Mondays with Manuel: Dishonored (1931)

Mondays with Manuel is a new ongoing series here at the blog wherein I am watching all the films referenced in Manuel Puig's The Buenos Aires Affair (1974). If the name sounds familiar, it is because Puig gave us that other Hollywood-obsessed book (turned film/turned play/turned musical) Kiss of the Spider Woman (1976). In his 1974 police novel, Puig opens every chapter with a snippet of dialogue from movies he adored, all of which star beautiful and iconic starlets from Old Hollywood from Dietrich to Garson. I'm working on Puig and the influence of these films on his prose for my dissertation, and this seemed like a good way of doing double duty (triple if I include the fact that I hadn't seen any of these films before!).

XIII

The Austro-Hungarian general: (in his bachelor’s den after the masked ball) Champagne?

Marlene Dietrich: (removes pistol from the spangles of her costume, aims it at him) No.

The Austro-Hungarian general: (suddenly realizing that the girl is a spy and has discovered the secret message contained in an insignificant cigarette holder) I guess the block is already surrounded by the police.

Marlene Dietrich: I’m sorry, it’s my job.

The Austro-Hungarian general: (sincere) What a charming evening we would have had, if I hadn’t been a traitor and you a spy.

Marlene Dietrich: (nostalgic and disenchanted) In that case we would have never met. 

(from Dishonored, Paramount Pictures)

The incomparable Dietrich stars in this Josef von Sternberg film as a prostitute turned spy dubbed X-27. Puig always mentioned this film as one the most influential on his work. Anyone familiar with von Sternberg's film and Puig's celebrated Kiss of the Spider Woman will likely find the reasons for this quite evident as X-27 is a precursor to Puig's own Molina. And just as Molina finds himself attracted to the guy he's supposed to be betraying, here Dietrich's X-27 is only weakened by the lurking attraction to an enemy general (who sadly costs her her life by the end of the picture).

For The Buenos Aires Affair though, Puig chooses an early scene that showcases the duality in Dietrich's character. In that "nostalgic and disenchanted" line reading, Puig isolates what is so striking and alluring about Dietrich's X-27. As a prostitute and later a spy, X-27 finds herself relegating her own sexuality for exploitation, hollowing out her own feelings. What ultimately leads to her "dishonorable" discharge and death, is the moment she lets her own feelings (ambiguous and ambivalent as they may be, given Dietrich's intentionally inscrutable performance) override her orders. It is fitting that Puig would isolate this scene as it showcases the underlying sense of romanticism the film presents in its ruthless spy-caper genre and one which vocalizes that very dissonance ("In that case we would have never met"): X-27's romanticism is as necessary as it is impossible, not that that stops her from acting on it once the right man comes along.

Mondays with Manuel Index:
Chapter I: Camille (1936)
Chapter II: The Blue Dahlia (1946)
Chapter III: Humoresque (1946)
Chapter IV: The Shanghai Express (1932)
Chapter V: Red Dust (1932)
Chapter VI: Blossoms in the Dust (1941)
Chapter VII: Marie Antoinette (1938)
Chapter VIII: Algiers (1938)
Chapter IX: I'll Cry Tomorrow (1955)
Chapter X: Ziegfeld Girl (1941)
Chapter XI: The Letter (1940)
Chapter XII: The Hamilton Woman (1941)
Chapter XIII: Dishonored (1931)
Chapter XIV: Tender Comrade (1943)
Chapter XV: Grand Hotel (1932)
Chapter XVI: Gilda (1946)

Mondays with Manuel: Camille (1936)

As I continue trying to keep up with blogging while trying to write a dissertation, I decided to make a blogging project that could double up as dissertation work. One of my chapters is on Argentine writer Manuel Puig. You may recognize him as he wrote one of the best novels about what it feels like to be enamored with Old Hollywood: Kiss of the Spider Woman (1976). If you haven't read it, you should! In his earlier "police novel" titled The Buenos Aires Affair (1974) he opened each chapter with a snippet of dialogue from movies he adored, all of which star beautiful and iconic starlets from the 1930s and 1940s, from Dietrich to Leigh. I am making my way through all sixteen films that make up these epigraphs (none of which I had seen before embarking on this project!) I'm not following any order other than whichever ones I can find (if anyone has access to copies of Red Dust, Blossoms in the Dust and/or Tender Comrade let me know). That said, I wanted to kick of Mondays with Manuel (get it, because his name is Manuel as is mine?) with the film that opens book, the George Cukor film Camille (1936).

I

The handsome young man: You’re killing yourself.

Greta Garbo: (feverish, trying to hide her fatigue) f I am you’re the only one who objects, now why don’t you go back and dance with one of those pretty girls. Come, I’ll go with you, what a child you are (she gives him her hand).

The handsome man: Your hand’s so hot.

Greta Garbo: (ironic) Is that why you put tears on it, to cool it?

The handsome young man: I know I don’t mean anything to you, I don’t count. But someone ought to look after you, and I could… if you let me.

Greta Garbo: Too much wine has made you sentimental.

The handsome young man: It wasn’t wine that made me come here every day, for months, to find out how you were.

Greta Garbo: No, that couldn’t have been the wine. So you’d really like to take care of me?

The handsome young man: Yes.

Greta Garbo: All day… every day?

The handsome young man: All day… every day, why not?

Greta Garbo: Why should you care for a woman like me, I’m always nervous or sick… sad… or too gay.

(from Camille, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)

Camille, based on the Dumas' book The Lady of the Camelias, opens with Marguerite trying to fund her expensive lifestyle in the only way she knows how: by luring a rich Baron. This simple setup is complicated by Marguerite's fondness (and later love) for the "young handsome man" in the epigraph. The entire film vacillates between Marguerite wanting to forsake it all for the love of Armand (Robert Taylor) or trying to repay her debts by staying with the Baron (Henry Daniell) and at times feels like a comedy of errors trapped in a melodrama. Much like what Puig suggests, we are here for Garbo alone who makes Marguerite's ambivalence (and slowly worsening TB) more believable than the script around her would suggest. Having arrived at Camille via a movie-obsessed writer, I wasn't too surprised to find that Satine's mistaken attraction to Christian in Moulin Rouge! is merely the first of the many ways in which Luhrmann's movie musical riffs on Dumas's novel and Cukor's treatment of it here, all the way to the sad fate that befalls these star-crossed lovers.

I love that Puig's epigraphs make the film sound like a star vehicle (which it was), populated by unnamed co-stars (note how Taylor is reduced to "The handsome young man"). Tellingly, he spotlights the moment where Taylor's Armand confesses his love for Garbo's Marguerite. The scene revolves around the very issues of loving actresses that the book's epigraphs perform themselves. Much like the "handsome young man," Puig will take care of these actresses all day every day despite them being always nervous, sick, sad, or too gay. In fact, much like Armand, Puig implicitly confesses to having followed Garbo long before professing his love (it's well known that Puig was so obsessed with Garbo, that his friends said that after hearing his impersonation of the beautiful Swede, Garbo's voice thereafter sounded like a second-rate version of Puig's). Also, by denying them their character's names (we have "Greta Garbo" speaking these lines, not "Marguerite"), Puig is intent on underlining the way these female stars could exceed and embody both their star personas and the nervous, sick, sad, gay characters they play. Puig (like many before him) is noting that there's no way to not love Garbo (the image of her at least); it can't just be the wine making us sentimental.

Mondays with Manuel Index:
Chapter I: Camille (1936)
Chapter II: The Blue Dahlia (1946)
Chapter III: Humoresque (1946)
Chapter IV: The Shanghai Express (1932)
Chapter V: Red Dust (1932)
Chapter VI: Blossoms in the Dust (1941)
Chapter VII: Marie Antoinette (1938)
Chapter VIII: Algiers (1938)
Chapter IX: I'll Cry Tomorrow (1955)
Chapter X: Ziegfeld Girl (1941)
Chapter XI: The Letter (1940)
Chapter XII: The Hamilton Woman (1941)
Chapter XIII: Dishonored (1931)
Chapter XIV: Tender Comrade (1943)
Chapter XV: Grand Hotel (1932)
Chapter XVI: Gilda (1946)