LIAR'S MOON
US, 1982, 100 minutes, Colour.
Matt Dillon, Cindy Fisher, Christopher Connolly, Yvonne de Carlo, Broderick Crawford, Hoyt Axton, Maggie Blye, Susan Tyrell.
Directed by David Fisher.
Liar's Moon was an early star vehicle for Matt Dillon. He had appeared in such films as On the Edge and My Bodyguard and was soon to make The Flamingo Kid and become a star for almost twenty years. He also moved into direction in the 21st century.
This is a conventional film about a romance and doomed love. Dillon portrays an earnest young man. Cindy Fisher his love. However, the film reveals that there are darker secrets in her background, especially with her possessive father. The film is one of those of the 80s which earnestly explored romantic love, its sense of doom, the gradual revelation of dysfunctional American families.
Yvonne de Carlo and Broderick Crawford appear briefly in the film, echoes of the past?
1. Enjoyable and satisfying romance? Tragedy? Soap opera and melodrama for popular appeal? A Texas, Southern film? For universal audiences?
2. The atmosphere of Texas and Louisiana in the late '40s? The atmosphere of the past, style, issues? Morals and law? Standards and responsibility? Truth? Comparisons with later decades?
3. The atmosphere and period: the prologue and its sepia tone, the atmosphere of the town, wealth and society, poverty and farms, school, sport, dances? The bank, the pipeline? Louisiana and its boarding houses? Colour photography, atmosphere? Musical score?
4. The title and its meaning? The verses and their explanation? The prologue and its feel? Questions of truth? The later aspects of truth and the ironic twists? Their hurting the victims?
5. Themes of truth and its use and abuse, love, greed? The repercussions and the exposure, the hurt, the violence, the destruction?
6. Matt Dillon and his personality and style as Jack? A pleasant young man, his friends, the fair and the greased pig incident and accident? The encounters with Ginny? The horse-ride? The going out on dates, her father forbidding it, his mother reluctant? His being presented at home and his relationship with his parents? His work with his father? His father being hurt, death? The atmosphere of the funeral and its impact on Jack? The sunset rides, support for Ginny? The dance? His being kept away from her, the joke in order to meet her and the collaboration of the friends? The eloping? The driving out of state, the atmosphere of the marriage ceremony and the old couple and their support, looking for a room, work? Jack supporting Ginny as a good husband? The gifts and the birthdays? The conception of the child and their hopes?
7. Ginny and her glamour, wealth? School, dates? The relationship with Richard and her father pushing her? Accidents? The relationship with her father? Her being kept away from Jack? The funeral and her decision to obey? The dance and the encounter with Jack contrived by the friends? The decision to elope? The drive away, the Impact of the marriage ceremony, setting up home? The kindness of the landlady and the helping with the cooking? The cake and the candles? The tenderness of the relationship with Jack? Her pregnancy? Her friendship with Laura Mae and the discussions, her discovery about prostitution? Her shock? Helping Laura Mae?
8. Jack and his relationship with his mother? Her glamour, the grief? His hardworking father and his looking after Jack? The impact of his death? The importance of Ginny's father and the phone calls with Jack's mother? The concealing of the truth?
9. Ginny and her relationship with her father, his possessiveness, wealth, background? Her sister? Pearl? The background of business, entertaining, croquet games, etc.? Her grandfather's presence in the house and his devotion to her, giving her the pony as a gift? Her reaction to the situation, her father's pressures? The Colonel and his reaction to her elopement? Support of Jack? Audience knowledge of the truth and concern for Ginny?
10. The sketching of Jack's friends: the fat boy, the jokes, hair, the greasy pigs, the dance. the drinking, the peeking and the sex? The background of adolescents in the late 140s in a Texas town?
11. Comparison with the girls, school, glamour, the girl letting herself be watched by the bogs?
12. The landlady and her concern for Jack and Ginny? Laura Mae and her friendship and help and the irony of the wrong kind of help with the news of the abortion? The couple that married the two?
13. The build-up to Ginny's pregnancy and the melodrama? Her decision to get an abortion, especially after the news from the detective? Her fears of congenital illness and madness? Her desperation in going to the private abortionist with her barbaric methods? The doctor and the phone calls? The arguments? Jack's discovery of the truth? Time and urgency? The ironies of the complexity of the truth - truth and lies?
14. The detective and his being hired, his interrogations, the personal characteristics which made him a strong character for the film? His talking with the couple, the landlady's concealing their presence? Catching up with Jack and Ginny, the pursuit with Ginny bleeding? The crash?
15. The complexities of the explanation with the phone calls to Jack, his mother, Ginny's father, the doctor? The records? The chase. the crash and the shooting? The doctor and Ginny’s death?
16. The melodramatic tragic atmosphere of the ending? Jack and his declaration that life was not fair ? and the memory of the verses of Liar's Moon?
17. The human themes, youngsters growing up, innocence, love? The small town? The ordinary problems of adolescence? The complexities of the older generation and lies and deceits having poetic justice ? but for the wrong people?
