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That's the bathroom. And it's full of fish
So at the end of June I began my introduction to Sam Peckinpah with Ride the High Country (1962) and this month I've continued the project with The Wild Bunch (1969), Straw Dogs (1971), and The Getaway (1972) and I am returning to the Somerville this Wednesday for Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974) because I really want to know what kind of movie belongs to that title, but I am not talking about any of these movies tonight because I don't have the time. I am sleeping very little and I miss the sea so much that I'm reading and listening to maritime things to make myself feel better. Hence Miranda (1948).
I don't know what it was about 1948 that produced two mermaid movies within four months of each other, but you can find them on either side of the Atlantic: Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid in the U.S. and Miranda in the UK. Both feature married men whose fishing vacations entangle them with alluring mermaids and suspicious wives, although my memories of the American film suggest that the similarities end there: Ann Blyth's wordless, childlike Lenore is a figure of fantasy in William Powell's midlife crisis, while Glynis Johns as the eponymous Miranda is quite real, outspoken, and decidedly adult. She is a magnificent siren. None of the men in the story stand a chance. Viewers of various genders may feel likewise.
The premise of the film is straightforward: on a fishing holiday in Cornwall, good-looking doctor Paul Martin (Griffith Jones) finds himself the catch instead, pulled overboard into the cave of a mermaid who agrees to let him return to London only if he brings her with him. He disguises her as a wealthy young invalid and installs her in his apartment, explaining away the eccentricities of her behavior and her diet with the necessities of an invented rest cure, but his wife Clare (Googie Withers) is no fool; she doesn't make the leap from metaphorical to literal siren at once, but eventually somebody's going to notice that the ornamental fish are disappearing from the aquarium in the parlor while every heterosexual male within earshot of Miranda falls all over himself to attract her attention. The casual mix of folklore and light comedy is one of the film's delights. We learn quite early on that Miranda's last name is Trewella; half a movie later, it's offhandedly confirmed that her great-grandmother was the Mermaid of Zennor. She's always cool to the touch. She sleeps in a cold salted bath with seaweed for comfort and shells she brought from her native waters. Taken to the zoo for the day, she steals a fish meant for the seal exhibit—the last silvery edge of tail disappearing into Miranda's mouth is a worthy forerunner of Madison biting through the back of the lobster in Splash (1984)—and exchanges a volley of barky insults with the offended pinniped; she delights a cockle vendor by standing the crowd a round of bivalves and then singlehandedly cleaning him out, leaving nothing but a litter of shells. The tail effects are sparing but effective. Out of the water, her fins are always restlessly flickering, curling with contentment in a curious catlike motion; swimming, she has the dolphin-backed curve of a dive down cold; underwater, she moves with an easy sleek ripple and the floating clouds of her hair hide the details of her nudity, not the fact of it. Equally refreshing is her frank nonhumanness, which is not the same thing as naïveté. In her sea-cave in Cornwall, she reads water-wrinkled issues of Vogue and theater magazines that she's stolen from boats and beaches; her trip to London is full of wonders, but she wants more than anything to see an opera at Covent Garden, where the people might sing almost as well as mermaids. She doesn't have the longing of Andersen's mermaid for the land, but she plans to enjoy it while she has the chance.
And otherwise the film behaves very much like a bedroom farce where three men are interested in the same woman and three women have their suspicions without being able to prove anything and the woman at the center of the controversy is cheerfully and unconcernedly sincere in her desire for all three of her lovers, because why shouldn't she be? Paul was the first man she caught and kept, but lovestruck chauffeur Charles (David Tomlinson) blushes so endearingly when Miranda purrs over the size of his ears, while bohemian artist Nigel (John McCallum) irresistibly insists on painting her. The question is which one she'll choose to give her what she wants: a child fathered by the land. True to the folklore of merrows, Miranda finds sea-men unappealing and is set on netting a more handsome mate. Not that any of them imagine that she wants them for so practical and disposable a purpose, of course. Like a spell, she asks them to repeat her name and they fall into her sea-cold arms, murmuring, Miranda, Miranda; they preen like bowerbirds for the right to carry her around in their arms instead of pushing her properly in her bath-chair; each of them fancies himself the only man remarkable enough to attract the attention of such an enchanting creature as Miss Trewella. I appreciate, though, that none of her enchantment is coyness or conventional flirtation; she doesn't need it. Humans are the ones who tangle themselves up with morality and modesty and awkward, indirect, counterproductive courting behaviors. Miranda's approaches are direct and bracing as the slap of a wave and Johns' rough cat's tongue of a voice makes her immediately persuasive without falling back on coquetry. I know less about the British Board of Film Censors than about the Motion Picture Production Code, but I'm fairly certainly the film's ending wouldn't have passed in this country. Good for Miranda.
Having imprinted on Splash as a very young child, I am always looking for good mermaid movies; this is one. Peter Blackmore adapted the script from his own stage play and I keep meaning to track the original down and read it. (He also authored a much later sequel called Mad About Men (1954), but all signs point to it not being as good, so I've decided I don't need to see it.) I should mention before I try to pass out for the night that if you have fond memories of David Lean's Blithe Spirit (1945), the redoubtable Margaret Rutherford very nearly co-stars here as Nurse Carey, who is overjoyed to discover that her new charge is a real mermaid; she and Miranda bond instantly and I would have cheerfully watched the two of them take in the sights of London from a sea-slanted perspective for another hour. Oh, and if you like fish, don't watch this movie without some on hand. At least, 80 minutes of a character who eats nothing but raw oysters and fish sandwiches and seaweed made me want sushi like nothing on earth. This seaside excursion sponsored by my sympathetic backers at Patreon.
I don't know what it was about 1948 that produced two mermaid movies within four months of each other, but you can find them on either side of the Atlantic: Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid in the U.S. and Miranda in the UK. Both feature married men whose fishing vacations entangle them with alluring mermaids and suspicious wives, although my memories of the American film suggest that the similarities end there: Ann Blyth's wordless, childlike Lenore is a figure of fantasy in William Powell's midlife crisis, while Glynis Johns as the eponymous Miranda is quite real, outspoken, and decidedly adult. She is a magnificent siren. None of the men in the story stand a chance. Viewers of various genders may feel likewise.
The premise of the film is straightforward: on a fishing holiday in Cornwall, good-looking doctor Paul Martin (Griffith Jones) finds himself the catch instead, pulled overboard into the cave of a mermaid who agrees to let him return to London only if he brings her with him. He disguises her as a wealthy young invalid and installs her in his apartment, explaining away the eccentricities of her behavior and her diet with the necessities of an invented rest cure, but his wife Clare (Googie Withers) is no fool; she doesn't make the leap from metaphorical to literal siren at once, but eventually somebody's going to notice that the ornamental fish are disappearing from the aquarium in the parlor while every heterosexual male within earshot of Miranda falls all over himself to attract her attention. The casual mix of folklore and light comedy is one of the film's delights. We learn quite early on that Miranda's last name is Trewella; half a movie later, it's offhandedly confirmed that her great-grandmother was the Mermaid of Zennor. She's always cool to the touch. She sleeps in a cold salted bath with seaweed for comfort and shells she brought from her native waters. Taken to the zoo for the day, she steals a fish meant for the seal exhibit—the last silvery edge of tail disappearing into Miranda's mouth is a worthy forerunner of Madison biting through the back of the lobster in Splash (1984)—and exchanges a volley of barky insults with the offended pinniped; she delights a cockle vendor by standing the crowd a round of bivalves and then singlehandedly cleaning him out, leaving nothing but a litter of shells. The tail effects are sparing but effective. Out of the water, her fins are always restlessly flickering, curling with contentment in a curious catlike motion; swimming, she has the dolphin-backed curve of a dive down cold; underwater, she moves with an easy sleek ripple and the floating clouds of her hair hide the details of her nudity, not the fact of it. Equally refreshing is her frank nonhumanness, which is not the same thing as naïveté. In her sea-cave in Cornwall, she reads water-wrinkled issues of Vogue and theater magazines that she's stolen from boats and beaches; her trip to London is full of wonders, but she wants more than anything to see an opera at Covent Garden, where the people might sing almost as well as mermaids. She doesn't have the longing of Andersen's mermaid for the land, but she plans to enjoy it while she has the chance.
And otherwise the film behaves very much like a bedroom farce where three men are interested in the same woman and three women have their suspicions without being able to prove anything and the woman at the center of the controversy is cheerfully and unconcernedly sincere in her desire for all three of her lovers, because why shouldn't she be? Paul was the first man she caught and kept, but lovestruck chauffeur Charles (David Tomlinson) blushes so endearingly when Miranda purrs over the size of his ears, while bohemian artist Nigel (John McCallum) irresistibly insists on painting her. The question is which one she'll choose to give her what she wants: a child fathered by the land. True to the folklore of merrows, Miranda finds sea-men unappealing and is set on netting a more handsome mate. Not that any of them imagine that she wants them for so practical and disposable a purpose, of course. Like a spell, she asks them to repeat her name and they fall into her sea-cold arms, murmuring, Miranda, Miranda; they preen like bowerbirds for the right to carry her around in their arms instead of pushing her properly in her bath-chair; each of them fancies himself the only man remarkable enough to attract the attention of such an enchanting creature as Miss Trewella. I appreciate, though, that none of her enchantment is coyness or conventional flirtation; she doesn't need it. Humans are the ones who tangle themselves up with morality and modesty and awkward, indirect, counterproductive courting behaviors. Miranda's approaches are direct and bracing as the slap of a wave and Johns' rough cat's tongue of a voice makes her immediately persuasive without falling back on coquetry. I know less about the British Board of Film Censors than about the Motion Picture Production Code, but I'm fairly certainly the film's ending wouldn't have passed in this country. Good for Miranda.
Having imprinted on Splash as a very young child, I am always looking for good mermaid movies; this is one. Peter Blackmore adapted the script from his own stage play and I keep meaning to track the original down and read it. (He also authored a much later sequel called Mad About Men (1954), but all signs point to it not being as good, so I've decided I don't need to see it.) I should mention before I try to pass out for the night that if you have fond memories of David Lean's Blithe Spirit (1945), the redoubtable Margaret Rutherford very nearly co-stars here as Nurse Carey, who is overjoyed to discover that her new charge is a real mermaid; she and Miranda bond instantly and I would have cheerfully watched the two of them take in the sights of London from a sea-slanted perspective for another hour. Oh, and if you like fish, don't watch this movie without some on hand. At least, 80 minutes of a character who eats nothing but raw oysters and fish sandwiches and seaweed made me want sushi like nothing on earth. This seaside excursion sponsored by my sympathetic backers at Patreon.
no subject
Oh, fantastic. Enjoy!
"butter wouldn't melt, but fish will"
That is an excellent description.