Overcome by the Vapors

Film: Summer and Smoke
Format: DVD from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.

There’s a particular view of femininity that is almost perfectly captured by the work of Tennessee Williams. It’s primarily evident in works like A Streetcar Named Desire and The Glass Menagerie, but that same idea stands front and center in Summer and Smoke as well. In fact, in terms of Tennessee Williams characters, Alma Winemiller is straight out of central casting.

The female idea—I hesitate to call it an “ideal”—is one of a feigned purity, of striving to attain an impossible goal of refinement and culture and of holding any and all in judgment who do not meet or strive to meet those same goals. That is Alma Winemiller (Geraldine Page) in a nutshell. Daughter of the local minister (Malcolm Atterbury), Alma is as close as possible to a spinster as we’re likely to find. She takes part in readings of edifying books, sings and gives voice lessons, and frequently puts on airs to hold herself above the common folk. She is also given to nervous fits and fainting spells, the sort of thing that might be termed “the vapors.”

Becket

Film: Becket
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

I’m never really sure how to react to substantially religious epics. It’s always interesting to see someone willing to die for the courage of his or her conviction, but when that conviction is something I find so nebulous, I can’t help but ponder what I see as the waste of a life. That’s certainly the case with Becket, a story of warring ideologies and conflicted devotions. Admittedly, this is less a religious epic and more of a film about those divided loyalties and about perceived betrayal, but when so much of the film takes place inside a church and in characters wearing ecclesiastical garb, it’s difficult not to consider the intense religious overtones of the film.

What Becket really is at its core is the story of a friendship gone bad. The difference between a typical story of such a friendship and this one is that Becket concerns men at the height of temporal power. The two men in question are Thomas Becket (Richard Burton) and King Henry II (Peter O’Toole). The friendship is an interesting one. Henry is the heir of William the Conqueror, and thus a Norman in a still-hostile land filled with Saxon peasants. Becket is a Saxon raised to nobility by Henry. This leaves him in a very real sense as a man without a place to go. The other nobles hate him because he is a Saxon and the Saxons hate him because they believe he has willingly betrayed them for his position. This only becomes more the thought on all sides when Henry names him Lord Chancellor.