THE SOUND AND THE FURY
US, 1959, 114 minutes, Colour.
Yul Brynner Joanne Woodward, Stuart Whitman, Margaret Leighton, Francoise Rosay, Ethel Waters, Jack Warden. Directed by Martin Ritt,
The Sound and the Fury is a screen version of a William Faulkner novel and it takes us into the deep South, Tennessee Williams' country, where the old aristocracy is decaying and the new men enter in and take over the management and wealth.
The central character is Quentin, Joanne Woodward in a good performance, looked after by a new man, Jason, played by a be-haired Yul Brynner. Quentin belongs to the old. She has been deserted by her mother, Margaret Leighton, and her uncles are alcoholic or insane. The blacks still serve the family. The film traces the tensions, the longings, the conflicts of a strange part of the world that is steeped in tradition that seems to have corrupted it.
Direction is by Martin R1tt, an early Ritt, the period of The Long Hot Summer and Paris Blues. Later, Ritt directed such films as Hud, The Outrage, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Hombre.
1. Faulkner took his title from Macbeth: Life is sound and fury, a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing. How does this story illustrate this quotation?
2. Is this, once again, the usual picture of the South - inbred, insanity, alcoholism, nymphomania, enclosed, intermarried, frightened of the outside, still thinking of the glories and wealth of the past, the civil war, their mansion house and the family name and prestige, the black servants, the shops end business ventures?
3. The film made Quentin the central character. This was where the South had arrived in the present generation. What kind of a girl was she - her timidity, her yearnings, her loneliness (the opening bus trip), her birth, her relationship to her mother, to Jason, to her uncles, to the servants?
4. How had Quentin confronted the fact that she was growing into a woman? Why did she fall in love with Charlie Bush?
5. Why did her mother's absence loom so large in her life? How important was the first fleeting glimpse, then the first confrontation and the learning that her mother couldn't and wouldn’t understand or help her?
6. How did Jason typify the new man of the South, the man introduced into an old family who keeps it going? Why did Jason appear as a hard man? Why was he afraid of his feelings?
7. What was Jason's relationship with his mother? Why did she want such attention? Why did she resent Katty?
8. Why did Jason treat Quentin as he did? Why did he take her money? Was his way of bringing her up for her own sake? Why did he love her? Was he cruel in order to be kind?
9. Katty - what kind of woman was she? Why did she not return in twenty years? Why did she return? Was it only for selfish reasons? Did she find that she had come to the end of the road and her beauty? Did you pity her? How did she react to being at hone again and with her brothers? What security did she want? Why did she agree finally with Jason to look Quentin up?
10. What did the two brothers signify - Howard and alcoholism, Benjy and insanity? What had made them like -this? Through no fault of their own, were they a condemnation of the South? Why was the little black boy so faithful to Benjy? How did Benjy instinctively react to Quentin’s meeting Charlie? Was an asylum the only place for him?
11. Why was the black maid so devoted to the family - through love or not?
12. What kind of man was Charlie Bush? Did he love Quentin at all? Why did he run away from Jason? Why did he take the money instead of Quentin?
13. Quentin had a narrow escape after making a wrong choice. Did she learn by this escape? .
14. Did Quentin understand finally why Jason had brought her up as he did? Did they have a future together? Would they redeem the past?
15. Was the theme of this film, the personalities or the society in which they lived? Understanding the South?
