It will never be the same.

I’m thinking about some of the political movies that I enjoyed watching once, back when I was living in a fool’s paradise.

In All the President’s Men (1976), two reporters for the Washington Post uncover evidence that eventually leads to the resignation of Richard Nixon. Nothing like that will ever happen again, now that the Supreme Court has given the president immunity for such things as using the Department of Justice to obstruct justice.  Today, the president that was once and will be again would probably order the FBI to bring charges against such treasonous reporters, assuming that the owner of the newspaper didn’t fire them first.

The Manchurian Candidate (1962) was one of my favorites.  But now, instead of an elaborate plot involving brainwashing and assassination in order to put a Soviet agent in the White House, Russia was able to get its candidate elected president by ordinary, democratic means.

In Advise & Consent (1962), we see the Senate struggle to confirm the president’s nominee for secretary of state, one Robert Leffingwell (Henry Fonda).  Information has come to light that the nominee was once a member of a “communist cell,” where he supposedly said that communism would come to the United States gradually.  From some of the nominee’s speeches, it is feared that he will be all too willing to yield to the demands of the Soviet Union.  But with a name like Leffingwell, what would you expect?

In a few months, we can expect a different kind of struggle within the Senate.  Since the president-elect himself can be counted on to cozy up to the Russians, there is not much point in worrying about his nominees in this regard.  The Republicans need only ask themselves whether they should confirm those nominees in the usual way, thereby displaying their fealty, or simply allow for recess appointments, dodging the matter altogether.

One of the senators in that movie commits suicide when his past catches up with him, in particular, his homosexual relationship with another soldier when he was stationed in Hawaii.  At first, I thought this was one more feature of the movie that was outdated.  But then it occurred to me that the Supreme Court may not only invalidate same-sex marriage but even recriminalize sodomy as well.  So, perhaps this plot point will live to see another day.

Seven Days in May (1964) was thrilling, watching generals plot a military coup, in which President Lyman (Frederic March) would be removed from office and replaced by General James Mattoon Scott (Burt Lancaster).  There were several indications that these senior military officers were basically fascists, while the president and his allies believed in the Constitution, the rule of law, and democracy.

General Scott and other senior men in the military were worried about the fact that President Lyman was too trusting of the Russians, and that action had to be taken immediately before he allowed the Soviet Union to gain a military advantage over the United States.  This concern on the part of the generals in the movie is similar to that which exists between actual generals of today and our once and future president.  As in the movie, these actual generals are concerned that the re-elected president will play into the hands of the Russians.

Unlike the movie, however, it is a fascist president that that attempted a coup, not the generals, who are the ones that believe in the Constitution.  As a result, they may be subjected to courts-martial for being disloyal.

As with Advise & Consent, there is a sexual component in this movie as well.  General Scott wrote some love letters to a woman with whom he was having an affair, and this evidence of adultery is considered as a way of thwarting the coup, forcing Scott to resign under threat of scandal.  However, President Lyman decides to eschew such scurrilous methods. Unlike the threat of a homosexual scandal in Advise & Consent, the possibility of a heterosexual scandal of the kind found in Seven Days in May now seems quaint.  In a world where a politician can be found liable for sexual abuse and then go on to be elected president, love letters revealing an adulterous affair in the past aren’t worth the price of the postage stamps by which they were mailed.

And so it is that these movies must now be viewed as artifacts of twentieth-century America, revealing a time when people believed in the strength and integrity of their constitutional republic.

I suppose if we want to see a political movie that still has relevance, there’s always Triumph of the Will (1935).

The title character of Hud, played by Paul Newman, is a psychopath, and just enough so that we envy him. To be unburdened by our conscience is something we often long for.  In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), for example, when the former title character drinks his potion and becomes the latter, his first words are “Free! Free!” Of course, Hyde is too evil for us to want to be like him.  After all, we don’t want to kill anyone. We just want to be able to have sex with a married woman and then point the finger at our nephew when we get caught, the way Hud does at the beginning of the movie.

It also helps that Hud is good looking, whereas Hyde is ugly.

Anyway, the movie is set on a cattle ranch owned by Hud’s father, Homer Bannon (Melvyn Douglas). Hud’s nephew is Lonnie (Brandon De Wilde). They have a maid, Alma (Patricia Neal).  At one point in the movie, while Hud is drunk, wearing a wife beater, and feeling ornery, he tries to rape Alma in the small shack she occupies right near the main house, but Lonnie grabs him and pulls him off her. Hud becomes so angry that he starts to hit Lonnie in the face, but he has just enough of a conscience to stay his hand. He gives up and leaves.

The movie was based on a novel, Horseman, Pass By, which I have not read, only summaries.  In that novel, the maid’s name is Halmea, and she is African American. Lonnie is unable to stop Hud from raping her and can only watch as Hud does so.

That the movie changed black Halmea into white Alma is not surprising. Even if the Production Code had allowed it, I’m not sure how audiences in 1963 would have reacted to seeing a white man rape a black woman.  However, there is another consideration other than that of race.  Had Hud in the movie actually raped Alma, we would have despised him for that, and the Production Code, if not just ordinary movie morality, would have required that he die in the end.  But since he failed in his attempt, as a result of what little conscience he had, what he did was forgivable.

Am I wrong to say that?  I might have hesitated in this regard were it not for the fact that a lot of people say that Alma wanted to be raped.  On my own, that thought would never have occurred to me.  After my mother saw the movie, however, she said that Alma wanted Hud to take her by force. My girlfriend said that Alma was irritated that Lonnie prevented Hud from raping her.  A third woman, Pauline Kael, said the same thing in her book I Lost It at the Movies:

Alma obviously wants to go to bed with Hud, but she has been rejecting his propositions because she doesn’t want to be just another casual dame to him; she wants to be treated differently from the others. If Lon hadn’t rushed in to protect his idealized view of her, chances are that the next morning Hud would have felt guilty and repentant, and Alma would have been grateful to him for having used the violence necessary to break down her resistance, thus proving that she was different.  They might have been celebrating ritual rapes annually on their anniversaries.

I still don’t see it.  But I’m just a man, so what do I know?

Before we get to that attempted rape in the movie, all the cattle on the Bannon ranch have to be destroyed because they have hoof-and-mouth disease. They contracted it when Homer bought some Mexican cows to add to his herd.  As a result, the Bannon family is impoverished.  It is suggested to Homer that he might drill for oil, but he doesn’t like the idea.  As a result, Hud gets a lawyer, intending to take possession of the ranch owing to his father’s incompetence. When Homer finds out about that, they start arguing. Hud says that he’s going to get control of the property, one way or the other. Homer replies:

Why, you’re badly mistaken about all this.  I’ll be the only one to run this ranch while I’m alive.  After that, you may get part of it.  I don’t know. But you can’t get control of this place. No way in the world.

Homer could have said that when he died, Hud and Lonnie would inherit the ranch, but he most decidedly did not say that.  He said that Hud may get part of the ranch.

Earlier in the movie, when they first find out the cattle are diseased, Hud says to Homer:

You’ve had twenty-four of my thirty-four years working for you on this ranch, and, Daddy, you’ve had top-grade cheap labor.  I’ve shoveled manure for you.  You’ve got my calluses. For what?  Your blessings the day you die? No, damn it. I want out of this spread what I put into it.

I will only add that Hud doesn’t even have his own place.  I can’t imagine being thirty-four years old and still living at home with my father.

A man with a lot of money will sometimes turn his children into slaves, getting them to spend their lives doing his bidding for the sake of an expected inheritance, only for him to decide late in life that his children are unworthy and leave it all to the church or to some teenage tart, figuring it’s his money to do with as he pleases. That is why there are laws to prevent that sort of thing, and that is why we see some justification in what Hud is doing.

Before Hud is able to get guardianship of the property, Homer falls off his horse and is mortally injured. Lonnie tries to reassure him that he’ll be all right, but Homer says he wants to give up:  “Hud there’s waiting on me. And he ain’t a patient man.”  Right after saying that, he dies.

Therefore, like the attempted rape, the guardianship is only attempted as well. Our attitude toward Hud might have been different had he actually succeeded in getting possession of the ranch and putting his father out to pasture.

In the novel, Lonnie goes to get help, and while he is gone, Hud shoots Homer, saying he did it to put him out of his misery.  That would also have been too much for us had that scene been in the movie. As noted above, we no longer want to identify with a psychopath in a movie once he kills somebody.

And so it is that the movie softens the character that is in the book, and in so doing, allows us to interpret his behavior sympathetically, even if we have misgivings as we do so.

As noted earlier, I have not read the book.  I didn’t see anything in the summaries about Hud’s having been drafted.  In the movie, however, as Lonnie prepares to leave the ranch for good after Homer’s funeral, Hud says to him that he is a “little bit green” to be going off on his own:  “I was about your age when I went in the Army. Your granddaddy bought me a Mars candy bar at the station, and said, ‘Character’s the only thing I got to give you. Be a man.’”

Lonnie replies, “Well, I guess he was kind of worried, your trying so hard to get out of the draft.”

I did not see this movie when it first came out in 1963.  When I did finally see it at the drive-in with some friends of mine in 1968, we all laughed in a grim sort of way.  Our college deferments were just about up, and we were all trying to figure out some way to dodge the draft.  So, while Lonnie’s remark was supposed to indicate one more way in which Hud was a shameless character, by 1968, dodging the draft had acquired an entirely different connotation.

More to the point, given that this movie wants to portray Hud as an unscrupulous character, wouldn’t it have been better to have him succeed in dodging the draft? Or would that be like the attempted rape of Alma and Hud’s attempt at guardianship?  That is, we are able to forgive Hud for only attempting to rape her, whereas we would not have done so had he succeeded; and we find it easier to accept what Hud was doing about trying to get possession of the ranch when Homer’s death makes that unnecessary.  By the same token, then, we are able to forgive Hud for only attempting to dodge the draft, whereas we might not have done so had he succeeded in that case either.

That old movies should frown on draft dodgers is not surprising.  In For Me and My Gal (1942), Gene Kelly deliberately breaks his hand to avoid being drafted but ends up redeeming himself heroically. In Mr. Lucky (1943), the title character played by Cary Grant dodges the draft, but ends up having a change of heart and decides to do what he can for the war effort.

With the advent of the Vietnam War, attitudes about the draft changed for a lot of people.  In fact, one thing good about that war was that you could dodge the draft without shame.  After I pulled it off, everyone was happy for me:  my college professors, my friends, my parents.  In fact, even the sergeant at the draft board, after reading the doctor’s recommendation, said to me with a big smile on his face, “Congratulations, you just got yourself a I-Y deferment.”

Going beyond that, I knew a girl who said she would never have sex with a man who had been in the Army, indicating that a man should have the moral courage to refuse to serve.  In Hamburger Hill (1987), a soldier gets a Dear John letter from his sweetheart, breaking up with him, because her college friends have persuaded her that it is immoral to have a boyfriend who is a soldier.  There are also remarks in that movie about girls back home “fucking for peace.”  We’d come a long way since D.H. Lawrence, when asked why men go to war, replied, “Because the women are watching.”

And yet, these changes in attitude notwithstanding, I have never seen a movie in which someone dodged the draft and then went on to live happily ever after, unless he first redeemed himself in some way.

The draft was ended in 1973, so we can only speculate as to what our attitude toward a draft dodger would be today.

For a long time, I had heard about the movie Johnny Belinda, and I knew it was about a woman who was deaf, so when I finally got around to watching it, I naturally assumed that she was the title character. But no, her name is Belinda MacDonald, played by Jane Wyman.  As a result of being raped, she is impregnated.  She gives birth to a son, whom she names Johnny.  I should have thought that his name would then be Johnny MacDonald, but nothing is ever said to that effect.  I have never heard of an illegitimate child being given the mother’s first name as his surname, but I suppose she could do that if she wanted to.  No one in the movie says that his name is Johnny Belinda, but given the title, I assume that is the idea.

Most of the time when we watch an old movie, we simply make allowances for the censorship in place at the time of its production, in particular, the Motion Picture Production Code.  Perhaps because this movie is about rape, I found myself paying closer attention to the way this story is told than I might otherwise.

The word “rape” was not forbidden as such, but on those rare occasions when it was uttered, it was more likely to be used in the sense of despoiling, as in, “the rape of Europe had begun” in Mission to Moscow (1943), rather than in the sexual sense.  So, it came as no surprise that no one used the word in this movie.

The movie is set on the island of Cape Breton in the province of Nova Scotia.  The chief industry there is fishing.  As for the rest, there are farmers and merchants. The people that live there are portrayed as backward and ignorant.  It is no surprise, then, that Belinda is not only referred to a deaf and dumb, but is also called “the dummy.”  I can’t say what the people on Cape Breton were really like in 1948, or whether someone in Belinda’s situation would have been treated better in New York or Los Angeles, but that seems to be the way the movie wants us to see things.

Into this community has arrived Dr. Richardson (Lew Ayres), replacing the doctor recently deceased. One night he is summoned to the MacDonald farm where lives Belinda, her father Black (Charles Bickford), and her aunt Aggie (Agnes Moorehead).  They are dirt-poor farmers, and a cow is having trouble giving birth. It is there that Richardson meets Belinda and learns of her condition.

It is our introduction to her as well.  She is portrayed as childlike, although her age is never specified. Jane Wyman was over thirty years old when she made this movie, but that doesn’t mean that Belinda is supposed to be thirty.  Maybe she is supposed to be a fifteen-year-old girl.  Adults often played the roles of teenagers in those days.  Alternatively, it may be that Jane Wyman’s persona in 1948 was naturally childlike.  However, in the movie Stage Fright (1950), made only two years later, she comes across as the mature adult that she was.  In any event, the result is that when she is raped, it is as if a child has been raped.

The next Sunday, instead of going to church like everyone else, Richardson prepares to go fishing on the MacDonald farm, having been given permission to do so by Black as his fee for delivering that heifer.  The women of the community, represented by three old biddies in particular, are scandalized by the fact that Richardson has been living there three months and has never attended church. This is not uncommon in the movies.  As a general rule, if the protagonist is a bachelor, he probably believes in God, but he does not go to church.  If he is married, then he does go to church, from which we infer that going to church is something for women, who bring their domesticated husbands there with them. The Production Code says, “No film or episode may throw ridicule on any religious faith.” And yet, the way the movies depict bachelor protagonists as avoiding church, there is the implication that these characters have disdain for churchgoing, as if it is beneath them. Presumably, this was permitted by the Production Code as long as these bachelor protagonists did not actually say how much they disliked religion.

Richardson’s real reason for going to the MacDonald farm is to try to teach Belinda sign language, with which he was already familiar from having worked with deaf children at a hospital, and which he has been reviewing from a book he has.  He also gets her to start lipreading.  Eventually, he teaches her how to read and write.

Richardson has a cook and housekeeper named Stella (Jan Sterling).  She is in love with him, but it is unrequited.  Her boyfriend is Locky (Stephen McNally), a surly captain of one of the fishing boats. One day, when she sees him looking at Belinda, she becomes jealous, saying, “One thing, she’d never tell on you,” but then admonishes him to stay away from her.

That night at the dance, the three old biddies are watching what is going on.  One of them remarks of a woman on the dance floor, “She looks right spry for a woman who’s just had her arteries cut out.” Another corrects her, saying it was not her arteries.  She leans toward her and whispers something so low that we cannot hear what she says.  We often hear what people whisper in a movie, but not here.

That something is apparently the word “ovaries.”  I guess the censors regarded that word as too suggestive of sex to be permitted utterance in a movie.  The earliest use of that word in a movie that I could find was in 1970 in the movies Getting Straight and Tropic of Cancer.

But why is this scene in the movie?  Presumably it was to show how silly these old biddies are, thinking they have to whisper the word “ovaries” to each other even though no one else was around to hear them. But if these women are silly, thinking the word “ovaries” has to be whispered, how silly were the censors back then to believe that audiences should not be allowed to hear that word at all? If it be argued that there might have been children in the audience, then we are saying that children could watch a movie in which a woman was raped, but not one where the word “ovaries” was said out loud.  It’s almost as if the censors wished everyone were as deaf as Belinda, then no dirty words would ever be heard.

Stella quits dancing with Locky, telling him he is drunk.  He notices that Black and Aggie are riding out of town to visit their sister who has taken sick.  Seeing his chance, he goes to the MacDonald farm and rapes Belinda.  She becomes sullen after that, flinching if someone touches her. Richardson has been away treating sick people, and when he comes to see her, he is able to cheer her up a little.  He offers to take her to a town to see a diagnostician, thinking something might be done about her inability to hear.

When they arrive in the town, they pass by a store that sells women’s clothing.  In the display window, there is a brassiere and, I believe, a full slip.  She points to them, asking in sign language what they are.

This brings us back to the fact that she is portrayed as childlike, one too young to be wearing such undergarments.  Of course, as we soon find out, she is old enough to be pregnant.  Since Jane Wyman is a small-breasted woman, perhaps Belinda’s family figured she could do without such things.

We watch this scene through the display window from inside the store.  In other words, we are not allowed to hear what Richardson says to her.  The word “brassiere” was used in the movie Three on a Match (1932), but that is a Pre-Code movie.  It also is used in The 39 Steps (1935).  So, the word is more acceptable than “ovaries.”  Nevertheless, we are not allowed to hear what Richardson says to her, once again putting us in the position of being deaf like Belinda, right where the censors want us.

We watch Richardson struggle, trying to figure out what to tell her.  Finally, he distracts her by pointing to a scarf, which he buys for her.  Apparently, he decides that she is not old enough to know about such things, that she is like a child.

Richardson finds out from the diagnostician that Belinda is pregnant.  But the word “pregnant” is not used.  Instead, there are variations on phrases that include the word “child,” as when the diagnostician refers to Belinda’s “expected child,” or when Richardson tells Aggie that Belinda is going to “have a child.” The word “pregnant” was pretty much avoided in those days.  Where it occurs, it is usually in a foreign film like Fanny (1932), which is also Pre-Code, or used in a figurative sense, as in Hamlet (1948), where Polonius says, “How pregnant sometimes his replies are!”

Because “being pregnant” and “going to have a child” denote exactly the same state of affairs, the difference must be a matter of connotation.  There is something ominous about being pregnant, whereas there is something warm and cuddly about having a child.  I’ll go one step further.  It is not said that Belinda is “going to have a baby.”  That is too much like “being pregnant,” a dreadful anticipation for an unmarried woman.  Richardson does not tell Black about this, afraid that he will want to kill the father, no matter what words are used to indicate Belinda’s condition.

Black decides that Belinda is doing so well he will take her to church, something he did only once, years ago.  Richardson goes with them.  As noted above, a male protagonist will go to church once he is married, and this indicates, as if we could not already guess, that he and Belinda will eventually marry.

When Locky arrives at church, Belinda reacts with fear in her eyes, something noticed by Richardson, from which he gathers that Locky must have raped her. Anyway, it is announced at church that Stella and Locky will be getting married soon.  Stella has a lot of money that she inherited from her uncle, and this is the chief reason Locky wants to marry her.

Eventually, Aggie has to tell Black that Belinda is going to have a child.  He becomes furious, demanding that Belinda tell him who the father is.  Richardson shows up at that point and tells Black that she has repressed it, that “it’s blotted out of her mind.”  He manages to calm Black down, saying that even if he found out who the father was, bringing it before the community to exact revenge would only be more traumatic for Belinda.  Then Richardson goes to Belinda’s room and tells her she is going to be a mother, which has even more of a positive connotation than “going to have a child.”  As it sinks in, she becomes happy at the thought. When she has the baby, she loves it dearly.

I suppose there are some women who are raped, have the rapist’s baby, and then come to love that baby. But I suspect there are others that would be horrified at the prospect of having the rapist’s baby.  Telling such a woman that she is “going to be a mother” would be the height of presumption, effectively telling her that she is obligated to love that baby.  Instead, she might detest it, being filled with loathing when she sees it, determined to give it up for adoption.

But that’s real life.  I have never seen a movie in which a woman detested her baby.  Even in Rosemary’s Baby (1968), where Satan himself rapes Rosemary (Mia Farrow), when she looks at the baby that she has given birth to, you see the love in her eyes and the joy in her heart.  In It’s Alive (1974), a woman has a baby-monster on account of some birth-control pills she was taking.  It kills every doctor and nurse in the delivery room and then goes out of the hospital to continue its killing spree.  It eventually makes its way back to its mother, who in turn loves her baby-monster.  And in The Brood (1979), we even get to see Samantha Eggar licking the blood off the psychoplasmic baby that she just removed from its external fetal sac.

A possible exception is the baby-monster in Demon Seed (1977), where Julie Christie is raped and impregnated by a supercomputer.  When she sees what she has given birth to, she seems dubious.  However, her child has developed so quickly that it already looks like a seven-year-old girl.  Mothers are no longer obligated to love monstrous children once they are past the baby stage, as in Village of the Damned (1960).

Let us return to movies about normal babies.  If a woman does give up her baby, it is never with great relief to be rid of the damn thing, but usually out of desperation and with much heartache, as in The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931). Even in the movie Juno (2007), which ends happily, the title character cries after giving birth, knowing she will be giving up the baby for adoption.

Anyway, Locky spreads a rumor that Richardson is the father.  If this movie were made today, suspicion would probably fall on Belinda’s father.  But Joseph Breen, head of the Production Code Administration, would have turned purple had there been the slightest hint of that in the script.  That aside, given what Locky has been suggesting, no one wants Richardson’s services as a doctor anymore. Because of Belinda’s shame, people in town stop extending the MacDonalds credit. Richardson offers to marry Belinda, but Black says he would be doing it only out of pity, so that idea is put to rest.

A storm comes up, so everyone scrambles to prepare for it.  As a result, no one is in the house when Locky show us to buy some ground barley.  He sees the baby and starts talking to it when Black walks in, none too pleased to see him.  Locky forgets himself, saying the baby is the “spitting image of his father.” Realizing his mistake, he quickly leaves, with Black following.  They start fighting near a cliff, and when Black slips and struggles to cling to the ledge, Locky refuses to save him, letting him fall to his death.  He leaves, and no one in the movie ever finds out that he murdered Black.  They think it was just an accident.

Richardson decides to leave Cape Breton and take a job in a hospital in Toronto. When he explains this to Belinda, she starts crying and hugs him.  He realizes that she is in love with him, as he is with her.  We can tell they are going to get married. He kisses her, but only on the cheek.

However, he first has to get things ready at his new job and find a place for them to live.  In the meantime, the Town Council has a meeting.  It is decided that something must be done to uphold the honor of the community in light of the shame Belinda has brought upon them.  The baby should be taken away from her and given to the newly married Locky and Stella.  Otherwise, the godless child will run loose like an animal.

Locky and Stella ride over to the MacDonald farm to get Belinda to sign a release and give them the baby. Stella goes in by herself.  Belinda refuses to sign the release, outraged at the idea of giving up her baby. Stella goes back outside and tells Locky they are being mean trying to take away her baby, saying, “She’s his mother.”

Locky replies, “I’m his father,” horrifying Stella.  He goes in the house to get the baby, and Belinda kills him with a shotgun.

She is tried for murder.  At first, Stella plays dumb, but as the trial wears on, especially after Richardson is implicated as the father, she bursts out in court, telling what she knows.  Belinda is acquitted. She and Richardson leave Cape Breton for good, taking Aggie with them, the farm having been sold.

Let us return to the moment right after Belinda has been found innocent.  She comes to Richardson and starts using sign language.  He takes her hand and says, “I know Belinda.  You don’t have to say anything.” He holds her face in his hands affectionately.  Then she turns to get her baby.

It is the end of the movie.  Richardson and Belinda are going to get married and live happily ever after.  In any other movie made back then, the man and woman would kiss.  But not here, not even the little peck on the cheek we saw earlier. Although the Production Code forbade “excessive and lustful kissing,” it still allowed kissing that was unquestionably erotic, as when we saw Locky and Stella kissing at the dance.  So, why don’t we see Richardson take Belinda in his arms and give her a passionate kiss, to which she responds sensually?

As has been noted, Belinda is childlike.  For him to kiss her that way would be like kissing a child in a sexual way.  But that only pushes the question back one step. Why did the movie render Belinda’s character as childlike so as to preclude passionate kissing?  And the answer to that is that she had been raped.

A decent woman that has been raped in a movie might end up finding love and getting married, but if a raped woman is seen, either previously or subsequently, to have strong sexual desires, her moral character is called into question.  To see Richardson kissing Belinda on the lips would remind us of when Locky kissed her on the lips, thereby undermining her innocence.

In the old days, women who were raped were often said to have brought it on themselves by dressing provocatively, and a defense against a charge of rape was the testimony of other men who had had sex with her.  In other words, a woman that enjoyed sex could not truly be raped.  Any indication that Belinda was looking forward with lustful anticipation to frolicking in bed with Richardson on their honeymoon would be unthinkable.  It would suggest that what Locky did to her was not really so bad, that she might even have liked it.

Therefore, Belinda had to be desexualized.  We are supposed to believe that she will be happily married to Richardson, and that would imply a reasonably satisfying sex life, at least for him.  On her part, she will be passive, enjoying it to some degree, but mostly because she sees that it pleases her husband.

Before watching A Summer Place recently, the only movie I had seen with Sandra Dee was Imitation of Life, which was made in the same year, 1959.  She had only a supporting role in that movie, however. As a result, my conception of her was largely formed by that song in Grease (1978), sung by Stockard Channing, which begins as follows:

Look at me, I’m Sandra Dee
Lousy with virginity
Won’t go to bed ’til I’m legally wed
I can’t, I’m Sandra Dee

Later on in the song, Channing refers to Troy Donahue, who is also in A Summer Place:

As for you, Troy Donahue
I know what you wanna do
You got your crust, I’m no object of lust
I’m just plain Sandra Dee

Little did I know that A Summer Place would contradict those lyrics.  In fact, my expectations were lowered to such an extent that I wasn’t expecting any eroticism in this movie at all, especially that provided by Sandra Dee’s character.

The setting of this movie is Pine Island, Maine, where lives the Hunter family.  Because it might be difficult keeping track of who’s who in thIs review, here are the members of this family for easy reference:

The Hunter Family

Father:  Bart (Arthur Kennedy)

Mother:  Sylvia (Dorothy McGuire)

Son:  Johnny (Troy Donahue)

Aunt:  Emily (Beulah Bondi)

We gather that Bart’s father was old money, whose ancestors may even have come over on the Mayflower.  But now the Hunter family doesn’t have any money, no doubt because Bart is an alcoholic who made poor business decisions.  As a result, they have been forced to turn their mansion into a summer inn, where they barely get by financially.

There is a second family, the Jorgensons:

The Jorgenson Family

Father:  Ken (Richard Egan)

Mother:  Helen (Constance Ford)

Daughter:  Molly (Sandra Dee)

Twenty years ago, Ken had worked for Bart’s father as a lifeguard, but he became a research chemist and is now new money, being a millionaire.

Bart receives a letter from Ken, which reads as follows:  “Dear Bart Hunter, I am chartering the yacht Ramona at Nassau and taking my wife and daughter for an extended cruise. I’d like to end up at Pine Island for the summer.”  Bart reads the letter to Sylvia, saying that Ken purposely worked in the part about the “yacht” and the “extended cruise.”  He says that Ken undoubtedly heard that the Hunter family had been wiped out financially, and he wants to come to Pine Island and gloat. Bart imagines Ken saying to himself, “Maybe Bart Hunter will carry my bags. I might even give him a tip.”  Bart intends to turn him down.

Sylvia insists that they cannot afford to be proud, that they need the money.  She even goes so far as to say they can let the Jorgenson family have their rooms in the mansion, while the Hunter family will stay in the gardener’s cottage out back.

Bart is incredulous:  “In the servants’ quarters?  Where he even slept himself before with the hired help? That’s ridiculous.”

Sylvia may have another reason for wanting to let the Jorgensons stay at their inn. When Bart first mentioned Ken’s name, she turned around suddenly, accompanied by dramatic music, suggesting that there may have been something going on between her and Ken at one time.  Anyway, she wins the argument.

The scene shifts to the yacht, where we learn that it is Helen, not Ken, who wants to act superior. She bought Ken some yachting clothes, including a cap bearing the insignia of the Nassau Yacht Club, to which Ken does not belong.  Not wanting to pretend to be something he is not, he throws the cap out the porthole, telling Helen that people on Pine Island will remember he used to be a lifeguard, and he does not want to try “putting on the dog.”

As they approach Pine Island, Ken goes up on deck and calls Molly to join him. She looks through binoculars and sees a boy, Johnny, looking at her through binoculars.  She says to her father:

There’s a boy up there watching me. There he goes. Funny feeling, being looked at without knowing it. Remember that family that lived next door to us back home? … Their son used to look at me…. Well, his bedroom was right across from mine. And one night, I felt naughty and went right on undressing so he could see. And then all of a sudden, I got terribly ashamed, and I ran to pull the curtains down. I’ll never forget, I had hot and cold flushes all over me afterwards. Wasn’t that awful?

I have to admit to feeling flushed myself, listening to Molly talk about getting undressed in front of a window so the boy next door could see her naked.  And then it occurred to me that since she was talking to her father, that meant that for the purpose of that scene, I was identifying with her father, and that meant that her erotic story was tinged with incestuous desire.

This reminded me of the movie Fright Night (1985), where the attractive mother of a teenage boy tells him about a dream she had where, all of a sudden, she was “stark naked.”  I’m not sure how many women would tell their teenage sons about some dream they had where they were naked, but I would advise against it.  It’s hard enough to suppress such thoughts without having your mother put that image into your head.  Of course, the scriptwriter purposely had her tell her son about a dream like that in order to add Oedipal angst to his problems.

By the same token, the scriptwriter of A Summer Place purposely had Molly tell her father about getting naked for the boy next door.  Unlike me, however, Ken seems unaffected by this.  He merely tells Molly that everyone has done something he is ashamed of.  In any event, this is the first instance in this movie of a motif in which would-be lovers look at each other through the windows of their bedrooms.

Apparently, Helen believes that Molly’s body, even when fully dressed, is something to be ashamed of. Molly runs to Ken for support, saying Helen wants her to wear an “armor-plated bra” and a “cast-iron girdle.”  Helen enters the room and starts arguing with Ken, who takes the bra and girdle away from Molly and sends her out of the room.  He accuses Helen of trying to de-sex Molly.

At first, this confused me.  I could understand how making Molly look flat-chested would diminish her sex appeal, but why the girdle?  Isn’t that supposed to make a woman look prettier by giving her an attractive shape?

As I thought about this, I remembered a girlfriend I had once who had two books on her bookshelf, The Joy of Being Single and How to Marry the Man of Your Choice.  I guess she was covered either way.  On evenings where I had to wait for her to get ready for our date, I would read portions of that latter book. The author, Margaret Kent, had some pretty good advice.  One such piece of advice for a woman was to “dress friendly.”

By that she meant that a woman should dress in a manner that would make it easy for a man to imagine undressing her.  When I was in high school, I had a girlfriend who “dressed friendly.”  When we went to the drive-in, I had no trouble at all removing her clothes, which was as it should have been, allowing us to indulge our passions without obstacle or delay.

A year later, while in college, I had another girlfriend.  One night at another drive-in, while we were doing some heavy petting, I ran into her girdle.  I don’t know how much trouble it is for a woman to remove a girdle and later put it back on, but I suspected it would not be easy at a drive-in movie theater, so I never managed to get past that thing.  I still loved her, of course, and would have continued to do so nevertheless, had not her fiancé shown up unexpectedly one night.  The main thing, however, is that she was not dressing friendly.

In other words, while the bra Helen wanted Molly to wear would have taken away her sex appeal by making her look flat-chested, the girdle was intended to act as an impediment to the consummation of male lust.  Ken has a permissive attitude about Molly’s sexuality, however, and he throws the bra and girdle out the porthole.

When the Jorgensons arrive at the inn, Bart’s aunt and godmother, Mrs. Emily Hamilton Hamble, recognizes Ken, asking him if he is still a lifeguard.  She muses about Molly, saying, “Hardly proper to be so pretty. Seems to me that all the nice girls I know are either too fat or too thin or have bad skin and thick ankles.” Mothers of girls like that don’t have to bother with bras and girdles.  Such girls have a natural protection against indecency.

When the Jorgensons are shown their two-bedroom suite, Helen says she and Molly will take one bedroom, and Ken can have the other.  No more need be said regarding that arrangement.  Then Helen tells Molly to be sure to clean the toilet seat.  In those days, it was often said that you could get syphilis off a toilet seat.

When Ken looks out his bedroom window from the second floor, he can see through the window of the gardener’s cottage on the ground floor, where Sylvia looks back at him, recalling Molly’s adventure in front of open windows.  They gaze into each other’s eyes, once again suggesting that there used to be something between them.

That evening at dinner, Sylvia begins explaining about her and Bart’s decision to live at Pine Island all year, telling of the “bright dreams” she had before concluding with this:

And then after the summer season was over, I was going to abandon all convention, go back to nature. Take off my clothes, walk on the beaches in the sun, swim once again in the moonlight.

Once more, I started feeling flush.  In none of the movies I had seen starring Dorothy McGuire was she supposed to be sexy, so my expectations for her in this movie were like those I had for Sandra Dee.  But hearing her talk about walking the beaches naked during the day and swimming naked at night was having an effect on me like that of Molly’s strip tease with the curtains open. Fortunately, before she said all this, Johnny offered to show Molly the grounds, and they left the table, so he was spared having that image of his mother placed in his head.

Meanwhile, Johnny and Molly have paused by a fountain featuring a statue of Cupid.  She offers herself to be kissed.  When Johnny asks, somewhat gauchely, where she learned to kiss so perfectly, she tells of how she and a boy in high school used to kiss regularly, even though they were not going steady.  Although it is only kissing that they are talking about, Johnny is in awe of how casual she is about sex and more experienced than he is.  When they return to the inn, she asks him if they will be able to see each other from their respective bedroom windows.  When he says they will, she says she will wave goodnight.

Unfortunately, Helen saw them kissing.  When Molly returns to her bedroom, she overhears Helen telling Ken, “Your daughter didn’t waste any time,” saying she let Johnny “kiss and maul her,” that her behavior was “cheap.”  She says Molly must have Ken’s Swedish blood in her, saying, “I’ve read about how the Swedes bathe together….”  Clearly, being naked is the theme of this movie.

After Helen returns to the bedroom she shares with Molly, we find Molly getting undressed, down to her slip and removing her stockings.  Molly tells her mother that she should argue with her and leave her father alone. Helen admonishes her:

Must you parade before open windows like a strip-teaser? The way to get accepted here on Pine Island is certainly not by prancing past open windows and giving away cheap kisses behind the inn.

Molly goes to the window, where she can see Johnny looking up at her.  She smiles, waves, and lets him look at her before pulling down the shade.  Then she goes to the next window, smiles, waves, and lets him look some more.

Helen tells Molly that she has no objection to Johnny, that he would make a good catch, but that she has to “play a man like a fish.”  Molly agrees and then goes to say goodnight to her father.

She gets right in bed with him and snuggles up really close.  She asks him why he married her mother. He answers that he was lonely, that he once loved another woman, but “she married the other guy.”

Molly asks why they don’t share the same bedroom, but she knows the answer already, that Helen is anti-sex:

She says all a boy wants out of a girl is that, and when the girl marries, it’s something she has to endure. I don’t want to think like that, Papa. She makes me ashamed of even having a body. And when I have a naughty dream at night, she makes me feel like hanging myself.  How can you help what you dream?

As she says this, she looks up at her father tenderly, her lips parted and within inches of his lips.  He looks down at her with affection, assuring her that she can’t help having those naughty dreams.  He tells her that the sole reason for our existence is to love and be loved.

And then, to disabuse us of any naughty thoughts we might be having ourselves, she kisses him lightly on the cheek, says goodnight, and leaves the room.

Eventually, Ken and Sylvia happen to be alone together in the attic, where they confess that they never stopped loving each other.  Sylvia says Bart knew there was something wrong on their wedding night. They agree to meet in the boathouse that night.  However, because of a vent connecting the attic with the room below, Aunt Emily overheard everything.  We thought she was a prude, but she turns out to be a woman of the world, suggesting that Sylvia get a divorce. Sylvia is afraid she would lose custody of Johnny.  In that case, Aunt Emily suggests having an affair.

When Ken and Sylvia meet that night, they discuss those options.  Like Sylvia, Ken is afraid he would lose custody of Molly in case of a divorce.  As a result, they agree to have an affair, Sylvia saying, “I’m perfectly willing to come to you whenever you want me,” and Ken saying, “I love you too much to speak.”

Meanwhile, Johnny and Molly take a boat ride, but the sea gets rough, and their boat capsizes, forcing them to spend the night on a small island.  Nothing happens between them, and the Coast Guard rescues them the next day.  Unfortunately, Ken had to go to Boston for a few days, so he is not present to protect Molly from Helen’s suspicions.  She brings Molly to their bedroom where a grim-faced doctor is waiting. Helen says to her, “Take off every stitch you’ve got on, and let him examine you.” Molly becomes defiant, insisting she did nothing wrong.  Helen leaves the room, and the doctor forcibly grabs Molly as she becomes hysterical.  It is left to us to imagine the doctor making her to get completely naked so he can examine her hymen.

After this, there is much melodrama.  Molly runs away, Johnny threatens to kill Helen, Helen calls the sheriff, Ken returns from Boston and says he wouldn’t have blamed Johnny if he had killed Helen, and Helen says that would have made it easier for him to have sex with Sylvia, having found out about their affair from the groundskeeper.  Both sets of parents get divorced, and their children hate them for it, while being sent off to different schools.

Ken and Sylvia get married and move into a new home.  They invite Johnny and Molly to spend a couple of weeks with them.  Johnny and Molly agonize over whether they should be good or bad, but finally give in to their desires and have sex.  They are so young and innocent that they don’t realize that if you are in a movie, and you have sex just once, the girl always gets pregnant.  And so, she does.

But it has an upside.  Now that Johnny and Molly have been bad, they find they are able to forgive Ken and Sylvia for being bad, who in turn see to it that Johnny and Molly get married.  Bart’s ulcers are so severe that he will have to go into a hospital permanently, so the inn is turned over to Johnny and Molly, who will run it from now on and live happily ever after.

It’s interesting that at no point in this movie do Johnny and Molly discuss using birth control.  But then I remembered this other girl I knew in college.  As she explained it to me, one night at the drive-in, if an unmarried man and woman get carried away and have sex, God will forgive that.  But if they use birth control, then they are acting with deliberation, which makes it a mortal sin.  That dampened my desires.  I never even found out whether she was wearing a girdle.  A couple of years later, she got pregnant and had to get married.  But not to me.

Those in charge of enforcing the Motion Picture Production Code would probably have agreed with her.  For all the loosening of censorship by 1959, birth control was still taboo.  As a result, contrary to what was said in the song from Grease, Sandra Dee might lose her virginity in a moment of passionate love, but it would have been unthinkable for her to tell Troy Donahue use a rubber.