Well, then, I want to read something to you. But there were ways in which movies made under the Code were more imaginative about relations between men and women. You know, Andrew didn’t like the Code, he thought it was stifling in so many ways, and that it was ridiculous with all the happy endings and so forth. In that scene in "North by Northwest" with Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint in the train compartment, you know they’re going to do it for sure because they’re actually together in the same room, so there’s more of a lead-in to it.
#Molly haskell movie
Don’t you?Īlthough now that you mention it, I guess the movie never comes right out and says they had sex. I think there’s something in the way they behave.
I saw the movie for the first time before I read the novel and I just assumed they’d had sex. And people were amazed by that because they knew how strong the Production Code was at that time in the Hays Office.Įd said that was what was wrong with the movie of “ The Maltese Falcon,” you needed to know that Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor had gone to bed together. You see her go to her room, and you know it. It’s such an adult movie, because you know Ruth Chatterton is having affairs with all these people, but the movie doesn’t spell it all out. Well, we were talking about “Dodsworth” and how sophisticated it is.
I did a Q&A with Ed Sorel, who’s done this book on Mary Astor, with his cartoon drawings and everything, it’s just fabulous.
#Molly haskell full
But it’s-so full of hate and the hate is so close to eros that it’s just indistinguishable! So amazing! I don’t think there’s anything like that today. OK, so after he’s almost been killed by the crop duster and he comes to her room, and he doesn’t tell her that he knows she’s behind it, it’s all there. But those scenes with Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint are so erotic, and also when he’s hating her. Last night I was watching "North by Northwest" and I thought, “That can’t be done anymore.” They can’t make films that have that kind of subtext, and I guess it’s because we don’t have the veneer of normalcy that that sort of movie depends on, or the veneer of oppression and everything else. At times it seems as if you think that a bit of repression can be good for movies. MZS: One of the things that fascinates me about From Reverence to Rape is that, in addition to being about what it’s about-the image and treatment of women throughout movie history-the book is also about what’s shown and what’s withheld, what’s said and what’s unspoken, and what effect that all has on the viewer.
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