A DOUBLE LIFE
US, 1947, 104 minutes, Black and white.
Ronald Colman, Signe Hasso, Edmond O’ Brien, Shelley Winters, Ray Collins, Millard Mitchell.
Directed by George Cukor.
A Double Life is a film that is not seen very often. This is a pity since it is quite ingenious and won two Oscars.
The screenplay was written by the team of Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, responsible for several of the Spencer Tracy- Katharine Hepburn vehicles including Adam’s Rib and Pat and Mike. It was directed by George Cukor, Oscar-winner for My Fair Lady, but a director who led many performers to Oscars including Rex Harrison, James Stewart, Ingrid Bergman, Judy Holliday.
The film is focused on an actor played by Ronald Colman. Colman won an Oscar for this performance – after being an impressive screen presence in many films including Lost Horizon and Random Harvest. He portrays an actor who lives his parts in real life – cheerful when he is playing comedy, serious when he is playing drama. When he starts to rehearse for Othello, already divorced from his wife, he begins to suspect his girlfriend of infidelity. She is his Desdemona and he kills her. She is played by a very young Shelley Winters.
The film is interesting in its portrait of theatre life, theatre presentation and the theme of the relationship between the performer and the role that he or she is performing.
I. The meaning of the title? Its irony?
2. What was the central interest of the film: the life of an actor. the Shakespearean overtones of drama, the murder implications? How much emphasis did the film give to each? How well did it blend them?
3. How typical a film of the forties was this? The presentation of a madness, sexual aberration, The impact then, the impact now? Comment on the different techniques to communicate the dilemmas of the hero, angle shots, editing, fade outs?
4. What kind of man was Tony Johns? As a human being. his diffidence, his appearance as self-assured, his qualities as an actor, his abilities on the stage, audience applause, the different reactions in favour and against him, his explanation of his ambitions, of his life and origins, of his marriage and its effect on him?
5. Why did he live the part so vividly? The inadequacy of his own self image and supplying it with his parts? The split personality and the double life? How convincing was this presentation of a man being absorbed by his parts?
6. The significance of Othello: the achievement for an actor, the magnitude of Shakespeare’s verse and insight, jealousy as a fatal flaw? The achievement for Tony - the importance of the sequence where he appeared and during his speech the whole production pre-preparation goes forward? Why was there a blending in the intervening in his life? Himself as a tragic here? Othello as an actor? Loneliness and betrayal? The gradual jealousy and the dependence on Brita? Linking her with Bill? The inevitability of the jealousy? How well was the Shakespearean presentation blended with the life of Tony?
7. How effective were the actual Shakespearean scenes? Did they make and impact in themselves? The continual use of quotations? Tony imagining himself an Othello and speaking? The parties where appearances and reality faded and Shakespearean verse came? The sequences with Pat? The importance of his idea of killing Desdemona with a kiss? The reality of it in the drama, the reality of it when he a almost killed Brita?
8. How well did the film blend in the theme of Pat? What kind of girl was she? Shelley Winters' performance? Her explanation of herself and background? Her fears, premonitions?
9. How did the film draw the themes together? With Tony's proposal of re-marriage to Brita? Her reaction and the fomenting of his jealousy? How far had the split personality gone by this? The inevitability of his attitude towards Pat? Pat as another Desdemona? The irony? Her blonde hair, ‘turn out the light’, the victim, murdered with the kiss of death?
10. How well portrayed were Brita and Bill - in themselves, their word, in relation to Tony, in relation to themselves, Tony’s understanding of Bill’s love for Brita?
11. How well did the film integrate the police investigation and the newspaper talk? The kiss of death and the scene with the doctor? What right did Bill have to go on with his charade of the waitress? ( the insight in the scene were the actresses were interviewed and tested for the part?) Did the papers have the right to use such sensational publicity? Bill's compliance in this? Tony’s violent reaction? The effect of all this on him and his mind?
12. Was his death scene inevitable? How well filmed was it? The variations in his stage acting of a scene we had seen so often? The reality of the words for his own life? The nature of his killing himself?
13. How much peace did Tony find in his dying? The impact on the rest of the cast?
14. The ending and the bringing down of curtain and tho spotlight out? The symbolism of this?
15. How ingenious was the screenplay in connecting so many strands? Did Ronald Coleman’s performance deserve the Oscar that he won?
