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Monkeyface, I've been broke all my life
I went to Dr. Fiveash's funeral service yesterday. It was held at the Greek Orthodox church at the bottom of the street I grew up on. I hadn't realized he was actually baptized in the tradition, although I had known that one set of his grandparents were Greek immigrants; he'd told the story once about how they were married from two feuding families in Crete and then sent to America so that the next generation couldn't even think about getting involved in the feud. I remember him saying, and hope I am remembering correctly, that their fortunes were saved by the paint-peeling local liquor they knew how to make during Prohibition. It was a musical service, mostly ritual: the cantor sang in Greek, the priest echoed him in English translation. He spoke a little about Dr. Fiveash's life, although the eulogies are being saved mostly for the memorial service. It was not offensive. Everyone in attendance walked by the coffin on their way out, saying farewell. And then there was potluck in the church basement, which I hadn't been expecting. I met one of my former social studies teachers, who talked to me about living in Somerville and backpacking across Europe to Kathmandu, a friend-of-dearest-friend who is now in science education, the father of the kid who'd sat next to me in Latin and mythology, who recognized me from the two lines I'd spoken in a short movie his son filmed one summer. (The one I remember was an exasperated "Oh, Grendel." I was playing Lamia.) I think it was a good funeral, as these things go. It was sad. Everyone who said something, thank you.
After dinner, I went to see Hitchcock's Suspicion (1941) at the HFA. It's one of his lesser pictures, but I have always liked it. Most of the literature surrounding the film involves Hitchcock's dissatisfaction with it, especially the ending which he always complained the studio had hijacked after the story became a glamorous A-list property with Cary Grant and an expensively borrowed Joan Fontaine rather than just another neat little B-picture for RKO. If that's true, it's the rare case where I'm perfectly glad the director was thwarted, because the thing I love most about Suspicion as it exists is the ambiguity of its title: the tension beween the places where Fontaine's Lina is quite right to be suspicious of the irresistible, irresponsible man she married on a mix of chemistry and defiant whim and the places where everything they don't know about each other suggests, to the sheltered, bookish Lina, possibilities perhaps even more damning than either of them deserves. Johnnie Aysgarth is a charming wastrel, a sponger, a gambler, a penniless playboy whose opening flirtations on the train include him borrowing enough change off Lina to make up the difference between his third-class ticket and her first-class compartment where he'd much rather stay. It's their relationship in microcosm and he makes no bones about it. "I'm honest with you because I think it's the best way to get results." What does it mean, then, when he stops being honest with her? What results is he looking for now? What better way has he found? The casting plays beautifully with this uncertainty: on the one hand, it's Cary Grant. He might be a womanizer, he might be a crook, but he wouldn't be a murderer, too, would he? On the other, it's Hitchcock. Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo (1958), remember? Without any outside information to tip off whether we're watching a calculating Bluebeard or a floundering ne'er-do-well, we're left as anxious as Lina, wanting desperately to believe she didn't make a mistake with Johnnie, not wanting to be so lured by the dream of a happy ending that we miss some crucial, fatal detail. The ending does have its hiccups for me, but they don't have to do with which side of the question the script comes down on. And I am reminded every time I watch this movie that I've seen Joan Fontaine in almost nothing: The Women (1939), Rebecca (1940). Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (1948) has such a good pulpy title, I'm really sorry I missed it this summer at the HFA.
I am going tonight with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
derspatchel to see Twelfth Night at Theatre@First. While I'm thinking about Shakespeare, somebody cast Tom Hiddleston in Much Ado About Nothing, all right?
After dinner, I went to see Hitchcock's Suspicion (1941) at the HFA. It's one of his lesser pictures, but I have always liked it. Most of the literature surrounding the film involves Hitchcock's dissatisfaction with it, especially the ending which he always complained the studio had hijacked after the story became a glamorous A-list property with Cary Grant and an expensively borrowed Joan Fontaine rather than just another neat little B-picture for RKO. If that's true, it's the rare case where I'm perfectly glad the director was thwarted, because the thing I love most about Suspicion as it exists is the ambiguity of its title: the tension beween the places where Fontaine's Lina is quite right to be suspicious of the irresistible, irresponsible man she married on a mix of chemistry and defiant whim and the places where everything they don't know about each other suggests, to the sheltered, bookish Lina, possibilities perhaps even more damning than either of them deserves. Johnnie Aysgarth is a charming wastrel, a sponger, a gambler, a penniless playboy whose opening flirtations on the train include him borrowing enough change off Lina to make up the difference between his third-class ticket and her first-class compartment where he'd much rather stay. It's their relationship in microcosm and he makes no bones about it. "I'm honest with you because I think it's the best way to get results." What does it mean, then, when he stops being honest with her? What results is he looking for now? What better way has he found? The casting plays beautifully with this uncertainty: on the one hand, it's Cary Grant. He might be a womanizer, he might be a crook, but he wouldn't be a murderer, too, would he? On the other, it's Hitchcock. Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo (1958), remember? Without any outside information to tip off whether we're watching a calculating Bluebeard or a floundering ne'er-do-well, we're left as anxious as Lina, wanting desperately to believe she didn't make a mistake with Johnnie, not wanting to be so lured by the dream of a happy ending that we miss some crucial, fatal detail. The ending does have its hiccups for me, but they don't have to do with which side of the question the script comes down on. And I am reminded every time I watch this movie that I've seen Joan Fontaine in almost nothing: The Women (1939), Rebecca (1940). Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (1948) has such a good pulpy title, I'm really sorry I missed it this summer at the HFA.
I am going tonight with
derspatchel to see Twelfth Night at Theatre@First. While I'm thinking about Shakespeare, somebody cast Tom Hiddleston in Much Ado About Nothing, all right?
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You're welcome! It should be easy to find; I hope you enjoy it.
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I can't remember if I saw it first on TCM or if it's one of the movies my mother sat me down and showed me, but I have always liked it, and I don't think it would work at all if it had played out the way Hitchcock originally (said he) scripted it.
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I like the idea of your Latin teacher's grandparents making corrosive liquor during prohibition.
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It has problems, but I don't think they're the one Hitchcock thought. Let me know what you think!
I like the idea of your Latin teacher's grandparents making corrosive liquor during prohibition.
I hope I have not given them someone else's story. I have a clear memory of standing next to the bookcase in his classroom while he was telling it.
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Yes. (And I like that it was something as simple as a lightbulb in a glass of actual milk—the first time I saw the movie, I wondered if it was some kind of black-light effect.) It's not so luminous that it looks artificial, but it makes the milk the center of the picture, more attention-attracting than it should be, an ordinary, sweet bedtime gesture charged suddenly with malign significance. Johnnie is wearing a dark suit; his face is in shadow. The camera tracks on the glass and its contents, just the same way Lina is obsessing about them. It looks radioactive. It's a very short scene and very effective.
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Well, at least he wouldn't be evil enough to murder Nigel Bruce. It's not like he's Moriarty, after all.
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Points.
Hell of an alt-historical fancasting, though.
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Oh, brilliant—I had no idea it was going to be broadcast!
And it's even showing at the Coolidge!
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I'm glad of this.
I hope Twelfth Night has been everything you'd wish it to be.
While I'm thinking about Shakespeare, somebody cast Tom Hiddleston in Much Ado About Nothing, all right?
Having read the interview you linked, I'd very much like to see this as well.
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It was fun; I did not consider it a landmark production; it was good for us to have gone. I've been trying to decide whether to write about it or not.
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I'm glad to hear it was a good funeral, and that you were able to connect so many people at the potluck. Life is sometimes fortuitous that way, particularly, I find, around funerals.
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I'm so glad you saw the show, but I'm very sorry we missed you! I got your e-mail, but it was a disorganized week.
Please write about One Man, Two Guvnors.