~four~

“I’m not afraid of death but I am afraid of dying. Pain can be alleviated by morphine but the pain of social ostracism cannot be taken away.”  -Derek Jarman

(ET 20) A(nne) to G or A(nthony) to G?

Among his fifty years worth of motion pictures, Strangers on a Train stands out as one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most played and studied movie in contemporary times. Featuring Robert Walker and Farley Granger as Bruno Anthony and Guy Haines respectively, the film centres around the idea of criss-cross murders whereby Bruno kills Guy’s unfaithful wife in return for Guy killing his much-hated father. This may at first come across as just another of the director’s signature psychological thrillers, but underneath a screenplay so dense with Freudian concepts and notions, the film holds a strong, if underexplored, homoerotic subtheme. Forget the Id and Ego and Superego; Strangers embarks on a journey through an unsuspecting courtship between the two leading men.

Like any other love story, this all-male relationship begins with mate selection, a process put to life in the film’s opening sequence. Viewers are presented with two sets of feet, shot from the knees down. The first wears brown-and-white brogans with striped pants, the second single-toned shoes with plain slacks. The colors and patterns function to foreshadow the owners’ personality and behaviour; the first is playful and flamboyant while the second is dull and rigid. Their steps converge in the train carriage and a little bump from the brown shoe initiates the meeting of these two strangers. Bruno, the one with striped pants, strikes a conversation with Guy, the one with brown shoes and thereafter, their seemingly chance encounter would go on to develop into a tumultuous pursue of romance, something again foreshadowed, this time by the train’s directions; instead of staying on the ‘straight’ track, it takes on the diverging rails. While it appears that Bruno is the one who stumbled upon Guy, the reverse is really the reality. At the station, Bruno walks in front with Guy trailing behind. Aboard the train, Bruno sits down first followed by Guy. Both instances make it look as if Guy, who is seeing another woman, is keeping tabs on Bruno. And most importantly, had Guy not accidentally kicked Bruno’s leg, both men would never have known each other. Then again, as Sigmund Freud famously claimed, there are no accidents; this explains the odd pairing of two people with very different fashion tastes that would later prove to be a defining event in both men’s lives.

Notice how Bruno immediately shows interest in Guy. Right after he identifies the tennis star, he starts to pry into Guy’s personal life with “too friendly” (“Strangers”) questions. His behaviour throughout their conversation is nothing less than flirtatious, such as sitting a tad too close to his new found friend and constantly trying to establish Guy’s marital status. Guy, on the other hand, presents conflicting perception of Bruno. Initially very welcoming towards Bruno, he became cold and hard after Bruno correctly guessed the tangle between Guy, Anne, and Miriam, which annoys Guy very much. But when Bruno explains that his nosiness “always happen when I meet somebody whom I like and admire” (“Strangers”), Guy swiftly returns to his welcoming position – facing Bruno –once more. Clearly, Bruno is the active pursuer and Guy, as reluctant as he may be, is the passive receiver in this newly formed contact. Next, Bruno presents his idea of swapping murders to Guy to which Guy responds sarcastically in agreement. Bruno interprets it in an entirely different light and proceeds to killing Guy’s wife, Miriam. Apart from simply keeping his part of the deal, the murder doubles as Bruno’s elimination of competitor, anyone who stands between him and his subject of interest. As Barbara exclaims, “It’s wonderful to have a man love you so much he’d kill for you!” (“Strangers”). Of course, Guy does not realize any of this, or maybe deep down he does and that is why he chooses not to betray Bruno; perhaps another indication of his latent homosexuality.

Bruno continues to meddle with Guy’s life, much to Guy’s apprehension. During their encounter at the Capitol building, Bruno tells him that Anne looks better, that she is “a slight improvement over Miriam” (“Strangers”). He sounded almost jealous of her, and this is evident in the sudden change of tone in his voice. He appears again at Guy’s tennis practice, this time taking a step further by meeting his girlfriend and friends. Such is his way of cementing a position in Guy’s social circle. Although Guy feels disturbed by Bruno and repeatedly wants him to stay away, he does not return the pistol Bruno sends him. Why? His holding on to this phallic imagery culminates at Senator Morton’s party when Bruno faints shortly after a strangling demonstration gone wrong. Upstairs in the room, Guy angrily pleads Bruno to leave him alone to which Bruno replies, “But Guy..I like you..” (“Strangers”). That remark is the third from Bruno, with the first and second during their meeting on the train carriage and the conversation in Bruno’s compartment respectively. In both cases, Bruno’s words calmed Guy’s tensing emotions but in the third instance, Guy responded by throwing a punch at him. But there is more than meets the eye in that punch. It is not only his furiousness; it is an emotional – perhaps even sexual – release for Guy. Immediately after that violence, he shares a tender moment with Bruno, helping him with his bow tie. This is followed by Guy walking him to his car side-by-side looking like a couple. Regardless of his outward denial of wanting anything to do with Bruno, subconsciously Guy has already submitted to his relentless pursue.

Guy’s contradictory behaviour remains, as seen when he has a sudden change of heart and decides to fulfil his part of the bargain. However, while navigating his way around Bruno’s house, his face is never completely lit. This suggests that his intention going there is not at all pure; he never intends to carry out the murder and possibly even expects Bruno to be the one waiting for him. Indeed, when Bruno switches on the bed lamp to reveal himself and therefore Guy’s betrayal, Guy retains full composure, as if he actually wants to be found out. Then, he returns the pistol. Just as viewers think that Guy has decides to reject Bruno’s advances, Guy behaves otherwise. He proceeds to leave the room with Bruno right behind him holding the weapon. As Guy descends the staircase, the pistol, in Bruno’s possession, points in his direction. Guy turns to face Bruno with a face that screams seduction (see Figure 1). Could it be that he has evolved from being the passive one to the more active party without even knowing it?

Figure 1

The last stage of all courtship is intimacy. In the case of Strangers on a Train, it is embodied in the carousel scene, which is also the climax of the movie. Guy goes to the amusement park in Metcalf attempting to retrieve his lighter from Bruno. A brief chase scene finds them both on the merry-go-round, embroiled in a big fight. The two get very physical, pushing and punching and kicking and strangling one another. Even when they are struggling on the floor, they appear to be in a tight embrace more than a fistfight. The excessive amount of non-verbal contact, together with the background screams and images of prancing horses form a powerful sexual allegory. Bruno and Guy have become a single entity here. Bruno is seen wearing brown shoes while Guy dons a pair of plain whites and when combined, it gives a visual of Bruno’s brown-and-white brogans from when they first met. Furthermore, the use of aggression and violence in place of intimacy and affection is a recurring – and Freudian – motive, as shown in Guy’s single blow to Bruno’s face in an earlier scene. The climax of the climax finally comes when the merry-go-round collapses, killing Bruno but at the same time granting him release (see Figure 2). If anything, his serene expression is hardly an indication of pain.

Figure 2

What Hitchcock attempted to illustrate in Strangers on a Train apart from the idea of suppressed aggression and anger is the duality of human nature (Spoto 192). Although the audience are presented with clear-cut personalities of Bruno and Guy right from the opening sequence, by the end of the movie most, if not all, viewers would be left with lingering doubts over the motives and sexual orientation of the two. The film’s careful exploration of homoeroticism was more than bold for its time; the way it was carried was as far as one can possibly go under the Hays Code. For that, the director should have been called not just the master of suspense, but the master of suspense and disguise.

Works Cited

Spoto, Donald. The Art of Alfred Hitchcock: Fifty Years of His Motion Pictures. New York: Anchor Books, 1992. Print.

Strangers on a Train, 1951. [Film] Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. United States: Warner Bros.

~three~

“My purpose is to make a movie to make you warm. To give you some heat. Now, this rational world has become a place where only what is cool is good. Do you cut the movie on the basis of the beat of modernity or the basis of the beat of your own heart?”  -Emir Kusturica

(ET 19) Eden in a Rosebud

“Rosebud” is regarded by many to be the greatest cinematic enigma. The primary driving device in Orson Welles’ debut feature film, Citizen Kane, it is generally interpreted as the protagonist’s one true love. But is that all there is to this cryptic word that has managed to elude revelation since its first appearance in 1941?

The film revolves around the life of a narcissistic newspaper publisher, Charles Foster Kane whose story is told by five different characters. Each narration is a puzzle piece, with the big picture being the meaning of Kane’s last word – “rosebud”. The fact that “rosebud” is the name of the wooden sled he owned as a child automatically sparks the idea that the word represents his longing for his family, especially his mother, and for the love he lost when he was taken away from his Colorado home “to see Chicago and New York and Washington, maybe” (“Citizen Kane”). But more than that, “rosebud” marks the last – and only – period in Kane’s tragic life that is real. The separation Kane was forced to endure as an eight-year-old became a sort of symbolic death in the sense that he stopped growing ever since; the inner stagnation ultimately led to a self-destructive fixation on his childhood manners. What the five narrators reveal are not so much what Charlie Kane developed into, but rather the innocent snowball-throwing persona he failed to move beyond.

Like a child, Kane had a profound contempt for authority. For instance, he attended various prestigious universities without ever lasting long enough to graduate. It was a record in which he took great pride, something evident during a conversation with Walter Thatcher where he refreshed Thatcher’s memory about his colourful academic journey with a smirk. When Kane turned 25, he decided to try his hand in an unfamiliar field of newspaper publishing because he assumed “it would be fun to run a newspaper” (“Citizen Kane”), much to Thatcher’s chagrin. The plan outlined by his ex-guardian – handling goldmines, oil wells, and real estate – was abandoned altogether in his pursuit of freedom. These behaviours could be projections of Kane’s resentment towards Thatcher whereby he blamed him for that painful separation from home. Kane’s later usage of the Inquirer to attack banks and corruption – Thatcher was a banker – is especially similar to that hard glare (see Figure 1) he gave to his newly appointed guardian as a child outside the boarding house; both held a rebellious undertone. Nevertheless, his pleasure of publicly bleaching the banking sector came at a price of one million dollars per annum. His conviction that it would take him 60 years to go out of business is proof of intellectual short-sightedness given that the daily did not even survive the 1929 Great Depression. But how could Kane have seen it when his takeover of the newspaper was an act of impulse to begin with?

Figure 1

Like a child, Kane craved attention. To generate sales for the Inquirer, he left behind the conventional straight-laced news reporting for yellow journalism. The fictional accounts of Spanish armada’s presence off the Jersey coast and the kidnap-cum-murder of a woman in Brooklyn clearly show that Kane had no qualms about bending the truth in order to hog the spotlight. Ironically, Kane later issued a “Declaration of Principles” containing his intention to “provide the people of this city with a daily paper that will tell all the news honestly” (“Citizen Kane”). An intriguing note of the scene where he explained the declaration to Jedediah Leland and Mr. Bernstein is that he did the talking while standing in the shadows (see Figure 2). A comparison of this with an earlier scene of young Kane playing in the snow (see Figure 3) enables a parallel to be drawn: in the former, we hear but not see him whereas in the latter, the reverse is true. One is a faceless man, the other a voiceless boy. What this translates into is that no matter how hard he tried, whether in constructing a philosophical backbone in publishing or hurling snowballs, the amount of concentration given to Kane would never reach 100% not unlike how a parent does not fully listen to his kid. The only way to replenish the deficit is for the child to focus on himself. At the celebration party of the Inquirer, an ice sculpture of an initial “K” was placed on Kane’s end of the table facing him, so even when everybody else saw Kane from only one trajectory, the sculpture was rightly mindful of him (see Figure 4). His marriage to the president’s niece also was nothing more than an artful scheme to boost his popularity in the political circle.

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4

Like a child, Kane was extremely egotistical. His selfishness was especially protruding in his marriage to Emily Norton whereby he openly criticized Uncle John, who also happened to be the president, through the Inquirer with hope that he would one day replace the President with himself. He continued his little scorning game knowing his actions were placing his wife between a rock and a hard place. Although the bad press coverage of the President failed to hamper Kane’s political ambitions, his conceited arrogance did it with much ease. After Emily discovered his affair with Susan Alexander, Kane chose to remain with his mistress despite Jim Gettys threatening to expose his extramarital hobby, effectively abandoning his family. He did not even for a split moment consider the impact of that decision because he was too disillusioned by the belief that he gained the voters’ support simply by virtue of being Charles Foster Kane. Just as his resistance against leaving home was crushed by Mary Kane’s words, his fury-filled speech directed at Emily and Gettys at Susan’s hallway were tamed with a slamming door. In both instances, what the audience see is a spoilt brat with an inflated sense of self-importance. The same arrogance was also what drove his best friend away. As Leland recalled, his negative review of Susan’s debut performance was in fact completed by Kane whose bigger-than-life ego “was always trying to prove something” (“Citizen Kane”).

Like a child, Kane constantly demanded love from others. When Susan let her temper flared after reading Leland’s review, she repeatedly threatened to give up on singing which prompted Kane to lash out saying that doing so would be equal to poking fun of him. Getting the audience to love her shows was an indirect means of having people love him because he was, after all, the one who built her opera career. Although Kane refused to explain himself to his wife at this point of time except saying that his reasons “satisfy him”, he eventually did so. Twice. The first time happened when Susan attempted suicide, overwhelmed by the stress of having to sing to unwelcoming crowds. Kane finally gave in to her wishes and allowed her to abandon her career. This unusual act of selflessness was in fact a damage control; instead of continuing to push her off the brink, he chose to submit to her just so he would not lose the only source of love left in his life which was Susan. The second time, however, was less straight forward. During the picnic at Everglades, Susan again antagonized Kane, this time regarding his inability to reciprocate her love with any of his personal belongings especially his affection as a husband. For the first time, the audience see Kane professing his feelings – love – to Susan or anybody for that matter, and this is where the answer to his possessive behaviour lies. Emotionally, Kane had the capacity of an eight-year-old. No doubt he loved her, but his definition of loving her was to have her love him first and to do so, he kept Susan by his side by showering her with material gifts and wealth. And because it takes two to tango, Kane’s one-sided bid for love ultimately cost him his wife.

And just like a child, Kane had his outbursts which he was not compelled to hide. This particular characteristic culminated in his systematic thrashing of Susan’s bedroom after she walked out on him. By then, he had lost two wives, one best friend, millions of voters, and a mother. The Kane who destroyed the furniture and the Kane who smashed his sled onto the ground threw their tantrums the moment things deviated from their plans: Susan’s departure was out of his control while Mary Kane’s decision to put his son under the care of a total stranger was made without consulting the defendant. As if dying was not enough, Kane had to withstand being crucified as a result of losing his wife; all his servants stood and watched their hard-skinned employer wept in front of them.

Kane’s emotional death meant that his whole life revolved around his childhood and nothing more. Even as he physically progressed through adolescence, adulthood, and old age, the things he did were all mere repetitions of his time at his parents’ boarding house. Perhaps the biggest tragedy of Kane’s story is the fact that he spent seven decades living in a moment that was never meant to last. Had Kane not be sent away at such tender age, he would probably still turn out to fancy taking the centre stage, try to impress his best friend and run for governor, but at least he would learn to love someone else besides Charles Foster Kane. And maybe, just maybe, his last word would have been something else other than “rosebud”.

 

Works Cited

Citizen Kane, 1941. [Film] Directed by Orson Welles. United States: RKO Radio Picture.