I really wanted to rewatch A Letter for Evie (1946) tonight, but it is annoyingly not included in the bundle of films directed by Jules Dassin currently on FilmStruck. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
asakiyume was talking about the interplay of character and actor and there's a scene in it that speaks directly to this question.
It's the moment when Hume Cronyn faces himself in the mirror. He's playing Johnny McPherson, the Cyrano of this wartime retelling: all sharp-faced, wire-voiced five foot six of introverted tree surgeon whose epistolary affair with sweet, smart Evie O'Connor (Marsha Hunt) would be the nicest thing that ever happened to a nerdy serviceman if he hadn't gotten himself into the predicament of conducting it in the name of his bunkmate Edgar "Wolf" Larson (John Carroll), all rake-mustached, Louisiana-drawling six foot three of shameless ladykiller. They've been bonding like anything over books and movies. Her latest letter encloses a picture of herself. Johnny's struck to the heart. It's not a glamour shot, she's not a pin-up, but she's a nice-looking girl: a warm, direct smile, playful dark brows. It's the cherry on the top of finding a woman who loves the Brontës as much as he does. He lays the picture down tenderly on his pillow to watch him while he reads. And then he gets to the postscript—requesting a picture of himself in return—and the expression that fades across his face is a resigned kind of cynicism even more than dismay. He didn't lie to her about his civilian profession, but he encouraged the misapprehension that he wore a size 16½ shirt and strode undeterred through the great northern blizzards instead of squirrel-shinning up his father's lumber stock in Connecticut. Resolutely, he opens his locker door to study his chances.
He looks like Hume Cronyn. He looks someone who gets cast as weasels, shysters, or weaklings. His profile leads with its nose and the fact that he's got a chin is the most you can say for it. Skin all right. Hair receding a bit. He touches his ears uneasily; they stick out. His eyes are close-set; he widens them hopefully. In three-quarter profile, his cheekbones show to their best advantage and he has a genuinely nice smile, enlivening all the narrow, rather suspicious lines of his face—then he attempts to stretch it into the flirtatious grin of a devil-may-care charmer and the whole facade falls in. His reflection shakes its head at him: it's got his number. He closes the locker door.
It's a very short scene, maybe a minute tops, but it got my attention the last time I watched the movie and has stayed with me since because it's not at all the usual Hollywood de-glamming: it will not work if the actor is really, conventionally handsome. Cronyn's not a grotesque, but he's not a leading man. He's a character actor, he looks and sounds like one; the audience can sympathize with Johnny and root for him and still understand the disappointment he imagines—projects—Evie will feel, perceiving the pint-sized reality instead of the heroic dream. You couldn't pull off this effect with Jimmy Stewart or Gregory Peck. I am skeptical that you could pull off the plot. The audience needs to believe in Johnny's total absence of romantic self-confidence that led to the imposture in the first place, otherwise it's just a contrivance that he didn't answer Evie's first letter as himself. Cast an actor who can evaluate himself so uncomfortably in the mirror and half the script's work is done. From a point in history when male stars can be slobs but their love interests still need to play as hot in Peoria, I also appreciate that while Marsha Hunt is closer to the silver screen norm than Hume Cronyn, she's not like Rita Hayworth or Veronica Lake. No one is going to drive up onto the sidewalk from passing her on the street. Just if you talk to her for five minutes, you'll never look past her at a party again.
So that's one of the reasons I like this movie, in addition to the fact that it earns its happy ending and confronts its Cyrano with his deception and allows its Roxane to get mad at him first; it's an intelligent fix-it. Nobody takes their glasses off, nobody shakes their hair out, nobody transforms. People come with the faces they come with. Whatever that means is secondary to the way they write about Wuthering Heights, and whether they'll say in their own voice that they love you. This reflection brought to you by my literary backers at Patreon.
asakiyume was talking about the interplay of character and actor and there's a scene in it that speaks directly to this question.It's the moment when Hume Cronyn faces himself in the mirror. He's playing Johnny McPherson, the Cyrano of this wartime retelling: all sharp-faced, wire-voiced five foot six of introverted tree surgeon whose epistolary affair with sweet, smart Evie O'Connor (Marsha Hunt) would be the nicest thing that ever happened to a nerdy serviceman if he hadn't gotten himself into the predicament of conducting it in the name of his bunkmate Edgar "Wolf" Larson (John Carroll), all rake-mustached, Louisiana-drawling six foot three of shameless ladykiller. They've been bonding like anything over books and movies. Her latest letter encloses a picture of herself. Johnny's struck to the heart. It's not a glamour shot, she's not a pin-up, but she's a nice-looking girl: a warm, direct smile, playful dark brows. It's the cherry on the top of finding a woman who loves the Brontës as much as he does. He lays the picture down tenderly on his pillow to watch him while he reads. And then he gets to the postscript—requesting a picture of himself in return—and the expression that fades across his face is a resigned kind of cynicism even more than dismay. He didn't lie to her about his civilian profession, but he encouraged the misapprehension that he wore a size 16½ shirt and strode undeterred through the great northern blizzards instead of squirrel-shinning up his father's lumber stock in Connecticut. Resolutely, he opens his locker door to study his chances.
He looks like Hume Cronyn. He looks someone who gets cast as weasels, shysters, or weaklings. His profile leads with its nose and the fact that he's got a chin is the most you can say for it. Skin all right. Hair receding a bit. He touches his ears uneasily; they stick out. His eyes are close-set; he widens them hopefully. In three-quarter profile, his cheekbones show to their best advantage and he has a genuinely nice smile, enlivening all the narrow, rather suspicious lines of his face—then he attempts to stretch it into the flirtatious grin of a devil-may-care charmer and the whole facade falls in. His reflection shakes its head at him: it's got his number. He closes the locker door.
It's a very short scene, maybe a minute tops, but it got my attention the last time I watched the movie and has stayed with me since because it's not at all the usual Hollywood de-glamming: it will not work if the actor is really, conventionally handsome. Cronyn's not a grotesque, but he's not a leading man. He's a character actor, he looks and sounds like one; the audience can sympathize with Johnny and root for him and still understand the disappointment he imagines—projects—Evie will feel, perceiving the pint-sized reality instead of the heroic dream. You couldn't pull off this effect with Jimmy Stewart or Gregory Peck. I am skeptical that you could pull off the plot. The audience needs to believe in Johnny's total absence of romantic self-confidence that led to the imposture in the first place, otherwise it's just a contrivance that he didn't answer Evie's first letter as himself. Cast an actor who can evaluate himself so uncomfortably in the mirror and half the script's work is done. From a point in history when male stars can be slobs but their love interests still need to play as hot in Peoria, I also appreciate that while Marsha Hunt is closer to the silver screen norm than Hume Cronyn, she's not like Rita Hayworth or Veronica Lake. No one is going to drive up onto the sidewalk from passing her on the street. Just if you talk to her for five minutes, you'll never look past her at a party again.
So that's one of the reasons I like this movie, in addition to the fact that it earns its happy ending and confronts its Cyrano with his deception and allows its Roxane to get mad at him first; it's an intelligent fix-it. Nobody takes their glasses off, nobody shakes their hair out, nobody transforms. People come with the faces they come with. Whatever that means is secondary to the way they write about Wuthering Heights, and whether they'll say in their own voice that they love you. This reflection brought to you by my literary backers at Patreon.
