December 12, 1919 [Victory, Male and Female]
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Meanwhile, J. M. Barrie’s The Admirable Crichton also scatters its characters to a far corner, where the butler rules as King, and the lady—Gloria Swanson, more like a ripe and pendulous fruit than a person (lolling at the opposite pole from Theda Bara and her burnt-silk languor)—as his, well, slave (DeMille cannot avoid the lure of the Ancient, and supplies a Babylonian interlude). I must admit, when I write about the cinema I sometimes feel I have become completely unmoored from not only all taste but sense—and I also must admit I do love it so. Where was I? Well, either about to contemplate the plot, or babble on like a dizzy schoolboy over Swanson. The scene of her morning, ahem, ablutions is orchestrated as unadorned erotica, from the dressing-gown slipping as she enters her bath to the cold sparkle of rose-water. It is at such moments that my wife shows the most patience with my love of this liveliest art.
But I digress. Perhaps.
The wilderness island in Male and Female is infinitely more Enlightened than Victory’s literally volcanic setting. It is Peter Pan's Neverland as a Rationalist’s dream, waiting to serve Man—while Woman waits to do the same, it appears. “A male fantasy,” my wife observed, "as much as Peter Pan's is a child's"—and she was not speaking of Miss Swanson’s toilette. And perhaps it is: When they return to England, followed by their social positions, High and Low, the Male is not cast into exile for his dream: In a cinematic postscript, Crichton finds hearty American solace on a farm, his fellow former servant, Tweeny, at his side, the two of them glowing with western bounty. Not the “impassive” ending of Barrie’s original, but an assertion of maleness, square-jawed and triumphant.
And I must admit I enjoyed the sight—almost as much as Swanson’s dainty foot slipping into her equally dainty slipper. Perhaps, then, the worst of the century is behind us, and the next decade will be more cheerful, at least in the area of the ankles.
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