#where ?! WHERE?!?! is my adaptation where we actually get to see Edmund slowly falling for Fanny at the end???? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

illusion-of-death · 3 years

Note

hey can you talk about the relationship between regan and cornwall in your ideal adaptation? i'm so into this murder couple, you have no idea!

Oh ABSOLUTELY this is like my OTP and I literally never shut up about them so

Regan and Cornwall are pretty much the polar opposite of Goneril and Albany—obviously this is venturing FAR into “purely headcanon” territory, but my thought process here is that while Regan’s marriage was surely political, she as a second-born child would not be nearly as sought-after as Goneril and therefore had more of a choice in the matter, and you know all this already; your post about it was so good and better than anything I could come up with at the moment. When I look at the text, I think they’re clearly in love, and even after Cornwall’s death Regan never quite seems to get over it. What bothers me about several of the adaptations I’ve seen is that they don’t seem to take this into account; they’re very “elder sisters evil” about it and make Regan behave ruthlessly to everyone, including her husband. Maybe this is because the first performance of this play I ever saw did not portray the sisters in such a black and white way, but all of the subsequent productions I saw that took the easy route just felt wrong to me.

I have Further Opinions about them all over my blog already, but we all know tumblr’s tagging system is broken so good luck finding it lol. TL;DR: Regan and Cornwall may be ruthlessly violent and textbook “evil”, but they are not so to each other: they both care very deeply for the other one, and also are constantly building each other up and egging each other on when their schemes turn more violent. Any adaptation of the play that I think portrays their relationship well ought to acknowledge that.

Here’s the thing about *my* adaptation of Lear: it’s a circus show, because I grew up performing in one and I only have one brain cell which is dedicated to combining things I love. This means that while there will be some voiceover, the majority of the story gets communicated through physical body acting rather than the actual words the characters speak. What gets semi-complicated about circus shows (but is also super fun) is that everyone in them is super typecast, since you’re not going to put someone who specializes in Acrobatics in a role that’s heavily composed of aerial acts. The way I wrote it, Regan and Cornwall have a lot of acts together, meaning that whoever’s in those roles are already going to have a ton of chemistry because they’ll have been training in said acts together even outside of the more theatrical choreography that they’d also be learning.

Let’s talk about 3.7 for a bit because that’s The Scene. Gloucester is bound to a chair on one end of the stage, a couple members of the servants ensemble are up on Silks in the background, and the main event is Regan and Cornwall on Pas de Deux, an apparatus very similar to Flying Silks but with narrower fabric (I think? I’ve never done this one; I have a few aerial acts but I mostly specialize in balance). Pas de Deux is arguably one of the most physically gruelling acts there is, and yet if you’re good at it you can make it look super easy, which is why it’s so commonly used for ~the romantic scene~ in contemporary circus shows like this one—seasoned audience members will probably get the vibe. This time, however, the soundtrack is not a soft romantic one, but a very driving, boarderline aggressive song to match the much more energetic way these two will be moving. Also of note about this act, since I realize many people are probably not familiar with it: you’re absolutely reliant on your partner to be able to do just about anything, and it’s pretty obvious to the audience that there wouldn’t be much of an act if it was just one of them. This makes Cornwall’s death halfway through the scene that much more jarring, because the act practically falls apart without him (I’m no choreographer, but I’d want to emphasize to whoever plays Regan that I want to see at least a few “attempted” tricks that just can’t be done without her partner before she exacts her revenge on the servant and takes Glousester’s second eye. Then she tries to help Cornwall stand—maybe they even manage one last finale trick where it looks like he’s barely holding on—I haven’t gotten too far into this yet, but my point here is that I’m going to be making this scene as emotional as possible). For the rest of the production, Regan no longer really has a partner in any of her acts—she had a few with Goneril at the beginning, but as their relationship falls apart so does their ability to perform together, Cornwall is dead, and anything she tries with Edmund will be undercut by Goneril getting involved as well. Visual symbolism!!

That’s the end, though—what about the beginning? Well, there’s the obvious “couple who yeets each other across the arena together stays together”, but also just general scene blocking; these two are always flanking each other’s sides, if one moves in a certain way the other will copy it, etc. Though I’ll be limited in the number of spoken lines I can include, since too much voiceover starts to sound clunky and fitting the actors with microphones is not an option, I’ll make an effort to include at least a few of the important ones (“my Regan counsels well”, “till noon? Till night, my lord, and all night too”) and of course direct the actors about the relationship these two have so that they can make their own decisions about the little things.

I don’t know where I’m going with this, really; it’s all still a fairly distant dream. I’ve got some people on board so far, but not nearly enough, and don’t even get me started on the complexities of finding a space to perform in or equipment to do it with, but things are slowly coming together and maybe some day Circus Lear will be a reality. For now, though, I just have four copies of this play on my desk to look at and I’ll have to content myself with those.

#idk what happened with the spacing here that’s a big yikes #thanks for the ask though!!! i love talking about this #long post #asks #shakespeare #king lear #circus lear #regan and cornwall

9 notes · View notes

charliejrogers · 3 years

Text

Miracle on 34th Street (1947) - Review & Analysis

What a weird, wonderful movie. Miracle on 34th Street is quite possibly the oddest Christmas movie I’ve ever seen. In part this is due to the fact that some stuff just doesn’t age well. How many old, strange men are you willing to let your seven-year-old daughter hang out alone with, Ms. Doris Walker?! But also it’s weird because because despite its typical Christmas-movie themes of faith/belief, true love, family, etc… it’s a wholly unique film that doubles as a legal drama!

This was my first viewing of the perennial classic, a film which started as a story by Valentine Davies and was adapted for the screen and then subsequently directed by George Seaton. Though baptized a Roman Catholic, Seaton himself grew up in a Jewish neighborhood of Detroit. He even had a bar mitzvah. I wonder how much of Seaton’s upbringing affected the final product we see. The central theme of holding faith in something that doesn’t make sense to those around you probably resonated strongly for the director who as a kid who became interested in a religion that was foreign to both of his Swedish immigrant parents.

From a direction standpoint, it’s fairly by the books and of its time, with a few notable exceptions, one being the opening credits sequence which shows a lone man walking slowly about the NYC streets from behind. He’s dressed in all black and we have no idea who he could be. He could literally be anyone in the world. Then all of a sudden, like magic, his face is revealed: the man we’re following is Santa Claus! Or, at least it looks a whole lot like him. What is Santa Claus doing in New York? Is this even Santa Claus?

These are questions that end up being central to the movie and just straight up never get answered. I loved that writing choice. The writing is the first of the film’s three big stars. This film won the Oscar for both best story and best adapted screenplay and it deserves every ounce of those awards. The story is so sublimely clever. Put shortly, the movie is about a man who claims to be Santa Claus and due to his uncanny resemblance to the jolly holiday figure, his natural aptitude for talking to children, and his almost savant-like knowledge of toy stores in Manhattan, he gets hired to be the mall Santa for Macy’s flagship Manhattan store. However, not everyone is as convinced that he is the real Kris Kringle. Certainly the Macy’s company psychologist does not. An uptight and unpleasant man, he (like others) thinks Kringle is utterly delusional but (unlike others) he also thinks these delusions presage future violence whenever inevitably others may challenge Kringle on this delusion. The psychologist thus schemes to get Mr. Kringle committed to *cue thunderclaps* Bellevue!

What ensues is a legal battle. I can’t imagine any other Christmas movie whose climax ends in a courtroom but it’s an incredibly satisfying thing to watch. We have the idealistic lawyer, Mr. Fred Gailey, who believes that Kringle, while clearly delusional, poses no actual threat to the community and actually does the community a great service in spreading kindness. Nevertheless, has to prove that Mr. Kringle is legally THE Mr. Kringle lest Kringle spend the rest of his life in the looney bin. Note… I have a very healthy and “modern” view of mental health, and would never use the term “looney bin” to describe today’s mental health hospital… but I use the term here because the images we get in the film of Bellevue’s inpatient psych ward are of sedated men in all-white clothing… in other words the movie certainly thinks of being in a psych ward as a looney bin, which adds a bit of dramatic tension to the story.

There’s certainly some not-so-subtle condemnation of psychology going on this movie (at least of the kind practiced by the Macy’s psychologist, Mr. Sawyer (a snivelling Porter Hall)). This was coming at a time when increasingly science was taking the place of religion, so it makes sense that psychology would be an enemy in a movie about faith and clinging to things that don’t make sense. The trial over the existence of Santa Claus almost serves as an inverse Scopes Monkey trial; Kringle even ironically compares his lawyer to Clarence Darrow, the lawyer on behalf of science.

What this movie nails so absolutely perfectly is that honestly… I don’t know if Kringle really isn’t Santa Claus. I’m not claiming that Santa exists in the real world, but in the world of this film, it’s really not obvious whether the film leans one way or another. That’s an ambiguity that tends to make art shine when it’s present. We see through Gailey’ legal maneuvering that the legal defense for Santa Claus’ existence is tenuous at best. At one point he calls the prosecutor’s child to the witness stand to argue that Santa Claus must be real since that is what his Dad (the prosecutor) has always told him. Therefore it seems like the film’s psychological explanations are probably the most likely. Yet at the same time… when a little Dutch girl comes to see Santa at Macy’s because she can “just tell” he’s the real Santa… why else would Kringle know Dutch songs about Santa off the top of his head? Why does an old man who lives in an old folk’s home on Long Island know so much about Manhattan’s toy stores?

And then there’s the more practical questions about Santa lore. Why is Santa in New York? He says he was born in the North Pole… so why did he leave? If he’s real, then why does he need to direct parents on where to buy the best toys? Is it merely that the world has outgrown him?

There’s also a whole economic piece of the script that I won’t even fully touch on. But basically Kringle in attempt to do right by parents, doesn’t merely recommend toys from the Macy’s toy department, but lets them know about better deals on toys that are located in stores elsewhere in Manhattan, including those that are rivals of Macy’s! This policy is such a hit with customers, it ushers in a revolution in department store policy, with department stores across the nation vying to extend more goodwill to customers. As I said, there’s something in there about the power of the free market and how capitalism doesn’t have to be evil... but I’ll leave it there and return to the central questions of the film. Like... does Santa Claus exist?

I don’t know! But the film raises really interesting questions and just leaves them there for us to sit with. Everything that the film tells us points us to the common sense conclusion that this man is NOT the genuine Jolly fellow… yet we want to believe there’s something more and that’s what makes this film so special. We literally as the audience go through the same mental charades as the characters in the film.

Thus far, I’ve attributed this brilliance to the plot, but there’s another absolutely vital element: the performance by Edmund Gwenn as Kris Kringle. This guy deserves every ounce of his Oscar for his performance. There’s not a second that he’s on screen that he doesn’t ooze charisma and charm. This whole movie would fall apart were it not for him, good plotting be damned, since we need to believe, even for mere fits and flitters, that this man is Santa Claus.

Never is he more convincing than when he interacts with children. There’s the absolutely magical scene with the little Dutch girl I mentioned above, but it’s when Kringle chats with little Susan Walker (played to heart-melting perfection by nine-year-old actor Natalie Wood whose got a stink face that never ceased to make me chuckle) that this movie achieves greatness. Though the trial scenes put the theme of faith vs. psychology at the forefront, the real heart of this movie is the conflict of faith vs. practicality. Little Susan is raised by her mother (and her Black nanny/house-caretaker who gets depressingly little credit… or screentime), and her mother Doris Walker (Maureen O’Hara) is a thoroughly practical women. She’s a high-up exec at Macy’s, and seemingly one of the only women to be in such a position. As such, she’s a unique character for her time. Rigidly pragmatic, she eschews any and all attempts at fun and imagination for her daughter (as well as for herself). We get the sense that a different film, a different story, might dive deep into Walker’s struggles as a single mother in the 1940’s trying to be taken seriously in the business world. In a sense, she’s a forerunner to Faye Dunaway’s character in Network. She was clearly hurt by romance in the past (she and her husband divorced, which I imagine was rather scandalous at the time), and this fear of getting hurt by romance is what compels her to teach her daughter to avoid the stuff completely.

Clearly, there’s some cool gendered stuff going on here. Imagination, romance, faith: these are all things that are stereotypically more female-coded, while business, pragmatism are more male-coded. You inherit your father’s name but your mother’s religion as the old tradition went. And in our society at least, the latter (pragmatism/business) is supposed to make you successful and get you places… the former (faith/romance) does not. Yet in this movie, we have idealism and romance of our male lawyer Fred Gailey (John Payne) and the pragmatism of our female businesswoman Doris Walker. It’s a fun play on typical gender norms, but more interesting is to see how this duality plays out in the development of little Susan under the dual influences of her mother and the combination of Misters Gailey & Kringle.

Natalie Wood goes down in the pantheon of all-time great child actors, up there with the kid from Kramer vs. Kramer. She’s precocious but not in a way that’s off-putting. The way she evaluates the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade in such a matter-of-fact way is hilarious, and as I mentioned the stink eye she gives Kringle when he tries to tell her that he’s Santa is nothing short of perfect. Over the course of the film, we see her more harsh nature melt away and she becomes a kid. It’s a beautiful reminder of that childhood only comes once in a lifetime. If this movie shows us nothing, it’s how hard it is to maintain a sense of levity once one becomes an adult. We have to start worrying about what our bosses might think, what the press/public might think, what voters(!) might think. Never again will it be fully OK to have your heads in the clouds and believe in nonsense, so why take that away from children.

As much as this is a perfect film, I could have done without the romance plot. Mostly because it seems unnecessary. Doris seems to change in her attitudes towards Kringle and towards raising her daughter that constitute enough character growth thata having her all of a sudden fall head over heels for Gailey just seems forced. For that matter… Gailey’s a weird dude. This movie romanticizes a weird, creepy type of romance where Gailey spends time with a small girl just to get time with that girl’s mother. Walker and Gailey are such opposites and share no on-screen chemistry, that I just didn’t buy the plot.

But that’s OK. It’s a small blemish on an otherwise wonderful film. It hits different emotions than, say, It’s A Wonderful Life, but it’s magical all that same, and one that I can actually imagine children wanting to watch. It’s unceasingly clever plot, matched by a once-in-a-lifetime performance by Edmund Gween as Kris Kringle and a great child actor performance from Wood make this a must-see movie for any holiday movie fan.

***/ (Three and a half out of four stars)

#miracle on 34th street #edmund gwenn #maureen o'hara #john payne #natalie wood #george seaton #christmas movies

3 notes · View notes