I’ve always hated that part at the end of ONCE UPON A TIME
IN THE WEST (1968), when Jason Robards tells Claudia Cardinale: “You can’t
imagine how happy it makes a man to see a woman like you. Just to look at her. And if [a man] should pat your behind,
just make believe it’s nothing.
They earned it.” — To be told this as kindly advice
already makes me want to revolt.
Women have minutes, hours, even days strung together in which they don’t
want to be imposed upon just because they are female. But this is completely stymied in Leone’s film. To be a great lady, as the film would
like us to believe, Cardinale has to “put out” and “put up” with it.
The film is an epic western with an all-star cast almost
entirely of men, except for the stunningly beautiful Cardinale. She plays a woman who comes way out
west to Arizona from New Orleans to join her new husband. In the Old West, women were easily
outnumbered by men, and for those women, the threat of being sexually harassed
and molested is very real and most especially because this is a movie. The implication is that you can’t show
up looking like Claudia Cardinale and not expect to be pawed over and stripped
down.
At the beginning of the film, Cardinale steps off the train wearing
a black traveling dress. Her
neckline is covered with modest lace trim that almost goes up to her
throat. By the end of the film,
however, she’s fetching water and doing heavy housework, wearing an
off-the-shoulder outfit in a precarious state of being undone. And of course, Jason Robards gets to
pat Cardinale on her bum because he’s “earned” it.
It’s the kind of thing that women need a counterbalance
for. It’s why Jane Austen is so
important. Austen made the
internal heroism of women impactful and gave women the kind of respect that
wasn’t overly precious, but breathtakingly heartfelt. In ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, the
male characters spend a lot of time staring each other down, trying to size
each other up, and deciding whether to respect and/or shoot each other. When men size up Cardinale however,
they’re strictly going by her outward attractiveness and how well she holds up
to their advances.
Recently, I watched AND GOD CREATED WOMAN (1956) in which the
nude, reclining backside of Brigitte Bardot opens the film. She is sunbathing, shielded somewhat by
white bedsheets hanging on a laundry line. In posing her this way, director Roger Vadim suggests what
use the male gaze sees in Bardot — she is ready-made for bedding down. Throughout the film, she is perpetually
in some state of undress. The
local bus driver comments to the local playboy that “[her] ass is a poem.”
Bardot’s character has a mad crush for that very same
playboy named Antoine. She hopes
that he will do right by her and take her away from St. Tropez to the city as
his legitimate paramour. Instead,
she overhears him discussing her as an easy one-night-stand and that he has no
intention of taking her seriously.
Later, despite their mutual animal lust for one another, Bardot won’t
sleep with Antoine and instead goes home as any good girl would. Unfortunately, that’s not how people
judge her.
Being so beautiful and sexually provocative doesn’t make her
a “sexpot” in my book, but her foster mother decides to send Bardot back to the
orphanage where she came from. It
is assumed by the entire town that because Bardot looks the way she does and
wants to enjoy life that she’s slept with (or is willing to sleep with) every
male in town.
As presented in the film, the only way for Bardot to
circumvent being sent back to the orphanage is to marry. This is hardly much of a choice, and
one can’t blame her for not wanting to be institutionalized again. As the fates would have it, Bardot
marries Antoine’s younger brother Michel (played by Jean-Louis
Trintignant). Michel is honestly
enamored of her and doesn’t treat her like a tart, unlike his brother Antoine
who is mad with jealousy, but still refers to Bardot as “that bitch”. Antoine behaves as if he blames Bardot
for being irresistible. Though
he’s conflicted about sleeping with his brother’s wife, there’s no self-hatred
on his part.
There’s a moment in the musical YOU WERE NEVER LOVELIER
(1942) starring Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth in which Adolph Menjou (playing
Hayworth’s father) dismisses his wife and daughter’s taste in fashion and
declares that women don’t know how to dress to please men. However, to my thinking, if a woman
feels good in her choice of clothing, she radiates sexiness, which in turn should
please those around her — at least it ought to.
Film heroines are cast most often for their physical
beauty. But in STELLA MARIS (1918),
a silent film starring Mary Pickford in two roles, the lack of outward beauty
creates a heroine in the eyes of the audience. Pickford plays a homely, unloved orphan named United Blake
whose life runs parallel to that of Stella Maris, a pretty, sheltered
invalid. To play Unity, Pickford
subdued her famous curls, “flattened” her face makeup to appear pale and plain,
and altered her facial expressions to smile lop-sidedly.
One of the most touching scenes of the entire film is when
Unity compares herself to a luminous portrait of Stella Maris. Unity looks into the mirror and
recognizes that she has none of Stella Maris’ beauty. She admits to herself that she is not alluring, and it’s a heartbreaking
moment to witness. Unity and
Stella Maris are both in love with the same man, but Unity knows that she’s not
the one who completes the image of the ideal romantic pairing. Ironically, in admitting that she isn’t
the romantic heroine, Unity becomes a heroine herself. She lives with her exclusion from an idyllic
life; she loves without recognition or reciprocation; and she literally
sacrifices herself in order to ensure the happiness of her secret love and to
another woman. Unity represents
the under-represented, unglamorous individuals of the world who are more than
worthy of great love and admiration.
But in movies, sex appeal will invariably win the day.
