Gosford Park (2001)

A friend told me : “I have seen the film and did not like it. It was glossy and full of famous names and not a good whodunnit”. This demanding film with its overlapping dialogues when important information could easily be missed presented an added challenge to some of our audience with hearing difficulties.  So what I aimed to do at the U3A screening at the Lexi was simply to introduce Altman and his style of directing and genre renewal in the hope that some of the members of the audience would appreciate the film and be tempted to see it again on DVD.

For me the film was a delight. It offered me a group of diverse older women integrated in the general narrative and who reflected the ‘upstairs/downstairs’ aspect of the society of England in the 1930s. In a film where there are no major protagonists but over thirty characters played by great actors the old women are well represented and do not lack psychological depth . I will look at them in turn and point out the elements that form their characterisation.

Lavinia’s maid (Joanna Maude) merges with the other servants in group shots. We do get glimpses of her mending clothes or listening with delight to Ivor Novello. But Lewis (Meg Wynn Owen- 62), the maid of the lady of the house, Sylvia, conveys  in the few seconds of screen time the image of the long-suffering older woman.  When she is supplanted from her rightful place at the servant’s table she says: “Naturally I am nothing when there are visitors in the house. Never mind I am used to it”. In the scenes where she interacts with Sylvia, her mistress does not look at her once and even rejects her help.  Sylvia divests herself of her false hair and eyelashes at arm’s length.  Lewis is used but not acknowledged.

In  opposition to this relationship between Sylvia and Lewis, Lady Constance the dowager and her novice maid have more interactive exchanges. It is Maggie Smith (67) who plays the role of the eccentric dowager in this film. The titles sequences introduce us to Constance and her maid Mary, characters who exemplify to us the way Altman is going to expose the class structure. Constance is in the shadows of the car but Mary is in full view, getting drenched in the rain and helping her mistress. The dowager in this film is not as rich or powerful as in other films and neither is she irresponsible. Lady Constance is an embodiment of her class. She is disdainful of the lower classes and of foreigners, she despises popular entertainment, the cinema and popular songs. She certainly considers class differences as natural “I have not one snobbish bone in my body”. But although she talks disparagely to the other women about her maid, she exchanges gossip with her in private.  The last lines of dialogue of the film are between Constance and Mary and they show Constance’s basically human attitude. Constance is again in the soon departing car and says in worried tones to Mary: “Do you think if there’s a trial I might have to testify in court? Or you? I can’t think of anything worse. Imagine a person being hanged because or something one said in court.” Mary :” I know. And what purpose could it possibly serve anyway?” This exchange can be interpreted in different ways: Is Constance hinting to Mary not to divulge any information she may have? Mary’s reply echoing Mrs Wilson words (see later)  provides closure for the audience but challenges the detective genre.

The downstairs older women are Mrs. Wilson, the housekeeper,  and Mrs Croft, the cook, played respectively by Helen Mirren (56) and Eileen Atkins (67).  While Sir William welcomes  his guests on the porch, Mrs Wilson directs the arrival of maids, footmen and valets in the servants hall. The operation is nearly military in its execution and Mirren   commands the army of servants.  Her looks are stern and haughty. She  behaves throughout in this efficient authoritative manner. (Sylvia:   “Thank you Mrs. Wilson, always ten steps ahead, as usual”).   She is unflappable and when she first suspects on his arrival, that Stockbridge’s valet, Parks, might be her abandoned son, her slight discomfort is hardly noticeable on first viewing.  The clues that subsequently accumulate in the brief scenes between her and Parks as to the nature of their link are subtle. She even keeps her composure when Mary confronts her with her knowledge that she was the murderer.  She explains that she knew that Parks intended to kill his father and poisoned him so that her son would not be convicted, having stabbed a dead body. “Are you going to tell him” says Mary ” What purpose would it serve? she replies.    As the perfect servant she anticipates other people’s needs and has no life of her own. Mirren delivers the lines with a passion that has deep emotional impact.  Her breakdown in tears lying on her bed (such a familiar film scene of women’s despair) is all the more heartrending.

The conflict between Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. Croft is also resolved in these emotional scenes. The antagonism between the two women is mentioned in gossip both upstairs and downstairs. George: “They hate each other”.  Constance: “Why are they such enemies?”  It is expressed by brushes over territory and status. In the kitchen Mrs. Croft intervenes between Henry and Mrs Wilson : “I am dealing with this.” Mrs. Wilson  ” Now, now, we don’t want to be thought unsophisticated, do we?”,  ”Excuse me, but Dorothy’s under my jurisdiction as well, you know. And I say she can listen to a spot of music if she likes”. It is late in the film that it is revealed that they are sisters. The siblings resentments have two strands. On the one hand Mrs Croft cannot forgive her sister for giving her illegitimate  child for adoption. She kept hers and lost her job but the child died.   On the other hand  Mrs. Wilson climbed the servants social ladder and was responsible for providing her sister with the cook post in McCordle household. While Mrs Wilson never expresses her feelings, Mrs. Croft does not hesitate to voice her contempt for Sir William  ”a hard-hearted randy old sod”, “he got what he deserved”. The emotional breakdown of Mrs. Wilson following admission of her guilt of murder and the departure of her son permits her sister to comfort and forgive her.

It is such a relief and surprise for me to find that I did not, in this piece, talk about the appearance of the old women but considered their social and psychological circumstances. Old women in major as well as minor roles are diverse. They reflect the society portrayed and fulfill a role in it. Constance is not the usual caricature.  Both Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. Croft keep their titles throughout. Both have a teaching role with the younger women. Both are proud and dignified. The casting, direction, characterisation and dialogue, the whole mise-en-scene stress  who they are rather than how they look.

Once again I feel I do not make justice to a great film. But my role here is simply to highlight the images of old women.

Who is Mrs Henderson?

The U3A December screening at the Lexi  was “Mrs. Henderson Presents”.

It might be churlish to criticise a film that seems to be so ‘feel good’  and in which the actors had such fun performing. A film where the age of an old woman (“nearly 70″) is irrelevant to the story.  Yet I must –  if only to understand certain features of film reception and why I feel so uncomfortable about Mrs. Henderson Presents.

When I showed the film in our Women in Film Group a few years ago, we had noted that Mrs. Henderson fitted in the category of ‘transgressive, rich, difficult, dowager’ film  stereotype.  We noted how her aged face with lines and folds and pouch under the eyes was  framed by stylish  hairdos, hats,  tiaras, jewels and silk and satins and did not detract from Judi Dench’s  expressive beauty and sprakling eyes. Her un made up face is often filmed in close up and specially in a protracted shot with young Maureen’s.   Also in the pillow talks with Lady Conway physical ageing is not used in a pejorative way. But Mrs H. as a character was not discussed at length.  I noted at the time that certain scenes and their significance were not recalled after the viewing.   Today the audience perceived the film as ‘feel-good’ and Mrs. Henderson as a charming determined character albeit a bit difficult.   ‘I enjoyed every minute of it’ was one of the comments. ‘ A mixture of fact and fantasy’ was another. A most telling one was ‘when I looked at Mrs. Henderson I saw Judi Dench’ and yet another: “Was Mrs. Henderson pimping?”, “Van Damm is two dimensional”. These comments raise important points. Again I will restrict myself to the representation of the old woman, and how it affects this  mixture of three Hollywood genres:   musical, comedy and melodrama.

The feel-good effect : the critics in their vast majority and specially the American ones were delighted by the film. They nearly all centered around Judi Dench’s performance.  Words like : funny, naive charm, marvelously enjoyable, Hoskins and Dench have terrific chemistry together, it offers a feel-good experience, an absolute delight from start to finish, one of the wittiest comedies to come our way, genial naughtiness, humour and warmth, good clean fun, a goodie goodie film.   There were some dissenting critics and they focused mainly on the lack of structure of the story ‘the film haphazard and uneven structure’, the sentimentality: ‘falseness and sentimentality take over completely when war breaks out’ (Philip French). But Mrs. Henderson’s as a character is  mentioned  in any detail by only one reviewer : ‘She emerges as a grieving woman who has suffered multiple bereavements, a do-gooder motivated by complex reasons.’  (Sukhdev Sandhu in  the Telegraph). Mrs. H’s complex motivations are not explored further in this review although there are scenes in the film that do delve into the darker sides of her character.  These emerge in the drama part of the film as an attempt at deeper characterisation and motivations.

Stephen Frears on the  Freedom to Embellish the Story: “When you make a film about real people it’s always, you know, you’re always more circumscribed in some ways. So it’s better to be able to use your imagination and invent the whole thing. There’s a  bit of each, really, in this case.”  The woman Frears and his scriptwriter created however is unconvincing.  Frears: “Mrs. Henderson is the most appalling right-wing woman, an absolute shocker. But I respect defending the indefensible”. Hoskins: “Mrs. Henderson is three things: she’s charming, cheeky and an absolute cow”.

When I look at Mrs. Henderson I see Judi Dench : In he first two thirds of the film Mrs. H is a ‘feisty’ widow who on the death of her husband  flouts the conventions of her upper class background and behaves outrageously.  Sherman the scriptwriter modelled her interactions with the manager of the theatre, Van Damm, on the Hepburn/Tracy marital rows of the Hollywood comedies. The dialogue is acerbic, funny and provide an entertaining romantic tension.   The exchanges between Mrs. H and Lady Conway also poke fun at the upper classes ”Mrs.H: ‘But I am nearly 70′ – Lady C. : “But you are so very rich, one cancels the other”.  One cannot but be seduced by this determined, brave, beautiful, manipulative widow who can, with a smile and a flash of her sparkling eyes make you forgive her faux pas. The one indefensible incident in this part of the film is Mrs. H. behaviour towards Mrs. Van Damm  - but this is soon forgotten.  One critic said ” However extraordinary an actor, she (Dench) may be, she cannot conceal the obvious fact that she’s having the time of her life here.  Isn’t that delicious”. (Village Voice).

Was Mrs. H. pimping or matchmaking? The viewer has  been led to settle into  a musical comedy mode where Judi Dench is the main seducing protagonist. However the Mrs. H that  Frears offers us in the war episodes  is different. But for some reason Mrs. H less attractive traits are completely ignored by the viewers, be they critics or general audience. This part of the film, Frears  tells us on the DVD,  is inspired by the Hollywood melodramas of the time. Melodramas do deal with grief and desire and loss of youth in older women.  These deep emotions are on screen in this film. But they leave no trace in the viewer’s consciousness.  Somehow grief,  desire, and vicarious pleasure get entangled in a most superficial way. We see Mrs. H mourn over her son’s grave in France and sympathise with Van Damm’s war losses. But we also see Mrs H gaze at the young soldiers from her seat in the theatre, spy  on them  from her car in the dark night  and pick one particular one. We see her in the dressing room where she identifies with Maureen, the  leading Windmill nude girl. In her bedroom she performs the fan dance in front of a mirror fantasising the role that Maureen plays.  She proceeds  to arrange calculatingly for the soldier to meet with Maureen and persuades her to have sex with him. What do these scenes reveal about Mrs. H. and her motives?  And is Mrs. H. innocently matchmaking to allay Maureen’s loneliness and provide a sexual experience to a young soldier about to go to the front or is she pursuing a dangerous fantasy? And how in this light  are we to interpret her speech about the Windmill girls fortifying  young men going to the front? If  Frears wanted to convey the dark side of Mrs.H, he failed. Judi Dench’s attractive personality and physical presence overpowers the insensitivity, the egotistic manipulation of others, the hypocrisy,  of the character she is supposed to portray. Maureen gets pregnant and is killed in a bombing raid.  But the show must go on and the film ends with Judi Dench and Bob Hoskins still bickering, swirling  in a romantic dance on the roof of the theatre. The titles sequences lead the audience to expect a light hearted comedy/musical and the melodrama cannot be accommodated.

The director had problems with the reception of the film as he admitted  when asked about the animated titles sequences that he commissioned  long after the film was finished. “I previewed the film. And the audience asked certain questions. And I kept thinking, “Why are you asking these questions?” They seemed completely inappropriate to the film I was making. And then it dawned on me that you have to tell them they were watching a film that took place in Fairy-land. You know, that it was one of those films over there—it wasn’t this kind—it wasn’t a realistic film. It was one of those films. And once you told them that, they understood everything and the questions stopped. But before, they’d ask these very, very literal questions.” What were the questions asked at the previews? Were they questions about the real Mrs. H.? about the real Van Damm? about the real Windmill girls? about the death of Maureen? the reality behind ‘we never closed’?

But I also would like other questions. What exactly is the director trying to say? and what is the audience supposed to understand? Why do the viewers not perceive the complexity of Mrs H. motives? why do critics not comment on Van Damm? Questions better left to research into the reception of films…

Age Spots and Spotlights: Celebrity, Ageing and Performance

An interesting research symposium “Age Spots and Spotlights: Celebrity, Ageing and Performance”.  http://agespotsandspotlights.blogspot.com/

I was so pleased to have been invited (on the strength of my blog) by one of the organisers Dr. Deborah Jermyn.  Before going to the event I asked my close email contacts : can you name any celebrity who can be described as ‘old’?  This was the response: Lauren Bacall, Joan Rivers, Joan Collins, Liza Minelli, Elizabeth Taylor, Germaine Greer, Mother Theresa, Barbara Castle, Yvonne Arnaud, Esther Rantzen, Claire Rayner, Jeanne Moreau, Katherine Hepburn, Yitzak Rabin’s widow (sic),  Jane Fonda, Tony Benn, Michael Douglas, Hugh Hefner, Ian McKellen, Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Vanessa Redgrave, Miriam Margoyles, Sheila Hancock, Julie Walters, Helen Mirren.   Two remarks were interesting: “there are lots of  old women who are admired and respected but since they are not doing anything ‘newsworthy’ they do not get the attention they deserve” and  ’the terms celebrity and substance seem incompatible’.

I will express my very personal feelings about the day. (a podcast will be available on the  above site for people who are interested in the proceedings).  I was confused by the use of the term ‘celebrity’ and ‘celebrity culture studies’. To me celebrity culture is an essentially ‘young’ phenomenon, based on  television reality shows, certain genres of music, football stars, talent shows, Facebook and YouTube etc… This world is of no interest to me and my study of ageing and ageism, specially in the field of the representation of  the old  woman in films and ageism as experienced in day-to-day life.   The word ‘performance’ intrigued me. Was it meant to include only professional performers? obviously not, since war correspondents and a film and opera director were the subject of two of the  papers. But they are men.

The day was stimulating for me and led me to pose quite a few questions.

1 –  Anne Widdicombe and a flash of celebrity.   It would be so interesting to explore why Anne Widdicombe (63), described as “clean-living Tory matriarch a devout Roman Catholic who barely drinks and lives alone” (Telegraph)  benefited from a brief celebrity flash when she appeared on the Strictly Come Dancing show. Felicity Kendal (64) however who appeared in the same show and who is a year older than Ann did not make any headlines.

2 - Voice and ageing: it occurred to me that in the films we considered in our Older Women in British films 1997-2006 (see resources) we did not mention voice. It is a characteristic that I have also completely ignored while analysing films myself. Is there such a thing as  the ageing of the voice as mentioned in the paper about the Trip?

3 – The difference  between  famous actor and celebrity  which was made  was very instructive. Brigitte Bardot was a celebrity, not much of an actor, whereas Elizabeth Taylor was actor and celebrity. Are our old actors: Judi Dench, Vanessa Redgrave, Helen Mirren, Sheila Hancock, Maggie Smith, Julie Walters celebrities ?  Is Delia Smith a celebrity? Germaine Greer? Margaret Thatcher? The Queen?  Are they ‘performers’?

4 - Old woman’s mask It was noted that Brigitte Bardot is still using face make up and the style of her hair was mentioned in the keynote talk. On the website of the symposium two photos of BB  are contrasted. The photo of BB in her 70s?  is less than flattering whereas there are online photos of  BB at 50 60 70  where she looks pleasant, imposing .  Why this choice? What is the mask of the older woman?  From the Queen of Spades to Gianni’s mother in the highly praised MidAugust Lunch, we are offered images of old women’s faces with a lot of make up. What do they signify?

5 - Ageing and cosmetic surgery was an important topic at the symposium.   The women celebrities mentioned in the second part of the Symposium   ‘Ageing and the Female Celebrity’  were all actors. For actors ageing starts early – even before the menopause. Are the problems of the ageing actor centred on the body  relevant to the ageing woman?

Members of the audience raised the following issues:

- the bulk of the papers were concerned with the ageing woman as Body

-  a woman ‘in my sixties’    pointed out that ageing is different in a woman in her late forties or 50s and a still older woman whose friends have started to die

-  Whereas the old man is shown to have sexual desire, the old woman is not supposed to have any sexual feelings…

Finally whenever I mention the ‘old woman in films’ to women of my daughters’  age  ( 40 - 50) I am quoted   Something’s Gotta Give as a wonderful, funny example. I know that taste in comedies differ radically but hearing again the speech by the sister of the Diane Keaton  character proffer her speech about the difference of the experience of ageing in men and women,  I had a sudden insight into why I so disliked this film and Potiche (see previous post). In both films feminist attitudes are expressed as if they are newfound truths. They are in your face statements that lack depth, subtlety or wit. Diane Keaton and Catherine Deneuve’s characters  may be the image that  younger women aspire to grow into but my goodness they do not, to my mind, provide fantasy or role models.  It is as if the women’s liberation movement never existed.   The dialogue, narrative, characters are so one-dimensional and predictable that as a woman who joined the Older Feminist Network 20 years ago, I found both films banal, and boring.

If celebrity culture is defined as a culture of the young I am wondering if it is the right tool to explore issues of the double jeopardy of age and gender.  Brigitte Bardot, Elizabeth Taylor (both celebrities when young) , Nicole Kidman, Diane Keaton,  cosmetic surgery, airbrushing, digital manipulation of the image, gossip blogs.  Does this approach in its blindness to old age in all its diversity reinforce our ageism or does it challenge it?

new blog on everyday ageism

I decided to separate my and my friends  very personal experiences of ageism from my commentary on films.

If you are interested check

http://ageingageismdiary.wordpress.com

Narayama, Dendera, The Lady Vanishes.

I met two women of our  ’Older Women in Film Group’ who had seen  Ballad of Narayama and Dendera. Both had been horrified by the first film and disappointed by the second. It is in these circumstances that I wish I had more energy to research and study. In the light of Gullette’s (Agewise) chapters on ‘the Eskimo on the ice floe’ and ‘Katrina’ the two films are rich in topics of discussion and exploration. For the first film there is a tendency to believe that the practice of taking old people when they reach 70 to freeze to death on the mountain is based on fact whereas it is based on a novel. To me the film expressed the inevitability of death and the two contrasting attitudes of the old man who fought insanely against it and the woman who prepared  serenely and patiently for it. Dendera was dismissed by the people I know. I think that the relentlessness of the black bear’s unending and repeated gory fights with the old women was not perceived as old people having to deal with repeated assaults on their health and well-being. It is the violence of the scenes, the blood, the fur, the gouged out eyes that I feel are misguided and distract from the real issues of the tenacity of old women. Do we have to accept that death is always violent? Is the film the product of an industry that thrives on violence?

If I had the time I would analyse these two films and the two news reports following the Tsunami in Japan. One described how old people in a nursing home were abandoned to their own devices. The other how old people offered their services to go to the unsafe nuclear zone. I would also look at the isolation of  some old  people in the West and the effects of the heat waves in France and Italy .                                                                        But I must go back to my routine and leave this project to the side with the others that deserve study: the blog about everyday ageing and ageism, the database, and the comparison between the different versions of ‘Make Way for Tomorrow’.

The  Lexi film this month was Hitchcock’s “The Lady Vanishes” (1938). To my surprise the U3A audience was augmented by a family or two and a group of  children. A good proportion of the audience had seen the film before and everybody enjoyed this very witty film.  There were no comments on the old woman as spy .  I had seen it ages ago. One of my grandmothers was a very sedentary, anxious old woman who shuffled around the house ineffectively and irritated me. So the images of this film that remained in my mind for all these years were the ones where Miss Froy runs away across the fields  and where she is found out to be a spy at the Foreign Office.  The idea of a spy  being an old woman enchanted me.

Hitchcock and/or the scriptwriters build on our stereotypical view of the old English governess to deceive us.   Miss Froy, played by Dame May Whitty (aged 73), is stout. She is white-haired. She presents herself as a good-hearted innocent kind of old woman used to talking to children . She bores Charters and Caldicott with her incessant chatter. At her window we are made to think that she is naively romantic as she listens to the man singing below, when in fact she is memorising the song with the secret message. At the station where she has lost her bag, she is seen as absent-minded and flustered. In the restaurant car she insists on having her tea made with really boiling water with the tea that her parents always use. She again mentions that she is a governess. But before leaving the train when she teaches Gilbert the coded tune she admits she is a professional spy “such a grim word” and “in this sort of job you must take risks”.

There is little else to say about the character. But I must admit that I rather like the image of the old woman kidnapped, bound in bandages, immobilised and silenced….

London Film Festival : Dendera

I am mortified. I have always thought that encapsulating a film in one paragraph saying what it is about is bound to misrepresent the film. And I have fallen in the trap with the Lebanese film Where do we go now?  To redeem myself I will just say: ‘ Go and See it and talk about it with your friends to appreciate all the issues that arise in this irreverent film’.

Yesterday’s film was Dendera (2011). Directed by Imamura’s son its starting point is the end point of his father’s great film the Ballad of Narayama (1983).  We had seen this last film in our women’s group. It was one of the rare times that attitudes to death were discussed in this group of older women.  While in the Imamura film the women are taken willingly to the mountain to freeze to death,  in  Dendera the women survive and  form a community under the leadership of a 100 years old woman only to be decimated by natural disasters.  It is worth seeing this poorly conceptualised and executed film for its basic idea of challenging the Ballad of Narayama.

London Film Festival: I’m Carolyn Parker

When I started to study old women and films I decided not to consider documentaries as the field is too extensive.  I’m Carolyn Parker was screened at the LFF a few days ago .  I had recently read  ’Agewise: fighting the New Ageism in America’ by Margaret Morganroth Gullette. In the chapter about the casualties of Katrina she exposes how the old, poor and disabled suffered the most. The Jonathan Demme film seemed to be about an old woman ‘s resistance in New Orleans after the hurricane – I had to see it.

I was not disappointed.   The director followed Carolyn Parker’s fight to return to her severely damaged  house in a poor neighbourhood  and to have it renovated to its previous state. It took 5 years and battles with the officials of the commission who wanted to redevelop the area (‘over my dead body’ she says), the local politicians and then the crooked contractors.  She also was involved in fighting to restore the local community church. Throughout she had the support of her daughter.

What is remarkable in this film is that although a documentary, it is structured like a feature film. The narrative centers around the return to and renovation of the house. The heroine is Carolyn Parker a black, disabled woman of around 60 years. We get to know her past, her family, her community, her struggles, her anger and tenacity and sense of fun. “Instead of trying to make fiction real, I was trying to find what was dramatic and entertaining about reality” said Demme. He has succeeded. But will the critics and distributors recognise the value of this film? Will they have the vision of screening nationally this example of resistance in these days of cuts affecting the more disadvantaged?  Or will it as one critic predicts find a happy future on More 4 and disappear?

If the film is shown go and see it. If you belong to a film society ask for it. If it is available on DVD buy it.