Jan 11 movie: Since You Went Away. I didn't mean to watch this again so soon, but I was flipping channels and came across it about a half hour in, and I was hooked. I had forgotten all about the part early on where Jennifer Jones has a childish crush on Joseph Cotten. The two of them had such good chemistry; I wish they had made more movies together. And Agnes Moorehead is great fun as the villainous neighbor, wondering "why do they have to have so much flag-waving?" and then opining that if everyone had hoarded food like she did, there wouldn't be any shortages at all.
My only negative comment isn't so much about this movie, but in general: why do so many black housekeepers in movies incorrectly use big words for comic effect? It's really not funny and it happens in a lot of old movies. Perhaps it's supposed to suggest that the servant class weren't just uneducated, but uneducatable: give them a two-dollar word and look how they mangle it. So therefore why feel bad about keeping a whole class of people down, when they couldn't do any better. And that is my political rant for the day.
1 Comments
The word-mangling is more of a class thing than a race thing, though admittedly they come together in American society. But think about Dogberry and company in Much Ado About Nothing, or Blossom's troupe from Midsummer Night's Dream -- they misuse fancy words for comic effect, too.
Which is not to say that your interpretation is invalid; there can certainly be more than one level of subtext!