but what they think is interesting about it is only the surface stuff--"Hey, guys, look! A woman doing stuff like a man! And screwing people over!"
And focusing on the surface just makes everything more shallow. The novel still has only the two main female characters, but they are much less ideologically opposed to one another than their screen counterparts. There's a great exchange between Rose and Dave near the beginning of the book—that doesn't make it into the equivalent conversation in the film—where she talks about liking to have male friends; she grew up with seven brothers, she's used to having men around the house, she doesn't like the expectation that she should only talk to women about fashions and hats. She's not in love with Dave when the novel begins. She let him crash in her front room for a week because he was in a bad way when Bill brought him home and he's grateful for the understanding and the fact that she never once pressed him for his reasons for "drinking the Special dry" and when he started to sober up she was still matter-of-fact about it; her liking doesn't turn to love until he trusts her unexpectedly with the reasons and then she doesn't recognize the change herself until some time has gone by. It doesn't trouble her, just as she was never troubled by knowing that she wouldn't settle down with Bill (and he knew it, too: "She can take me right off the Christmas tree any time, but she knows I'm a joker. Nobody fools Rose much"). The film's Rose is still perceptive, but much more simplistically feminine. She remains the financially independent dressmaker, but because she's seen only once out of doors, she is associated strongly with domestic space; she never rides out like her book counterpart wearing "waist overalls, a man's faded blue shirt, and an age-softened buckskin vest that matched the color of her Stetson." I'd like to have seen that. Instead we get Connie dressed androgynously and it is supposed to be a warning sign.
spatch was really struck by the fact that the adaptation actually added sex to the plot and I have to admit he's right: that's not the way the Production Code usually goes. But again it's a simplification—Bill in the novel has a moment of belated recognition that he did a really stupid thing helping Connie with her plan, but it has nothing to do with blaming her for tempting him. He wanted to get back at Frank Ivey and she offered the opportunity and he didn't think for a second about the potential blowback, he just went for it as impulsively as everything else in his life and only now is it slinking through his mind that he wasn't helping Dave by going behind his back—circumventing his friend and foreman's authority—and in the long run it didn't do Connie any favors, either. She didn't turn his head by kissing him. She didn't kiss him at all. This one's just on him. Enough of the novel's fossil traces remain in the film that it is difficult, as I mentioned, to read Bill as seduced to Connie's cause, but the film tries to make you think so. Maybe that was rewrites and reshoots, I don't know. You could have taken the same actors and made a more faithful movie and even with its ending, I would have enjoyed it significantly more.
Having seen that premise, they then remake the story into something much more conventional in mood, plot details, and overall effect, because they haven't bothered to notice that the thing that **really** made the story interesting went beyond those few eye-catching premise points.
no subject
And focusing on the surface just makes everything more shallow. The novel still has only the two main female characters, but they are much less ideologically opposed to one another than their screen counterparts. There's a great exchange between Rose and Dave near the beginning of the book—that doesn't make it into the equivalent conversation in the film—where she talks about liking to have male friends; she grew up with seven brothers, she's used to having men around the house, she doesn't like the expectation that she should only talk to women about fashions and hats. She's not in love with Dave when the novel begins. She let him crash in her front room for a week because he was in a bad way when Bill brought him home and he's grateful for the understanding and the fact that she never once pressed him for his reasons for "drinking the Special dry" and when he started to sober up she was still matter-of-fact about it; her liking doesn't turn to love until he trusts her unexpectedly with the reasons and then she doesn't recognize the change herself until some time has gone by. It doesn't trouble her, just as she was never troubled by knowing that she wouldn't settle down with Bill (and he knew it, too: "She can take me right off the Christmas tree any time, but she knows I'm a joker. Nobody fools Rose much"). The film's Rose is still perceptive, but much more simplistically feminine. She remains the financially independent dressmaker, but because she's seen only once out of doors, she is associated strongly with domestic space; she never rides out like her book counterpart wearing "waist overalls, a man's faded blue shirt, and an age-softened buckskin vest that matched the color of her Stetson." I'd like to have seen that. Instead we get Connie dressed androgynously and it is supposed to be a warning sign.
Having seen that premise, they then remake the story into something much more conventional in mood, plot details, and overall effect, because they haven't bothered to notice that the thing that **really** made the story interesting went beyond those few eye-catching premise points.
That.