THIS ANGRY AGE
France, 1958, 103 minutes, Colour.
Silvana Mangano, Anthony Perkins, Richard Conte, Jo Van Fleet, Nehemiah Persoff, Alida Valli.
Directed by Rene Clement.
This Angry Age is based on an autobiographical story by Marguerite Duras. In the following year she wrote the screenplay for the classic Hiroshima Mon Amour. The film was co-written by Italian Diego Fabbri who had a long career in writing films and adaptations of the Maigret stories for television. He had an interesting religious perspective in his writing, Pastor Angelicus about Pius XII in 1942, the screenplay for the film about the early Christians, Fabiola, a 1963 film about the second Vatican Council and the biography of the young John Paul II in Zannussi’s From a Far Country, 1981.
The film was directed by Rene Clement. Clement had a long career in French cinema with such films in the 1950s as Forbidden Games, Knave of Hearts and Jervais. In 1960 he made the Mr Ripley story, Full Sun with Alain Delon and during the 1960s and 1970s made a number of thrillers including Joy House and The Deadly Trap. He also made Is Paris Burning.
The film is set in Vietnam, where Marguerite Duras was born. It shows the difficulties in the Mekong Valley and a family trying to survive. Silvana Mangano is the strong mother (wife of Dino de Laurentiis who appeared in Bitter Rice). Anthony Perkins features as her son. The film has a strong supporting cast of Italian and American actors.
1. The significance of the title? The alternate title was "The Sea Wall." The emphases for themes of both titles?
2. The importance of the locations in Thailand, use of colour and wide screen, atmosphere, oriental and western music etc.?
3. The structure of the film: entry into the plantation, the move to the city, the move back to the plantation? What did the audience experience in each of these places and the varying movements?
4. The film was considered to be symbolic of colonial France. Was this evident? What did each of the characters represent? The mother and Mother France in its old age and decay and hold on its children, the colonialisation, imprisonment? The reaction of the East to France? The rebellion of the children? How well worked out in detail was
this symbolism? Did it throw light on France after the war and in the fifties?
5. The importance of the credits and the entry of the audience into Thailand? Its beauty and its remoteness? The cities and the countryside? The rice plantations and the sea? The atmosphere for the events and the characters?
6. The portrayal of the family? The individuals, their particular characteristics, their interaction? The explanatory background of France, widowhood, money, the plantation and making it a success? Redeeming the land, relying on the sea wall? The family as colonials? Their relationship with the Thais? The plantation becoming a prison? The nature of the clashes, the presentation of the tensions, the love hate relationships? The isolation and the effect on the two children?
7. What were the strengths of the mother? Her ambitions, her success, her hold over her plantation and her workers, her hold over the children and her manoeuvres to keep them with her? The impact of the disaster in flooding, the breaking of the sea wall? Her holding on tenaciously despite signs that she should give up? Her resistance to selling? Her reaction to Joseph's departure? To the emotional entanglements of her daughter? Her visit to the city and her being out of place, her illness, disappointment in her children, resorting to the piano? The significance of her return and her trying to build things anew? The significance of her death? An old world passing away?
9. How well delineated was the character of Joseph? The son of his mother, his frustration and sense of being trapped, his yearning for city life and modern things, music and dancing etc.? Sexuality? His decision to leave but his being trapped by the flood, his returning to help? His final decision to move away? His naivety in the city, his falling in love, the change in him, introducing Suzanne to the woman, his being abandoned? What had he learnt when he returned? What future did he have?
9. The contrast with Suzanne and her loyalty to her mother, her loyalty to Joseph? Her sense of being trapped? Her response to the various suitors? The impact of Michael in her life? The importance of money and saving the plantation? The emotional dilemmas? Her return with her mother? her awareness of Michael's love, her gladness that there would be a proper wall, the possibility of her leaving?
10. The character of Michael, his intervention during the flood, his role against the family, his decision to help, his love for Suzanne and his experience of her rejection, his decision at the airport to help? Rescuing Suzanne from this experience?
11. The agent and his trying to get the land sold, his selfishness, the drunken sequence and the humour with the family, his infatuation with Suzanne, the entanglements and his rejection?
12. The theatre sequence with Joseph being involved with the woman, her dependence on him, seduction? His dependence on her, her abandoning him?
13. The presentation of the crises in the plantation and the audience involvement in this? The comparative dullness of the emotional conflicts in the town, the length of time devoted to Suzanne?
14. How much insight into human nature? Into the allegory of France?
