forgetting to be a
lady
by Douglas Messerli
William Anthony McGuire (screenplay, based on
the play by Ladislas Fodor), James Whale (director) The Kiss Before the
Mirror / 1933
As the cinematic creator of Frankenstein (1931), The Old Dark House (1932), and The
Bride of Frankenstein (1935), openly gay director James Whale needs
no introduction to LGBTQ audiences. Or perhaps he does still, since, although
admitting his “camp” sensibility, even today there still seems to be an attempt
to deny that his clearly gay myths and characters were intentional or even
existent.
Consider, for example, the Wikipedia entry for Whale which uses comments
by fellow gay filmmaker Curtis Harrington and a friend of Whale in his later
years to denigrate contemporary queer theorists pretty straight-forward
readings of Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein:
“With knowledge of his [Whale’s] sexuality
becoming more common beginning in the 1970s, some film historians and gay
studies scholars have detected homosexual themes in Whale's work, particularly
in Bride of Frankenstein in which a number of the creative people
associated with the cast, including Ernest Thesiger and Colin Clive, were
alleged to be gay or bisexual. Scholars have identified a gay sensibility
suffused through the film, especially a camp sensibility, particularly embodied
in the character of Pretorius (Thesiger) and his relationship with Henry
Frankenstein (Clive).
Gay
film historian Vito Russo, in considering Pretorius, stops short of identifying
the character as gay, instead referring to him as ‘sissified’ (‘sissy’ itself
being Hollywood code for ‘homosexual’). Pretorius serves as a ‘gay
Mephistopheles,’ a figure of seduction and temptation, going so far as to pull
Frankenstein away from his bride on their wedding night to engage in the
unnatural act of non-procreative life. ...Russo goes so far as to suggest that
Whale's homosexuality is expressed in both Frankenstein and Bride as "a
vision both films had of the monster as an antisocial figure in the same way
that gay people were 'things' that should not have happened.’
The Monster, whose affections for the male hermit and the female Bride
he discusses with identical language (‘friend’), has been read as sexually
‘unsettled’ and bisexual. Writes gender studies author Elizabeth Young [in her
essay “Here Comes the Bride”]: ‘He has no innate understanding that the
male-female bond he is to forge with the bride is assumed to be the primary one
or that it carries a different sexual valence from his relationships with
[Pretorius and the hermit]: all affective relationships are as easily
'friendships' as 'marriages'. Indeed, his relationship with the hermit has been
interpreted as a same-sex marriage that heterosexual society will not tolerate:
‘No mistake—this is a marriage, and a viable one.’ writes cultural critic Gary Morris
for Bright Lights Film Journal. ‘But Whale reminds us quickly that
society does not approve. The monster—the outsider—is driven from his scene of
domestic pleasure by two gun-toting rubes who happen upon this startling
alliance and quickly, instinctively, proceed to destroy it." The creation
of the Bride scene has been called ‘Whale's reminder to the audience—his
Hollywood bosses, peers, and everyone watching—of the majesty and power of the
homosexual creator.’
However, [Curtis] Harrington dismisses this [in David Del Valle’s
‘Curtis Harrington on James Whale’ in Films in Review] as ‘a younger
critic's evaluation. All artists do work that comes out of the unconscious mind
and later on you can analyze it and say the symbolism may mean something, but
artists don't think that way and I would bet my life that James Whale would
never have had such concepts in mind.’ Specifically in response to the ‘majesty
and power’ reading, Harrington states ‘My opinion is that's just pure bullshit.
That's a critical interpretation that has nothing to do with the original
inspiration.’ He concludes, ‘I think the closest you can come to a homosexual
metaphor in his films is to identify that certain sort of camp humor.’
Whale's partner David Lewis stated flatly that Whale's sexual
orientation was ‘not germane’ to his filmmaking. ‘Jimmy was first and foremost
an artist, and his films represent the work of an artist—not a gay artist, but
an artist.’ Whale's biographer Curtis rejects the notion that Whale would have
identified with the Monster from a homosexual perspective, stating that if the
highly class-conscious Whale felt himself to be an antisocial figure, it would
have been based not in his sexuality but in his origin in the lower classes.”
I
quote this long passage since it represents an attempt to downplay how Whale’s
homosexuality played a role in his filmmaking and seeks to somehow separate out
the idea of being an artist from also being a “gay artist,” as if the other
were secondary and clearly inferior to the former.
Certainly, there may be some overstatement of gay themes in Whale’s
works, and even some “reading in” of the texts in a manner which does some harm
to the original; but “reading in’” as I always argue. is far better than
“reading over” or simply blocking out the many queer references and myths that
are played out in any work, and most certainly in Whale’s case.
One
must also remember that Harrington, David Lewis, and perhaps even James Curtis
are of a generation that was still fearful of speaking fully out about their
gay interests, as if to do so would take attention away—as if often did—from
the serious intentions of their art, “gay art” obviously not being perceived of
as being “serious.”
These attacks against gay interpretations have long been common, even
coming, as in this case, from homosexuals themselves.
In
the Wikipedia essay, although the gay argument is at least presented, the
conclusion is to dismiss such queer interpretations as simply being beside the
point, a totally wrong and dangerous proposition, when, in fact, such issues
are often very much central to the art. To say such issues are unimportant
would be similar to claiming that the heterosexual relationship between Rick
and Elsa was not really central to Michael Curtiz’ Casablanca or that
Nickie and Terry’s relationship was of little interest to Leo McCarey in his
making of An Affair to Remember, to argue that these were simply artists
not truly interested in sex.
One
might note that I have not included a full essay on Whale’s Frankenstein
in these pages because—although queer references are very much embedded in the
work even in Mary Shelley’s version (indeed they appear in the majority of the
works of the horror genre simply in their monsters’ being dangerous
outsiders)—to me they do not seem central to the film or even important enough
within the work justify my focusing on them. There is no doubt that the monster
and the hermit most certainly do hit it off in their short time together, but I
would not describe their relationship, as does Gary Morris, as a “viable
marriage” or even a full-fledged relationship. We might simply observe it as
one of many possible human relationships offered to the monster which for a
number of reasons he cannot comprehend or easily embrace. And the “friend” he
constantly seeks is of any sex or age, since he is basically a newborn without
yet the ability to distinguish gender or sex.
But
in The Old Dark House, The Bride of Frankenstein, and others of
Whale’s works, being gay or lesbian does truly matter, and I resent those who
would wash away any of that importance the way Joseph Breen and Hays Code board
tried to cut away all even subtle gay references to hundreds of films,
including the Whale film I am about to discuss, The Kiss Before the Mirror
(1933), which in for its 1935 reissue as Wives Under Suspicion, the
director was forced to savagely cut both regarding the heterosexual
melodramatic relationships and the other LGBTQ scenes I describe below. Queer
critic Richard Barrios describes the situation: “In 1938, when James Whale
remade his provocative 1993 The Kiss Before The Mirror...the material
was so denatured that one can sense Whale’s dejection in every frame of the
film.”
In
main, Whale’s original version is a melodramatic heterosexual tale about a man,
Dr. Walter Bernsdorf (Paul Lukas) who discovers that his wife, Lucy (Gloria
Stuart) is seriously cheating on him and kills her, who immediately after calls
the police to come and arrest him; and his friend and lawyer Dr. Paul Held
(Frank Morgan) who becomes his lawyer who will attempt and succeed in
acquitting his client despite his confessed guilt.
In
the process of learning the details of the reasons for his friend’s murder of
his wife, however, Held begins to perceive that his own wife, Maria (Nancy
Carroll) may be involved in an illicit relationship as well, and plans, after
making his plea for and freeing his friend to also commit just such a murder,
hopefully feeling justified by his acts.
The
entire film is centered around two incidents: Bernsdorf’s observation, as he
arrives home unexpectedly, to observe his wife making herself up in the mirror,
which reflects back her true beauty and her own excitement in enhancing that
beauty for another man. Her behavior, upon her discovering that her husband has
returned and is watching her, further reveals her disinterest in her
husband—although the day has been a pleasant and loving one between them. Indeed,
it’s gradually revealed, despite their perfect life together he has long before
suspicious, having purchased a gun. And the
new realization that her joy in the mirror is all on account of another
man, makes him so very jealous that he cannot help but follow her to her
lover’s house (the lover played Walter Pidgeon) and after seeing her in his
arms shoots.
Upon hearing his friend’s story, the lawyer Held returns home to see his
own beautiful wife sitting at her vanity table, playing out a scene so similar
to the one Bernsdorf described that he also suspects her, and following her on
her afternoon appointment discovers that she too is seeing another man (Donald
Cook), and cannot restrain himself from having the same feelings as described
by his friend.
Held does not even try, however, to plead Bernsdorf’s temporary
insanity—although withholds the information of his friend’s careful
planning—but attempts to demonstrate to the jury that the act is based on a love
intense that when it is betrayed the lover had no other choice. Although the
movie does not repeat Oscar Wilde’s famous statement, one might argue that the
sole cause of the murder is a love so intense that it is inevitable, the epic
force by the notion that
“Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By
each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some
with a flattering word,
The
coward does it with a kiss,
The
brave man with a sword.”
As
this short outline might reveal, Whale’s story (based on a play by Ladislas
Fodor with a screenplay by William Anthony McGuire) is not only a bit
hysterical at points, particularly with regard to both Held’s and Bernsdorf’s
reaction to their wives’ unfaithfulness and, most clearly in Held’s courtroom
plea for his friend’s innocence, but is also highly misogynistic. The women in
Held’s point of view deserve to die for their lies and treachery. Fortunately,
Held does carry through with his own murder, the lawyer finally finding a way
to forgive Maria and even, at the very last moment, to take her back into their
long-time relationship.
One might effectively argue that the intense mirror image of the whole
work is reminiscent of the incidents of Whale’s own life as portrayed in the
film Gods and Monsters (1998), based on Christopher Bram's 1995 novel Father
of Frankenstein, wherein it is suggested that in the trenches of World War
I, Whale’s lover was killed under German fire, trapped in the no-man’s zone of
the barbed wife where he body was left hanging to torture his lover for days
before it could be brought down. However, the incident in both the movie and
the original book is entirely fictional and did not occur in Whale’s
imprisonment in German war camp where he began producing plays—although it has
some similarity to incidents in R. C. Sherriff’s 1928 play Journey’s End
which Whale successfully directed in many stage renditions—the source of his
early wealth—and on screen in 1930.
We
can only perceive the mirror images as suggesting the myth of Narcissus in
which the lovely being must prove his/her beauty by seeking out an “other”
again and again. But in this instance it doesn’t take us very far into the
male/male love of the original myth. The shattered mirror in this film
represents the destruction of the lie of the wives’ inner beauty and a
revealing of love’s transitory nature.
As
Bernsdorf makes clear, he may be freed from death, but he is forever trapped in
its memory and consequences. Without love, for either another or himself, he
might as well be dead.
Yet Whale introduces other elements to this work that have nothing to do
with the central story but surely introduce us to other possibilities and
expressions of love.
The
director openly embraces the recent trend, by 1933 about to be banned by Breen
and the Hays Code, of placing a sissy in his tale. During the trial a
journalist is introduced surrounded by a cub reporter and a sketch artist, the
latter of which, when the journalist insists of the crowd, “They want blood.
They want to see the murderer,” the young sketch artist in the most mincing of
voices and with hand gestures to match bolding declares, “So do I!”
Later, in the courtroom as Maria Held enters in her newest outfit, the
artist asks of his journalist friend, “Who is the beautiful lady in the Russian
sable?, the reporter answering. “That’s Mrs. Held, darling. Get a sketch of her
and write under, ‘wife of the counselor wearing one the smartest gowns of the
season.’” He goes on, but quickly stops himself, admitting he’s getting the
event all confused with the Charity ball, suggesting that he himself, obviously
a connoisseur of female costume, is a fellow sissy.
But
Whale goes much further in his introduction the most intelligent and certainly
the wittiest figure of his work, Hilda (Jean Dixon), Held’s fellow lawyer
assistant. It is she, presumably, who argues most of the case, with Held only
delivering the final summary.
Dressed quite smartly, but in an entirely different manner from the
“frou-frou slinky” gowns of the wives Lucy and Maria, Hilda upon meeting the
prosecutor for the first time responds to his question about her involvement in
the case: “A woman has been killed. That interests me quite a bit.”
The
moment he leaves the room, she reacts, rather sarcastically, in an aside to
Held, “Charming man,” to which he replies, “Yes, I had an idea you’d like him.”
Indeed from that moment on one recognizes that Hilda is capable of
saying one thing that might have several other possible meanings. In the Held
home, waiting for her fellow law-partner to show up, she converses with Mrs.
Held.
Talking about the “murdered victim,” a word Maria cannot even bear to
hear, Held’s wife comments:
Maria: She was so excited about a new dress she’d ordered.
Hilda: Did she get the dress, madame?
Maria: Certainly, she wore it on the day she was murdered.
Hilda: Well, that’s something. She did wear it. It’s originally when
buying a dress to be
shot in. But if one’s going to murdered it’s nice
to dressed for it.
(Maria looks strangely at her, not knowing what to make of her
comments)
Hilda: You knew Madame, didn’t you, that she was having an affair?
Maria: Well I sensed it. We women always sense it before our husbands.
Hilda: I wonder.
Hilda’s last comment, I suggest, should not be interpreted as a
statement of doubt, but as a true wonderment, an astonishment that is out of
her experience, she not being a wife and never have sensed that another woman
was having an affair.
Finally Held shows up and they make a few comments, before he turns
toward Hilda, observing as if for the very first time:
Held: You’re a funny creature. What are you? Lawyer, or a new kind
of
women.
Hilda: By day I’m a lawyer. By night...well you might be surprised.
Held: Why don’t you get married.
Hilda: Well, being single has its points. At least no one will ever
murder me.
Held: You may have the night off Hilda.
Hilda: Why thank you. I’ll make the most of.
Held: Doing what? I’m curious to know what a lady lawyer does in her
spare
time.
Hilda: Probably forgets that she is a lawyer. And sometimes forgets that
she
is a lady.
This clever conversation can, of course, be perceived as a mere
discussion in which Hilda is simply suggesting that she may not be as prudish,
spinsterish, or uninterested in male companionship as her daily job might
indicate. But far more likely, I believe, the script suggests that the Helds
are asking these questions about her “outside” life because they may suspect,
what she hints at, that she is a “different kind of woman,” not just “a new
kind of woman,” as Held implicates, not only liberated but lesbian. As she
suggests, sometimes she forgets that she’s a “lady,” either implying that her
morals are much looser than they appear in her role before the bench or, far
more likely, that she is a “manly” woman, the way lesbians were generally
described in the 1930s.
Hilda plays an important role, accordingly, in this film, as both a
woman who sees things from a female viewpoint and a lesbian, who perceives
things about other women in a manner that neither of the two unfaithful wives
can imagine. Outside of the bounds of marriage, Hilda sees through both her
partner Held’s hyper-macho reactions and the dissimulation of his wife.
As Held returns to the judge’s chamber after his impassioned plea on
part of his client Bernsdorff, Hilda brings a perspective to the melodramatic
scene just prior that balances this film in a way that without her would make
it seem almost like a “male weepie,” the men crying for the evil women have
done them.
As he enters the chambers, she looks Held in the eyes saying: “As a
lawyer I congratulate you. You probably won. But as a woman I didn’t believe a
word of your argument.”
If such statements as these, from alternative gender and sexual
viewpoints, do not really matter, then, I’d argue, the viewer has no more
ability to read a movie than the Hays Code board or passive viewers who watch
movies for their quality as moving pictures instead of enjoying it as a form of
literate art.
Los Angeles, March 25, 2022
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (March
2022).
