My WashPo opinion essay

The main themes of my book Sensing the Past: Hollywood Stars and Historical Visions are discussed in a piece that has appeared online and will be part of the the Sunday "Outlook" opinion section of the Washington Post this weekend. I feel very fortunate to have my work appear in this august publication.

'Innocence' Experience

The following post is part of a work-in-progess on the work of Daniel Day-Lewis in particular, and on actors as historians generally. --JC

At one point early on in his 1993 movie The Age of Innocence, Martin Scorsese briefly shows us the Fifth Avenue mansion of widow Catherine Mingott (Miriam Margolyes), the maverick matriarch whose granddaughter (Winona Ryder) is engaged to marry Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis). “Though brownstone was the norm,” the narrator (Joanne Woodward) informs us, Mrs. Mingott “lived magisterially within a large house of controversial pale cream-colored stone, in an inaccessible wilderness near the Central Park.” This geographic cue alerts us to Scorsese’s (slightly exaggerated) visual joke: We all know that Fifth Avenue near Central Park is some of the most crowded and valuable real estate on the planet. But in the world of the mid-1870s, when the story is set, what we see is a single house in a remote urban outpost. Referring to the Central Park is another cue this is not yet territory that has been incorporated into the linguistic fabric of New York life. While the elite leisure class lives safely north of the Five Points that would have been dominated by Bill the Butcher when Newland Archer was a boy, Mrs. Mingott lives beyond the pale of settlement. But her power is great enough that the people of her milieu, prospective grandson-in-law among them, will respond to a summons uptown. Way uptown.

For Archer himself, however, the primary point of orientation is neither north nor west. It is east. This is not simply a matter of him getting his suits from England or listening to his operas in Italian. For Archer inhabits an aesthetic frontier, importing the latest books from Europe and taking in latest gallery exhibitions from contemporary painters at home and abroad. That’s why the unexpected return of his fiance’s cousin, the expatriate Countess Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer) proves so unsettling. The Countess, fleeing an unhappy marriage to a Polish nobleman, is finding readjustment to the world of her childhood difficult, not only because her of status – which will only become more problematic if she proceeds with her intention to divorce the Count – but also because she is impatient with the Old World pretenses of New World poseurs. “It seems stupid to have discovered America only to make it a copy of another country,” she observes to Archer at a ball early on in the movie. “Do you suppose Christopher Columbus would have taken all that trouble just to go to the opera with [the hypocritical prig] Larry Lefferts (Richard E. Grant)?” “I think if he knew Lefferts was here the Santa Maria never would have left port,” Archer replies, as the two break into laughter. This man of a new land has an arch sense of humor, which he points at those near at hand. Ironically, his prospective bride, the apparently pleasant but dull May, is quite the markswoman; we will later see her score a bulls-eye at a competition in Newport. “That’s the only kind of target she’ll ever hit,” observes the philandering speculator Julius Beaufort (Stuart Wilson). Archer glares at him.

 The Age of Innocence both is and isn’t Martin Scorsese territory. It is, of course, set on his home ground of Manhattan, the locale of a number of contemporary Scorsese films like Mean Streets (1973) and Taxi Driver (1976), as well as historical dramas like New York, New York (1977), which was set in the forties – and, as discussed, Gangs of New York. Scorsese has always been fascinated by tribal rituals and the often unspoken codes that shape the behavior of local subcultures, especially violent behavior (there’s no bloodshed here, but a casual brutality lurks beneath a veneer of civility). And the set of visual signifiers in this movie, from place settings on a dinner table to flowers – an often tellingly misleading metaphor – provided a feast for his imagination. This film, like Gangs of New York, featured production design from Dante Ferretti.

In another sense, however, The Age of Innocence takes place on an entirely different universe than that of the ethnic working class that is Scorsese’s metier. Based – very closely, including a good deal voiceover narration taken verbatim – on the 1920 novel by Edith Wharton, Innocence is a closely observed portrait of Wharton’s youth, the elite New York of the Social Register, a community of old-money Vanderbilts, Roosevelts and Astors. So it is that the reigning social arbiters of the movie, the van der Luydens (Michael Gough and Alexis Smith), have Dutch names.

In sharp contrast to Scorsese, Wharton also approached her art from a distinctly female point of view. To at least some extent, her work can be described in terms of the dilemma of strong women in an inescapably male world.  Interestingly, many of Wharton’s most memorable characters – like Lawrence Selden in The House of Mirth (1905) or the title character of Ethan Frome (1911) – are men. But her most sympathetic characters also tend to be ineffectual, lacking the will to act decisively before it’s too late. (Scorsese’s characters, by contrast, are impulsive figures played by the likes of Harvey Keitel and Joe Pesci, who do great harm by acting impulsively.) The Age of Innocence is told from Newland Archer’s point of view, but early on Wharton’s narrative adopts an ironic, even condescending, tone towards him. Archer is described “as at heart a dilettante” who thought himself more enlightened than he really was when it came to women, particularly that woman who was to become his wife. “He did not in the least wish the future Mrs. Newland Archer to be a simpleton,” the narrator says.

He meant her (thanks to his enlightening companionship) to develop a social tact and readiness of wit enabling her to hold her own with the most popular women of the ‘younger set,’ in which it was the recognized custom to attract masculine homage while playfully discouraging it. If he had probed to the bottom of his vanity (as he sometimes nearly did) he would have found there the wish that his wife should be as worldly-wise and eager to please as the married lady whose charm had held his fancy through two mildly agitated years; without, of course, any hint of the frailty which had so nearly marred that unhappy being’s life, and has disarranged his plans for a whole winter.

How this miracle of fire and ice was to be created, and to sustain itself in a harsh world, he had never taken the time to think out; but he was content to hold this view without analysing it, since he knew it was that of all the carefully-brushed, white-waistcoated, button-hole-flowered gentlemen who succeeded each other in the club box, exchanged friendly greetings with him, and turned their opera-glasses critically on the circle of ladies who were the product of the system.

Archer does not remain cluelessly complacent. In essence the novel is a story of growing awareness – a loss of innocence about others’ lack of innocence. This remains the narrative core of the movie. But the vein of sarcasm that salts Wharton’s prose is removed from Newland Archer of Martin Scorsese/Daniel Day-Lewis. Which is, on the whole, an improvement.
 Next: DDL's informed Innocence

Whose boy are you?

The Felix Chronicles, #10

In which we see that everybody belongs to someone—or something

“All right,” I ask the class as the lights come up and I raise the shades on the wan sunshine of a wintry Monday morning, “so what is Gangs of New York about?”

At the end three days of class screenings, I’m hoping I won’t simply be given a recital of the storyline. A bowdlerized version of the bowdlerized 1928 history of nineteenth century New York street culture, Gangs rests on a creaky patricidal plot in which a young gangster named Amsterdam (Leonardo DiCaprio) seeks to avenge the death of his father, Priest Vallon (Liam Neeson) at the hands of the vicious William Cutting, a.k.a. Bill the Butcher, (Daniel Day-Lewis), only to fall to stumble into a role as virtual son. Marked by stylized violence that is brutal yet sentimentalized, the movie was widely criticized by historians and reviewers alike. Still, I teach it for a number of reasons, among the most important of which is Day-Lewis’s performance as the brutally charismatic Cutting, Bowery B’hoy extraordinaire. Both consumed and sustained by his hatreds—among them the Irish immigrants who swarm into the Five Points neighborhood he runs with an iron fist and celebrates in a patois of profane poetry (inspired by the angry white hip-hop artist Eminem, to whom Day-Lewis listened as he prepared for the role)—Cutting is a man out of time. The pressure is coming from a variety of directions: from those immigrants, whose numbers will soon render his particular brand of nativism obsolete; and from a new breed of politicians, represented by William (soon to be Boss) Tweed, who sees possibilities for power in the ballot box, even if it has to be bought; and from the gathering force of the federal government—temporarily enmeshed in the Civil War—which will break the power of the clannish local lords, whether on the plantation or in the ghetto. A lot to chew on here.

“It’s about this really intense relationship between Bill the Butcher and Amsterdam,” Becky says. She proceeds to a long description of their intense psychological relationship. I sense mounting impatience, and jump into a gap.

“Yes, Becky I think you’re right. But now let’s look a little more broadly. When you step back from the characters and the plot, what is the movie really about?”

“It’s about ethnic tensions between the Irish and the native-born Americans,” Jason says.

Ethnic tensions, I write with a fresh piece of chalk on the blackboard. Actually, only half a board. The other half has been stripped, pending the installation of a high-tech Smart Board.

“It’s also about class conflict,” Tom says. I write that down.

“And racism,” Susan says.

“Yes, that too,” I say, scribbling it down with my back to her.

“The thing that really sticks out for me,” Samantha says, “is the corruption.”

I write that down and turn around. “At the risk of asking a dumb question, what do you mean by ‘corruption?’”

“Oh you know, some of the things we saw. Boss Tweed saying things like, ‘the appearance of law and order must be respected.’ Or some of those Irish voting two or three times.”

“Yeah, that was great,” I hear someone say.

“But that was so an Irish guy could be elected mayor,” Joey says.

“Sheriff,” I correct him.

“Yeah, sheriff. I mean, that was only fair.”

“Right,” Nate chimes in. “They deserved to have some power.”

“The thing that really scared me about the movie was the violence,” Becky says. I mean, the straight-out terror of those mobs. Breaking the windows of the houses of the people uptown—”

“—Yeah, did you notice that it was the firemen who actually started the riots?” Nate asks excitedly.

“— I couldn’t even walk the street without fear of being attacked.”

“Well, maybe not during the riots,” I agree. “But under normal circumstances you could.”

“No I couldn’t! “

“Sure you could. Bill the Butcher would take care of that. Remember how the policeman hung his watch in Paradise Square? He said it would be safe there because it was his beat. But we all understood it was the Butcher. He’d take good care of you, Becky.”

Some chuckles, even sniggers, at this.

But Becky isn’t buying it. “No! I wouldn’t be safe!”

“Yes you would,” Alec replies. “Don’t you see?”

“No! Because he’s just like, like—“

“—a monster,” Ellen says flatly.

“Right. Becky affirms, "a monster. I would never have any freedom!”

A light bulb goes off in my head. I know where to go with this. But not yet.

“Ellen, you call the Butcher a monster," I say. "But is he, really?”

“Of course,” Becky interjects. “Look how many people he killed!”

“Well, how many people did he kill? I ask. We see him kill Priest Vallon at the beginning. But who else? Amsterdam’s friend Vallon gets impaled on that fence, but Cutting doesn’t do that, or do it directly, anyway.”

“Remember all the people in that gang fight where Vallon dies,” Alec points out.

“True, I say.” (I had forgotten about that.) “Still, he doesn’t go around killing people at random. The Butcher maintains a kind of order, and order he wins as a result of that gang fight. The only other person we see him actually kill is Monk, the newly elected sheriff. The Butcher slices Monk’s back with a cleaver . . . .

“That was sooo gross,” Kim says audibly to Susan.

“. . . and then crushes his skull with the same club Monk used in his own gangster days. But that’s not a random act of violence. As a newly elected Democratic official, Monk represented a threat to the Butcher’s order.”

“He was a gangster! Becky insists. You make him sound like he’s running a business or something.”

“That’s precisely what he is doing, I say.”

“He’s just a cold-blooded killer.”

“Well, yes, I agree with you there: He certainly was cold-blooded. But he was also something of a murder artist, with an acute sense of propriety and ritual. Remember how he gave the dead Vallon back his knife for burial? ‘Here, take this, my friend,’ he said, almost lovingly. ‘You’ll need it on the other side.’ And how about what he said as he put the final notch in Monk’s club just before he finished him off? ‘See this?’ he said to the dying Monk. ‘This one here is the minority vote.’ And when Amsterdam killed the policeman the Butcher sent to kill him, the Butcher remarked with admiration of the skill in which Amsterdam arranged his body to suggest a crucifixion. Bill Cutting was a murder artist, a connoisseur of killing."

“Mr. Cullen!” Becky is feigning mock indignation. Or maybe non-mock indignation.

I push on. “He also has a way of cutting—pun intended—to the heart of an issue, I continue, pivoting to where all this is leading. What does the Butcher say when he himself is the target of an assassination attempt at that minstrel show? When Amsterdam, who plans to kill him, instinctively intervenes to save him? Anybody remember what the Butcher says after he retaliates against his would-be killer?”

Nobody does.

“He asks: ‘Whose man are you?’”

“Oh yeah,” Nate remembers. “But the guy doesn’t answer. He’s already dead.”

“Yes, that’s right,” I aver. “But that’s not what’s important here. I want to call your attention to that question: ‘Whose man are you?’ That’s the only relevant thing for the Butcher at that point. Because in the Butcher’s world, everybody is somebody’s man.

“And that means you, too, Becky. It would never even occur to you to assert your freedom, because you would never have had any. You’d be somebody’s man. You’d have to be to survive.”

“First she’d be her father’s daughter,” Susan says. “And then she’d be somebody’s husband. I mean wife.” Laughter.

“Not me,” Becky says, shaking her head. “I’d be my own . . . woman.”

Ed grimaces and shakes his own head, suggesting disagreement and irritation.

I look down, as if collecting my thoughts, and count to three. Then I look up at Tom, and in a quiet voice, I ask him: “Whose boy are you, Tom?”

“What did he say?” Susan asks Samantha.

“Whose boy are you?” I repeat.

Tom squints and smiles, a wonderful expression that suggests both that he understands in a general way where all this is going, but uncertainty as to what the specific answer to my question is. “I suppose I would have to say my parents, he says after a moment. I’m David and Hannah’s boy.”

“And what gang do they belong to?”

“The Democratic Party,” Jason answers for Tom. “They’re like serious political people.”

“And you, Jason. Whose boy are you?”

“I’m Aaron and Roberta's boy, I guess.”

“Are you a free man, Jason?”

“Well, I’m not a man, and I guess I’m not free either.”

“Does that bother you? That you’re not free?”

“Not really,” he says. “Don’t really think about it much.”

“Well I do,” Becky says, with a surprising degree of bitterness in her voice. I’m definitely not free. I can see that she’s drawn a heart in ink on the back of her hand, but I can’t decipher the letters on it. “My dad is like Hitler.”

“So you’re not free now, but you will be someday?”

“Absolutely.”

“How about the rest of you? Are you living in states of unfreedom? In tyranny?”

I get no answer. But Susan has a question. “What about you, Mr. Cullen? Whose man are you?”

“Well, right now, I belong to the Ethical Culture Fieldston School—it pays the salary that my family and I live on. Of course, the Ethical Culture Fieldston School is not a person; it’s an institution. In a way, this brings us back to what I think this movie is all about. For Bill the Butcher, everything was personal. He lived in a tribal world, and the United States was a tribal society, a collection of gangs—as Nate pointed out, even the fire departments were gangs. Among other things, what the Civil War did was make things impersonal. It created mighty institutions like a national economy, and a massive system for the distribution of goods and services to the Union army. And that army was itself extraordinarily powerful, steamrolling all opposition, whether it was the Confederate States of America or the gangs of New York. We rightly think of that army as a liberating force that destroyed slavery. Surely it did that. But it’s worth pointing out that from the standpoint of those who rioted at the prospect of being sucked into it, it army was a destroyer of liberty, and a destroyer of a way of life. I can’t say I regret the outcome. I’m a descendant of those Irish immigrants, who helped build the mighty political machine called Tammany Hall that we’ll be looking at again in a few weeks. But the Bill the Butchers of the world, with all their fiercely loving hatreds, can help us understand why the Civil War was such a hard-won struggle.

"See you tomorrow, folks. We’ll start reviewing for our upcoming exam."

There’s the usual familiar shuffle as they head out the door; a mere hour after a long weekend, I already feel like I never left. “Whose boy are you!” I hear Joey bellow down the hall as I look toward the e-mails waiting on my laptop. You’re my boy now, I think to myself as I open the first one. Or you’re my boy for now, anyway.