The Doll's House (1973)

The Doll's House isn't one of the greatest films that was ever made. It came out in 1973 at the same time as another film, made from the same play, and was released on television rather than in cinemas and it vanished pretty quickly after that. The makers included illustrious members of the aristocracy of the cinema- Joseph Losey, Trevor Howard and Jane Fonda- but the film has fallen into obscurity. Its fall into obscurity is pretty just- the film does not succeed really and as a failure I think its a worthy one. The Doll's House is a play by Ibsen about the constrictions of nineteenth century marriage- the way that it constrained women and meant that their lives were ornamental to their husband's lives rather than instrumental to their own good. It is one of the most famous plays of the century and that enduced Losey and company to an over respectful treatment- the play is set in 19th Century Norway, the swish of long skirts and the rustling of monocles dropping into pockets is the visual accompaniment to Ibsen's dialogue. There isn't anything neccessarily wrong in attempting authenticity in your treatment but you have to give the script life and vibrancy- the respectful treatment of the text translates in this case into a kind of lifeless stagy acting. The acting isn't wrong and every line is pronounced rightly but the overall effect is that the actors are trying to act rather than acting themselves.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Jane Fonda's performance. Ms Fonda here has to act as a silly girl growing into a mature young woman who demands her own liberty to define her own life. That transition has to be made subtly- in this case it is not. Suddenly in five minutes Ms Fonda's character makes that transition. Losey decided that Ibsen's dialogue needed improving so he added scenes of exposition to the beggining of the play. In those scenes Ms Fonda does nothing so heartily as she irritates- she gives a performance of being a giddy girl without constraint. The missing element is any depth or colour- Ms Fonda's transitions in this film are between moods but she does not convey a character. The film in a sense like Fonda makes too much of an effort- the most irritating effect to my mind was ponderous music draped over the first ten minutes telling me what to think of the scenes, telling me how to react. Music can serve films well- Scorsese's Mean Streets made a couple of years after this shows you how it should be used- but in this film it was not used well. Furthermore those scenes of exposition deprive the rest of the plot of its mystery and leave the main point of the story as the political feminist point but the feminist point emerges slowly and for too much of the film, this viewer knew what was going to happen and could not be interested because he could not be surprised.

The film's point is a good one. Fonda's character Nora married a man named Torvald and secretly through borrowing money got him to go to Italy, a move which, in the context of the film, we have to accept saved his life. Later on, Torvald treats her as though she were an ornament- his little bird, his little this, that and the other. He patronises her and refuses to acknowledge her existance. His code of honour seems to have little place for female personhood within it but more to exist within a patriachal universe in which only men and their moral selves exist. He ultimately gets a comeuppance for this particular example of sexism. The point is well made and perfectly illustrated and the last ten minutes in which the point is made are the most impressive ten minutes of the entire movie- but that does not excuse all that has come before.

Having a good ten minutes though does not make a good film- obscurity in this case was thoroughly deserved.

Dragging up the Druids

The history of Druidism is odd. For a tradition which boasts of its antiquity with several ancient orders of the druids around, the history of Druidic practices does not go that far back. Though Caesar and Tacitus mention them, as Ronald Hutton explains in his latest book (and Tom Shippey in a review of it in the London Review of Books concurs), the ancient evidence for them as sparce. It could be put together in about a dozen pages. There is no archaeological evidence to speak for. There are almost no monuments that can be associated with druids (Stonehenge is much older than the first mentions of druids that we have). Furthermore there are almost no Celtic traditions about the druids- these are all medieval and there are no medieval references to medieval druids, if there was a druidic tradition it managed to avoid Malory, Geoffrey of Monmouth and all the chroniclers of medieval Britain. Even the ancient evidence that we do have is unreliable- Pliny's writings about them are credulous, Caesar's justify Rome's imperial mission- a couple of pages here and there, introduced for local colour, by authors whose true focus is not Britain but Rome does not give us much to base a history of druidry upon.

What Hutton and Shippey argue therefore is that it is much more interesting to look at modern druids. Think of the analogy to King Arthur- there is almost nothing that we can know about the historical King Arthur but the modern King Arthur is an eco campaigner who has done interviews. Ultimately the two historians here are more concerned about the reflection of whatever ancient druidry was upon the modern and early modern world. What they suggest is interesting- Hutton's book, and Shippey accepts his conclusions, suggests that the druids were part of an invented tradition of welshness, created by the talented Welsh immigrants who streamed into London in the early modern period in the eighteenth century. This invented tradition was buttressed by the insane, the fraudulent and the fantastical until it became what we know today as druidism. Druidism has nothing to do with ancient druids- but it is interesting because enough people beleive that it does have something to do with them and that this is important to make it important in the modern world.

The Girl cut in Two

The Girl cut in Two comes with some substantial reccomendations- Claude Chabrol the director is one of the elder statesman of European cinema, Ludivine Sagnier the star is someone who has an interesting and enviable back catalogue of films behind her: these two figures deserve respect. Whether the film they have created together does is another matter. I watched this film and want to confess to two reactions- the first is that I was engrossed. The film has a marvellous storyline- a pretty weather girl meets two men, an old writer and roue and a young mentally unstable millionaire- both fall in love with her and she alternates between the two as the movie goes through, her alternations produce nothing but corruption- the corruption of a person through the ancient novelist and the corruption of a system through the young millionaire. The second thing that I will confess to is that I did not grow to like any of the characters beyond Sagnier's character, everyone important was vile, and to some extent, if it is true that we can judge people by the company they keep, then Sagnier's character is condemned by her friends. The film is involving but I could not get involved with the characters- and wondered out of the cinema wondering what a spectacle of decadence, sex (none seen but plenty implied) and violence was enacted to say.

In a sense I think my reaction is the one that the film drives towards. Lets take for a start the look of the film- a good place to start because we absorb films first through our eyes. Sagnier is stunning and dressed to look stunning in this film. M St Denis, the writer, looks debonaire and well preserved, M Gaudens the millionaire looks unstable and foppish- a kind of dangerous almost Byronic figure. The portrait here is one of exoticism and Chabrol uses as well the minor characters- particularly those who surround Sagnier's character as she presents the weather to give us that note of exoticism. These are TV personalities- brash and living in a world where champagne floats round a hall, where cameras are more familiar than kids. St Denis's world is one of oak fittings which conceal sex clubs, auctions where you buy pornography and the full range of Parisian taste- or at least the kind of taste that Englishmen of the eighteenth century would go to France to sample on the grand tour. It is the taste of Sade- and it is unsurprising that another glossy lover compares St Denis to Sade at one point. Gaudens inhabits fast cars, slick haircuts and shiny resturants- again wealth comes out but not the wealth of tradition and aphorism, the wealth of ostentation. Gabrielle, Sagnier's character, is being fought over by the Marquis de Sade and Cristiano Ronaldo, by Valmont and David Coulthard.

I do not think those associations are unimportant to what Chabrol is trying to do here- the spectacle of a film is often as important as its words. Chabrol is countering to us two worlds and their demands upon Gabrielle perhaps their demands upon us all. The first and second world share secrets- the first world has a secret decadence- M St Denis goes on the television to speak aphoristically of nunish behaviour (a reference to Diderot's pornographic nun, n'est ce pas- for such a learned film one would not presume the answer was no) and hides a liking to watch his beauties defiled by his friends. Gaudens has secrets about violence- he attempts Gabrielle in a dark alley and is stopped by his friend- footballers of the world would sympathise with that issue. St Denis and Gaudens hate each other from the beggining of the film because they each embody a different kind of celebrity- St Denis a witty aristocratic with pictures of naked women hanging inside his house and mistresses filing in sports cars to his door- Gaudens, idle, young, innocent expecting life to fall into his lap as he has the chance to have the wealth that others long for. Chabrol's view is that neither is healthy- and we see that in their impacts on Gabrielle- but that the former may present the possibility of survival whereas the latter may not.

Let us go a bit deeper here for the theme of the establishment brings us to a new level- a level which I think is the fundemental level of the film- the level of secret. Ultimately this is a film not about love nor class but about secrets. Everywhere you look there are secrets- even in the final denoument we see a secret enacted and when Chabrol moves his camera in on Sagnier's beaming face towards the end where she is literally cut in two, he moves us in to contemplate the secret. Recasting the film in terms of secrets brings in a final male character, Sagnier's uncle, a magician who has trade secrets of his own. He flits around Europe and the world- never where you expect him- his location is a secret. Bringing him in allows us to see what the film might actually be about- it is about a transition for the character of Gabrielle- a journey through different kinds of secret and a discovery about what kind of secret is comfortable as a fit for humanity. In a sense the film is what it says it is repeatedly- through the mouth of St Denis, through the mouth of Gabrielle's mother, through the mouth of Gaudens's mother- it is a film about growing up and growing up is about dealing with secrets.

Recast the film in your thoughts and imagine it now as a bildingsroman. Start with Gabrielle and take her through three relationships. In the first she loves St Denis because of his secrets- because he can show her how to do it- whether that it is oral sex or poetry matters not at all, the point is that it is an it. It is something that she does not know and hopes he can reveal- can take her beyond the oak pannelling into the world that we are not able to see but only hear about. The second relationship she has is with Gaudens. Here she has grown to see Gaudens's secret from the inside- she has accepted it to some extent though she does not realise its power- she does not realise that Gaudens is controlled by his secret madness. The story of her relationship with Gaudens is the story of that secret spinning out of control and destroying both their lives. The third and last secret concerns herself- she is not being cut in half- it is a magic trick- but she, her uncle and the audience all know it is a magic trick. From the charm of knowledge to the possession of knowledge, she has journeyed one step further to the control of knowledge: she has reached the point at which St Denis was in the film, fulfilled, sipping her champagne, in control of her secrets- having confronted them and explained them to herself. Confessing myself still ambiguous, I am not sure that the process is one of learning, however much it is one of growing.

I do not pretend that this does anymore than take another skin off the onion of the film's interpretation- it could do no more. But I do not feel this is an easy film to interpret. There is something unpleasant about watching old men ogle young women- something unpleasant about St Denis's lifestyle. The film of course is modelled on a real case- that of Stanford White- and Chabrol in that case was not completely in charge of his story- though he did of course choose to dramatise it and not another. Rather he has spun its focus away from the mad millionaire and the decadent roue to the girl- for the final key question at the end od the film is why, after all that has happened, is Gabrielle smiling? I'd suggest the reason is a secret.

Book Review: Soldiers and Strangers: An Ethnic History of the English Civil War

The English Civil Wars started in Scotland and finished in Ireland. They involved huge incursions by Welshmen, Cornishmen, Scotsmen, Irishmen and even Europeans into England but they fundementally were always about the position of England in the Atlantic Archipelago. The problem of England in seventeenth century Britain (like the problem of Germany in nineteenth Century Europe) was central to the civil war. Religion and other issues (as we shall see) drove the war- but what Mark Stoyle impressively argues here was that the English Civil War was a war in which the other nationalities of the British Isles fought to maintain their ways of life and traditional independence against an English chauvinist imperialism represented by Parliament and particularly by the New Model Army of Oliver Cromwell and Thomas Fairfax. Stoyle's approach is so unique and interesting because he has taken on a strand of the recent historiography, that under the guidance of two of the master spirits of that discussion- John Pocock and John Morrill, has begun to represent the war in its three kingdoms context, and he has extended it. Stoyle uses the approach of concentrating on ethnicity and nationality to explain fundemental moments within the civil war in England as well as in the wider Britain.

Since the revisionist challenge of the 1970s, most historians accept that the main issue confronting us has been explaining where the royal army came from. Parliament raised its forces from London and the South East. One answer to the problem of where the royal army came from is to focus, as Stoyle has done, upon what threat that South Eastern force posed to the rest of the British Isles. The King and his propagandists skilfully allied themselves with the Celtic fringe (and the Northern counties fearfull of Parliament's religious allies the Scots)- the King's armies therefore came from Cornwall and Wales. Armies such as Sir Ralph Hopton's in the South West embarrassed Parliamentary forces in the early 40s- leading to the Royalists seizing Bristol for example. Welsh units crossed the border to support the King's forces- so much so that Stoyle argues the royalist defeat at Naseby was as much a Welsh defeat as a royalist defeat. The King's main strength in his second main army (the Western army commanded by Prince Maurice and then by Lord Goring) was either Welsh and Cornish foot or recruited mercenaries from the continent. These men joined up because Charles promised that Wales and Cornwall would maintain their rights and freedoms- because ultimately Parliament was an English institution whereas the monarchy was a British institution.

Stoyle's account is much more subtle than that- he shows how the King directly attempted to appeal to his Celtic subjects whereas Parliamentary propaganda concentrated on diminishing them and disparaging them. The one exception was of course the Scots- tempted to fight with Parliament because of a common allegiance to a radical Protestant religious settlement. However as the war continued, Stoyle also shows that this nationalistic commitment to royalism brought problems as well as manpower. This was evident from the first days of the war when Cornish soldiers refused to march across the Tamar- and it continued right up until the end of the war in 1646 when Welsh troops defected continually from the King's English army in order to defend their homeland. Parliament found it easy to buy off the Celtic forces through promising to appease their concerns in Wales or Cornwall- easy because ultimately their priority was not a King on the throne of England but the independence of their own national community. Stoyle's account presents us thus with a new account of how the royalist armies were created and a new account of how they disappeared- how Charles in the aftermath of one battle (Naseby) went from controlling half the country to controlling almost none of the country.

Stoyle's narrative is more complex and detailed than a brief review can cover- but I hope that sums up the majority of his argument. Stoyle's argument stops with the end of war in 1647- it stops there because Stoyle's argument fails to explain what happens later. Afterall if negotiated settlement worked in Wales and Cornwall, why did not Parliamentarian generals try it in Ireland- they had equated the Irish to the Cornish and the Welsh, what ended up being so different? That question reveals that nationalism is only part of the answer- religion ended up feeding into the way that Parliament felt about the nationalities that it imposed settlements upon. Stoyle never sets out to deal with the religious angle because he abandons his account as soon as Parliament starts governing, and therefore distinguishing between the Celtic fringes. This halt suggests that a true account of civil war nationalism and ethnicity ultimately has to fuse itself with an account of civil war religion: if Stoyle points out rightly that we have ignored nationalism to concentrate on religion, it is important that historians do not swing the other way and make the opposite mistake.

Lastly it is worth noting that Stoyle provides a further interesting dimension to the civil war when he discusses the 'outlanders'- those who came from Europe to the British Isles as mercenaries, as ideologically connected zealots or as liege subjects and relatives of participants. Characters like Princes Rupert and Maurice on the Royalist side and Isaac Dorislaus on the Parliamentary are interesting in themselves. Stoyle demonstrates an intriguing political subtext where the foreigners were blamed for the violence of the civil war- hated for the invention of plunder (which Englishmen assured themselves was a German word) and loathed for not being loyal enough. He sees the reason for the creation of the New Model Army in 1645 as lying in part in the attempt by Parliamentary independents to distance themselves from foreign mercenaries- who in their view were untrustworthy. It gives a new light on Cromwell's lauding of 'russet coated captains' when one realises that the opposite was a proffessional soldier from the thirty years war who fought for money and not for beliefs. Having said all that, I would like to have heard more from Stoyle about the re-immigrants, men like Hugh Peters who returned from America to fight in the English civil war, I suspect there is another article to be written about those men.

Stoyle's book is an important and interesting contribution to the topics he writes about- it is a partial view of the war but it is a corrective and one of the perils of being a historian is realising that ultimately all views are partial. Stoyle has introduced to us something that we should have realised- as I read his book, I sat rebuking myself for not noticing how many times Parliament declared that it fought for English liberties. One of the greatest honours in any academic discipline is to receive that accolade that you have started a debate- Mark Stoyle should receive that accolade.

Katyn

On 3 April 1940 around 22,000 Polish officers, intellectuals and professionals were taken to a forest near Smolensk. They were all shot by NKVD agents for the Russian state and their bodies left in a mass grave. The incident at Katyn Forest has become one of the iconographic moments of the second world war, defining the pure evil of the Stalinist Russian state and for many in Poland providing yet another reason, even to this day, to fear Russian intervention in their country. Katyn was denied for years by the Russian state who only admitted what they had done in 1990- even today it is not classified in Russia as an act of genocide nor have the victims been officially rehabilitated within Russia. Katyn in a sense is a symbol, both of the crimes of the Stalinist state during the second world war to other peoples- particularly Eastern Europeans, and of the violence and aggression that Russia participated in as an equal partner with Germany from the Molotov-Ribbentrop treaty until the outbreak of war in 1941. Making a film about this moment in history is a brave enterprise- the problem is that the atrocity overshadows almost everything else that you could surround it with.

So how do Andrzej Wajda and his cast do? The answer is mixed. There were times in this film when I thought I was watching a television piece rather than a film- there is something uncinematic about the way that the film is shot which did not convince me. The film mostly concerns itself with the women who were left behind when their menfolk were shot at Katyn- their stories are interesting but are obscured by the central fact of the massacre. In a sense the horror of the massacre drives the story forwrads but also inhibits it. Furthermore with many of the women short scenes with few lines of dialogue mean that they merge into one greiving whole rather than becoming real individuals. The director could have focussed on one character's response and grief but instead chose to encapsulate all types of grief- the defiant, mournful and forgetful and the responses of the next generation- his frequent change of focus leaves you wondering where some characters have gone and makes it hard to relate to others. For example at one point we see a woman berate a Pole who has joined the Russian army after the war- this is when discussion of Katyn is forbidden- for betraying his comrades- we know what happens to him, but we never find out what happens to her. We also see her earlier being intimidated by the Nazi state but we never find out whether she gave in- something that is important to the later scene (how complicit is she in giving in to the temptations of accord with totalitarian powers). Stories are left hanging and one never really identifies with the characters- they appear and disappear- often going through great terrors (how did a Polish woman cross the frontier between Germany and Russia in late 1940 early 1941 without coming to any harm for example) without any explanation.

I sense and this is another major flaw of the film, that this is because Wajda has deliberately set out to make a nationalistic Polish film. He dedicated the film to the Polish Prime Minister for example and the film is filled with discussions of what it is to be Polish and what isn't Polish behaviour. Of course this misses out the fact that Poles were complicit in the oppression of the Nazi and Soviet period- the Polish treatment of Jews during the Holocaust is not a happy episode in that nation's history. Nor was the officer corps entirely beneficent itself- whilst nothing on the scale of its neighbours to the West and East, the Polish government was unpleasant, for instance in the 1930s Jews in Poland were forbidden from receiving welfare benefits and had to sit on special ghetto benches at universities. Russian and German crimes- at Katyn and elsewhere- cannot allow anyone to whitewash the Polish prewar regime. A nationalistic Polish film creates a simple opposition between resistance and compliance- between principle and opportunism- whereas actually Polish attitudes to the Nazis and Soviets were more complex. The Katyn Forest incident was a shocking demonstration of the Soviet disregard for human rights and disarms a certain simplistic understanding of Russian history (promoted by President Putin amongst others) but it must not be fitted into a simplistic portrait of Polish history either.

There are things I liked about this film though- and perhaps it is only because it takes on such an important subject that I hold it to these high standards. I think that the decision to concentrate on the women waiting at home and the people after the war is a very interesting one- perhaps it would have been better to focus either on the women in 1941-5 or the people afterwards but not on both. Its interesting because it shows you how much it is the reverberations of something like Katyn that matter and not simply the incident itself. The Holocaust still affects the grandchildren of those who were killed, the First World War's shadow hangs over 21st Century Britain and the shadow of Katyn hangs over post war Poland, particularly over the Poland that emerged into the Cold War. I liked all of that- but I still felt it was disjointed, still felt getting more intimately engaged with the characters and being less self consciously national about the portrait might have presented a more compelling argument and more interesting film. I should note that others do disagree with me- this for example is a very good and positive review- but I ultimately found something missing in this movie for me.

I would still recomend seeing it for the closing scenes and for a sense of Polish history (an important history that is not as known in the West as it should be)- this may not be the perfect film but it is about a subject that everyone should know about.

Thomas and Felix Platter

Thomas Platter was a Swiss peasant boy who learnt how to read and write, became wealthy comparatively, a printer and a teacher in later life. Felix was his son, a doctor in Switzerland as well. What is interesting about both of them is that they left memoirs of their lives- memoirs that have become as vital for the history of early modern Switzerland as the Paston letters are for medieval England. They give a vital and important portrait of the way that the Swiss lived from the early 16th to early 17th Century. But for one moment I think we should halt. Here we have the lives of a son and a father- the latter self made, the former taught and brought up by tutors, a citizen of one of the great cities of Reformation Europe. Amongst the vivid impressions that you can garner from Emannuel Le Roy Ladourie's encounter with the two memoirs is the two different personalities- the encounter is an interesting one and demonstrates the change between generations that a change in fortunes can evoke. To some extent the father's success is demonstrated by the fact that the son cannot understand his legacy.

The first difference between them is in the nature of their memoirs. Thomas's memoir is matter of fact- a catalogue of facts. Felix's more ornate with classical tags and quotations. Thomas was a more religious man flirting with the radical protestantism of the 1520s, Felix was conventionally religious. For Thomas the ladder to success was represented by writing and reading- for Felix writing and reading were things that he learnt quickly, music was where his true love lay and that love was shaped not as Thomas's by need but by a love of the texture of story and song itself. Not all of this is explained by the differences in background- it might well be differences in character as well- differences in the complex ways that humans orientate their lives. Others though are differences created by the different generations. Thomas was a teacher and had sought to be a doctor: his son was able to exercise that option and become a medic. Thomas was comfortable returning to and living in the mountains that he had come from, Felix hated them and was addicted to smooth fashions and a smoother lifestyle.

There may not be anything in these contrasts- but I think they are important and potentially interesting. We remember that these gulfs exist in the modern era- between parents and children who have lived in different worlds as social mobility propells people upwards and downwards- but the truth is that they existed in the medieval world too. One of the segmentations that is easy to forget is the segmentation between the generations in interest and condition of life- it is something that you can see in the distinction between Felix and Thomas. Ultimately Felix's context was completely different from his father's, his outlook was too- the enduring effect of social mobility or even the narrowing or widening of social divisions is the way that people understand and look to their lives, what they like and what they believe is possible to do.

North by Northwest

North by Northwest was part of the golden run that Alfred Hitchcock enjoyed through the mid-twentieth century- it is hard to think of a dud that Hitchcock made from Notorious to Psycho and he collaborated with the greatest actors and actresses of Hollywood (Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, James Mason, Eva Maria Saint, Grace Kelly, Claude Rains and others) in order to make a succession of films that nobody can see without gasping. Because of that it is easy to dismiss some of the features- Vertigo and Rear Window seem to stand the test of any critic's eye, but Rope is dismissed as a parlour game, To Catch a Thief as a light drama and North by Northwest as a silly nonsense. Of course in the hands of Hitchcock it is anything but- and whilst it is entertaining- the film has an argument, a thought behind it about the nature of normality and the ways that human beings behave. North by Northwest is a farce- its a classic tale in which identities are confused- Cary Grant's advertising executive Roger Thornhill is believed to be a US agent- or in which they are secret, James Mason's and Eva Maria Saint's characters retain an elusive nature right through the entire film. But farces make serious points- anyone who knows Shakespeare ought to know that comedies focusing on mistaken identity can become great literature, and even though Hitchcock is now Shakespeare, North by Northwest has considerable virtues.

One of those virtues is its description of the world of spying. Of course the plot resolution is ludicrous and several incidents (Cary Grant chased across the American midwest by a plane) are foolish but the view of the world of spies is not so silly but is deadly serious. Hitchcock unlike the producers of several James Bond movies since demonstrates that the fundemental life of a spy is boring, unglamorous and sad. Cary Grant spends most of his time hiding in Eva Maria Saint's train compartment- the two lovers Saint and Grant cannot consumate their relationship through marriage until they can leave the world of spies- the Professor, a CIA 'boss' is reduced to callousness by the demands of his service- James Mason's character (Grant's double within the film- a point I will move to) exerts his power through being a devious and deviant monster. Spying is a world without friendship- but a world without friendship is a world not worth living in- and never are the characters so happy as when they leave or are not within the world of spying. Spying subverts justice, it has nothing to do with justice, it exposes the ugly side of life to full view. Hitchcock ultimately presents us with a view of spying that may be thrilling but is also deeply antagonising.

What that means is that a film about concealment is actually a film about the pleasures of straightforwardness. Thornhill, and the viewer who inhabits his eyes, is a character who wants to know what is going on- wants to understand- and never really until the last moments of the film does. Thornhill is a charming suave and sophisticated man- played by Grant a tramp would be suave and sophisticated- but the key about him is that he is straightforward. Oppose him to the doppleganger he confronts. James Mason's character is suave and sophisticated- as mannered and polite as Grant and as intelligent but Mason, unlike Grant, hides depths of duplicity and depravity within that exterior. His mistress becomes convinced of that after she sees miscellanious photographs of his deviancies- we can have no doubt that Grant has no such photographs in his attic. If Thornhill's character comes from the world of Romantic Comedy and movies like His Girl Friday, then Mason's emerges out of the slime that gave birth to Harry Lime- they may be brothers under the cravat, but they are estranged by their different moral characters.

Grant and Mason have two distinct and important characters who rule the film as part of a triumvirate- between them is one of the most interesting actresses of the fifties, Eva Maria Saint. Saint's role in North by Northwest is interesting- but in order to discuss it I must warn you that spoilers lie ahead. She is a spy, working for the American government. She is Mason's mistress- a good time girl that he picked up at a party and yet she turns out to be intelligent and skilled, patriotic and virtuous. In a sense she is Ingrid Bergman's character from Notorious, had she met Grant's years after and Rains been the villain of that film. Saint's choice we have discussed above- but her fundemental character is that of a woman who is thoroughly in charge of her emotions. In a sense to reverse the gender roles, Grant's Thornhill is a blundering innocent, dangerously putting lives at risk in a hysterical way: Saint's Eve Kendall is cool, calm under pressure, virtuous and willing to sacrafice herself even unto death for the greater good. Saint is the warrior, Grant is the civilian. Saint is sexually aggressive, Grant is responsive. Hitchcock leaves us in no doubt though that Saint like Grant shares a sincerity- neither character lies to the other in the entire film. Like Mason they artfully talk and flirt, unlike Mason behind talk lies truth, behind flirtation might lie love.

And here lies what I think is an interesting Hitchcock twist for he leaves us in doubt over whether the good time girl and the three times divorced Grant are telling each other the truth. THe sincerity that they express is the sincerity of a moment- both are afterall practitioners through advertising and spying of different kinds of acting. What Hitchcock though wants us to reflect on is the kind of acting that they embody, both of them act the truth- and whilst Mason's act is an act, their act is a temporary truth.