Kick-Back Friday: #127
On Saturday. No good excuses.
To watch The Heiress (1949), based on the play of the same name, which is based on the Henry James novel Washington Square, is to engage in an exercise of contrasts. To wit:
- Contrast the dowdy Catherine (Olivia de Havilland) with her father's ideal of womanhood: Catherine's socially accomplished, dead mother.
- Contrast the overt contempt of Catherine's father for Catherine with the cloaked abuse of Catherine's suitor, Morris Townsend (Montgomery Clift).
- Contrast de Havilland's old-school mugging with Clift's subtler method acting.*
- Contrast Catherine's restrictive 19th-century bun with Morris's bon-vivant locks.
- And so on...
It's also worth noting that more contrasts are possible by watching the deftly filmed Washington Square of 1997, starring Jennifer Jason Leigh as Catherine, Albert Finney as Catherine's father, and Ben Chaplin as Morris. Leigh, in particular, adds several effective layers to Catherine's developing character that are absent from de Havilland's two- or three-note execution.
* de Havilland wins, if only because mugging is so hard to ignore.
