MRS SOFFEL
US, 1984, 110 minutes, Colour.
Mel Gibson, Diane Keaton, Edward Herrmann, Matthew Modine, Trini Alvarado, Maury Chaykin.
Directed by Gillian Armstrong.
Mrs Soffel is fine entertainment. It is a star vehicle for Diane Keaton who is impressive as the quiet but passionate Kate Soffel. Mel Gibson has a sympathetic role which he plays well as Ed Biddle, the convicted murderer. Matthew Modine (Birdy, Crazy for You) is effective as Jack Biddle.
The film is based on a true story, the wife of the prison governor in Pittsburgh falling in love with a prisoner, escaping with him, abandoning husband, children and home, social status and reputation, her Christian beliefs. Pleading with the convict to kill her so that she would not survive him, she is merely injured and spends the rest of her life in the prison.
The film was directed by Australian Gillian Armstrong and photographed by Russell Boyd. Gillian Armstrong's previous features included The Singer and the Dancer, My Brilliant Career and Starstruck. The film has excellent period atmosphere, both in the oppressive winter of industrialised Pittsburgh as well as in the open plains covered in the winter snow.
The film is an interesting character-study, a comment on attitudes, behaviour and standards of respectability in the 19th. century as well as a mad love and an experience of passionate commitment.
1. An interesting, entertaining and moving film?
2. The work of Gillian Armstrong? In Australia? In the United States? The feminine perspective on this story of passion?
3. American and Canadian locations? Winter? Period? The jail, industrialised Pittsburgh? Exteriors? The range of the musical score, the piano themes and mood?
4. The film as a prison story, an escape story, a passionate and foolish romance story? A search for freedom?
5. Diane Keaton as Mrs Soffell: a wife and mother of Pittsburgh, 1901?, Her illness and her recovery - indication of unease, repression? Her relationship of devotion to her husband? Her genuine and passionate love for her children? Relating to each? Loving but quiet? A woman of religion, her Christian comfort to the prisoners, reliance on the Bible, Bible readings? The encounter with the prisoners, her style of visitation? The Biddles? Tangling with them? Talk? The attraction towards Ed yet her resistance and clash? Fear? Retreating? The returns to the prison, the irony of her religious principles? Peter's attitude towards the Biddles? The popular attitudes? Coping with the domestic life? Her growing children? The fire in the cell, the effect on her, her decision to help their, escape? Ed's visit to her home, her being swept off her feet, the passionate and hasty decision to go, the experience of the escape, exhaustion, the journey? The house with the old couple treating them as married? The consummation of their love, the telling of the truth? Kate's commitment to Ed? Her plea about being shot? The desperate chase, stance? Her being shot - and surviving? her going into prison? Her man giving her Ed's picture? The imprisonment of her past life compared with the imprisonment of the jail?
6. The credibility of Kate Soffell's experience? Feelings, motives, change, loss of children, status and respectability? The impact of the experience of the escape? Her survival?
7. Mel Gibson as Ed, persuasive, charming? The credibility of Kate Soffell loving him? In the cell with his brother, the details of prison life, condemned to die? The background of the robbery, the killing? His charm and people not believing him guilty? Partly folk hero? His support of his brother Jack? Their bonds, clashes? Offhand attitude towards religion, listening to Kate, infatuated by her, the Bible reading? The beginning of the passionate love, his decision to use her? The escape and its details, going into the house, persuading her to go? The journey, the dangers, the exhaustion? The old couple, the passionate love, his telling the truth? His shooting Kate but merely wounding her? His death?
8. Jack and his brother as hero, sharing the crime, the imprisonment? Wary of Kate? Youthfulness, exasperation? The escape? The loner? The pathos of his death?
9. Peter Soffell and his work for the prison, his principles, prim attitudes? His devotion to Kate, the 19th century husband dictating to his wife? His response to his children? Expectations? The hurt and bewilderment about the news of Kate's leaving? His impersonal response? What was he left with?
10. The portrait of the children, their bonds with their mother, with their father? Growing up? Kate handling the problems? Their being abandoned by their mother? The effect?
11. The police, the posse, the dramatic chases?
12. The press and the interviews and the treatment of the incident as a cause celebre?
13. The old couple and their hospitality, charm? Innocence?
14. The 1901 setting, the transition from the 19th to the 20th century? Pittsburgh, industry and ugliness? Status and respectability? Imprisonment and crime? The outlaws and their being held as heroes? The administration of justice? Love and marriage, duty and fidelity, passion?, The place of religious principles, Christianity? Kate Soffell and her, defiance, breaking out of the imprisonment of her life? Finding a truer freedom in prison?
15. A film of insight? Moving? Melancholic?
