Quality human beings transcending or trashed? by the indifference and mediocrity of striving ambition…..the Armageddon of feigned loyalty: “talk doesn’t cook rice” the actors bound in shallows and miseries…..
II
Theodore Dreiser dissects the American way of life vis a vi a German immigrant ‘s grasp of hard knocks His Teutonic interpretation of the class warfare and struggle, surfaced in his “Sister Carrie”.
Uncorrupted innocence from the farm, arrives in the city: shades of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, the wiles of the English landed gentry at the moment of Lord Profumo’saffair…..Douglas Fairbanks, Jr (“The Corsica Twins”) but a guest.…..enjoying the good life, having his father’s dash and splendor, playing dual roles aka twins.
Innocence corrupted by the big city boys, on thee make?
III
But the lief motif….these demons contaminating the Brutus and Cassius state of mind; mercenaries become assassins, their ulterior motives surfacing.
Dreiser’s ‘The American Tragedy’ demonstrates the Bard’s view of the Julius Caesar conspiracy, a caper that tests Mark Anthony’s character and loyalty.
IV
The film “A place in the sun”tranposes the novel. Elizabeth Taylor, Shelly Winters, Montgomery Cliff the protagonistsmotivating the motif…
‘Be grateful for small favors’
V
Montgomery Cliff depicts the hang-ups of a young man (“no Huckleberry Finn he”) believing he can out wit his origins by wooing the boss’s daughter.
The moneyed trappings of a security blanket however liesbeyond his ken, the artist however is very manipulative as thebridge between his two auras, start to collapse like the struts supporting a it.
VI
Like the cream cheese bandit, he doesn’t visualize the trap in those trappings. Bewildered by the pretentious charade, he succumbs to the fatalism playing out. .
Like the cream cheese bandit, Monty Cliff in opting for the security blanket and Shelly Winters? Yet he opts for the invisible and Liz Taylor’s moneyed “curse of bigness”.
He couldn’t see through the forest for the trees, the ancient myth maintaining its viable endurance over the centuries.
VII
The come up pance for Montgomery Cliff’s up start character is the fatalism playing out. To confess his alleged fatal attraction for Elizabeth Taylor’s security blanket, he takes Shelly on a boating tryst. To confess his longing for Elizabeth Taylor, he gets up from his oaring, the boat overturns, Shelly unable to swim, drowns.
Whether it was the court of public opinion or the criminal court, the jury finds Mister Cliff guilty of premeditated murder.
VIII
To free up his disenchantment, the cream cheese bandit vowed never to marry for money. But als alack, his maestros at Samuel J. Tilden High School, never told him ”The Awful Truth”.
If they did, his Habla el Eepanol teacher Sam Levinson never“nunca” even whispered or purred that enduring truth to his humdrum ears. That café society was a fiction b y Truman Capote or Norman Mailer slugging it out on t v or in their writings.
Didn’t Norman seek the role of Mayor in the Big Apple ?
IX
The ultimate tragedy is the self destructiveness of Monty Cliff. Shelly Winters pointing to medical school for her daughter, she once coming from the Five and Ten in Eat New York and Jefferson High School. Well Elizabeth Taylor befriending Montgomery Cliff, riding her horse into the B el Air sunset and her cache. Necklaces, rings and bracelets…..slave or otherwise.
Shades of Zsa Zsa Gabor and her Count. Or was it a Baron?
May 7, 2015 The City that never sleeps.
