Tuesday, 25 September 2007
Notes on Female Spookiness: Ten Otherworldly Girls...
posted @2:03 p.m. by Richard Kelly
Simone de Beauvoir famously decried the notion of ‘feminine mystique’ as an invention of men who would rather regard women as mythological creatures than deal with them as flesh-and-blood equals. It’s a problem, I agree – and yet I find I can’t quite help myself. That’s why I wrote a list for Ten Bad Dates entitled ‘Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel: Ten Otherworldly Girls.’ I now realise that I made one major omission in my selections...
Movies have offered any number of supernatural romances in which svelte, enigmatic females turn out to be immortal or literally ethereal. A darker alternative is presented by certain horror/fantasy films wherein a woman can appear in superficially pleasing form, yet be nothing but a wraith or a devil. The allure is quite obvious, for there can be something terribly appealing about someone who’s a bit different, a bit special – and then something terribly unappealing too. You could get a nasty nip.
At any rate, this is my list as it appears in Ten Bad Dates.
10. Eva Galli/Alma Mobley (Alice Krige) in Ghost Story (US 1981, dir. John Irvin)
9. Sadako (Rie Inou) in Ringu/The Ring (Japan 1998, dir. Hideo Nakata)
8. Selina Kyle/Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer) in Batman Returns (US 1992, dir. Tim Burton)
7. The Girl Angel / Satan (Juliette Caton) in The Last Temptation of Christ (US 1988, dir. Martin Scorsese)
6. The Devil (Silvia Pinal) in Simon del Desierto/Simon of the Desert (Mexico 1965, dir. Luis Bunuel)
5. Regan McNeil/Pazuzu (Linda Blair) in The Exorcist (US 1973, dir. William Friedkin)
4. Lilith Arthur (Jean Seberg) in Lilith (US 1963, dir. Robert Rossen)
3. Jennie Appleton (Jennifer Jones) in Portrait of Jennie (US 1948, dir. William Dieterle)
2. Lady Wakasa (Machiko Kyo) in Ugetsu Monogatari (Japan 1953, dir. Kenji Mizoguchi)
1. The Princess/Death (Maria Casares) in Orphée (France 1950, dir. Jean Cocteau)
So what about that omission I mentioned up top? Well, in my list you will see no fewer than three different female versions of The Devil: so much for the Dark Side, but what of the Light? I must have been blind, or had scales before my eyes, for there was a glaring candidate in that department – a performer whom I love, in a movie I thought fantastic, namely:
The Virgin Mary (Sinead O’Connor) in The Butcher Boy (Ireland/US 1997, dir. Neil Jordan)
The ‘butcher boy’ is a young pug called Francie Brady (Eamonn Owens), who endures an authentically awful Irish childhood yet remains, in the main, valiantly chirpy – partly because he is insane. That madness comes to horrific ends, but in the early stages of the movie it’s enough that we see France very intensely attached to his best pal Joe (Alan Boyle), so much so that Joe takes fright and disdains him. Francie’s consolation is that he can see and chat to the consoling figure of Mary, mother of Christ (or ‘Missus’, as he calls her). Neil Jordan’s genius was to cast in that role Sinead O’Connor, who has had what we might call a love-hate-love relationship with God and the Church. The movie’s immortal moment comes when Francie has just suffered a particularly bitter rebuff from Joe, and stares gloomily into a frosted window pane, thinking the whole cause lost. Then, behold the Madonna: O’Connor, in virgin violet, her eyes full of sad love, her wondrous voice tenderly chiding as she murmurs, “Francie. For fuck's sake...”
Comments
It may be obvious, and another addition to the 'dark side' but I couldn't help but feel you've missed one of the most alluring visions of female temptation:
Angel of Death - Jessica Lange - All that Jazz
Was she ever a contender?
Top-notch call there, Hope - Jessica Lange's All That Jazz angel is indeed mentioned among a handful of "runners-up" in the actual book. Probably the only reason she wasn't higher up is because I haven't seen the film in years...
How about Elizabeth Peña as 'Jezabel' in "Jacob's Ladder". Enjoying coitus with the devil in front of your boyfriend feels a little dark to me. But then again, she might not be.....
More than a little dark... and yes, I think enjoyment is off the agenda once that horn presents itself... Fraser, I don't know whether Pena's character counts as ghost, angel or figment of the imagination, but then I wouldn't bet money that I really know anything about 'Jacob's Ladder'. What I can say is that the scene you cite features elsewhere in Ten Bad Dates within a list entitled 'Heroic Doses, Hellish Descents: Ten Bad Trips, Man", the entry as follows:
6. Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins) in 'Jacob’s Ladder' (1990, dir. Adrian Lyne)
From the writer of 'Ghost' and the director of 'Fatal Attraction' comes – nothing you would ever pay to see, right? Yet 'Jacob’s Ladder' was always considered a great unfilmed script, and finally emerged as one of those hellish movies that bait you to decide which part of them is not a savage chemical-soaked nightmare. We’re fairly sure something terrible happened to Tim Robbins in Vietnam. But he seems to have a life in the present, a postman, married for the second time. The worst bit –until things get really dreadful – is when he attends a lively house party and encounters a palm-reader: ‘You have a very strange line. No, it’s not funny. See, according to this you’re already dead.’ That would unnerve anyone, but as Robbins stumbles around the fast-deteriorating throng he starts to sense the beating of leathery wings, under-cranked heads gnashing their teeth at him, and his wife being evilly raped by some horned and tailed monstrosity...
I think I'd throw in Virginia Madsen's white-coated angel of death in A Prairie Home Companion...
The freaky little girl ghost in Mario Bava's Kill, Baby, Kill! (aka Operazione Paura).
Fellini 'borrowed' her for Toby Dammit, his segment of the Edgar Allan Poe Euro-portmanteau movie, Spirits of the Dead. Which Anne Billson SHOULD have included in her Ten Places You Wouldn't Expect to See a Severed Head, incidentally. Though maybe you WOULD expect to see a severed head in a Fellini film...
Both little girl ghosts highly recommended, by the way.
Thanks Doravale. I will relay your remarks to Anne B. Haven't seen the Bava, only what you cite as the imitation, Spirits of the Dead, which I remember as a big let-down given all the talents involved... portmanteau movies are a strange concept, big in the 60s and 70s, esp. supernatural, but they seem always to be the braichild of a greedy producer...
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