those involved with the making of the film, Mark photographs the proceedings. Mark talks with a fellow worker and says that he is filming the police as part of his “documentary.” The other man jokingly questions whether they will catch Mark recording them. He answers in the affirmative, but he is talking about arresting him for the killings. It implies that he feels that he will be apprehended eventually. When the man asks jokingly if he is crazy, Mark says, “Yes. Do you think they’ll notice?” He is admitting to his deranged mental state, but he is cloaking it in a humorous exchange.

Chief Inspector Gregg (Jack Watson) interviews Mark, who offers his camera as a way, most likely, to show that he is cooperating with the police as to any filming that may prove useful to the investigation. But he constantly reaches out for it during the scene, like a man reaching for his lover, or even a part of himself. Mark photographs the removal of the body from the rafters. As he leans over, objects fall out of his pocket, but he is not discovered, at least not yet. All the above takes place on the movie set, sealing the emotional connection between the fictitious moviemaking and actual events.

The sightless Mrs. Stephens again shows her perceptive abilities as she can feel Mark looking in on them again through the window. She jokingly says, “Why don’t we make a present of that window?” When she shakes his hand she says that he has been running. He says he was hurrying to see Helen, but we know he was escaping the movie studio. Mrs. Stephens asks Mark about the dead actress, but he claims he didn’t know her. The look on his face shows that he registers the mother’s suspicious nature.

On their way to dinner, Helen suggests that Mark doesn’t need to take his always-present camera with him that night. He is defensive at first, but admits that he trusts Helen, and they lock it in what was once Mark’s mother’s room. Mark seems genuinely happy to be with Helen. But, as they head out, he sees a couple kissing, and he instinctively reaches for where his camera would be slung over his shoulder, ready to capture the passion between the man and woman vicariously.

They have a nice evening, but their joy is intercut with the timer ticking away to clock his developing film. The image suggests that the movie we are watching is counting downward, and possibly that Mark’s time is growing short. It may also mean that despite Mark’s attempt to escape his obsession, it is always in the background. When Helen retrieves his camera, she points at herself and wonders how it would photograph her. Mark grabs it out of her hands, repressing the thought of filming her murder. He says he will not film her because, “whatever I photograph I always lose.” How true when it comes to ending a person’s life. She kisses him goodnight, but he doesn’t respond with any passion. After she leaves, he kisses the lens of the camera, emphasizing his displaced, detached emotional personality that can only become involved at a distance.

While looking at the film he made of Vivian, Mrs. Stephens surprises him. This is a fascinating scene. We have a blind woman at home in the photographer’s dark room. She has heard him every night running his camera. She can keep him at bay with her pointy cane, a version of his knife-like tripod. He is on the defensive here at first. She asks what he is looking at and says he can lie to her, but he perceives her intuition and knows she would know the truth. Vivian’s projected image is partially on the screen and also on his back, visually implicating him in her fear. The film ends and he lunges toward the white film screen, arms raised. It appears as if he has been crucified by his own obsession. He says that the light ends too quickly, and he needs a new opportunity. He is talking about what he has filmed but what his words imply is that he feels compelled to seek another victim. It appears it is going to be the mother. However, Mark relents. The two continue to speak in a code as if they are talking about film. But what Mrs. Stephens says is that he needs to seek help and doesn’t want him to see her daughter until he does. He says he will never “photograph” Helen, which means he would not harm her. She says they would move away if he became a threat to Helen. He escorts her back to her place, and she warns him that he will have to tell someone about his problem, a confession really, and the implication is that it will either be a psychiatrist or the police.

Back on the movie set, there is a psychiatrist there to aid the traumatized lead actress. Taking Mrs. Stephens’ advice, Mark asks the shrink, who knew about Mark’s father, if he had insight on someone being a “Peeping Tom.” The technical term is scopophilia according to the psychiatrist. Mark is hopeful, symbolized by his raising the stage elevator as he talks to the psychiatrist. When he hears that it would take a few years of continuous analysis to cure, Mark becomes despondent, as he lowers the lift appropriately. The Chief Inspector is on the set and the psychiatrist mentions to him that Mark was asking about voyeurism, which piques the policeman’s interest. The fellow worker he spoke to before gives Mark a photo of a beautiful woman, which Mark says gives him “an idea.” He then speaks to the man who employs him to shoot sexy photographs. The audience may suspect that he may make one of the models his next victim.

The police are now following Mark as he goes to the store to photograph Millie. Mark realizes he is being tailed and it appears that he films the model, then leaves the store, locking up the place. Meanwhile, Helen seeks out Mark, who is not back yet. She turns on one of his cameras, and we see only her response. Her face goes from being in the light to being hidden in darkness, which reflects what she is witnessing. She gasps and whimpers, seeking escape from the room as she realizes the horror of what she is looking at. Mark shows up and she wants to know if the film she watched was just from his “magic” camera, creating an illusion. But he confesses that he killed the women. He tells her that she should stay in the shadows because if he can’t see her fear, she will be safe. How much his father warped Mark is very evident here.

The store proprietor informs the police that he found Milly’s body. So, Mark is allowing himself to get caught. He is driven to commit his crimes, but he is also a sympathetic character because he realizes his mental illness and wants to end his lethal actions. He reveals to her that his father had the whole house wired for sound. and he plays back his screams that his father recorded. She sees his torment and wants to understand what he actually did. He tells her he let his victims see their fear being recorded in a distorted reflection as the tripod knife penetrated their throats. He acts out but does not consummate the crime with Helen. He records his own fear, as his father once did, as he kills himself with his own weapon. The police burst in right after his suicide as a film reel stops rolling, reflecting the end of the movie.

The film has shown us that we are getting our thrills by also being Peeping Toms. At the end of the movie, we hear Mark’s father saying to his young son that there’s nothing to be afraid of. Despite the fact that we are watching a piece of fiction, our fear is real.

O Brother, Where Art Thou

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

In the film Sullivan’s Travels, the main character is a filmmaker who travels to find what real life is about and make a film entitled O Brother Where Art Thou? In the Coen Brothers movie with that title, we have a farcical version of true life, reversing the process of the earlier motion picture’s protagonist, but showing the real-life situations beneath the exaggerated exterior. The opening notes cite The Odyssey as the film’s source material, but the tone here is mock epic.

The main character is Ulysses Everett McGill (George Clooney), and his real goal is to return to his wife, Penny (Holly Hunter). So, the names and the quest establish the link to Homer’s epic, Penny referring to Penelope in Homer’s epic. This Ulysses, however, is a convict, not a war hero, a character that can be associated with everyday life. Clooney excels in delivering fast-paced, pretentious speech here, as he also does in the Coens’ Intolerable Cruelty. His language is in contrast to the lowly situation he is in, since he is incarcerated in a chain gang. There are many contrasts here as the whimsical, humorous aspects contrast with the bigotry and corruption in the tale. As Adam Nayman points out in his book The Coen Brothers, the song included in the film, “The Big Rock Candy Mountain,” suggests a utopia where “the downtrodden and dispossessed” do not exist, which is in direct contrast to what the Coens depict in their Depression-era movie. Nayman says the colors used in the cinematography are vivid, making the film a “gilded Dust Bowl” story. Again, there is that sense of artifice stressed in the midst of a movie relating a dark time in American history. (The soundtrack of traditional, downhome music was a hit and received the Grammy for “Album of the Year.).

The movie begins with this Ulysses handcuffed to other convicts on a chain gang, the volatile Pete (John Turturro) and the intellectually challenged but sweet Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson). Being bound together physically brings about an emotional bonding despite the differences in these characters and adds an optimistic aspect to the story.

The three men escape their captivity, and as Nayman points out, we see them popping into the horizon like plants growing out of the soil. Nayman says that the whole film has this universal homage to what is basic and universal to humankind, as if the men were “products of the rich, fertile Delta soil.” Perhaps the Coens using a mythological structure means that they are aiming at the universal that binds us all.

They visit Pete’s cousin who removes the shackles, change out of their prison garb, and spend the night in the barn. Everett tells the other two men he has over a million dollars that he hid from a robbery and will split it with them if they help him. However, the cousin called the police to get the reward on the men. Greed is a continuing theme in the Coens’ films, and it does harm to those who worship profit and the collateral damage associated with monetary gain. Everett utters a repeated phrase here when he says, “We’re in a tight spot!” The words are in opposition to his usual long-winded style when not in immediate danger. They are able to escape with the help of the cousin’s son, which shows compassion in the midst of selfishness.

The travelers come across a religious group. Delmar and Pete feel the need for salvation and are baptized. Everett, the rational-minded member, does not participate. However, despite the draw of splitting Everett’s cash, the desire for the other two to mend their ways shows that they are more upstanding than others in society who appear upright morally. Delmar is childlike, and it is that incorruptible aspect that puts him in contrast to the schemers that the men encounter on their journey. It’s as if the real culprits of society are on the loose, and the three convicts are minor transgressors in the scheme of things. These scenes are played broadly, but, as Nayman says, “lowbrow humor is deployed in the service of social commentary.”

The men then meet a hitchhiker, a black musician named Tommy Johnson (Chris Thomas King), who plays guitar and says he made a pact with the devil to become talented. Tommy says that Satan is not the scaly creature people envision, but is actually “white, as white as you folks. With empty eyes and a big hollow voice. He likes to travel around with a mean old hound.” For the black man, the devil is white, especially at this time. As it turns out later, we discover the demon is a policeman, one who is supposed to stand for morality, but instead is the devil beneath the trappings of justice.

The foursome come across a radio station run by a blind man (Stephe Root) who thinks the fellows are a black musical group. They record a song, “Man of Constand Sorrow,” as the “Soggy Bottom Boys” and collect some money for the performance. They do not realize it, but the recording becomes a hit, which helps them later. Nayman says that the blind DJ shows a white man’s not recognizing the music of African Americans and it is an example of cultural appropriation. However, could it also mean that music is universal, and thus it addresses people of all backgrounds despite its source?

The police are on their trail, headed by the devil-like Sheriff Cooley (Daniel von Bargen). They escape but become separated from Tommy. They run into “Baby Face” Nelson (Michael Badalucco) and are drawn into a bank robbery. Nelson is an unhinged character, and his nickname is in sync with the theme of the film in that the gangster’s innocent name hides a nasty fellow underneath.

The next attack on their innocence comes in a form that mirrors the temptation of the Sirens in The Odyssey. Beautiful women sing and do their laundry in the river. They are awash in clingy, wet clothes that stress their allure that draws the men to them. The next morning Delmar finds Pete missing. Inside his strewn clothes is a frog, and the superstitious Delmar believes the women cast a spell and turned Pete into the creature. The Coens continue to give us a magical exterior to the story, but it again is a coating of artifice that storytellers use to embellish the harshness of reality.

At a restaurant Everett and Delmar meet Big Dan Teague (John Goodman). He has that way with words that reflects a kinship with Everett. Big Dan has one eye, so he is the cyclops character in this version of the Ulysses tale. He is a bible salesman. All of this is a front that hides a mean character beneath the friendly surface. In a field where they are having a picnic, he beats up the two men, steals what money they have, kills the frog Delmar was carrying, and steals their car. Big Dan is the Mr. Hyde to Everett’s Dr. Jekyll.  

Everett and Delmar arrive at Everett’s hometown where Everett tries to talk with his wife, Penny, who is taking care of their seven daughters (seven being a magical number which fits in with the mythic framework of the story?) She is so ashamed of him she told the children he was killed. Penny is now engaged to Vernon T. Waldrip, who is the campaign manager for Homer Stokes (Wayne Duvall), who is running for governor. Nayman believes Waldrip is a reference to a writer, Howard Waldrop, who wrote a story that re-envisioned the labors of Hercules to the time of the Depression. In a way is what the Coens are doing with this film, reimagining a mystical tale. Stokes is another fraud. He acts like he is planning on getting rid of corruption, while in fact he is the head of the local KKK. He has a little person with him on the campaign using a broom to symbolize sweeping things clean for the “little” people in society. As Nayman points out, it is a condescending image, and the man’s campaign smacks of the “proximity of populist rhetoric and fascist ideology.”

Everett and Delmar find Pete (not a frog) as part of a prison chain again. The prisoners are in the audience in a movie theater (a film within a film? The Coens stressing storytelling?). He was turned in by the Sirens (more deviousness). They help Pete escape. Everett now reveals that there is no armored car stash of money. He was arrested for practicing law without a license – not so horrendous a crime compared to acts committed by some others - and all he wants to do is get back with his wife. His other character flaw may be his vanity, insisting on using “Dapper Dan” pomade. The problem is they will get fifty years for escaping, a geometrical multiplication of original infractions, which points to inequities in the legal system.

These three Depression musketeers come upon a KKK meeting where the white-robed Klansmen are ready to hang their pal, Tommy. Although the KKK rally mimics The Wizard of OZ, a fantasy, with its chanting like the scene in the 1939 film, what is happening is actually frightening. Stokes says, “Oh brothers … our women … looking to us for protection. From Darkies! From Jews! From papists, and from all those smart-ass folks say we come descended from monkeys! That’s not my culture and heritage!” The call to “brothers” echoes the title of the film, which here questions what people stand for. The three men are admirable as they rescue their African American friend in a dangerous situation (like the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion helped Dorothy), and show their place on the moral measuring stick. They topple a burning cross onto KKK member Big Dan in a bit of ironic justice, apparently killing the brute.

The four men come upon a campaign rally for governor. When they sing “Man of Constant Sorrow,” they reveal themselves as the Soggy Bottom Boys, and are wildly popular. The dancing and mugging as they sing the song is diverting, but the song identifies the four men with the hardships of everyday people. The crowd condemns Homer Stokes who derails himself by attacking the Boys for ruining his KKK rally. The shrewd current governor, Pappy O’Daniel (Charles Durning), embraces the Boys, knowing he will win the popularity of the masses. He pardons them. It is a left-handed way of doing the right thing.

Penny says she will take Everett back, but he must retrieve her wedding ring from their old cabin. The men go there but Sheriff Cooley is present and doesn’t care about a pardon. His men have dug their graves. Everett prays and then there is divine intervention this time to save them. A biblical-like flood immerses the valley. The men come across a floating desk and retrieve a ring from it (it almost reminds one of how Ishmael is saved in Moby Dick). However, when Everett gets back to Penny, she tells him that it’s not the right ring, which is now at the bottom of the lake. The man is always in that tight spot. Finding the ring at the end is like a Herculean task, an impossible thing in the real world, which fits with the mythic, mock-epic feel of this story.

Nayman sums up the way the Coens present their story by saying, “art with a message is less valuable than that which sets out, energetically and unpretentiously, to entertain.”