Getting to Know “What Maisie Knew”

Several of the great novels of Henry James (1843-1916) have been made into films of the Merchant-Ivory variety. Such James works as Washington Square, The Portrait of a Lady, The Wings of the Dove, and The Golden Bowl, all of them marked by psychological insight and a fascination with upper-crust life, have successfully been brought to the big screen, filling the eye with bustles and parasols and cravats. (There’s also a terrifically spooky period film, The Innocents, that came out in 1961, based on James’ The Turn of the Screw. I saw it in its first release, and have never quite gotten over it.)

 James’ plots don’t usually translate well to the present day. Certainly, his characters don’t talk in the way we do now, for better or for worse. But in 2012 a cluster of producers brought forth a film that had been languishing in development hell since 1995. It’s a modern adaptation of a slim James novel in which the author chronicled the impact of a divorce upon a six-year-old girl. Although the novel, What Maisie Knew, was published back in 1897, its story of warring parents, their new mates, and an emotionally challenged child seems astonishingly contemporary.

 The film shifts its action from Victorian London to modern New York City, where Susanna and Beale have acrimoniously parted. Susanna, a successful singer/songwriter with a big tour coming up, is highly volatile. (She’s played by the always impressive Julianne Moore, whose participation helped get this project off the ground.) Beale, played by Steve Coogan, is an art dealer with an international clientele: he’s jolly indeed when he’s in a good mood, but spends most of his life jetting to foreign climes. Six-year-old Maisie (the truly adorable Onata Aprile) rotates between their condos, cheerfully adapting to wherever she happens to be. Her poise when a pizza deliveryman shows up at her dad’s place—as the grown-ups fight, she calmly gathers enough dough for an appropriate tip—tells us that in many ways she’s old before her time.

 Beale, it seems, is now shacking up with Maisie’s former nanny, Margo, whom he soon marries. On the rebound, we gather, Susanna ties the knot with a virile young bartender, Lincoln. Maisie, always open to sudden changes in her chaotic family life, quickly comes to adore Lincoln. That’s a good thing, because her mother is soon off in a big tour bus and her father departs yet again for Europe, leaving Margo and Lincoln to manage the child’s daily life.  Everyone loves Maisie, and she loves all of them, but her daily needs are not being considered. At one point she’s stranded at Lincoln’s bar, not sure where she’s going to sleep that night. (A moment in her first-grade classroom tells us that she’s not the only child of her generation and affluent circumstances dealing with a fractured family life.)  

 I’m not always a fan of tykes on the screen: too often they seem mannered and excessively “cute.” But this project, built on Maisie’s reactions to the world going on around her, is lucky to have found a child who genuinely seems both innocent and wise beyond her years. We sense her craving for love, and feel like cheering when she finally takes a stand on her own behalf. The ending is not quite that of Henry James, but it will do nicely. (The young actress, now 20, is still around, but without any recent credits I know of. The implications in her bio is that her own parents have separated too. Perhaps that’s why this performance seems so close to the bone.)

 

 

 

Fanning the Flames: Portrait of a Lady on Fire

 Portrait of a Lady on Fire: what a scintillating title! Céline Sciamma’s 2019 French-language historical drama was originally called Portrait de la jeune fille en feu, which sounds almost as good. But the English-language version allows for an interesting mental connection to a Henry James classic from 1881, The Portrait of a Lady. In that novel, one of James’ most admired, young Isabel Archer is a feisty American who attracts several European suitors, but turns them down because she’s  determined to preserve her independence. Ultimately, though, she marries an American expatriate . . . only to find that he’s a schemer, and totally unworthy of her affections.

 James’ novel has a lot to say about love and marriage, but it never enters into the territory that Sciamma broaches in this fascinating and beautifully photographed film. Set in the late 18^th century or thereabouts, it begins with an art instructor (Noémie Merlant). Facing a classroom full of eager young girls, she ruefully admits that a painting one of them has unearthed in a storeroom is her long-ago work. Its title: Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Flashback to decades earlier, when the same woman-- traveling via a small rowboat to an island off the coast of Brittany—leaps into the choppy water to rescue some of her work that has been washed overboard.

 Marianne, self-confident and determined, has been summoned by a French countess to produce a portrait of her daughter, Héloïse, who’s on the brink of marriage to a wealthy Milanese nobleman. The assignment is a tricky one. Héloïse was mostly reared in a convent; it was her older sister who was destined to marry. But that sister is now dead—a suicide?—and so Héloïse (Adèle Haenel)  is being groomed to be given away in marriage in her place. Héloïse is a fascinating character; our sense is that she’s as of yet unformed: she doesn’t quite seem to know who she is or what she wants. She does know, though, that she does NOT want to pose for a commemorative portrait. And so the plan is for the talented Marianne to befriend her and then paint her portrait in secret, using herself (in Héloïse’s gown) as a model for the painting’s upper body.

 The friendship thrives, and then – in the countess’s brief absence—becomes something far more. The two young women discover that a deep sexual bond exists between them. There’s a dazzling bonfire scene on a local beach that seems to reflect their passion, and the moment of Héloïse’s long skirts catching fire hints at both the ardor and the danger of their burgeoning relationship. There’s also a provocative scene in a local peasant hut where the housemaid in the countess’s chateau matter-of-factly undergoes an abortion, with the abortionist’s own very young children nestled by her side. 

 I won’t give away what ultimately happens between Héloïse and Marianne, though the film gives us several interesting glimpses of their future lives. Suffice it to say that the ancient Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice plays a key emotional role in what ultimately transpires. Sciamma, clearly a master filmmaker, makes creative use of music both old (Summer, from Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons”) and new (a haunting a cappella number for female choir and rhythmic clapping). 

Portrait of a Lady on Fire was nominated for countless awards, and won many. At its Cannes debut, it was nominated for the Palme d’Or, and won for Sciamma’s screenplay. As a filmmaker devoted to the female gaze, Sciamma was doubtless pleased to have won the Queer Palm as well. 

 

What Have We Inherited from “The Heiress”?

Does The Heiress, an oldie from 1949 based on a Henry James novel called Washington Square, have anything to say to us today? In this #MeToo era, we’re all aware of women who’ve been pressured by men into unwanted sexual activity. Being a woman now—at a time when sexual compliance is often expected as a quid pro quo for favors received--is hardly easy. Still, it’s got to be an improvement on the nineteenth century, when a woman’s entire life was based on the obligation to marry and produce heirs.

Catherine Sloper, who lives with her doctor-father in an elegant Greenwich Village mansion, has what may seem an easy life. Having no need to earn her living, she devotes her time to embroidery, pretty dresses, and making homelife comfortable for her widowed papa. He pays her back by comparing her—in strongly negative terms—to her dead mother, whose good looks and charm the shy Catherine can’t hope to approximate. It’s clear to her that he considers her an abject failure, because no eligible bachelor seems willing to look at her twice.

Everything changes when, at a posh neighborhood soiree, she is asked to dance by the handsome Morris Townsend, just back from a swing through Europe. Almost immediately he is courting her, and she is falling head over heels in love. Their quick engagement is applauded by her giddy aunt, who thrives on the romance of it, but Dr. Sloper is sure from the start that the attractive but impoverished Morris is a fortune-hunter. To the good doctor, it’s clear that Morris Townsend is attracted less by Catherine’s quiet charm than by her future financial expectations.

So sure is Catherine that her beloved wants her for herself alone that she chooses to face disinheritance by organizing a late-night elopement. She’s thrilled by the prospect of leaving the family home forever, and going off into a future where she and Morris will live on love.  Alas, we’re not surprised when her betrothed leaves her in the lurch, and all her romantic dreams turn to dust.  The true suspense in the story comes when—several years later—Morris returns from far-off California to resume his courtship. By this point, Dr. Sloper is dead, and Catherine is the mistress of both her house and her desires. From this position of power, how will she react to Morris’s pretty speeches about why he abandoned her (for her own good, of course) all those years ago?

Catherine Sloper was played by Olivia de Havilland, now still alive and feisty at 103. It was she who brought a successful Broadway play to the attention of William Wyler, insisting on playing the role that ultimately brought her an Oscar. Ironically, de Havilland is perhaps best known as the sweet, docile Melanie in 1939’s Gone With the Wind. Her petite prettiness was not ideally suited to the role of Catherine, despite the valiant attempts of the production staff. Yet in the latter sections of the film, the steel in her spine seems quite genuine. Britain’s Ralph Richardson was Oscar-nominated for playing her father, subtly conveying the sense of a man who doesn’t realize how hatefully he’s treating his only child. I also admired veteran charmer Miriam Hopkins as the flighty aunt. But Montgomery Clift, starting to get a reputation as sensitive leading man, somehow seems too modern for this very period piece. Kudos to William Wyler for his elegant direction (which makes vivid use of the house’s massive staircase), and to Aaron Copland, who won an Oscar for bringing his symphonic gifts to the film’s score.