The purpose of plot and the place of Joan Bennett in Fritz Lang’s The woman in the window
2003; Issue: 62 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2562-2528
Autores Tópico(s)Kierkegaardian Philosophy and Influence
ResumoFritz Lang's 1944 film is entitled The Woman in the Window, but in what sense is the woman in the window? (1) Assistant Professor Richard Wanley (Edward G. Robinson) views a painting of a woman in the window of a gentleman's club. When he returns to view the painting on leaving the club, he sees more than the painting of a woman, he sees the reflection of the woman in particular painting (Joan Bennett). He sees her head hovering beyond the pane of glass, sidling up to her own portrait. Despite the inference of the film's title, the real woman is never 'in' the window, and the referential ambiguity of 'in' wittily suggests her elusive quality. In a film that consists of the telling, or the showing, of Wanley's dream, it is appropriate that he should first see one of the dream's principal characters indirectly in two forms of replication--a portrait, a reflection--rather than experience her directly, as it were, in the flesh. The image of the reflection in glass--as distinct from the more precise reflection of a mirror--on a dark night, on a deserted street, renders the woman's appearance particularly indefinite. The translucent image reflects the prospect, but not the presence, of Alice's flesh; suspended before Wanley, she is beguilingly both there and elsewhere. She is held at arms length, seemingly reachable but ungraspable. The film, however, does not go on crudely to present the ephemeral presence of the beautiful woman, the product of a man's dream, taunting him with her inaccessible flesh--as, perhaps, the reflection might. Nor does the film simplistically represent the woman as 'captured', or 'framed', or 'stilled'--as, perhaps, the portrait might. The Woman in the Window evokes and exploits elements of a genre--film noir incorporating a femme fatale--while avoiding too slavish an attachment to attitudes normally associated with it. For example, the film courts, and complicates, the conventions associated with the sexual seduction of males in film. In the light of Wanley's subsequent liaisons with Alice, the indeterminacy of the image suggests that the prospect of her body, but his inability to touch it, may provide a much needed, redemptive, flirtation. For Wanley, prospect may not amount to a sexual frustration (maybe because the pleasures of companionship are freed from the pressures of consummation). The light suspensions of pleasurable flirtations might indeed be the desired cure for what Wanley calls, this solidity, stodginess I'm beginning to feel. Which of his desires the dream fulfils, distorts, ignores or reflects is central to the film's swirling fascinations. The twist--it's all a dream--is not simply a contrivance, and unlike some twists of sort, the previous action is not betrayed but enriched by the revelation. In retrospect, or on subsequent viewing, we experience the quality of a dream's aggressive logic, each detail of the story inevitably interlocking with others, ensuring a tightening grip around Wanley. At the same time, we also experience an uncertainty in comprehending the story, interpreting it now as dream, now as real. Yet, the dream is more than a canny exercise in compulsive plotting. Langian plots implicate the viewer as well as the films' characters and there seems to be a quality in Lang's best films that consists of beguiling the viewer with the irresistible lure of certain logical consistencies that nevertheless fail to amount to the whole truth. After Claude Mazard's murder (Arthur Loft), District Attorney Frank Lalor (Raymond Massey), in the gentleman's club, displays his ability to work out the plot (Mazard angrily interrupts Alice and Wanley in her apartment and Wanley stabs him with a pair of scissors). The fascination for the viewer at point is that having viewed the events of the crime he can now hear them recreated by a character (the DA) who was originally not present. Massey deftly (and unwittingly) enacts a civilised torture as he (re) constructs the crime, his long and detailed account delivered calmly and deliberately. …
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