Oct.
6, 1949—The Heiress, a costume drama that demonstrated the
big-screen potential of the psychological fiction of Henry James,
premiered in New York City. Though not a box-office success, it scored with
critics, and it stands today as a model for screen adaptations of novels and
plays.
My
headline understated the process by which the word-heavy James came into focus
in image-heavy Hollywood. The dramatic promise latent in “The Master,” largely
unrealized in his own lifetime (see my prior post on his London stage
disaster, Guy Domville), was first manifested by Ruth and Augustus Goetz
in their hit 1947 adaptation of Washington Square, The Heiress.
That
same year, Hollywood might have been forgiven for tiptoeing around James after
the critical and box-office drubbing given The Lost Moment, an
adaptation of The Aspern Papers starring Robert Cummings and Susan
Hayward.
But after watching The Heiress on Broadway, Olivia de Havilland was so convinced it would work on film that she persuaded William Wyler to take on the project, and the Oscar-winning director meshed so well
with the Goetzes on fashioning the screenplay that Paramount Pictures
generously bankrolled the production.
But
the raw material in the hands of Wyler and the Goetzes was more than a bit
challenging. James’ attitude towards his characters was frequently ironic;
inferences about motives were largely between the lines; and he refused to
provide a happy ending for his heroine.
I
heard Washington Square (1880) once described wittily (and more or less
accurately) “the James book for those who hate James.” Written two decades
before the rococo style of his “later period” in the early 1900s (The American,
The Golden Bowl), this was simple in comparison.
The
content, however, is anything but, focusing on a struggle for autonomy, as
Catherine Sloper—the shy “heiress” of the play and film title—is scorned by her
father for ungainliness (an ironic reminder of the beautiful mother who died
while giving birth to her), pursued by a fortune hunter, and undermined by an
insipid aunt. She must not only negotiate the path to adulthood without honest,
practical advice from any responsible adult, but do so in the face of a trio
with no real regard for her feelings.
When
imagining how to reconceive a play for the screen, most directors think in
terms of “opening it up” with exterior shots. But Wyler did not see this as
appropriate for this drawing-room drama.
Washington Square was
preeminently an interior mental drama, marked by the multiple obstacles
to happiness in the way of the painfully self-conscious Catherine. As a visual
counterpart to her mental state, then, Wyler emphasized the interior
architecture of the Sloper home.
The
quickest the camera moves, then, is in the crucial dance scene, not only
because of the bodies waltzing around the floor but because of Catherine’s
giddiness when the charming cad Morris Townsend passes unexpected attention to
her.
Otherwise, the stillness of the camera throughout most of the rest of the
movie underscores Catherine's growing agony as her father, justifiably suspicious of
Townsend’s intentions, threatens to disinherit her and a disappointed Townsend
abandons their plans to elope.
It
is Catherine’s understanding of this last development that allows Wyler to
capitalize on the Sloper home’s interiors. In the play, she gave full vent to
her sorrow in a long monologue. Wyler dispensed with just about all the lines
penned by the Goetzes, choosing instead to have de Havilland trudge wearily up
the staircase.
Director Martin Scorsese later described to critic Roger Ebert the impact of The
Heiress on his budding movie consciousness:
“When I was nine or 10, my father took me to see ‘The
Heiress,’ which was the first costume piece that had a powerful impact on me. I
didn't understand every detail, but I knew that something terrible had
happened, a breach of trust and love - and everybody was dressed so nicely and
they had such nice drawing rooms. I didn't understand how a father could talk
that way to his daughter, explaining that the man was after her for her money,
'Because you're not clever and you're quite plain.' That's quite a scene.”
Other
scenes, equally memorable, owe much less to the novella. In the book, several
years after jilting Catherine, Morris returns, having lost most of his hair in
the interim. (It is as if he left looking like Rob Lowe and came back looking
like Wallace Shawn.) In the film, Clift’s sunny confidence is gone but not his
looks.
Most
of all, Catherine’s response to Morris’ desperate plea to marry him for real
this time is the exact opposite of James’ quiet fadeout. It is the logical
consequence of her fierce answer when her Aunt Pennyman asks if she can really
be so cruel. Yes she can, Catherine answers: “I have been taught by masters.”
And
so, Catherine, after seemingly consenting to go away with the supposedly
chastened Morris, locks him out when they are supposed to meet, leaving him
pounding the door in helpless frustration. It is only partly an
audience-pleasing act of revenge, for it also involves Catherine’s emotional
imprisonment as a lifelong spinster in a house that has never meant happiness
for her.
No
two ways about it: this material was grim. After agreeing to back the film,
Paramount evidently sense the nature of the proposal it had accepted, and
pressed Wyler to make Morris sympathetic. In the end, Wyler only softened the
character without changing his essential nature, and that only heightened the
suspense through much of the film about whether he would in fact go ahead with
his plan to wed Catherine.
As
would occur with Carrie (1952), Wyler’s adaptation of Theodore Dreiser’s
Sister Carrie, the director’s refusal to make more than minimal nods
toward audience expectations of a happy ending cost Paramount dearly at the box
office for The Heiress. But Hollywood honored the film with eight Oscar
nominations; de Havilland ended up winning her second Best Actress Oscar for
the role; and the movie is now studied by cineastes such as Scorsese as a
sensitive and spot-on literary adaptation.
Perhaps
the only inexplicable misstep in the production involved the score by Aaron Copland, which was, in the words
of this fine post on the blog “Words of Note,” “chopped to bits, poorly dubbed, and rescored without his approval” by
Wyler. Though the composer won an Oscar for the score, Copland—who had been
contributing music for movies for the last decade—created only one more film
score for the rest of his life.
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