Vindauga

I saw a chunk of this movie today. I am surprised and impressed by it.

I’m feeling out of sorts today. I caught a touch of a cold. I’m running a slight fever. So, I was a little slow getting moving today. When I was breaking my fast around lunchtime I flipped to TCM to see what was on. I hadn’t ever seen this movie, and I still haven’t seen the whole thing. Its seems pretty good and the acting is on target. Its one of these movies which remind me that George C Scott was once a damn good actor. Anyway, the point of the movie, or at least the plot outline according to the IMDB, is not what I found most revealing about this film.

Ostensibly the story is about whether or not a husband murdered another man who may, or may not have, raped his wife.That is, did he do it intentionally or was he caught up in the throws of passion. Much of the trial therefore focuses on whether the husband was overly jealous and whether he was prone to beating his wife. But what is much more interesting is what the movie reveals about how things have changed, and how they haven’t, for women since this film came out.

Released in 1959 (based on a novel which was selling in 1958) part of the story focuses on how the wife behaved, whether she was “stepping out” on her husband and what constituted “appropriate” behavior. Among the things that were actually raised in the trial was whether this woman, who had gone to a local bar alone, was wearing pantyhose or whether she was bare-legged. Being bare-legged, was seen as being flirtatious, as being open, as being on the prowl. The bartender who was implicating the woman claimed that she was “bouncing up and down” while playing pin-ball, that she once or twice, bumped her hip into into the man accused of raping her. The movie didn’t focus on what, to me, is the obvious point of contention; no matter how a woman acts or dresses this does not justify continuing when she has said “stop.” But the movie did at least bring the matter into focus. The prosecutor open accused her of cheating on her husband and even, because she had been divorced, of being willing to violate an oath; basically, that she was a liar and sex-crazed. She was even forced to reveal that, brace yourself, she doesn’t always wear panties.

I am reminded, mostly because in a feverous stupor last night I watched PBS and saw part of a documentary on this, that the Kinsey report on the Sexual Behavior of Women came out not long before the book (1953, that guy was weird by the way). So, basically, I am just saying that it is interesting to see more evidence of the progression from a repressed 1950’s American to a only slightly less repressed 2000’s American. And further, to see the inter-relatedness of social change.

p.s. 300 opens this weekend