Kubrick announces Anne Rice

The story itself is nothing but a romance thriller. An older man arrives in a small town where he rents a room in the house of a young widow with a teenage daughter. The widow falls in love with him but he falls in love with the daughter. He manages – willy nilly – to marry the mother who is killed by a car on the street outside her home. Then the man tries to conquer the daughter. In fact he does take her but he is jealous and avaricious in love, exclusive and possessive. What has to happen happens. A playwright manages to put his grubby hand on the girl and organizes her elopement. Then he tries to fool her into an orgy and she steps out. Out of the blue comes a young man from a small town who she marries and gets pregnant from. The stepfather then tries a last time, fails, gives the girl her share of her mother's inheritance, drives away to the playwright's residence and kills him in cold blood. He will later die in prison waiting for his trial. Nothing much altogether that Kubrick transforms into a black and white masterpiece. Apart from the technique, the beauty of the shooting and editing, Kubrick transcends the triteness of the subject with a never directly expressed discourse on love ?. Love is capricious but it is difficult for it to live even only survive in the case of an older man and a younger girl. Suspicion kills the cat and spoils the pussy. They are obliged to hide and this puts dirt on a feeling that could be beautiful. An older man's love is possessive and that destroys love by definition. Then the younger girl will play on the older man's desire for love and secrecy to hide what will be cooking on the side-burner. We can even wonder if for Kubrick at this moment stable and lasting love is plainly possible for older men when young girls are involved. Anne Rice later will look at the problem with feminine eyes and give in « Belinda » a completely different account of such an affair, a love affair. But Anne Rice is fascinated by abnormal beings and situations. So she does not prove anything. Kubrick seems to be repulsed by such conditions and the final chaotic murder place in which the playwright will be put to death is nothing but a pile of trash in an eighteenth century mansion turned into an empty hard-liquor bottle cemetery. Brilliantly anti-decadent and baroque.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Paris Dauphine & University of Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne
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