Wow, given that the play explicitly is about extramarital sex and posits more than one occasion of it, I find it hard to believe it was even *made* into a film in the Code era. Like why bother
It was a long-running critical and commercial success—it was still on Broadway when the film came out and there was a London transfer with two out of three of the opening night cast—so it would have been an irrestistible property to the movies, but, I know, right? As soon as the order of operations has been reversed from sex → relationship or even sex → love, the play just ceases to exist as itself. It would have made a superb pre-Code, except it wouldn't have been written without the war.
if the main points of the movie aren't to be talked about (not that extramarital sex is the main point, but women's sexual desire and the fact that desires for sex and commitment don't infallibly break along genital lines).
The play is very non-judgmental about unmarried sex! The characters talk about double standards. They talk about the weirdness of running into a former lover and realizing that aching limerent leap just isn't there anymore. The ending is explicitly not a proposal of marriage or even of permanence—although the subject can't fail to come up—but a commitment to see what happens if they stay together rather than preemptively separating or trying to maintain the relationship on an artificially casual level. They might get hurt. It might not last. (Neither of them mentions it, probably because neither of them needs to, but it's wartime; he might die.) But the apartment is full of spring flowers and they are sitting down to a dinner from the restaurant which in two nights has already become theirs and they are very definitely going to spend another night together and you like to think there will be many more. I love the moment before their first time when the heroine asserts gravely that "there's a beast in me, too." Per the AFI Catalog, Breen wouldn't approve the film for production unless it was "affirmatively" established that "there has been no illicit sex affair between Bill and Sally." I hope Van Druten took the money and ran like hell.
About many things--not just sexual mores--I came to the conclusion that people just lied/didn't share their reality. Not out of a desire to deceive others, just because the loudly proclaimed societal norms don't match lived experience.
It's one of the reasons I am always so interested when lived experience seems to slip in between the cracks of popular representation. It's so interesting to see a play from 1943 where the male character is the one the morning after a potential one-night stand wanting to be reassured that it meant something.
--SO TRUE. And a lovely detail. And reminds me of this tweet.
That entire thread is very good, but the part about the roomba is really true.
no subject
It was a long-running critical and commercial success—it was still on Broadway when the film came out and there was a London transfer with two out of three of the opening night cast—so it would have been an irrestistible property to the movies, but, I know, right? As soon as the order of operations has been reversed from sex → relationship or even sex → love, the play just ceases to exist as itself. It would have made a superb pre-Code, except it wouldn't have been written without the war.
if the main points of the movie aren't to be talked about (not that extramarital sex is the main point, but women's sexual desire and the fact that desires for sex and commitment don't infallibly break along genital lines).
The play is very non-judgmental about unmarried sex! The characters talk about double standards. They talk about the weirdness of running into a former lover and realizing that aching limerent leap just isn't there anymore. The ending is explicitly not a proposal of marriage or even of permanence—although the subject can't fail to come up—but a commitment to see what happens if they stay together rather than preemptively separating or trying to maintain the relationship on an artificially casual level. They might get hurt. It might not last. (Neither of them mentions it, probably because neither of them needs to, but it's wartime; he might die.) But the apartment is full of spring flowers and they are sitting down to a dinner from the restaurant which in two nights has already become theirs and they are very definitely going to spend another night together and you like to think there will be many more. I love the moment before their first time when the heroine asserts gravely that "there's a beast in me, too." Per the AFI Catalog, Breen wouldn't approve the film for production unless it was "affirmatively" established that "there has been no illicit sex affair between Bill and Sally." I hope Van Druten took the money and ran like hell.
About many things--not just sexual mores--I came to the conclusion that people just lied/didn't share their reality. Not out of a desire to deceive others, just because the loudly proclaimed societal norms don't match lived experience.
It's one of the reasons I am always so interested when lived experience seems to slip in between the cracks of popular representation. It's so interesting to see a play from 1943 where the male character is the one the morning after a potential one-night stand wanting to be reassured that it meant something.
--SO TRUE. And a lovely detail. And reminds me of this tweet.
That entire thread is very good, but the part about the roomba is really true.