T H E  M A R R I A G E  I S S U E

Till the Credits 
Do Us Part
Marriage, Hollywood Style

By Nick Aretakis

The critical and popular success of the vastly overrated American Beauty (Sam Mendes, 1999) leads one to wonder about other Hollywood films that have dealt in a major or even tangential way with the subject of marriage. American Beauty, while well-made and well-acted, is filled with stereotypical characters and is an accurate but banal representation of its times. It is a product of its time, rather than a critique of it, celebrating selfishness as a virtue, and self-actualization over any sense of community - a perfect reflection of the current, atomized Second Gilded Age.

Not every Hollywood product has managed to successfully reflect its period. Nor have all films dealt honestly with representations of marriage. But it is worthwhile to consider them within their historical context in order to determine the interplay between film and politics. Would other films featuring marriage as a theme do any better? Would they be representative or critical of their times? Only hours before the TV monitor would tell. Herewith, an idiosyncratic review of a few such films, and the impressions they leave.

Barefoot in the Park

If there’s one thing that the marriage of Paul and Corie Bratter doesn’t lack, it’s outward affection. The couple featured in Barefoot in the Park (Gene Saks, 1967) is introduced to us riding in a horse-drawn carriage through Central Park, leaving their wedding ceremony and on their way to a five-day sexual marathon of a honeymoon in the Plaza hotel. The idyll ends, however, when Paul has to return to work as a fledgling lawyer, and novice homemaker Corie has to set up their apartment in a fifth-floor walk-up in Greenwich Village. It’s hard to think of a pair of actors in the late 1960s who could have thrown off more beauty and sexual energy than Robert Redford as Paul and Jane Fonda as Corie (although Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway come to mind).

The tension in the Bratter marriage develops quickly, out of the simple fact that these people don’t seem to know each other very well. Did they talk at all in their pre-marital relationship? Simplistically characterized by Neil Simon, Paul is all head, and Corie is all heart, and therein lies the rub. Either she must accept his boring steadiness, or he must become a little more like her, willing, for example, to walk barefoot in the (Washington Square) park.

The movie is disorienting in that Paul and Corie live in a marital universe that consists of only one couple - themselves. There is no “norm” against which they can be compared, no contrasting couple against which their marriage can be seen as either vivacious or untenable. They are only strange. They are, however, seen in juxtaposition to two other people: their upstairs neighbor, Victor Velasco (Charles Boyer) a globe-trotting lothario who eats exotic foods and climbs across the roof to enter his apartment, and Corie’s widowed mother (Mildred Natwick), who is the prototypical old-before-her-time fuddy-duddy.

The first sign of disagreement between Paul and Corie leads the young wife to demand a divorce and that her breadwinner husband move out. Their relationship is either all love or all hate and the movie argues, boringly, that a happy medium must be found in order for this marriage to survive. That the older mismatched couple develops an affection for each other points to the possibility that Paul and Corie might make it, and make it they do, when each relents in his and her own little way. Paul gets drunk and heads for the park, Corie wises up (or wusses out) and proclaims that Paul is not a boring “fuddy-duddy” (which of course he still is, for one verdant romp does not a wildman make), but is in fact ’strong and dependable, and he takes care of me.” Is Corie the voice of the 60s counterculture, or the last dying gasp of the 50s haus frau? Is this the summer of love, or Ozzie and Harriet?

Two for the Road

The introduction we receive to our next couple is not auspicious. At the beginning of Two for the Road (Stanley Donen, 1967), Mark (Albert Finney) and Joanna Wallace (Audrey Hepburn) are sitting in their car (as we often encounter them), waiting for a wedding procession to pass by. Their first words -

Joanna: “They don’t look very happy.”
Mark: “Why should they, they just got married.”

From the start of the film, we learn that the love isn’t necessarily gone from their marriage, but the joy is - somewhere along the way they have lost something. The movie unfolds through interwoven flashbacks, showing key moments in their relationship. We see them in their romantic early life of poverty, and, after Mark has become a successful architect, in their boring later life of wealth. We also encounter them in juxtaposition to another couple, an American woman who was a former flame of Mark’s and her stultifyingly boring American husband, played by William Daniels (who went on to later fame as the voice of K.I.T.T. in TV’s Knight Rider and as teacher Mr. Feeny on the small screen’s Boy Meets World). Compared to the American couple, the Wallace’s have a wonderful marriage, not least because it seems to have a pulse.

Over the course of the film, we find that each has been unfaithful. While Mark’s dalliance remains a secret from Joanna, hers forces the climactic crisis in the film. Their eventual reconciliation is not only what the audience wants, but also seems eminently reasonable in a film whose theme is the inextricability of the wonderful and the mundane in any relationship.

There are three interesting, recurring motifs in the film that should be noted. The first is Mark’s occasional Humphrey Bogart impression, which serves not only to reinforce his image as a world weary romantic, but to remind viewers of the Bogart-Bacall relationship, surely one of the most romantic that Hollywood has ever produced, on screen and in real life. Secondly, it seems that Mark and Joanna, always zooming around the European countryside in automobiles, are happiest when in an open-air vehicle (or on foot), and most miserable in hardtop cars. The virtues of openness, naturalness, and spontaneity are favored over the enclosed, artificial and safe. Whereas the couple in Barefoot in the Park seems to be reacting against the emergent “60s counterculture, the lovers of Two For the Road are embracing it.

Last, is the theme of Mark’s repeated loss of his passport, and Joanna’s uncanny ability to locate it. These episodes bookend the film and dot it throughout. So not only does the independent and adventurous Mark need Joanna as his guide through life, showing him the way forward and opening doors for him, but she seems the only person capable of the task. It’s an episode of the lost and found passport that closes the film, reminding us of all the happy times in which this has happened in the past, and providing an opportunity for the final exchange between the couple. Joanna hands the now-found passport to Mark, just after they’ve fought (again). “Bitch,” says Mark. “Bastard,” replies Joanna. Surely those two words have never been uttered before or since in film with such tenderness and love.

War of the Roses

Barbara and Oliver Rose call each other “bastard” and “bitch” in The War of the Roses (Danny DeVito, 1989) and surely those words have never been uttered on film with more venom and hate. “The War of the Roses’ is Hollywood’s ultimate black comedy about husband and wife, an unrelentingly grim and cold-eyed look at the death of a marriage.

Told in flashback by lawyer and family friend Gavin D”Amato (DeVito), the film tells the story of Barbara (Kathleen Turner) and Oliver Rose (Michael Douglas) from their initial meeting to their mutually assured destruction. The theme of international conflict is a recurring one in the film, from the historical allusion in the film’s title, to the couple’s tendency to deploy their pets as troops in the conflict, to the physical division of their house into friendly and enemy territory. Even as they destroy each other, these two nation-spouses cannot reconcile their differences. In his dying act, Oliver reaches out to the equally expiring Barbara, laying his hand on her shoulder in a final attempt at peacemaking. Barbara reaches out too, but only to push the offending hand away from her territory, in a final act of independence.

Made at the end of the Reagan era, the film is a wonderful critique of a decade of greed and vicious individualism. Douglas’s memorable turn as Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street was only two years old, certainly fresh in viewers’ minds, and, in a twisted way, an iconic representation. Oliver Rose is just a low-rent Gordon Gekko, merging and acquiring his way to success, winning over his wife by taking her share of the pie.And Barbara Rose is simply engaging in a never-ending escalation of arms, meeting her adversary blow for blow. Neither of them is willing to give up from exhaustion, and so they die together, fulfilling the greatest anxiety of the Cold War.

As an examination of the realpolitik of human relationships, however, The War of the Roses is more farce than tragedy, more Dr. Strangelove than Grand Illusion. On first viewing, I admired the film tremendously for its courage to be angry and unsentimental, and I still respect that, but on second viewing a few weaknesses start to poke through.

The main problem is that the depiction of the Roses’ courtship is so short and superficial, it makes much of what follows less powerful and sad. Why did these two people marry in the first place? While the sight of Kathleen Turner in a wet, white linen blouse might be enough to catch the attention of any man, did they have anything in common other than a mutual interest in antique porcelains? It’s easier to enjoy the death of their marriage; because we don’t feel sad about its demise, we have no deep need to root for its survival.

A Letter to Three Wives

A Letter to Three Wives (Joseph Mankiewicz, 1949) tells the story of three married women, all friends and all upper middle-class or better, who embark on a boat for a day-long charity excursion. Just before boarding, they receive a letter from unseen narrator Addie Ross (the voice of Celeste Holm) informing them that she has run off with one of their husbands, who remains unidentified until the end of the film. During the long day’s journey across the lake, they all flash back to crucial events in their married relationships, revealing much about the strengths and weaknesses in their marriages, and about their personal anxieties and fears.

Deborah Bishop (Jeanne Crain) is married to Brad (Jeffrey Lynn), a wartime sweetheart and now a successful businessman whom she met while a WAC during World War II. A poor, unsophisticated farm girl, she is now comfortably wealthy, if no less secure about the legitimacy of her status in society, and in her marriage. Through a flashback to a gala party in the early days of her marriage, we see her try to modify an unfashionable dress (disastrously), and attempt to make herself at ease with her husband’s friend by drinking (excessively). Furthermore, it’s revealed that her husband has had an actual romantic relationship with Addie (all three men exhibit varying degrees of affection, awe, and emotional commitment toward Addie). Born on a farm and completely unsophisticated, Deborah’s fear is palpable - she feels she’s lucked into this marriage and that if it ends, there’s no hope of regaining what she has.

Rita Phipps (Ann Sothern) is married to George (Kirk Douglas, as a college literature professor!). The least well-off of the three couples, but still comfortable enough to hire domestic help in the form of the always delightfully sassy Thelma Ritter, they owe most of their financial success to Rita’s career as a writer of radio melodramas. The testing point in their marriage is a tense dinner party at which the Phipps’s must entertain Rita’s employers, vulgarly unsophisticated and bottom-line oriented radio station magnates.

Addie intrudes upon the scene through her birthday gift to George of a classical record, which he loves. Rita’s marital insecurity grows out of her need to impress her employers — actually her principal employer, the dominating and emasculating (and wonderfully named) Mrs. Manleigh. When Mrs. Manleigh destroys the beloved record, Rita has a crisis on her hands. If she favors the boss in order to become more professionally and financially successful, she puts strain on the marital relationship, if she sides with her husband, she stands to lose what she’s attained in her career.

Lora Mae (Linda Darnell), not only lives on the wrong side of the tracks, they virtually run right through the home she shared with her mother and sister. She’s married to department store magnate Porter Hollingsway, who is considerably older than she is, and apparently the richest man in town. In her own way, and by her own standards, Lora Mae is the most accomplished woman of the three: her flashback is to her courtship with Porter, in which she used sexual and emotional trickery to land the big prize. When he finally proposes, the earth moves for her, but only because a train is rattling by.

Even though she has the farthest to fall of the three women in terms of status, we feel that she could make it back most quickly by setting her sights on another wealthy man. Though she’s stuck in an apparently loveless marriage, she seems the most secure of the three women — she’s beautiful and sexy, and powerful because of that. The one thing she does not have, however, is class, and she’s constantly reminded by her husband that Addie Ross has class (along with beauty and sexuality) in spades, and is therefore a constant and virtually unbeatable threat.

All three of these women stand to lose much if they lose their husbands. Deborah would lose the comfort that she’s stumbled into through seemingly dumb luck, and would be headed back for the farm. Rita would continue her successful career, but would lose the love of a good man, and a husband whose intellectual cache makes her feel a bit better about the hackwork she does for money. Lora Mae would become a fairly rich divorcee, but would lose the status and legitimacy of being Mrs. Porter Hollingsway.

In a word, they all stand to lose what they’ve gained, — a fear that confronted so many women who had gained a measure of independence and self-sufficiency during World War II. Furthermore, I don’t think it’s too much to think of A Letter to Three Wives as a meditation on the fragility of relationships, and, in a way, as a commentary on the newly-emerged Cold War. Is it too much to think of Addie Ross as a super-power rival to the wives, the little clique’s own version of the Red Menace? Remember, the film was made at the time that China was falling to communism (and Greece and Turkey were threatened), the Soviets were exploding their hydrogen bomb, and international relationships were tenuous at best. If the sanctity of marriage could easily be threatened, how safe was the sanctity of the Western alliance and affection among democratic nations?

The Thin Man

Of all the film marriages examined for this piece, that of Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man (W.S. Van Dyke, 1934) is the most harmonious. They are a couple perfectly attuned to each other, operating completely on each others wavelength as they laugh and drink and crime-solve their way through life. They exist together, happily alone in their own two-planet universe, with their faithful and talented puppy as an orbiting moon.

Nick (William Powell), a former detective, has willingly left that life now that he’s married to Nora (Myrna Loy), who comes with a family fortune which Nick is managing. Nick clearly loved the life of a detective, but is reluctant to return, and does so only at Nora’s encouragement. They only fight when one won’t let the other in on their fun. Anger or violence only creeps into their relationship when they have to protect each other. Midway through the film, Nick punches Nora in order to save her from a bullet fired in their direction, and is himself wounded in the action. The effect is shocking, but also wonderful. It’s jarring to the viewer to see him hit her, because their relationship up to that point had been so sweet and loving. It becomes noble and assuring when one realizes that it’s an act of self-sacrifice and protection.

The Thin Man is escapist fare, designed - as was much of Hollywood’s product of the 1930s - to get the viewers’ mind off of their own troubles. There is no hint of the pain of the Great Depression in the film - everyone is seemingly comfortable and stylish and happily drunk. Instead, it’s a reaction to the Depression, and, I think, a quite wonderful assertion of the power of love to elide any hardship.

Of course, Nick and Nora Charles have a wonderfully happy life, and our other couples a comparatively bumpy one because the writers and directors have made it so. The degree of happiness in any film marriage is at the service of the director and writer’s desire to make a point. Would that every couple had Dashiell Hammett writing the story of their marriage.

Films Mentioned
American Beauty
Barefoot in the Park
Two for the Road
The War of the Roses
A Letter to Three Wives
The Thin Man