Year 18, Day 59 - 2/28/26 - Movie #5,259
BEFORE: It's the last day of February, so let's check the format stats for the month:
2 watched on Hulu: Cat Person, Good Luck to You Leo Grande
28 TOTAL
Elizabeth McGovern carries over from "The Wings of the Dove", and I'll post the links until St. Patrick's Day tomorrow. But first it's time to check the line-up for Day 17 of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" programming, this is for Sunday, March 1, and the theme is "Oscar Goes Dancing". Hmm, that's going to fit right in with my film for tomorrow, I think:
I've seen seven of these 11, so that's good - "Swing Time" and everything after that, except for "The Red Shoes". Am I mistaken, or is there some actor linking going on here? Fred Astaire carries over from "Swing Time" to "Royal Wedding" and then "The Band Wagon", and Jane Powell carries over from "Royal Wedding" to "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers", and then Russ Tamblyn carries over from THAT film to "West Side Story". I think TCM made this same grouping of films a few years ago when they were doing a linking thing, and maybe just liked this order and wanted to repeat it? Anyway, I'm rising to 78 seen out of 189, which is 41.2% - my score went UP!
THE PLOT: A woman risks losing her chance of happiness with the only man she has ever loved.
AFTER: This story treads some of the same ground as "The Wings of the Dove", the two films are set around 1910 and are based on classic novels about class struggle, one written by Henry James and the other written by Edith Wharton. Wharton could be the female American version of Henry James, for all I know. Hell, they could the same person, for all I know. They both apparently excelled at writing about whatever the opposite of joy was, and of course one was European and the other American, so we've got every possible other thing carrying over as well - both films have a female lead character who has no way to improve her station unless she can get married to a richer guy, and she's having no luck with that. And in both stories the lead character is in a situation-ship with a man who has a job that doesn't make "enough" money - a reporter in the James book and a lawyer in this one.
Wait, there's more - in both cases the lead female is beholden to her aunt, who controls her financial reputation and gives her a small allowance. The difference comes when in "The Wings of The Dove" Kate takes action to try and get the money from a rich heiress's fortune and fails, and here Lily tries to get money in various other ways - by investing, by working in a millinery, and by inheriting money from her aunt, but nothing really works, except she DOES get $10,000 when her aunt dies, however it takes a long time to collect it, and Lily has outstanding gambling debts that need to be paid, so that inheritance is spent already, essentially. Supposedly she's going to get $9,000 of investment money from Gus Trenor, her friend Judy's husband, however after a night at the opera Gus reveals that this money is really his, he invested it on Lily's behalf, but he wants a little sumpin' sumpin' in return for that money, and Lily doesn't want to give it to him. OK, fine, but then he wants his $9,000 back.
That lawyer that Lily romances occasionally is Lawrence Selden, but he's got a couple other relationships going on, including an affair with Bertha Dorset, another one of Lily's friends. A random woman comes to Lily's door one day with love letters sent from Bertha to Selden, and Lily pays the woman $100. WHAT? I thought Lily was deep in debt, but she's got $100 to pay off a blackmailing stranger who found some love letters? She must really did this Selden guy, but how's he going to support a wife on a lawyer's salary? Again, WHAT? Were lawyers paid horribly back in 1910? These days lawyers tend to make a lot of money, but maybe things were different back then?
Still, Lily can't seem to catch a break - Simon Rosedale does propose to her, and he owns a bunch of fancy buildings, but Lily would seem to prefer to wait for her poor lawyer boyfriend to start making some bank. Bad move, Lily, you should have taken up Rosedale on his offer, you know what they say, "Buy land, they're not making any of it any more." Lily rejects Rosedale's proposal because reasons, and instead goes on a European cruise with the Dorsets. Sure, if you're short on cash, maybe a cruise will fix everything. Wait WHAT? HOW? She's just digging the hole deeper, isn't she? But she's desperate to get away from the bill collectors in New York. Very relatable.
On this yacht near Monte Carlo, Lily hangs out with George Dorset while Bertha seems to enjoy the company of a young poet. George freaks out one night when Lily doesn't make it back to the ship, and he accuses Lily of knowing about his wife's affair with this poet. Lily claims to know nothing, and when Bertha is confronted about it, she claims that Lily is having an affair with George. Sure, deny everything, admit nothing, then attack attack attack. Selden, meanwhile, arrives in Monte Carlo himself and starts hanging out with Carry Fisher, yet another friend of Lily's who seems to keep putting herself in-between Lily and any available bachelor. Man, it's rough out there, I suppose.
Fast forward a bit to New York, after the cruise, when Lily's aunt has died and the Dorsets are breaking up. Most of Lily's aunt's fortune goes to her cousin, Grace Stepney, and Lily is essentially homeless, but Carry Fisher invites her to stay with her at the Gormers' place. Again, Lily has two possible prospects for marriage, the divorced George Dorset, or Simon Rosedale, who proposed to her before and she turned him down. Well, she blows it with both of them, because George asks Lily for the truth about his wife's affairs, and she says she knows nothing (even though she BOUGHT those love letters from the blackmailer!) and then she offers to marry Rosedale, only now HE'S not into HER. Simon thinks Lily should use those letters to get Bertha to restore her social standing, but for some reason she won't.
Finally, Lily gets a J-O-B as a secretary and companion for socialite Mrs. Hatch, she needs the money, but working for a living isn't helping her social standing. What a commoner, working for a living. One of her responsibilities is to pick up Mrs. Hatch's sleeping medication, but Lily begins taking it herself to deal with all the troubles in her life. Mrs. Hatch breaks into society, but feels that keeping Lily employed would be a liability, so she fires her. Lily works that sewing job in a hat factory, but by now she's addicted to laudanum and doing a bad job. She tries to borrow money from Grace, her cousin who got most of her aunt's money, but is turned down.
It really doesn't make much sense here, but Lily burns the letters that Selden wrote to Bertha, letters which she could have somehow used to get either money or social status. Then she finally FINALLY gets her $10,000 of inheritance money, but she turns it right around and pays off Gus Trenor, so there goes most of the money, and remember she still has those gambling debts, too. But this is as close as she'll ever get to a blank slate, I suppose, so with the scales balanced, she overdoses and checks out. Selden figures out what she did for him and declares his love for her, just a bit too late.
I don't really understand why the title is "The House of Mirth", because there's really no mirth anywhere in this film. It's extremely depressing to have to watch this woman struggle to support herself and fail over and over again. It's relatable, but maybe a bit TOO relatable, especially if I have to dip into my savings account a little each month, just to finish paying my own bills. Maybe in Lily I see the need to improve my situation, coupled with the apparent inability to do so. Anyway, I base my score on how much I enjoyed a movie, and really there's no enjoyment here at all, either. Sorry.
Directed by Terence Davies
Also starring Gillian Anderson (last seen in "Boogie Woogie"), Eric Stoltz (last seen in "Brats"), Dan Aykroyd (last seen in "Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print"), Anthony LaPaglia (last heard in "All-Star Superman"), Laura Linney (last seen in "Genius"), Terry Kinney (last seen in "Mile 22"), Eleanor Bron (last seen in "Iris"), Jodhi May (last seen in "Einstein and Eddington"), Penny Downie (last seen in "Breathe"), Pearce Quigley (last seen in "The Way Back"), Helen Coker (last seen in "Vanity Fair"), Mary MacLeod, Paul Venables (last seen in "Skyfall"), Serena Gordon (last seen in "GoldenEye"), Lorelei King (last seen in "Shining Through"), Linda Marlowe (last seen in "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy"), Anne Marie Timoney, Clare Higgins (last seen in "Bigger Than the Sky"), Ralph Riach (last seen in "Copying Beethoven"), Brian Pettifer (last seen in "Conspiracy"), Philippe De Grossouvre, Trevor Martin (last seen in "Othello"), David Ashton (last seen in "The Last King of Scotland"), Lesley Harcourt, Mark Dymond (last seen in "Die Another Day"), Pamela Dwyer, Kate Wooldridge, Graham Crammond, Roy Sampson (last seen in "Macbeth"), Alyxis Daly.
RATING: 3 out of 10 tableaux vivants
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