#WTW: Certified Copy (Copie conforme)

(it's #WhatThomWatched's Sweet Sixteen!)

Certified Copy (Copie conforme)

(2010, Abbas Kiarostami; Criterion spine #612)

One of the most subtle and beguiling film-structure tricks of recent memory: A French woman and an English man go on a drive and then an extended walk together through gorgeous and romantic Italian countryside, conversing, flirting, arguing, and flat-out fighting for 100 minutes; it sounds very much like an entry in Linklater’s Before trilogy. Except that the man and woman are strangers on a date at the start of the film, and spouses with an entire past history together at the end. There’s a narrative point in the middle where it might make sense that the two (dating strangers) would start playing a let’s-pretend game (of being 15 years married). But the genius of the script and of the performances (by Juliette Binoche and William Shimell) is that they resist this simple interpretation; for example, the characters speak to each other in English, French, and a bit of Italian, but the actual fluency in these languages shifts from beginning to end to fit the differing interpretations. And the information that Shimell has about the relationship changes as well. It’s possible that two people could play a game with each other, but the game would have to be diabolical if they were to pretend they didn’t know things they had to know (and that the other didn’t know the things they knew the other knew)! No, the two interpretations of the situation are both true simultaneously; for the viewer, they lay uncomfortably on top of each other like two identical-but-not-quite transparencies of the same artwork, conflicting with each others’ lines in some spots, and reinforcing each other with the same lines in other spots.

And this metaphor is explicit: Binoche is an art dealer and Shimell is an academic who has written a book about copies in art, specifically to question whether or not there is ever a true “original” of an artwork and why a “copy” of an artwork should be considered equally valid as a work of art. The idea of high art and low art, reproductions and forgeries, true value and value which is imputed to an artwork (or value rescinded) appears again and again: when the two view a portrait in a museum which was thought for decades to be original but recently found to be a copy; as they walk past statuary in a village which the townspeople love but critics deplore as kitsch; even as Shimell signs several of his books for Binoche (thus theoretically increasing the value of some previously identical copies over others). At the same time, even before the viewer starts to suspect that the two strangers might in reality be a long-married couple, the idea of marriage has already been in the foreground — the town that they drive to for a visit is famous for its weddings and is full of young couples getting married and older couples revisiting the site of their marriage. Every grumpy observation that Shimell makes about the naive youngsters (“When I see all the hopes and dreams in their eyes, I can’t support the illusion!”) becomes, by the end, a comment on his own marriage; every (seemingly) flighty gesture that Binoche makes (oddly aggressive arguments, suddenly wistful reactions to the weddings) could be misinterpreted, at the start of the film, as the art-film version of critic Nathan Rabin’s “manic pixie dream girl” trope.

So artworks and newlyweds are highlighted. But also, as with any two-handed, real-time conversation in a movie or (more often) in a stage play, the viewer is primed to watch closely for additional details (reactions, settings, background actions) that comment or shed light on the interrelationship. In the driving scenes, heavy reflections and shadows on the pair flow by, as if their thoughts or memories are being depicted visually, especially since the setup results in two entirely different but related “streams” (reflections from the two sides of a road); the visual even seems to be commenting on the dialogue, if impenetrably. The rapid spoken language changes are also fascinating; generally, the two speak English or French, with some interactions in Italian, and although every language choice makes sense line-to-line, there seem to be higher-order comments on the conversation based on what language is being used and by which speaker (especially interesting given that Kiarostami is working outside his native Persian). And the positions of the actors in the frame (interesting to consider in any well-designed movie) are doubly interesting in the context of the two possible reads of the relationship; in the opening scene’s lecture by Shimell, Binoche first appears in the far back of the room, clutching copies of his book, looking almost like a star-struck fan — and then winds up in one of the reserved seats in the front row. The camera’s position seems utilitarian at first, but read as Shimell’s view of the room, it’s either interest in the pretty art dealer come to hear his slightly pompous talk, or unease at the appearance of his somewhat estranged wife (with their son hanging around at stage left, shooting increasingly exasperated looks at his mother). There are also many reflection shots, both key mirror shots for each character (including the enigmatic final shot) but also frames within the frame with one character dominant and the other seen in reflection, like an artwork.

Binoche is incredible. Shimell, an opera baritone who had never acted in a film before, holds his own. Their parts are, obviously, very tricky; Shimell has to be a bit of a jerk in both takes on reality, and Binoche has to externalize frustration and desire using only her facial expressions and manner of talking, driving the conversation for most of the film as Shimell trails behind and reacts. Kiarostami developed the film with and for Binoche, and it’s very hard to imagine another actress pulling it off.

Reminds me of:

As mentioned above, Richard Linklater’s Before films (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight) are also structured as real-time events with two characters talking. (So is My Dinner With Andre, as far as that goes.) Familiarity with a couple of these movies might lead a viewer into a false set of expectations with Certified Copy: we’re used to a certain low-budget, pretty-scenery, backward-camera-tracking aesthetic; we’re listening for verbal reveals and counter-reveals, with an expectation that each line is as new and unexpected to the other listener as it is to us — we’re a third, silent participant in the conversation. Therefore the rug is really pulled out from under us as we start to suspect that the characters know more (and more about each other) than we’d thought.

This is another film about marriage, like L’Atalante and some others mentioned in that #WTW. It’s a tough one to watch as a husband. All the selfishness of Shimell’s character lies uncomfortably close to the ways in which men fail their spouses all the time, especially the fact that Binoche holds all the emotional responsibility for their son; apparently Kiarostami was working from his own life and own failed relationship, and the two simultaneous narratives show the need for and the impossibility of marriage commitment. He is not letting himself (and his male viewer) off easily. L’Atalante was a sweet depiction of the early years of a relationship which has the power to remind people of their own youthful emotions; here there are some similar early-relationship mementos, along with some hard and bittersweet truths about where people sit fifteen or twenty years down the line.

I remember the first time I was aware of Binoche, in Krzysztof Kieslowski’s masterful Blue from his Three Colors trilogy in 1993. She’s always been complex. Last year’s Clouds of Sils Maria just opened in the U.S. and I can’t wait to see Binoche in it; it sounds like it’s built on another layered conceit: Binoche is a famous stage actress who found fame in a performance twenty years earlier, and she’s agreed to star in a revival of the play but as an older character, with a new young ingenue in “her” part. It’s racked up European awards including honors for American actresses Chloë Grace Moretz (always interesting) and Kristen Stewart (interesting when she’s in the right work); it sounds like a female-centric, international version of Birdman.

But then — the guilt!

Typical American: This is the this first Kiarostami film I’ve seen despite being intrigued by (and owning) Close-Up, and having heard about and yet ignored Taste of Cherry for years. His other films are situated in and react to Iranian society, and this European-centric film (while wonderful) doesn’t engage with Iran other than to act as a counterpoint (a movie which Kiarostami couldn’t have made in his native milieu; in Iran, the film was automatically banned from release due to its “western themes” — and, very likely, Binoche’s bare arms). Taste of Cherry would have been a more straightforward introduction to his work. As penance, I’ll watch my copy of Close-Up soon.

The easy resemblance to Linklater’s trilogy (which I’ve seen) doesn’t absolve me of the fact that there are stronger precursors which influenced both Linklater and Kiarostami: the one everyone mentions is Rossellini’s Journey to Italy from 1954, in which a couple similarly argues and rekindles their relationship as they travel. Apparently George Sanders as the husband character is rude and off-putting in ways which strongly inform Shimell’s performance here.

Pitch:

This is Binoche’s show and she’s a stunner from start to finish; Adrian Moore as her son only gets to appear in the first couple scenes, but it’s an unforced and natural performance. Their early conversation in a cafe is masterful, leaving just enough questions about Binoche’s internal state that we’re primed to keep watching for clues. That’s where Kiarostami hooks us, because those clues are liberally scattered — but don’t add up to what we’re anticipating (or, indeed, anything quite like we’ve seen before.)

<< The Prisoner (-) Big Hero 6 (Glance) >>

#WTW: The Prisoner

(#WhatThomWatched Number Fifteen....)

The Prisoner

(1967-1968, Don Chaffey/Pat Jackson/Patrick McGoohan/David Tomblin; A&E Home Video disc set)

This singular television program ran on BBC competitor channel ITV (the “I” is for “independent”) for 17 episodes. It set a bar for how challenging a show can be that has rarely been passed since. It’s not fully successful, but it’s never less than provocative and far-reaching. Unlike most television, it is the creative vision of a single person — Patrick McGoohan, its creator and star, author or co-author of some episodes, credited or uncredited director of others. Some of the episodes still rank with the finest television shows ever broadcast; some fail now only because their tricks or themes have been copied so many times since then; and still others fail because they represent such a huge conceptual reach that audiences then (and still now) can’t find its wavelength. But it’s always, at any point, thoroughly entertaining.

The Prisoner has a simple conceit: In the opening credits (with no audible dialogue, over a driving theme from Ron Grainer, also the composer of the iconic Doctor Who theme), the protagonist steers his mod convertible into a London parking garage, storms into a secure office with a letter of resignation, and causes a desk-pounding, teacup-spilling scene. He then speeds home with the proverbial smile-playing-about-his-lips, too focused on his upcoming island vacation to note the black hearse and top-hatted men following him. After being gassed and abducted, he wakes up in a posh apartment to discover that, along with hundreds of other (presumably) former spies and intelligence assets of unspecified nations and political orientations, he is a prisoner of the Village. This is apparently some sort of organized retirement for folks who served god-and-country and are too dangerous (or are too tempting as targets) to live freely, but our man chafes at the forced anonymity — each resident is known only by an assigned code number — and at the authority figures’ one repeated question for him: Why did he decide to resign? Now known only as Number Six, he explores the comfortable confines of the genteel (and escape-resistant) Village while being subjected to a series of complex mind games designed to wrest the answer from him, unsure at any moment who he can trust but always bedeviled by his lead jailor/torturer/inquisitor, Number Two. It’s a nigh-perfect hook for an episodic show, although its creators were wise to limit it to 17 installments — the hero can stay ahead of the captors, but he still has to lose every week — he cannot escape.

Over this premise McGoohan and co-creators George Markstein and David Tomblin layered an almost absurd (and often absurdist) amount of surrealistic detail, often choosing the boldest and least-expected visual over a more conventional one even at the expense of the narrative. This includes Village residents in incongruous costumes essaying incongruous leisure activities, a silent cadre of efficient henchmen-and-women who appear to arrange things behind the scenes, surveillance footage viewable by the leadership which can include any location and shots from improbable camera angles, a bevy of mysterious instrument panels and sinister contraptions, endless syringes and shots forcibly given which convey any magical outcome (up to and including switching two persons’ selves into the other bodies), and so on.

And typical to the show’s tone, lead antagonist Number Two is played by a different actor each week; as time goes on it becomes clear that each leader’s failure to break Number Six is resulting in them being replaced by some impenetrable management structure (Number One, possibly?), but for the first several episodes this is just another in a pile-up of disorienting detail which keeps us just as confused as Six. 

It's a feast, visually, and one that continually rewards careful watching. Signs and posters in the background feature Orwellian slogans, all rendered in the Victorian font used throughout the Village. Costumes are opulent and colorful and often dress residents in contrast to their actual functions. And many scenes are blocked and framed to emphasize confusion, mysterious purpose, and layers of reality; the shot below, taken from the key location of Number Two's control room, is a good example of this: facilitated communication via multiple devices; machinery with mysterious purpose, often (as here) outscaling its human operators; and reality interacting with mitigated reality on giant screens:

Watching the documentary that comes with the A&E 40th anniversary disc set (Don’t Knock Yourself Out, from 1997), it’s clear that not everyone associated with the show is on the same page about McGoohan (who does not participate). The series is indelible because of where it goes in the last several episodes, which were completely taken over by McGoohan; some of his colleagues think he was a genius who knew exactly what he was doing, and others speculate that he deliberately took the series off the rails because he was stuck — but there’s no doubt that what he did is unique, compelling, and an honest attempt to say something (and be) different. The last two episodes are still bracing and unexpected when viewed today. The Prisoner was clearly highly influential in many ways, and yet the ending doesn’t resemble anything else on television then or now — it’s closer to a highly intellectualized theater piece.

Reminds me of:

Stylish British 1960’s secret-agent shows, at least at first — obviously I’m reminded of my childhood public television discovery of The Avengers and all those kinky John Steed and Emma Peel costumes (even the Catherine Gale years had an indelible impact on impressionable minds). Those shows were flashier and less ideological but they still seemed to push the limits of television. 

That’s superficial, though: It’s more interesting to consider which other dramatic series have been so much a product of an auteur with a singular vision. David Lynch’s 1990-1991 run of Twin Peaks not only held a similar cachet but was also very peculiar (almost beyond reason) and also let down a large percentage of its fan base when it could not bring all of its story threads and themes to a satisfyingly neat conclusion. The last few episodes of Prisoner at least manage to say exactly what its auteur McGoohan wanted to say: some of the passages are nonsensical, but others have undeniable power, with imagery as fine as any the series has to offer — and all of them would be unthinkable as a conventional product of television-by-committee.

When The Prisoner was originally airing in Britain, it would inevitably have played on the public’s fervor for and familiarity with the previous Danger Man series, in which McGoohan played secret agent John Drake. McGoohan can certainly play other roles and could have created a distinct agent character, but instead he seems to be deliberately and cannily connecting his previous project to this one. Many actors from Danger Man show up again here; the deeply researched Danger Man fansite identifies fifty-six such crossovers, though in no case can an actor be definitively said to be playing the same character in each show. Of course that didn’t stop the theorist-fans from finding connections that “prove” Danger Man’s John Drake is Number Six — after all, any former colleagues or opponents that Drake might have known would be similarly under alias or assigned a number in the Village of The Prisoner. Even without considering the earlier show, the heavy reuse of actors and very few recurring roles (with just a couple of exceptions) adds to the sense of disorientation.

But then — the guilt!

I’d never seen Danger Man and my experience of watching The Prisoner really made me fall for McGoohan. I’m now eager to see it and fortunately for me Shout! Factory did a new DVD set a few months ago which includes all of the earlier shows — literally, two different but tightly related British series (39 half-hour episodes between 1960-1962 and then 47 hour-long episodes in a revamped format from 1964-1967; confusingly called Secret Agent in their U.S. runs). I understand that it’s frothier and more conventional, but even the possibility that his character John Drake is destined to become Number Six makes me want to see it. Though note: At 17 discs, it’ll be a while before the #WTW comes out.

I’d also like to start seeking out some of McGoohan’s film performances. Silver Streak (where he plays the big bad) was one of my favorite films as a kid, but I don’t remember him over the Pryor and Wilder shenanigans. I also noticed the other day that The Quare Fellow, one of those items in my Netflix streaming queue which appeared there at some point in the past (so long ago that I can’t remember why — I’m sure you have yours too) is a starring role for McGoohan from 1962 — I will bump it just a smidge upward in my eventual inevitability index. (And yes, I realize he’s in Scanners. Which has a new Criterion edition, spine #712.)

Pitch:

It takes a bit to warm up to McGoohan here — he’s prickly, self-righteous and uncompromising. But you can’t take your eyes off him. Give him an episode and a half and you’ll be hooked. The middle eight or so stand with the best television episodes in existence, and even with the problems that start to crop up, you’ll want to stay tuned through the sometimes bitter end.

<< L'Atalante (-) Certified Copy >>

#WTW: L'Atalante

(#WhatThomWatched nº 14...)

L’Atalante

(1934, Jean Vigo; Criterion spine #578, from The Complete Jean Vigo)

It’s startling to consider that this, Vigo’s only full-length film after two shorts that jabbed at the establishment, wasn’t even a project he wanted to do. It was what a studio offered him and his financial backer, a corny script with a mildly interesting conceit: What if a village girl were to be swept off her feet by a young barge captain floating through town, ran away from her family, and found herself adjusting to married life on a tiny boat with a salty first mate, a foolish cabin boy, and innumerable feral cats and kittens sharing her impossibly tiny personal space? Vigo himself was apparently highly dubious. And then he shot off from that hackneyed idea and created an utter masterpiece, beloved by romantics and cynics alike, studied frame-by-frame by filmmakers ever since. He did this with a handful of extremely talented collaborators, sure, but he also was working under a death sentence, passing away from tuberculosis at 29 just as the film was nearing its final edit.

A good older foreign movie is worthy of respect and study, but this reaches across 80 years and grabs you, laughing, by both shoulders. Yes, part of this stems from inescapable awareness of the tragedy of Vigo’s short life, but it’s more than that — the visual experimentation, the palpable joy of the actors (especially mate Michel Simon and bride Dita Parlo), the satisfying story beats; it all feels completely modern, possibly because great filmmakers have been continually inspired by Vigo across decades. It’s an incredibly simple story once Parlo is on the boat with new husband Jean Dasté: She makes the best of the cramped conditions, with some of the inconvenience salved by the balm of new love; a rare trip ashore with Dasté proves that he’s a touch less social than she; and when she ventures off the boat again for some innocent fun alone, her new husband, jealous, steams off without her. Simon, with whom she’s bonded earlier, conspires to find her and bring her back. That’s it — the complications hardly rise to the level of a sitcom episode. But the details are what makes the film unforgettable, especially Simon. His Père Jules is an unruly, profane force of nature, the source of most of the comedy and a lot of the heart of the show, and the bits are inspired even when viewed today; for example, the circa-2011 meme of table flipping (where a person turns over a table to stop a game in progress when it’s not going their way) makes an appearance here.

Clearly this is a key film about marriage, turning the universal fear about binding your life with someone else’s and losing your own sense of identity into an externalized situation — the barge. The ways in which Vigo shows us both ineffable joy and simultaneous uncertainty are immensely clever: the newlyweds exult in just holding each other, alternately embracing and looking into each other’s eyes, in long takes that encourage us to forget about actors acting and believe that the emotions are real; the husband stalks his bride abovedeck like a cat; and at one point they fall into a game where they are back to back and trying to lift the other off the ground. It’s foolish and silly on the one hand, and yet that very ridiculousness makes it seem even truer. Parlo loves the romance of the boat but you can see how she begins to long for just a little time onshore; Dasté clearly wants to indulge her but it’s also obvious that he’s uncomfortable with the crowds and gaiety at the nightclub he takes her to, and only breathes easy when he’s back. It’s easy to criticize the movie for not having an operatic plot or giant emotional incidents, but that completely misses what’s happening: the tiny, universal adjustments and disappointments that any relationship forces, the inevitable arguments and the self-righteousness that each spouse feels, the shock of realizing that your life is already starting to bind to another’s and that walking away doesn’t bring any relief, and the comfort that can result if these compromises are made and embraced — this is what Vigo has, miraculously, put on the screen.

Reminds me of:

So continuing the point above, the relationship-commitment aspect of this story reminded me of my favorite (to date) movie-marriage-metaphor, Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Woman in the Dunes (Suna no onna). Granted, L’Atalante is scrupulously realistic and not a fantastical metaphor — in Woman, the male character is literally trapped at the bottom of an ever-growing sand pit by his initial impulse to help a stranger — but there is a similar full-force recognition of what marriage feels like and what it becomes over time.

Having seen the lethal-love-triangle-on-a-barge movie Young Adam back in 2003 (with Tilda Swinton having her head turned from lout husband Peter Mullan to the younger lout Ewan McGregor), there’s no way for me to avoid mentioning the connection. (Writer/director David Mackenzie names the barge “Atlantic Eve”; is he cynically connecting the loveless Swinton/Mullan marriage to an imagined fate of the Parlo/Dasté characters, the “eve” of their relationship?) Young Adam is also a fine movie but it could not be more different in tone; where it uses the confined barge spaces for dread and as a metaphor for imprisonment, L’Atalante compares the same spaces to the willfully entered “prison” of a relationship.

This is another one of those early sound movies where sound is an integral part of the plot — I’m thinking of Lang’s M, with the killer’s whistling, or even the stomach-gurgling gag in Chaplin’s Modern Times. In this case, while Parlo is having her “lost weekend” walkabout in the city, her desire to listen to “Song of the Bargemen” leads her to a public record parlor, where her song choice playing over the speakers on the street leads Simon to her in turn. And of course one of the film’s best and most modern gags — which works just as well now as it ever has — finds Simon running his index finger along a record’s grooves in his cabin, sadly and nostalgically, as we hear the strains of the music rise on the soundtrack — only to realize on the reverse shot that the cabin boy is playing an accordion on the bunk opposite. That’s a sophisticated joke, and one made less than a decade after movie sound had been invented.

And here’s one that was brain-twisting for me, at least: When I was preparing my stills for this #WTW post, I was struck at how often I found myself wanting to pair the pictures up, to show how a shot flowed or how one commented on the previous. Then other pairs which I hadn’t captured jumped to mind, like the payoff of the Pere Jules record player scene, or the panning shots along the barge, or the famous cross-cutting of the separated spouses tossing and turning in two different beds. I haven’t had this impulse with the stills from any of the prior films, which made me wonder: Maybe this tells us something about Vigo? An uncanny sense of visual flow? An ability to think in terms of serial shots and how their presentation affects the audience?

And all of a sudden I remembered something that I hadn’t thought about in years: One of my personal seminal moments of film awareness happened when I was very young, a pre-teen; I was a voracious reader and my local library allowed me to hang out and browse in the adult stacks (thank you, Ms. Sandy the children’s librarian!). Somehow I got my hands on Amos Vogel’s  Film as a Subversive Art. If you know that book — still one of the most important reference works for film, and I bought my own copy as an adult — you know why I don’t keep it lying around for my own three kids to find; it is a full list of avant-garde and disruptive works of world cinema up to that date (1973), illustrated with copious stills, many of a disturbing nature. My own adult quest to seek out (and own) great classics is highly informed by Vogel, even though I often forget that fact. (I’m sure it will come up again as #WTW continues.) At any rate, I suddenly realized where I’d run into Vigo originally, and forgotten: in Vogel, and branded on my 12-year-old mind’s eye forever, is a still from his first film À propos de Nice, a sly “documentary” of the French town of Nice that’s really an acerbic commentary disguised as a sunny “city film.” In that short, as the various silent shots of life in Nice begin to turn satirical, there’s a “ladies’ fashion” segment in which we see a matronly woman modeling her of-the-moment outfit, lounging in a deck chair. Vigo then cross-fades into a shot of the model wearing another outfit, then another and another. At the end of the sequence, the final fade is into the woman sitting completely naked. There’s no narration or titles in the movie, but Vigo’s intent is clear — it’s a joke on the rich and fashionable, an “emperor-has-no-clothes” riff (hmm, one repeated wholesale in Altman’s problematic Prêt-à-Porter from 1994, now that I think about it). And in the Vogel book, to lead off the chapter “International Left and Revolutionary Cinema” (p. 120), he’s selected two stills from À propos — one with and one sans clothing. It’s probably the only film in the book that gets two stills. So I might have good company in my inability to distill Vigo into a single image.

Note that I’m not mentioning Vigo’s other masterpiece because I’ve already decided — about two seconds after L’Atalante ended — to rewatch Zéro de conduite again as soon as possible for a #WTW. The anarchy present in a film like Zéro clearly influenced many other films, but with L’Atalante there’s a sublimely light touch and fewer obvious elements to copy. (That said, I see some Wes Anderson borrowings in his films’ collections of stuff, most obviously from Père Jules’s cabin crammed full of signifying objects, right up to a puppet theater.)

But then — the guilt!

This is one of those movies where if you had told me that no one in it was a professional actor, I’d have believed it, especially Michel Simon. But of course that’s ludicrous — Simon is one of the great French actors of his time. Yet in part of my brain Père Jules actually lived on a barge in the 1930’s and is probably still there, grumping up and down the canal, sticking a kitten or two on his shoulders and cuffing the cabin boy. He literally strips to show Parlo his life of misadventure, mapped out in terribly crude, touchingly naive tattoos on his body. How could this man just be acting? But of course he was, and it was only when I was looking up some facts for this piece that I realized I’ve seen him and all the others before: Simon and Parlo are in The Grand Illusion; Dasté is in Zéro de conduite; he and Simon are in Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc, and so on. I’ll be watching for these folks the next time I see these other films (but I won’t be surprised if I don’t recognize them)!

Pitch:

Wow, this is just a beautiful film. David Thomson is quoted all over the web (from his 2008 book “Have You Seen…?”) as having called it “not so much a masterpiece as a definition of cinema.” It’s poetry transformed into sound and images. I don’t think it matters at all whether a given person cares to experience L’Atalante for themselves, because even if they “don’t like” old or foreign or French or recovered or subtitled or black-and-white or romantic or (deceptively) simple films, whatever it is they do think they “like” is inherently informed by Vigo’s work, defined (as Thomson indicates) by it. Inescapably. Watch Parlo’s face fall as she sees the barge for the first time, forlornly standing at the bank in her wedding dress; then watch her clown and flirt around with her new husband; then watch her stride along the barge on that first day in the sun; you are watching the essence of what movies are for.

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