Watchmen & Visual Irony

We finally get to see that really short Watchmen movie this weekend!

Woo hoo! Hehehe…

I had thought about writing a number of different articles on the Watchmen but there’s very little I could add to the discussion about the superb graphic novel that isn’t already explored here as well as the Podcasts I referenced earlier. You can also catch quite a list of other great links at IFC’s Watchmen Round One and Round Two.

Let me say, there are many rewards for screenwriters by listening to the Watchmen Podcasts, and I’ll tell you why. These guys go through each issue panel-by-panel discussing not only the story but all of the visual details as well. This really could help you to not only develop your own visual vocabulary but also think more in terms of visual storytelling, which was all quite inspiring for me at least.

For example, I loved the many, many transitions between scenes. I loved the many visual metaphors at play in the narrative, like outside of Hollis’ place where there was always that sign for the “closed” mechanics shop who can “fix ‘em” and “obsolete models a specialty!” Or like when (in Chapter III, page 9) Laurie was talking to Dan in his kitchen about how people have become (to Dr. Manhattan) just “shadows in the fog,” while visually her face is blurred by the steam from the kettle. Or how, later in the chapter from page 12-15, Dr. Manhattan is verbally “attacked” by the press during a talk show while Laurie and Dan are physically attacked in an alley by thugs. And I loved how, on page 15, you have government guys escorting Dr. Manhattan out of the studio while the press swarm around them and one government guy says, “C’mon, the mob’s getting aroused,” and then they cut to Dan and Laurie aroused and looking at each other after the fight. And then the government guy says later, “Gentlemen, I think it safest not to pursue this line of thinking,” and they cut to Dan and Laurie turning away from each other to avoid hooking up. And I also loved the first few pages of Chapter VIII, which opened with Sally and Hollis having a phone conversation but you don’t see their faces. You look at the memorabilia in both of their apartments from days gone by when they were both members of the Minutemen as they speak about days gone by over the phone. The knick-knacks are sentimental just as their conversation is sentimental about the old days and how they’ve changed. And then the panels reveal how they’ve changed in ways that they aren’t saying over the phone, Hollis with his cigarettes and alcohol, and Sally with her vitamins. Hollis mentions a tight budget and Sally responds about how they’re all feeling “the pinch nowadays” and all the while she’s getting a professional manicure done. Hehehe…

And some of you might be thinking, “Has MM lost his mind? Those are visual flourishes that the director should figure out. I just have to write the story.” Wrong. Screenwriters are filmmakers, too. It isn’t enough to “write a story.” You have to render that story cinematically.

More on that topic here.


But there’s one aspect I would like to discuss – visual irony.

Nobody ever says this but contradictions are where it’s at in drama. In a story, you typically have two opposing forces, a protagonist vs. an antagonist, and they generally contradict each other in terms of goals and tactics and philosophy. Drama is born from contradicting motives, words, and actions. Of course, finding drama through contradictions between characters can also be used to great effect in love stories. Opposites attract, right? Not only that, contradictions within the characters themselves is how you create depth, that is, a character can have contradictory sides to his/her nature. For example, there was Hamlet, who was both spiritual and blasphemous, loving and sadistic, courageous and cowardly, cautious and impulsive, proud and self-pitying, witty and sad, weary and dynamic, lucid and confused, and sane and mad. There can be layers of contradictions between what a character says and what a character really thinks. Exploiting a character’s contradictions is also a way to craft inner conflicts. You have two opposing needs in a character that eventually puts that person in a difficult position where he or she has to make a choice.


But there’s a whole other level of contradictions in the way that you tell your story – Visual Ironies. It’s that contrast between two things you see on the screen or it’s a contrast between words and images. And when it comes to the Watchmen visual contrasts is what makes so much of the imagery interesting, all of which begins with the blood-splattered smiley face. The smiley face pin on its own gives off very fun, happy vibes. Add a splotch of blood on the button, and you have a more layered, twisted, perversion of meaning. I loved what Dr. Spiros Xenos wrote in his essay on Reading Space in Watchmen:

Tracing the smiley face symbol in its various manifestations reveals the manner in which minor and occasional details accumulate and add pressure on the paranoia/determinism axis of the text. Watchmen begins with a close-up of the smiley badge lying in the gutter, the smear of blood crossing the right eye in the manner of a clock hand approaching 12 o’ clock. Rorschach’s diary entry notes his apprehension of the city’s “true face”. It is clear Rorschach is not referring to the badge at this point, but it is equally clear that we, the omniscient reader, recognise the proximity of the two levels of narration, that is, the ‘face’ of the city as smeared with blood, and Rorschach’s unconscious registration of the badge as pertinent symbol. Moore refers to this double-tracking as a

sort of “under-language” at work ... that is neither the “visuals” nor the “verbals,” but a unique effect caused by a combination of the two. A picture can be set against text ironically, or it can be used to support the text, or it can be completely disjointed from the text - which forces the reader into looking at the scene in a new way.... the reader has the ability to stop and linger over one particular “frame” and work out all of the meaning in that frame or panel...

Lewis refers to the overlay of text and image in Watchmen as “harmonic counterpoint”, which aptly registers the effect of the quotation of visual symbols throughout the text. In his account the smiley badge represents repression, blocked vision and denial. The smear over the right eye symbolises willful blindness and denial...

I totally agree. At the same time, it could also represent a false facade, the happy image that masks the hidden, sinister motives underneath. That’s visual irony. That’s the combination of two contradictory images, in this case, blood and a smiley face, to create something layered and complex and unique. It’s a detail that adds weight to the story.

I also discovered this fabulous essay by Dr. Biljana Scott from the Centre for Linguistics and Philology at the University of Oxford. It’s called PICTURING IRONY: the subversive power of photography. He talked about a variety of different forms of visual irony, but for the sake of this discussion, I’d like to break it down into two categories: 1) Word-based visual irony and 2) Image-based visual irony.

1) WORD-BASED VISUAL IRONY

I love this. This is where there is a contradiction between what is being said and what we are seeing. What’s the value of this technique? It’s a way of making statements about characters, about relationships, and about society without having to verbalize what’s happening. And the first script that comes to my mind when talking about word-based visual irony is Kubrick’s Napoleon. I say this not because it’s the greatest script ever, but because I studied it so intensely and admired many techniques in the script. So often in his story, Stanley would try to exploit what we were seeing vs. what we were hearing…

We see the happy wedding of Napoleon and Josephine while we hear in voice over Josephine reveal her true feelings of lukewarm indifference to Napoleon. In a later sequence between Napoleon and Josephine, we hear Napoleon’s endless love for Josephine, but we see the painful reality of their marriage in the form of Josephine’s torrid affair. During the Italian campaign, we hear the Narrator tell us about all the glories and victories of Napoleon while we see French troops pillage small Italian towns and take away food and livestock from poor farmers. We hear Josephine read her statement declaring how she feels pleasure giving Napoleon “the greatest proof of attachment and devotedness that was ever given on earth,” that is, a divorce, but yet, we also see her sobbing uncontrollably.

In Watchmen, you had, as I mentioned earlier, Sally pretending to Hollis over the phone that she’s feeling the “pinch” as everyone else is, but visually, we know that’s not the case for her. She’s getting her toes professionally manicured. In the last few pages of the first Chapter, you had Dan and Laurie telling each other everything’s fine in their lives and acting like they don’t care for each other, although we see that they are in a romantic setting and leaning in to each other. I loved how, in Chapter III page 2, we would hear Sally say, “Life goes on, honey. Life goes on,” while we look at Rorschach holding a sign that says, “The End is Nigh.” Or when we hear Sally say, “In the end, you just wash your hands of it,” but we’re looking at Rorschach’s hands holding the sign and the ink from his “The End is Nigh” words have run down to his hands. He will not wash his hands of this.

Dr. Scott’s article had some interesting examples, too. Consider this image by Margaret Bourke-White:


This was taken during the 1930’s, has a big billboard that “depicts a white American family of four, well dressed and smiling happily as they drive along in a new car. The strap-line at the top of the poster reads: ‘World’s Highest Standard of Living’, and the text on the ad reads: ‘There’s no way like the American way’. Beneath the billboard stands a breadline of cold and ragged looking black Americans, queuing for handouts. The contrast between the way of life projected by the billboard, and the actual conditions endured by the poor people standing in its very shadow could not be more literal: whereas the idealised Americans are healthy wealthy and white, the actual Americans in this photograph are underfed, impoverished and black. Bourke-White’s photograph offers a clear illustration of a contradiction between what is said and what is shown, of the discrepancy between the expectations set up by the advertisement and… reality.”

Consider this one:


This is “Elliott Erwitt’s Versailles, 1975, which shows part of a gallery with gilt frames on the wall. In one frame we see a classical portrait of a nobleman, next to it the large frame contains what appears to be a small slip of paper. Three people stand in front of this frame gazing intently at the paper. Nobody is looking at the pictures. The image is ironical because it flouts our expectations that people go to art galleries in order to look at the pictures which are there (rather than to read the notices informing them as to why a picture is no longer there). It may even be that the adage ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ comes to mind, providing the target of echoic mention which the visual evidence then undermines. The most striking difference between these two renderings of a similar topic is that Kruger uses words and uses them ‘in your face’ whereas Elliott eschews words and depends on implication exclusively. Kruger’s irony is earnest, possibly even aggressive; Elliott’s is irreverent and amusing.”

Here’s one that needs no explanation:


Or this one, escalators going up to a fitness center!


2) IMAGE-BASED VISUAL IRONY

This is where you have two contradictory elements without words. In Watchmen we have the blood-splattered smiley face.

Dr. Scott’s article had this photo:


A broken bicycle that’s obviously been run over lies on a marked bicycle path, which indicates to us that it’s obviously not as safe as the bicycle symbol on the street would have you believe.

I remember writing about Banksy who would take an image like a famous Monet painting and throw in a splash of contemporary reality:


Or he would take something ugly like the wall between Palestine and Israel and try to add something pretty/hopeful to it.


Let me end on this last photo. Is it condemning or hopeful?

Unproduced Hitch: Complete Series

Hey guys,

As many of you know, I just wrapped up my series on the Unproduced Screenplays of Alfred Hitchcock and I thought I’d repost links to all of the articles for those who may be new to the blog. There’s a lot of great material here. A study of Hitchcock is absolutely crucial to every screenwriter. Hitch will change the way you write and view cinema.

This series was inspired by the Key to Reserva (above), as well as David Freeman’s book, The Last Days of Alfred Hitchcock, and another wonderful book I read last year, Steven DeRosa’s Writing with Hitchcock. Of course, like any study I have, I may still add articles to this from time to time if I ever feel so inspired.

In any case, hope you enjoy it.

-MM

---------------------------

The Man Who Made Movies

Unproduced Hitch: The Complete List

Hitchcock, Cinema's Purist

The Derosa Links

The Exposition of Rear Window

Tension & Suspense Blog-a-thon

Elements of Suspense

Peet Gelderblom's Alternatives to Suspense

Hitchcock Goodies for Cinephiles

Two Fabulous Unused Hitchcock Ideas

1939 Alfred Hitchcock Lecture

John Michael Hayes, Lucky Bastard

Script Review - The Short Night

1964 Hitchcock Interview

A murder scene written by - Hitchcock!

Script Review - Mary Rose Part One & Part Two

“Mary Rose,” Part Two

(Click here if you missed Part One.)

To conclude my script review, I’d like to share six personal insights that I took away from the Mary Rose experience.

* First and foremost, there is magic in the fun, playful dialogue of J.M. Barrie’s characters. It’s infectious. At the ripe young age of sixty, Barrie was still having fun with his powerful imagination and bringing his brand of playfulness to the proceedings, as if, “hey, everybody, let’s have fun together!” Too many of us are too damn serious with our scripts, and we’ve forgotten to have fun or to bring a sense of joy to our work. And when Barrie’s plays turn emotional, or even tragic, there is a great tenderness to his approach that I found so refreshing. Even when we’re in the midst of the tragedy of Harry speaking with his ghost of a mother, he could’ve turned bitter and angry about it all, but no. He is good-natured about it. He cares about helping her. He makes the most of his time with her, and in the process, we go through this kind of tender therapy about letting go a loved one.

* Mary Rose proves that logic isn’t as important as emotional content. The island makes no sense whatsoever. But, ya know, we recognize the themes contained in the story, the emotions the characters are feeling about losing a loved one, about letting go, and the play hits all the right emotional points where it counts: the fun in the beginning, the sadness of loss, and sense of liberation in the end. We go to feel and because J.M. Barrie makes us feel something, we give ourselves over to the story – even when it doesn’t make a damn bit of sense.

* I don’t blame the studio for passing on the script. In its present form, I would’ve passed on it as well. The magic of the third act does not compensate for all horribly static scenes that preceded it. But, ya know, I also came up with a fun creative writing exercise - to imagine all the ways that I could break up those excessively talkative scenes, especially those first two scenes, to make it more visually stimulating, while also honoring Barrie’s playfulness. I may return to that periodically as a writing exercise for myself.

* Another aspect that bothered me about Jay Presson Allen’s script was not only the excessive amount of dialogue in those first two scenes but the dialogue itself. She covers all of the necessary plot points of the story (and in many cases points that never needed to be made) but what she failed to capture was the playfulness of the words themselves. This script was more about resuscitating Hitchcock’s career than it ever was honoring Barrie’s craft, and some really treasured elements of the play would’ve been lost in transition.

* While I didn’t like the way they handled it, I admired the decision to actually show Mary’s death after her return from the island. That was not in the play. I can’t help but wonder how I would handle it. Once she sees that Harry’s missing, she should try to run away. Then some kind of accident, perhaps, falling down the stairs? I’m not sure.

* I have to say that Hitch and Allen made all the right decisions about the third act. In fact, the way that they handled Kenneth’s conversation with his ghost mother is very close to how I believe I would’ve approached the ending. In the play, the conversation sort of reaches an impasse. He didn’t know how to get rid of her. She didn’t know how to leave. Plus, they weren’t sure where she could even go. And after a bit of time, she gets sleepy and the island takes her back. In the script, Mary wants to go back to the island, and that is far more satisfying. Also in the script, he’s a bit more forthright about being her son, although she never figures it out, which was good. That scene would’ve never worked if she realized he’s her son. It would’ve lost that magic. One thing I would change. I would’ve had Kenneth/Harry ask her to please stay a little bit longer… and then let her go.

Script Review – “Mary Rose”

Hello, my friends,

This is the first of two final posts on what may have felt as a never-ending series on the Unproduced Screenplays of Alfred Hitchcock.

Woo hoo! Hehehe...

This was the film Hitch purportedly wanted to make more than any other but the studios always refused. Biographer Donald Spoto said that Hitch’s failure to make this film was “perhaps the single greatest disappointment of his creative life.” Hitch would say repeatedly in interviews that his contract with Universal allowed him to make any film so long as it cost under $3 million and so long as it wasn't Mary Rose. Of course, this was never verified and probably not true. In truth, the reasons why this didn’t happen are complicated, involving the Tippi Hedren fallout, the failure of Marnie, Hitch’s career crisis, and concerns about audience expectations of Hitch at the time.

In any event, Mary Rose was originally a play by J.M. Barrie (of Peter Pan fame) that Hitch had seen in his youth and loved dearly. In fact, he saw the original production at London’s Haymarket Theatre and was so enraptured by Fay Compton’s performance as Mary Rose that he cast her as the countess in his 1933 film, Waltzes from Vienna. When he was preparing to produce Mary Rose in the early 60’s, he inquired about Compton’s availability (probably to play Mrs. Morland or Mrs. Otery). According to Dan Auiler, during the production of Vertigo, Hitch had sought out from England the play’s original score and sound effects, which he sent to his composer, Bernard Herrmann, for inspiration. (The “call” that prompts Mary Rose's disappearance, which I’ll write about in a bit, was created with bagpipes and “wordless voices” played on a musical saw. Hitch described the sound as “celestial voices, like Debussy's Sirenes.”) Hitch also clung to the rights of the play until 1987 well after his death. He commissioned the only screenplay for Mary Rose (on his own without studio approval and without a greenlight). The script was written by Jay Presson Allen, who wrote the final draft of Marnie. The screenplay can be read here, thanks to Derosa’s Writing with Hitchcock website. (Be warned: the script is a huge 21 MB file.)

Let me just say, when I first went through the script, I couldn’t believe what I was reading. The first twenty pages was the most awful, talkative, static scene I’ve ever encountered in a script and never imagined I’d find in any kind of Hitchcock project. It was two people talking in a room, and it went on and on and on... I thought the damn scene would never end. The next scene was more people talking in a room, which went on for another thirty pages or so. This was followed by a visit to a mysterious island in which all they did for yet another 20-30 pages was sit in one spot and talk. And talk. Was Hitch truly serious about this? Everything in this script betrayed his principles of pure cinema. I could understand Universal’s objections.

But I labored on to the end.

And what I discovered was something at once inexplicable and yet so powerfully moving that I could not get Mary Rose out of my system. In fact, the feelings from the story continue to linger inside of me. So I bought the original play and read it and loved it even more.


The story is very simple, which begins with a man, named Harry (changed to Kenneth in the script) who visits a spooky house that’s for sale. It’s haunted. Harry talks to the keeper of the house, Mrs. Otery, and explains that he used to live there as a child. He points out details he remembers. There’s a hidden little door that leads to another room, but it’s locked. And then he inquires about the ghost stories. Mrs. Otery reluctantly tells him it’s just some scared little woman, nothing to fear. At the end of the first scene, Harry has a spooky encounter with the unseen ghost (oddly missing from the screenplay).

And then we go back in time in a flashback structure to when the house was anew. We meet the parents of Mary Rose, Mr. and Mrs. Morland and a friend of theirs, Mr. Amy. Mr. Morland and Mr. Amy have an ongoing competition about obtaining works of art. The dialogue is playful. Mr. Amy leaves. Mary Rose enters. She's eighteen and wants to marry a middle-aged man named Simon. The Morlands want to talk to Simon alone first. She leaves. In fact, she goes up to the attic to knock on the floor so he’d know she’s nearby and supporting him. (The sheer fun and playfulness of J.M. Barrie’s dialogue is just infectious.) So the parents tell Simon a story about Mary that they felt he should know before marrying her. They took her to an island in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides years ago on a vacation. At the time, she was eleven in the play but seven in the script. The name of the island in Gaelic means “The Island That Likes To Be Visited.” Mr. Morland would fish and watch Mary Rose sketch on the island. Well, one day, she disappeared. They looked all over for her. She was gone for thirty days. And on the thirtieth day, she was found again in that same spot and never realized she had been gone. For her, it was as if a few minutes had passed. They never told her what happened. Yet, somehow, Mary Rose had changed a little. Her mother, Mrs. Morland, said, “I have sometimes thought that our girl is curiously young for her age – as if – you know how just a touch of frost may stop the growth of a plant and yet leave it blooming – it has sometimes seemed to me that a cold finger had once touched my Mary Rose.”

Simon responds by saying, “What you are worrying about is just her innocence - which seems a holy thing to me.”

Naturally, Simon is not dissuaded by the story. The parents consent to the marriage. Simon and Mary reunite, celebrate, and Mary mentions taking him to her favorite island in the Hebrides someday.


Cut to a few years later. They’re on the island. They have a 3-year-old son back home named Harry (Kenneth in the script). She talks about how much fun it would be to sit on Harry’s knee one day when he’s older just as she has him sit on hers. They had been ferried to the island by an Irishman named Cameron who has lunch with them. He’s funny. He tells them stories about the island, one of which was the story of Mary Rose’s disappearance that doesn’t quite click with her. As they prepare to leave, Mary Rose disappears once again.

Cut to almost thirty years later. We’re back at the house with the now elderly Morlands and Mr. Amy. They never found Mary Rose and only recently healed from the wounds. Simon comes back to see them. He’s a Captain of a vessel, I believe, in the war (WWI). Harry escaped to sea at the age of twelve and they haven't heard from him since. In the script, he's missing and thought to be taken prisoner in the war.

And then they get the news. They found Mary Rose. In fact, Cameron found her back in the spot where they left her thirty years ago and he’s bringing her home. When she arrives (and I swear this moment leaves me breathless every time I read it), they discover that Mary Rose is still young. And Mary likewise cannot fathom what’s happened to her. She keeps crying for Harry, her son. This reunion between Mary Rose and her family was heavily expanded in the screenplay to great effect. It’s inexplicable what has happened, and yet, I cannot deny the powerful emotions J.M. Barrie so effectively exploited here.

Cut back to Harry with Mrs. Otery in the house now abandoned and for sale and haunted. Harry goes through the tiny door to the other room and discovers that the ghost is, of course, his mother, Mary Rose. They have a conversation that’s so satisfying and so therapeutic on so many levels. It’s one of those conversations you find in drama that you wish would never end as you read it. Harry’s interaction with Mary resolves her ghostly wandering and searching for her long lost son, and she’s freed to go back to the island. The dialogue in this scene was so very playful and tender. At one point, she actually sits on his knee.

Harry: Do you see who I am now?
Mary Rose: Nice man.
Harry: Is that all you know about me?
Mary Rose: Yes.
Harry: I wonder if there was ever a man with a ghost on his knee before.
Mary Rose: (innocently) I don’t know.
Harry: Seems to me you’re feared of being a ghost.
Mary Rose: Yes.
Harry: I dare say, to a timid soul, being a ghost is worse than seeing them.
Mary Rose: Yes.
Harry: Is it lonely being a ghost?
Mary Rose: Yes.
Harry: Do you know any other ghosts?
Mary Rose: (sadly) No.
Harry: Would you like to know other ghosts?
Mary Rose: Yes.
Harry: I can understand that.

And later:

Harry: All I know about [ghosts] for certain is that they are unhappy because they can’t find something, and then once they’ve got the thing they want, they go away happy and never come back.

And thus, in a moment full of effects, Mary Rose returns to the island.

The end.

Isn’t that a strange story? What the hell does it all mean? What does the island represent exactly? Not even Barrie knew. He just imagined it and wrote it. I’d like to delve into the meaning of the play here and then talk about the script in PART TWO on Tuesday.

There’s more than meets the eye with Mary Rose. After reading the script, I had to know everything about this play, and interestingly, the last few years actually brought some revivals of the play, the most popular would probably be the early 2007 production with Paige Howard (daughter of Ron Howard) at the Vineyard Theatre. I’m grateful because it generated some interesting articles.

Here’s Charles Isherwood in The New York Times:

Although Barrie wrote many plays, even his popular successes, like “The Admirable Crichton” and “What Every Woman Knows” have been largely relegated to the ranks of the unrevived. After its United States premiere in 1920, “Mary Rose” was seen on Broadway very briefly in 1951. Then, like the rest of Barrie’s stage work (“Peter Pan” spectacularly excepted), it sailed off into the Neverland of theatrical obscurity. Such a fate is somehow apt for this elegantly plotted ghost story, which tells of a spunky British lass who has an odd habit of evaporating and then reappearing. The play is in many ways a more mature and mournful reworking of themes Barrie explored in the tale of the boy who refused to grow up. Time is seen as a quiet despoiler of happiness and innocence, and the lure of another world unblemished by its passing has an irresistible seduction.

Steve Cramer wrote in The Scotsman:

On the face of it, the story Mary Rose has to tell has little to do with the war; its title character's story occurs before the start of hostilities. As a child about to enter adulthood, she disappears from a Scottish island on which her family are holidaying, only to emerge weeks later with no account of what has transpired. At a second significant juncture, as she enters motherhood, she disappears from the same ill-omened place, only to emerge, eerily, a generation later. What is emphasised about the character is her continual, childish innocence, as if, after her first disappearance, her growth is stunted. Parallels are drawn between 1904's Peter Pan and this character, yet Peter's continuation as a child is an act of choice, while Mary Rose's development is abruptly halted by inexplicable circumstance. The metaphor must have been especially relevant to a 1920 audience.

Here are John Lahr’s comments in The New Yorker:

“The only ghosts, I believe, who creep into this world, are dead young mothers, returned to see how their children fare,” Barrie wrote. He knew, from experience, that a mother could be both alive and dead. In 1867, when he was six, his thirteen-year-old brother, David, was killed in a skating accident. Barrie’s mother, Margaret, took to her bed and became a ghostly presence, who was both there and not there for her little boy. “Do you mind nothing about me?” Barrie recalled asking her as he sat on her bed, in his idealizing memoir, “Margaret Ogilvy.” To revive his mother, Barrie even dressed up as David and tried to imitate David’s whistle. (He also is said to have stopped growing at the age at which his brother died, and was only five feet tall.) “She lived twenty-nine years after his death,” Barrie wrote of his mother. “But I had not made her forget the bit of her that was dead. . . . In those nine-and-twenty years he was not removed one day farther from her. Many a time she fell asleep speaking to him, and even while she slept her lips moved and she smiled as if he had come back to her, and when she woke he might vanish so suddenly that she started up bewildered and looked about her, and then said slowly ‘My David’s dead.’ ” In life, Barrie could not heal his haunted mother or reclaim her; in “Mary Rose,” written fifteen years after “Peter Pan,” when Barrie was almost sixty, he does both. In the play, Harry (Richard Short), who left home at the age of twelve to go to sea, returns as an adult to release her ghost from its restless tribulation. “Being a ghost is worse than seeing them,” he tells his mother when they confront each other at the finale.

And later, he wrote:

When Harry first returns to the haunted family home, he’s dressed in a First World War uniform; he takes a dagger from his belt and sticks it mysteriously into the floorboards. “It’s not a knife, it’s a visiting card,” he tells the housekeeper, who goes to make him some tea. The knife augurs some kind of battle. While Harry waits for his tea, the play happens; he imagines Mary Rose’s entire story. When her ghost is finally coaxed into view, the knife disappears. Harry, who doesn’t seem at all scared, demands that she return it; she hands it over. There is no contention, no struggle, and, finally, no drama. Barrie didn’t want to face his own aggression in life; he can’t face it in theatre, either. Here, with the empathic power of his imagination, Harry, whose mother never actually recognizes him, nonetheless liberates her from woe and engineers a kind of salvation for them both. The psychological progress—this is commercial entertainment, after all—is strangely painless, a fairy tale of deliverance, mostly Barrie’s own. The last line of this production is Barrie’s final stage direction, “Harry hears nothing but he knows somehow a prayer has been answered”; that prayer was Barrie’s.

Joseph McBride wrote in Cineaste:

Barrie's style is charmingly fey. But something sinister about Mary Rose's reason for disappearing is briefly suggested by her cryptic response to her father when he asks what frightens her. She replies, "I am most afraid of my daddy." Perversely, this revelation leaves Mr. Morland "rather flattered." It implies that her escape to her "safe place"--safe from growth, sexuality, and the adult responsibilities of marriage and motherhood--is motivated by fear of being dominated or even sexually violated by her father, and perhaps also by fear of her future with her equally paternalistic husband. Along with its overtones of incest, her anxiety suggests the dangerous futility of attempting to preserve childhood innocence beyond natural limits.

The play's great success with British audiences in 1920 has been attributed in part to its psychological timing. Mary Rose opened less than eighteen months after the end of World War I. In the stage version, Mary Rose's son, who has run off to sea at the age of twelve, returns from the war as an Australian soldier. Patrick Chalmers observed that Barrie's "lovely and spiritual conception was staged in the ugly and uneasy period that followed immediately upon" the armistice, bringing "joy and peace and a tear or two to thousands, weary of the War and the War's aftermath, during the years of its run." Audiences took from the play a mystical answer to Rudyard Kipling's cry of national bereavement, "But who shall return us the children?"

And also:

Matte artist Albert Whitlock, whom Hitchcock described in the late 1970s as "by far the finest technician that we have in our business today," had trouble grasping what the director had in mind for Mary Rose. Whitlock remembered doing "a lot of sketches" for the project, calling it "a very moody thing. And I said to him, because he was always very strong on the selling point, 'What's the selling point, Hitch?'" Revealing his need to claim Barrie's story as his own, Hitchcock replied that the film would be sold not as "Hitchcock's Mary Rose" but as "A Ghost Story by Alfred Hitchcock: Mary Rose." "That'll get 'em," Hitchcock declared.

A somewhat more concrete sense of what Hitchcock visualized came in his discussion of the project with Truffaut in their 1967 interview book. Hitchcock described Mary Rose as "a little like a science-fiction story. I still haven't definitely dropped the idea of making it. A few years back it might have seemed that the story would be too irrational for the public. But since then the public's been exposed to these twilight-zone stories, especially on television...

"If I were to make the film, I would put the girl in a dark-gray dress and I would put a neon tube of light inside, around the bottom of the dress, so that the light would only hit the heroine. Whenever she moved, there would be no shadow on the wall, only a blue light. You'd have to create the impression of photographing a presence rather than a body. At times she would appear very small in the image, at times very big. She wouldn't be a solid lump, you see, but rather like a sensation. In this way you lose the feeling of real space and time. You should be feeling that you are in the presence of an ephemeral thing, you see."

"It's a lovely subject," commented Truffaut. "Also a sad one."

"Yes, very sad," Hitchcock agreed. "Because the real theme is: If the dead were to come back, what would you do with them?"

(Click here for Part Two)

Trust the Reader

From a recent TS script review of mine:

I want to say a word on trusting the reader. An inevitable sign of growth in a new writer (and we all go through this arc) is in the area of trusting the reader. Newbies who haven't developed the discipline of trusting the reader tend to over-explain simple things in the action lines or they over-explain obvious reactions in characters or they indulge in on-the-nose dialogue to convey obvious emotions we all know that particular character is feeling. Over time, you'll learn that you only need to explain something once (or not even explain it at all) and then move on because you know very well that your readers are with you, will get it without needing your help, and will appreciate you more for trusting them and moving forward. An example of this might be, like on pg 62, you mentioned that the gang saw "an ocean of trees." Okay, great. But then you had to add, "Absolutely no sign of civilization, whatsoever." Yeah. We got that with "ocean of trees." Let's move on. Do you see what I mean? I also mentioned characters indulging in on-the-nose dialogue to convey obvious emotions we all know that particular character is feeling. This brings to mind the moment after Kevin sees [his best friend] Josh [kissing his girlfriend] Emily, and he's all pissed off and he later tells everyone off. Well, we've seen this a billion times before. We all know exactly what Kevin's thinking and feeling, and it's moments like these where a writer has to find ways to show us something totally unexpected from a character. What if he didn't tell them off? What if he embraced Josh? Why would he do something crazy like that? What if, when Emily kisses him, he doesn't push her away but pulls her in, and I don't know, has angry sex? You lower interest by having characters play out in ways that are totally expected and you make people more engaged when they do the opposite.

Also -

You should also consider multiple setups in one scene. I'm a believer in horizontal / vertical storytelling. I think a writer should work hard to give the audience a smooth, seamless, and efficient setup to the story. You establish many things in as few scenes as possible to quickly move us down that horizontal plane of storytelling. That is, until you get to those vertical moments, which is the reason we're all there to see that film and the time when the story could slow down or briefly stop. In an action movie, it's the action sequences. In a comedy, it's the big gut-busting moments. In a horror story, it's the suspenseful moments of horror. So when you finally get to those moments, like when the engineer transforms and you have Angie on her way to see him, that's when you should slow down, focus your creative energies in dragging out the suspense to excruciating levels. I recently posted a murder scene on my blog that was actually written by Alfred Hitchcock from an unproduced screenplay. One murder scene took up 12 pages. Mind you, it wasn't the greatest murder scene ever since Psycho but it was fascinating to analyze. It wasn't about getting a murder scene done quickly in order to move the plot forward. It was about the EXPERIENCE of the murder scene. It was about the characters and the question of "will he or won't he commit murder" dragged out to excruciating levels. That's what horror does. And I think almost all of your scary scenes, which were good, could have still been dragged out longer, could've been more intense to heighten the EXPERIENCE for the audience. It's not about volume of scares but quality of suspense.