René Clair | I Married a Witch / 1942

taming the barbarians

by Douglas Messerli

 

Robert Pirosh, Marc Connelly (screenplay, based on the novel The Passionate Witch by Thorne Smith, complete by Norman H. Matson; with further dialogue by René Clair, André Rigaud, and Dalton Trumbo, all uncredited), René Clair (director) I Married a Witch / 1942

 

     In René Clair’s 1942 fantasy, I Married a Witch, it is clear that Jennifer (Veronica Lake) is an “actual” rather than a societally “perceived” witch, having centuries ago been condemned to death by Wallace Wooley’s (Fredric March) Puritan ancestor, Jonathan. A tree is planted over where she and her father, deemed a sorcerer, were burned to keep their spirits inside the earth.

 

    In the first few frames of the film, we discover the real reason why Wooley has condemned Jennifer as a witch is because he felt sexually tempted by her when she followed him into the haystack and attempted to kiss on his lips.

     Clearly Jonathan was an outright prude, about to marry an ugly woman named Purity Sykes (Marie Blake) who is already criticizing him for not paying her more attention. The film quickly moves on to 1770 where Nathaniel Wooley, obviously also terrified of females, is about to propose to Martha, a very plain woman. And in 1861 on the verge of the Civil War, Daniel Wooley’s wife Bessie is so violently hurling objects at him that he runs off to the nearest recruiting office.

     In fact, because he has rejected her kisses, Jennifer, the woman who has just been burned as a witch along with her father have, in turn, cast a spell upon all the Wooleys who come after Jonathan, dooming the Wooley tribe forever to bad marriages, a tradition Wallace is about to carry out in a forced wedding with a local political bosses’ daughter, Estelle Masterson (a forever frowning Susan Hayward)—although when later Jennifer  reminds her father of the Wooley curse, he responds, “Every man that marries, marries the wrong woman. True suffering cometh when a man falls in love with the woman he cannot marry.”

     In Clair’s fantasy she comes back to life only through another series of fiery forces, lightning striking the tree over Jennifer and her father’s burial site, bringing them back to life, and the destruction of a city hotel, from which Wallace carries the previously invisible witch to safety, thus bringing her back into the visible human world, where after catching a glimpse of herself in a mirror even Jennifer finds that she’s rather beautiful, although she wonders whether or not she should be a brunette.                      Accordingly, if there was ever a true barbarian, someone in the Puritan mind eternally burning in hell, it is Jennifer and her father Daniel (Cecil Kellaway), set on the destruction of the civilized world. Indeed, it is the chaos they introduce into the so-called civilized world that makes the first part of this film so delightful. It is hard even to sympathize with the hypocritical Wallace and his ancestors, given their bourgeois aspirations and their sacrifice of their ideals to community demands.

      March, clearly not in love with his arguing fiancée, spends most of this part of this movie with a drink in his hand, as he tries to escape Hayward’s scolds. At one point she even forces him to given up his drink, which his friend Dudley (Robert Benchley) grabs and immediately finishes off.

      But the movie shifts course when the barbarians “get inside,” so to speak, and refuse to leave. And what else can you do when they’ve squeaked through but to fall in love. It’s interesting just how influential this film was on later works such as the play and film Bell, Book, and Candle, and the television series Bewitched. In each of them falling in love is associated with witchcraft, and requires the male to readjust to a life with a woman who has used magical powers to woo him and alter his life.

      Obviously, in all three of these “bewitching” tales, even if the women are originally powerful, they are also seen to be dangerous outside forces who got their companions through guile and cunning. Moreover, throughout history—and well represented in LGBTQ films—witches were thought to be lesbians, presumably since females with whom such females consorted were imagined to be unable to actually fall in love—love being defined as it still often is as heteronormative sex. And as in Bell, Book, and Candle Jennifer begins the film with the idea of only doing further harm to the Wooley ancestor, forcing him to fall in love with no results. As with Wallace’s Puritan ancestor Jonathan, temptation is her goal rather than a heterosexual relationship. She is not even interested in sex.

     The surge of the betwitching powers in each of these works is what make them so much fun. It’s almost disappointing when Jennifer accidentally is served the magic potion her father has cooked up for her revenge. For as she falls in love and loses her powers the story becomes almost misogynistic as she spends an inordinate amount of time between her clever remarks by posing in Wallace’s pajamas, displaying her legs, and generally seeking out the male gaze as Veronica Lake purrs out her sexual admiration of her companion.

     In real life neither of them much liked each other. As Guy Maddin has reminded us:

 

“No one could suspect how much they loathed each other. Lake claimed she spurned the forty-five-year-old leading man’s advances. March claimed she was an ill-behaved amateur. The hatred between the two performers playing at romance on-screen is so hot it works wildly! Watching the heavenly Lake, positively itchy with sexual frustration because she can’t seduce this man, is enough to cast a blazing spell over anyone!”

 

     Like was most certainly irresponsible at times and often irrepressible. As she wrote her autobiography:

 

“One scene had me in a rocking chair. A picture falls off the wall and strikes me unconscious. I’m supposed to sit in the chair without movement while March desperately attempts to talk to me.

     The shot was medium, showing only the two of us from waist-high. We were into the scene and he came close to me. He was standing directly in front of the chair. I carefully brought my foot up between his legs. And I moved my foot up and down, each upward movement pushing it ever so slightly into his groin. Pro that he is, it wasn’t easy for him, and I delighted simply in knowing what was going through his mind. Naturally, when the scene was over, he laced into me. I just smiled.”

 

     Yet there is still enough fun throughout to keep the film as the Masterson’s drop in for a morning visit after Jennifer has settled into Wallace’s mansion permanently, despite he attempts to get rid of her. As in the original author Thorne Smith’s Topper stories, doors inexplicably slam shut, brooms move of their volition, and rum bottles speak. Pianos play of their own accord, the pot boils, and a revolver goes off by itself, temporarily killing Jennifer’s father. By the end of the film Clair even cooks up a flying taxi.

      And even after the film switches to its inevitable heterosexual plot after her drinking the love potion, Jennifer and her father attempt to stop Wallace’s wedding by causing a small cyclone of chaos as the couple begin down the aisle. When Wallace comes down again, it is hand in hand with his friend Dudley and when his bride-to-be finally joins him, the bridgegroom faints. A few minutes later, his fiancée Estelle finds him back upstairs kissing Jennifer. And even though Masterson attempts to ruin the man who was to be his son-in-law, Jennifer not only arranges for their marriage, a room to stay for the night, but saves the election by allowing him to win every single vote. 

     Like Kim Novak in Bell, Book, and Candle and Elizabeth Montgomery in Bewitched, she finally admits she is, in fact, is a witch, promising that from now all she will give up magic. However, she needed worry about that since she had lost her powers and is now a mere mortal, endangered by her father’s insistence that she return to the tree again. The newlyweds are finally saved by mortal love and a cork put back on a bottle of rum her pop inside. At the end of the film, we see the couple’s young daughter, Tabitha, astride a broom.

 

Los Angeles, February 17, 2024

Reprinted from My Gay Cinema blog (February 17, 2024).