What is the link between the films, An Affair to remember, The Road from Coorain, and the Kids are All Right, with the announcement of the engagement to marriage of the second heir to the British Monarchy and commoner Kate Middleton?
An Affair to Remember was first presented in cinema theatres in 1957 with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr in the leading roles and is regarded as one of the most romantic. Cary Grant plays an international playboy with an undeveloped ability for visual painting in oils who meets, Deborah Kerr, a night club singer on a transatlantic sea voyage. As Cary Grant played his established role as Cary Grant the name of the character (Nickie Ferrante) is irrelevant. Deborah Kerr as a night club singer, Terry McKay, is more difficult to sustain. They are both engaged to others, but their friendship becomes one of love after Terry joins Nickie on a stop over visit to his grandmother at her villa somewhere in the Mediterranean. She promises to send her white shawl to Terry as a form of blessing for the relationship.
In the tradition of the era of Brief Encounter, when even married couples always wore pyjamas and used twin beds on film, they decide not to meet for six months in order to test their real feelings and get their affairs in general in order. The chosen meeting place is the viewing platform at the top of the Empire State building. Both end their respective relationships and work hard to prepare for the meeting which dominates their lives from the moment of parting.
Grant arrives ahead of time and stays for the rest of the day until nightfall and closing time approaches. He becomes very bitter about the non appearance and goes to see his grandmother only to find that she has died, but left the shawl for Kerr in the Will.
Kerr had been so excited about he meeting that looking up to the top of the building she had taken her eyes of the roadway, was knocked down, was unconscious and therefore unable to arrange for someone to advise Grant, and then unwilling to contact him when she found she had become chair bound although the condition was thought to be as much psychological as permanently physical. She leaves her performance career and is found occupation as a music teacher which provides opportunity to introduce singing children into the story.
The two do not meet until attending a ballet performance when they are both with their original partners. This sparks Grant to locate Kerr just before Christmas, in theory to hand over the shawl from his grandmother, but more so to express his anger and disappointment at her failure to keep the appointment. He mentions that he has used the shawl in a painting of her which he gave way to someone who asked about it at the gallery where it was being exhibited with other creations during the agreed six months before the planned meeting, During the visit Kerr remains on the settee where she has been placed beforehand and Grant realises that the woman who bought the painting had been in a wheel chair and goes into the bedroom on a hunch and finds the picture hanging there. The two are reunited in Hollywood happy ending tradition. The film extols the virtues of constancy. The film reflected how those who wanted to portray the USA and adult relationships in a certain way were able to dominate film productions in the first decade and a half after the ending of World War 2 and when democratic capitalism was the only alternative to the totalitarian Dictatorships of Hitler and then Stalin. It was also the era when despite the role played by women during the World War, the general male approach was to remain the dominant in relationships as well as society.
Jill Ker Conway was born in 1934,that is five years before me, and spent the first 14 years of her life in the Australian outback where her parents operated a huge sheep station of 18000 square acres (73 square kilometres) later expanded to nearly twice this size. Her mother was a strong educated woman, originally a nurse, who struggled to maintain the estate after her husband died trying to find additional water during a seven year period of drought in which he also suffered ill health. After struggling on her own for several years she had to effectively close down the operation while according to the autobiographical based made for TV film, The Road from Cooridge (windy place) as she worked in two jobs so that the children could have educations and need normal lives.
Not having read the autobiographies on which the film is based or had previous knowledge of Jill Ker Conway. I have no means of knowing how far the film follows the actual development of Jill from a child living in isolation with her parents while her two elder brothers were sent away to school, especially the story that her pregnancy was unwanted and that although her mother had taken immediate unsuccessful steps to immediate end, when told that that she should terminate later because her life was being threatened, she had insisted on keeping. It is not made clear why Jill was kept on the estate and participated in the working life of the farm with her father while schooled by her mother and a country governess(the latter not mentioned in the film), but together with the early death of her father, mother and daughter had a difficult relationship through adolescence until graduation from the University of Sydney where she took an honours degree course in History and English.
In part this may have been because of the loss of her husband followed by the accidental death of the eldest brother, and that because of friction with other pupils at the state school, she had been placed a highly regarded and expensive private school. There was ambivalence in their relationship with the mother placing an excessive sense of duty and need to achieve on the daughter, and critical when she went out, got drunk, and especially when she commenced a relationship with a visiting Texan married man investigating the possibilities of mineral wealth. In the film after graduation she obtains a place at Harvard where in fact she went to complete a doctorate and commence an academic career, but rejects the offer of establishing a permanent relationship with the American on the grounds that it would mean leaving his children behind, given her own experience she would not wish to have on her conscience.
In fact in her actual life she first attempted to join the Australian Department of External Affairs (our Foreign Office) but was rejected for being too good looking and too intellectually aggressive so she travelled through Europe with her mother who had become increasingly volatile. It was only at the age of 25 that she moved on her own to the USA and to Harvard and commenced what became a distinguished life teaching first in Toronto 1964-1975 and then becoming President of Smith’s college 1975-1985 and becoming a visiting Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her reputation was established in advancing the position female students, particularly those on state welfare programmes and her published works include A Woman’s Education and Women on Power both in 2001 Modern Feminism 1997, Autobiographies of American Women 1992 1989 with others, and Women Reformers in 18th and 19 centuries America 1982, Women Reformers in American Culture 1870-2930 1972). She was married to a Canadian Professor who died 15 years ago.
The story interested me because of the nature of the relationship with her mother following the death during childhood of her father, her individuality and self reliance as well as driving ambition to express herself and make her mark. At one level she is a very different woman from that portrayed by Deborah Kerr is presented as having an uncomplicated set of values and standards which meant self sacrifice and self denial. Juliet Stevenson gives an excellent performance as the mother.
Both these stories and the films contrast significantly with The Kids are All Right in terms of the presentation of the reality of relationships, in this instance between two lesbian women and their two donored children by the same male. The film concentrates on five characters. The outstanding actress Annette Benning plays Nic, the dominant in the relationship who is a physician and income earner of the family, although as it emerges, she needs to have her partner, Jules, Julianne Moore, subservient and domestic and has placed obstacles, particularly emotional and psychological whenever Jules has attempted to develop a life of her own outside the relationship. Another way in which Nic controls is to insists on openness within the their family and sharing of feelings which is another method of suppression of individuality and establishing conformity with her outlook and wishes.
Although each woman has given birth it is evident that Nic has set the way both children have been raised and regards her partner as the soft one. Joni, the daughter has just turned 18 years and is shortly away to college. She has been smothered and behaves as someone younger than her 16 year old brother as Laser who presses his sister to use her new age authority to seek information on their donor father. Under USA law 18 years old can seek contact although this depends on the willingness of the donor to have contact. She reluctantly agrees and makes direct contact with Paul who is a successful restaurateur who also runs an eco friendly local vegetable and fruit market garden. He is content with his life, dates a member of staff when one of them fancies and rides motorbike. He is at first startled, then curious and then quickly warms to the idea of getting to know his biological children, establishing an immediate relationship with the girl but more frictional with the son, Laser., who is undergoing an identity and sexuality crisis not helped by his aggressive male friend or the overtly sexual girlfriend of his sister which is her way of coping with her sexual insecurity.
Paul also quickly establish rapport with Jules offering her first commercial assignment to design the space at the rear of his property. His arrival on their scene coincides with the relationship becoming routine and stale. The sexual adventure has long since evaporated and there is need of pornography, in this instance a DVD of two butch gay men because they find those of gay women unrealistic. Although Jules still loves her partner and remain gay she enjoys a brief heterosexual interlude with Paul about which she feels increasingly guilty. Realising she is losing her family to the newcomer who she instinctively distrusts as well as resents, she decides that if you cannot beat to join them and suggests they go over for a meal at his house in order to get to know him better. She is disappointed that selecting him when as a college student studying international relations he had dropped out of college soon after deciding to be a doer. However she goes to the opposite extreme on discovering that he is not only a fan of Joni Mitchell, but knows her work intimately and joins in when she sings one of her favourite songs. The admiration is short lives because on visiting the bathroom she realises that her partner has been having sex with Paul and her world is shattered as is that of the two children when the relationship between their parents strains to breaking point. The relationship and the family survive and Paul is told that if he wants a family he should go off and make his own.
This is an excellent film in its portrayal of the realities of long standing marital relationships and relations between parents and their teenage children striking out into adulthood, self reliance and comparative independence. The portrayal of lesbianism, unthinkable in the 1950’s is treated in an imaginative, humorous and realistic way no different from heterosexuality.
The three films reflect changes in social mores since World War 2 and the portrayal in the cinema of adult sexual relationships since my childhood although it should not be forgotten that one of most effective presentations was that of Ingmar Bergman from the 1950’s. With Summer with Monika my introduction. The films have progressively told how things are as opposed to how conventional contemporary society would like them to be. And this brings me to the announcement of the marriage of Prince William, second in line to the British Crown after his father Prince Charles and the daughter of wealthy traders, Kate Middleton.
Already there is speculation that this is the first step to William being crowned the next monarch after the death of his mother or her abdication in his favour, especially if Kate produces a child within the year or two. I say child because of the monarchy is to continue one anticipated change is that the first born will be treated as the next in line regardless of whether it is a boy or girl.
Already the media are beginning to treat Kate as if she is the natural successor to Princess Diana, to show whatever pictures there are for her including when she posed in underwear at a university charity fashion show, and where it is said she first caught the eye of the Prince. The couple have known each other for nine years, their relationship has been on and off and they have lived together for the greater part of recent times. Prince Charles, in expressing his delight, said in effect about time too as they have practiced for long enough.
The contrast with the unstable, volatile and competitive Diana could not be greater. The evidence available is that Kate is loyal, trust worthy, discrete and willing to be the junior partner in the relationship, fitting into what will be expected of her, as a Princess and if she is to become the next Queen. She is closer to the role played by Deborah Kerr than that of real life Professor Ker or Annette Benning. The idea of positive linear progress is not born out by history in which the same mistakes are repeated indicates cyclical swings between thesis and antithesis.
I have previously expressed my reservations about he continuation of the Monarchy in Britain after the death or abdication of Queen Elizabeth II. Oddly enough the monarchy has more of a role as a symbol of continuity and tradition at times of crisis or when the nation is under threat both of which apply at the present time. I have suggested that there will be major problems if the title is inherited by Charles who has never been a favourite with the establishment because of his progressive views. Similarly there is a substantial traditional and general public aversion to Camilla becoming the next Queen. These are unpalatable truths which suggests that a generational jump could make the difference if the monarchy in the UK is to survive. A Royal wedding next spring, followed by a royal birth in 2012, Olympics year could set the scene for the transition once the Prince has completed his present assignment as sea rescue pilot in the Royal Navy based in Wales.
An Affair to Remember was first presented in cinema theatres in 1957 with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr in the leading roles and is regarded as one of the most romantic. Cary Grant plays an international playboy with an undeveloped ability for visual painting in oils who meets, Deborah Kerr, a night club singer on a transatlantic sea voyage. As Cary Grant played his established role as Cary Grant the name of the character (Nickie Ferrante) is irrelevant. Deborah Kerr as a night club singer, Terry McKay, is more difficult to sustain. They are both engaged to others, but their friendship becomes one of love after Terry joins Nickie on a stop over visit to his grandmother at her villa somewhere in the Mediterranean. She promises to send her white shawl to Terry as a form of blessing for the relationship.
In the tradition of the era of Brief Encounter, when even married couples always wore pyjamas and used twin beds on film, they decide not to meet for six months in order to test their real feelings and get their affairs in general in order. The chosen meeting place is the viewing platform at the top of the Empire State building. Both end their respective relationships and work hard to prepare for the meeting which dominates their lives from the moment of parting.
Grant arrives ahead of time and stays for the rest of the day until nightfall and closing time approaches. He becomes very bitter about the non appearance and goes to see his grandmother only to find that she has died, but left the shawl for Kerr in the Will.
Kerr had been so excited about he meeting that looking up to the top of the building she had taken her eyes of the roadway, was knocked down, was unconscious and therefore unable to arrange for someone to advise Grant, and then unwilling to contact him when she found she had become chair bound although the condition was thought to be as much psychological as permanently physical. She leaves her performance career and is found occupation as a music teacher which provides opportunity to introduce singing children into the story.
The two do not meet until attending a ballet performance when they are both with their original partners. This sparks Grant to locate Kerr just before Christmas, in theory to hand over the shawl from his grandmother, but more so to express his anger and disappointment at her failure to keep the appointment. He mentions that he has used the shawl in a painting of her which he gave way to someone who asked about it at the gallery where it was being exhibited with other creations during the agreed six months before the planned meeting, During the visit Kerr remains on the settee where she has been placed beforehand and Grant realises that the woman who bought the painting had been in a wheel chair and goes into the bedroom on a hunch and finds the picture hanging there. The two are reunited in Hollywood happy ending tradition. The film extols the virtues of constancy. The film reflected how those who wanted to portray the USA and adult relationships in a certain way were able to dominate film productions in the first decade and a half after the ending of World War 2 and when democratic capitalism was the only alternative to the totalitarian Dictatorships of Hitler and then Stalin. It was also the era when despite the role played by women during the World War, the general male approach was to remain the dominant in relationships as well as society.
Jill Ker Conway was born in 1934,that is five years before me, and spent the first 14 years of her life in the Australian outback where her parents operated a huge sheep station of 18000 square acres (73 square kilometres) later expanded to nearly twice this size. Her mother was a strong educated woman, originally a nurse, who struggled to maintain the estate after her husband died trying to find additional water during a seven year period of drought in which he also suffered ill health. After struggling on her own for several years she had to effectively close down the operation while according to the autobiographical based made for TV film, The Road from Cooridge (windy place) as she worked in two jobs so that the children could have educations and need normal lives.
Not having read the autobiographies on which the film is based or had previous knowledge of Jill Ker Conway. I have no means of knowing how far the film follows the actual development of Jill from a child living in isolation with her parents while her two elder brothers were sent away to school, especially the story that her pregnancy was unwanted and that although her mother had taken immediate unsuccessful steps to immediate end, when told that that she should terminate later because her life was being threatened, she had insisted on keeping. It is not made clear why Jill was kept on the estate and participated in the working life of the farm with her father while schooled by her mother and a country governess(the latter not mentioned in the film), but together with the early death of her father, mother and daughter had a difficult relationship through adolescence until graduation from the University of Sydney where she took an honours degree course in History and English.
In part this may have been because of the loss of her husband followed by the accidental death of the eldest brother, and that because of friction with other pupils at the state school, she had been placed a highly regarded and expensive private school. There was ambivalence in their relationship with the mother placing an excessive sense of duty and need to achieve on the daughter, and critical when she went out, got drunk, and especially when she commenced a relationship with a visiting Texan married man investigating the possibilities of mineral wealth. In the film after graduation she obtains a place at Harvard where in fact she went to complete a doctorate and commence an academic career, but rejects the offer of establishing a permanent relationship with the American on the grounds that it would mean leaving his children behind, given her own experience she would not wish to have on her conscience.
In fact in her actual life she first attempted to join the Australian Department of External Affairs (our Foreign Office) but was rejected for being too good looking and too intellectually aggressive so she travelled through Europe with her mother who had become increasingly volatile. It was only at the age of 25 that she moved on her own to the USA and to Harvard and commenced what became a distinguished life teaching first in Toronto 1964-1975 and then becoming President of Smith’s college 1975-1985 and becoming a visiting Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her reputation was established in advancing the position female students, particularly those on state welfare programmes and her published works include A Woman’s Education and Women on Power both in 2001 Modern Feminism 1997, Autobiographies of American Women 1992 1989 with others, and Women Reformers in 18th and 19 centuries America 1982, Women Reformers in American Culture 1870-2930 1972). She was married to a Canadian Professor who died 15 years ago.
The story interested me because of the nature of the relationship with her mother following the death during childhood of her father, her individuality and self reliance as well as driving ambition to express herself and make her mark. At one level she is a very different woman from that portrayed by Deborah Kerr is presented as having an uncomplicated set of values and standards which meant self sacrifice and self denial. Juliet Stevenson gives an excellent performance as the mother.
Both these stories and the films contrast significantly with The Kids are All Right in terms of the presentation of the reality of relationships, in this instance between two lesbian women and their two donored children by the same male. The film concentrates on five characters. The outstanding actress Annette Benning plays Nic, the dominant in the relationship who is a physician and income earner of the family, although as it emerges, she needs to have her partner, Jules, Julianne Moore, subservient and domestic and has placed obstacles, particularly emotional and psychological whenever Jules has attempted to develop a life of her own outside the relationship. Another way in which Nic controls is to insists on openness within the their family and sharing of feelings which is another method of suppression of individuality and establishing conformity with her outlook and wishes.
Although each woman has given birth it is evident that Nic has set the way both children have been raised and regards her partner as the soft one. Joni, the daughter has just turned 18 years and is shortly away to college. She has been smothered and behaves as someone younger than her 16 year old brother as Laser who presses his sister to use her new age authority to seek information on their donor father. Under USA law 18 years old can seek contact although this depends on the willingness of the donor to have contact. She reluctantly agrees and makes direct contact with Paul who is a successful restaurateur who also runs an eco friendly local vegetable and fruit market garden. He is content with his life, dates a member of staff when one of them fancies and rides motorbike. He is at first startled, then curious and then quickly warms to the idea of getting to know his biological children, establishing an immediate relationship with the girl but more frictional with the son, Laser., who is undergoing an identity and sexuality crisis not helped by his aggressive male friend or the overtly sexual girlfriend of his sister which is her way of coping with her sexual insecurity.
Paul also quickly establish rapport with Jules offering her first commercial assignment to design the space at the rear of his property. His arrival on their scene coincides with the relationship becoming routine and stale. The sexual adventure has long since evaporated and there is need of pornography, in this instance a DVD of two butch gay men because they find those of gay women unrealistic. Although Jules still loves her partner and remain gay she enjoys a brief heterosexual interlude with Paul about which she feels increasingly guilty. Realising she is losing her family to the newcomer who she instinctively distrusts as well as resents, she decides that if you cannot beat to join them and suggests they go over for a meal at his house in order to get to know him better. She is disappointed that selecting him when as a college student studying international relations he had dropped out of college soon after deciding to be a doer. However she goes to the opposite extreme on discovering that he is not only a fan of Joni Mitchell, but knows her work intimately and joins in when she sings one of her favourite songs. The admiration is short lives because on visiting the bathroom she realises that her partner has been having sex with Paul and her world is shattered as is that of the two children when the relationship between their parents strains to breaking point. The relationship and the family survive and Paul is told that if he wants a family he should go off and make his own.
This is an excellent film in its portrayal of the realities of long standing marital relationships and relations between parents and their teenage children striking out into adulthood, self reliance and comparative independence. The portrayal of lesbianism, unthinkable in the 1950’s is treated in an imaginative, humorous and realistic way no different from heterosexuality.
The three films reflect changes in social mores since World War 2 and the portrayal in the cinema of adult sexual relationships since my childhood although it should not be forgotten that one of most effective presentations was that of Ingmar Bergman from the 1950’s. With Summer with Monika my introduction. The films have progressively told how things are as opposed to how conventional contemporary society would like them to be. And this brings me to the announcement of the marriage of Prince William, second in line to the British Crown after his father Prince Charles and the daughter of wealthy traders, Kate Middleton.
Already there is speculation that this is the first step to William being crowned the next monarch after the death of his mother or her abdication in his favour, especially if Kate produces a child within the year or two. I say child because of the monarchy is to continue one anticipated change is that the first born will be treated as the next in line regardless of whether it is a boy or girl.
Already the media are beginning to treat Kate as if she is the natural successor to Princess Diana, to show whatever pictures there are for her including when she posed in underwear at a university charity fashion show, and where it is said she first caught the eye of the Prince. The couple have known each other for nine years, their relationship has been on and off and they have lived together for the greater part of recent times. Prince Charles, in expressing his delight, said in effect about time too as they have practiced for long enough.
The contrast with the unstable, volatile and competitive Diana could not be greater. The evidence available is that Kate is loyal, trust worthy, discrete and willing to be the junior partner in the relationship, fitting into what will be expected of her, as a Princess and if she is to become the next Queen. She is closer to the role played by Deborah Kerr than that of real life Professor Ker or Annette Benning. The idea of positive linear progress is not born out by history in which the same mistakes are repeated indicates cyclical swings between thesis and antithesis.
I have previously expressed my reservations about he continuation of the Monarchy in Britain after the death or abdication of Queen Elizabeth II. Oddly enough the monarchy has more of a role as a symbol of continuity and tradition at times of crisis or when the nation is under threat both of which apply at the present time. I have suggested that there will be major problems if the title is inherited by Charles who has never been a favourite with the establishment because of his progressive views. Similarly there is a substantial traditional and general public aversion to Camilla becoming the next Queen. These are unpalatable truths which suggests that a generational jump could make the difference if the monarchy in the UK is to survive. A Royal wedding next spring, followed by a royal birth in 2012, Olympics year could set the scene for the transition once the Prince has completed his present assignment as sea rescue pilot in the Royal Navy based in Wales.
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