The Thousand-Yard Stare of Desire and Other Expressions



He was looking at her; she wished she could see his face. “You couldn’t have done this if you loved him, Natalie. You couldn’t have locked him up like an animal. It isn’t love you feel for him. It may be almost as strong, but it isn’t love. It’s something else. Something bad.”
--Robert Rodi, Fag Hag

Writing about movies you like is relatively easy. You think of your favorite parts, you try to describe in a way that does not give away all the fun for future viewers and then you try to describe all the emotions you felt throughout the movie.

For that matter, writing about movies you hate is easy. You think of your least favorite parts, you try to describe them in a way that would discourage would-be viewers without giving away too much to those who will probably go ahead and see it anyway and then you try to describe the emotions you felt throughout the movie.

What is hard to write about are the movies that produce mixed reactions. On one hand, you cannot really pretend you hated the flick. On the other hand, if you write too knowingly about the film, you might give away a part of yourself that you might not want to give away.

Take 1952’s Angel Face, for example. Like most movies in its genre, it is tempting to take the movie less than seriously and say, “Oh, yes, I would never act that way. Only idiots would act that way.”

But to take that route, one would have to believe that no one would ever act that way. That no one you know or care to know or used to know ever fell for someone who was all wrong for them, someone who was bad for them or someone who would eventually prove quite harmful to them. And I cannot do that.

I have known too many women who were beaten by spouses or boyfriends with whom they were once in love. Hell, I know too many people of both sexes who have gotten emotionally involved with people who brought them nothing but problems.

Moreover, while I am vain enough to pretend I would have made a different choice than ambulance driver Frank Jessup (played by Robert Mitchum) did in this movie, it is hard for me to take one look at Jean Simmons’s dark pupils and pretend there is not a part of me that would fall for her too.

Am I blind to the fact her character (Diane Tremayne) was a bit crazy? No.

But I am also not blind to the fact that men often like crazy. Blame on self-destructive tendencies, a mixture of the eros and thanatos instincts or even lives of quiet desperation, but people in the real world don’t always make the sanest choices -- especially if they believe there are no ideal choices to be made.

Thus, while part of me identifies with the character who did his damnedest to stay away from Ms. Tremayne and found himself a relatively sane girlfriend, part of me also identifies with Jessup, who, of course, made the opposite choice.

Then there was the whole murder question. Jessup suspected early on that Tremayne had it in for her stepmother and that she had even made an unsuccessful attempt on said step-mom’s life. Yet he was still drawn to her. He often insisted throughout the movie that he was still attracted to his old girlfriend Mary, who worked at a nearby hospital. But when it came to the temptation offered by a young and beautiful rich girl like Ms. Tremayne, Jessup did not put up much of a fight. Nor did he once consider alerting the local police about his suspicions -- even when they were proved right.

I will be the first to admit that I have never been attracted to a murderer. But I have known people who have been involved with either murderers or would-be murderers. Indeed, for a time, I even envied a cousin who had done jail time for murder -- not because I wanted to be a criminal -- I did not -- but because at the time, he seemed to be more successful at attracting women than I was. In the end, the cousin proved to be a person who was not worth envying, and I like to think that my life is a lot happier today because I did not even try to follow in his footsteps. Like the ghost in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, I have tried to leave all my girlfriends happier than I found them and while I am not conceited enough to pretend I was always successful, I am prideful enough to admit that I at least tried.

And yet there was something about the thousand-yard stare of desire Ms. Tremayne displayed in one scene when she played the piano while thinking of Jessup that lured me like some nocturnal winged insect to a lit candle. Or a clear-eared sailor to a Siren’s shoreline.

Yes, it would be nice if men like Jessup went only for the nice women. The women who had nothing wrong with them. The ladies who were not crazy. But people are not always attracted to that which is good for them.

I will admit though that I was attracted to Mary as much as I was attracted to Diane and I envied the guy who ended up with her far more than I envied Jessup. But then, given what happened to Jessup as a result of his choice, that would be a no-brainer.