RAPTURE

UK/France, 1965, 104 minutes, Black and white.
Patricia Gozzi, Dean Stockwell, Melvyn Douglas, Gunnel Lindblom.
Directed by John Guillermin.

Rapture is an unusual and stylised melodrama, a British-French? co-production, directed by British Guillermin. Guillermin had a career in the '50s and early '60s in England with small-budget films and then productions like The Waltz of the Toreadors with Peter Sellers. At this time he made The Blue Max and then moved to Hollywood with many action adventures and by the mid-'70s made such films as Towering Inferno, King Kong and Death on the Nile.

The stars of this film are an international group and bring excellent talent to the contrived story - Melvyn Douglas had just won his Oscar for Hud and is a persuasive character actor. Dean Stockwell had just made Long Day's Journey Into Night and can portray vulnerable hunted people. Patricia Gozzi had made Sundays and Cybele and Gunnel Lindblom had featured in several Ingmar Bergman films including at this time The Silence. The film is a study in an isolated group interacting with passion and with violence. The film's title has the ambiguity of wonder and violation and this indicates the tone of the film.

1. The significance of the title? Indications of wonder, of rape and violence? The ambiguities indicating themes?

2. The presentation of the French setting - how particularly French was the film? Universal in the symbolic characters and
symbolic situation?

3. The black and white photography, the use of locations, the importance of the musical score? An enclosed world, the town, the house? The landscapes and the sea? Home, an alien landscape, a landscape ultimately of destruction and the need for escape?

4. The presentation of a family and relationships of love, hatred, intensity, power & domination? The images of tension? Masks and images?

5. The portrait of a girl growing up? Her being stunted in her development by the family, her father? The symbolism of the dolls and her love for them? Agnes as a doll? Living in a dolls' house? Her fears, her madness? The indications of her sexual growth? Her capacity for love? Her responsibility and accepting and coping with herself? Her adjustment to the real world, the transition from the world of fantasy?

6. The opening and the introduction to the characters - the four in the car, tensions, relationships? The background of the wedding? Fear?

7. The portrait of Agnes - a young girl, attractive, quiet, retarded? The influence of her father, mother? The ironies with the revelation about her mother? The importance of the dolls and her playing with them - fantasy and reality? The scarecrow and its reality, symbolism? Josef and the fulfilment of the scarecrow? Sexuality and the influence of Karen? Josef and his intrusion on her life, her seeing him from the point of view of fantasy? Tenderness, love and the dolls? The asylum and the build-up to the killing of Karen?

8. The relationship with Josef? Her leaving, her bewilderment in the town, her return?

9. The occasion of Josef's death? The pursuit? The grief? What impact did he have on Agnes? The quality of love? His working for her?

10. The portrait of Agnes' father - as an old man, his qualities, weaknesses, harshness? His story? A solitary man? His love-hate attitudes towards his daughter? Treatment of her? His relenting? Hostility towards Josef? His anger, sheltering him?

11. Karen and her place in the household, a sensuous woman, type, helping, leaving? Her influence in the household, on Agnes, on Josef?

12. The accident of Josef's coming into their lives, the relationship to the scarecrow, Agnes and her infatuation, looking after him, going away with him? The contrast with Karen's attitude? The father and the book?

13. The sexual relationship, the lyrical tone given these sequences? The symbolism of the dolls?

14. What made Agnes go away with Josef? Work, apartment, money, her fear in the town, inability to cope? The inevitability of her return?

15. The ironies of her return - and the attitude of her father? The irony of Josef's return and death?

16. The tension build-up with the final chase, the fall, Josef’s death and final words?

17. A blend of the passionate and the lyrical, the sensitive? How well did the film communicate its atmosphere, characterisation, thews?