William Wyler (40 page)

This rationale is an oversimplification, however, because it belies Wyler's attraction to certain kinds of material.
The Heiress
shares the tightly structured melodramatic plot in
Counsellor-at-Law, These Three, Dead End
, and
The Little Foxes
. Like the Hellman plays,
The Heiress
deals with revenge and presents a heroine who learns that she must adapt to a man's world by becoming a cold and calculating person, as she discovers both her father and her fiancé to be. One of Wyler's frustrations with
The Little Foxes
was that he wanted Regina to be a warmer, more sympathetic, and more rounded figure, but Bette Davis refused to soften the character. As his own producer, however, he could give different shadings to his characters, making the two male protagonists, Dr. Sloper and Morris Townsend, more compassionate and ambivalent than they were in either James's novel or the Goetzes' play. And in fashioning his heroine, he was able to portray the evolution of her sensibility in a male-dominated social system with a precision he had been unable to achieve in
The Little Foxes
.

The film also reflects the grim postwar mood Wyler so carefully articulates in
Best Years
. Though Catherine Sloper cannot be strictly classified as a noir heroine, her personal trajectory is most decidedly tinged by that genre. In many postwar noir films, the protagonists return from the war to find their wives or sweethearts dead or unfaithful, and society as a whole is presented as dark and corrupt. In
The Heiress
, Catherine goes from believing in her patriarchal social world to rejecting it outright. The film's final images of Catherine closing herself off from her world—recalling Lavinia Mannon's locking herself up in her family's house at the end of Eugene O'Neill's
Mourning Becomes Electra
—are among the darkest in all of Wyler's work.

Wyler's film is a more faithful realization of the Goetzes' play than of James's novel. In adapting the book for the stage, the playwrights made some fundamental decisions about emphasis and character development—indeed, they note in the published version of the play that their work is “suggested” by James's novel, a clear sign that they have taken liberties. (This partial disclaimer is repeated in the film's credits as well.)
¹⁶
James uses an omniscient narrator to tell the story of Catherine's courtship by Morris and her relationship with her father. This detached, ironic voice offers the reader multiple perspectives in measuring the heroine's sensibility and her maturation. The narrator gives almost equal weight to Catherine's growth and Dr. Sloper's views of human behavior and society. James, writing amid the fallout from the American Civil War, was examining the conflict between the primacy of reason, as embodied in Dr. Sloper's rigid philosophy, and a democratic society that values practical choice. Although the democratic lifestyle can be messy and murky, the potential that exists in democratic choice can be exhilarating. In forging a middle ground between her father's and her suitor's attempts to victimize her, the novel's Catherine achieves a muted triumph. She moves from a limited understanding of society to a more mature one, a shift not seen in any of the other important characters in the story.

In adapting Catherine's story, however, the dramatists shift from an emphasis on psychological complexity and consciousness—a focus on how others see and interpret Catherine—to a sympathetic study of her transformation into a woman who is finally able to challenge her father and her fiancé. In the novel, Catherine is a private person who hides her feelings; her most observable trait is her passivity. In presenting her as a dramatic heroine, however, both the play and the film have to demonstrate more forcefully how Dr. Sloper's ironic wit and cruelty affect his daughter and force her to change. In doing so, the dramatists of both stage and screen convert the narrative irony of James's story into a melodrama of revenge in which a mistreated heroine dispenses justice to those who have hurt her.

Both play and film also focus attention on the power of money, as Catherine becomes a pawn in the conflict between emotional and economic realities. The title change accentuates Catherine's status as the potential beneficiary of a considerable income ($30,000 a year). Her position as a financial commodity is commented on by her father and her two aunts, and it looms as the one asset that Morris prizes above all else. On another level, however, both dramatic versions also explore the extent to which Catherine is heir to her father's cold, incisive intelligence and icy heart. This aspect of her personality becomes apparent when she turns the tables on him in the second half of the play.

The Goetzes had to impose some important alterations in plot development and structure to make the story effective as drama. The first, as mentioned earlier, was to sharpen the conflict between Catherine and her father. Also, because of Wyler's insistence that Morris's motivations be more ambiguous (necessitated in part by the casting of Montgomery Clift), the Goetzes' created two effective scenes that diverge significantly from James's text. In the novel, Morris breaks off the engagement in a fumbling, awkward way by alluding to his plans in a conversation with Catherine and then following up with a letter that formally ends their relationship. In the play and the film, however, the couple plan to elope on the night Catherine returns from Europe with her father, but Morris fails to show up. The dramatic effects on Catherine are considerable: she understands that Morris, like her father, does not love her. Her final illusion that she is worth loving has been destroyed.

In the second inserted scene, which ends both the play and the film, the story comes full circle as Catherine gets her revenge. Whereas the couple's final meeting in the novel is a subdued scene in which Catherine calmly explains to Morris that she has no desire to marry him, the dramatic versions show Morris coming back some years later and asking Catherine—a wealthy woman, since her father's death—to elope with him at last. She seems to agree, but when he returns to pick her up, she bolts the door against him and ignores his repeated knocking.

The effectiveness of this second invented scene is related to another crucial alteration made by the Goetzes. James's novel takes place over twenty years, while the film's time frame is roughly three or four years. Thus, when the film's Morris returns from California, he is still young, and his appearance has not radically changed. (Clift now sports a mustache but still looks very much the same as he did at the beginning of the film.) Her suitor's relatively youthful appearance heightens the dramatic impact of Catherine's decision to reject and humiliate him. In contrast, the novel's Morris is in his mid-forties, and Catherine has become an “admirable old maid” who takes little satisfaction in rejecting him two decades after their original breakup.

The most significant difference between Wyler's film and the novel, as mentioned earlier, is that Catherine not only recognizes her father's contempt, Morris's hypocrisy, and her aunt's complicity but also acts on that knowledge with savage force, playing out her revenge against all concerned. Catherine's metamorphosis also affects the emotional balance of the story—as she grows harder and colder, some of the audience's sympathy shifts toward Dr. Sloper and Morris. In gradually acquiring the strength and purpose to stand up for herself, Catherine becomes more like those she now despises, and this evolution mitigates her eventual triumph.

In this sense, Catherine Sloper's “triumph” is more ambiguous than that of Regina Giddens in
The Little Foxes
, who prevails in a man's world by outfoxing her brothers, who are as venal and duplicitous as she is. Regina, however, is surrounded by sympathetic characters. She is responsible for the death of her husband, Horace, who is presented as a humanist, unalterably opposed to the plan of his wife and her brothers to strangle the community for profit; she alienates her daughter, Alexandra, and her sister-in-law as well. At the end, Wyler's camera captures Regina alone, framed in one of his characteristic shots by a window, looking down at Alexandra and her fiancé as they leave her behind. In
The Heiress
, however, despite being awkward and dull, Catherine is presented as authentic and kind, a devoted daughter and niece. Her virtues stand out in contrast to the grasping, limited people around her, whose main concern is money. By then having Catherine become more like them, Wyler leaves us in a dark and unattractive world.
¹⁷

Wyler's technique and mise-en-scène again concentrate on the characters' relationships and the shifting moods of the story. The film opens with a close-up on Catherine's embroidery frame, which depicts various views of the front of her home on Washington Square; these views then dissolve into an outdoor scene showing the home and the street re-created to look like New York in the 1850s. In contrast, the Goetzes' script dated June 7, 1948, opens with a series of lithographs depicting New York in the 1850s.
¹⁸
While this strategy communicates similar information about the era and setting of the story, the use of the heroine's embroidery is more effective; it immediately emphasizes the opposition between Catherine's “art” and the reality of street life, thus anticipating the film's concluding scene when she shuts herself up in her house, renouncing participation in the world around her. The opening credit sequence also indicates that the film is concerned with the characters' relationships within the confines of the home (the focus of most of Wyler's play adaptations), not their engagement with the wider world outside.

In an interview to promote the film, Wyler defended his philosophy of using space with integrity and intelligence: “Just because movies move, some people think they have to move all the time. A love scene, for instance, that would normally be played in a drawing room is played in a moving carriage or at the racetracks, merely to keep things in motion. But when you wrench a scene from its appropriate setting, you only succeed in distracting the audience.”
¹⁹
Most of the film takes place in various rooms of the house—with one notable exception and two minor ones. One central scene takes place at a dance at the home of Catherine's cousin, where she meets Morris. The other two are brief: a scene in a Paris café during Catherine's unhappy European trip with her father, and a later one in the park outside her house, when she refuses to go to her father's deathbed.

Catherine is introduced as she hurries down the stairs toward a servant who is coming up with a package that has just been delivered, containing the dress Catherine is to wear to the dance. She is briefly seen in a mirror in a shot that captures her predicament—not only anticipating her fate, like the opening shots of the embroidery, but also revealing her subordinate position in the household. The impression of entrapment is reinforced when she is caught in the frame of her father's office window as she continues her descent; he occupies the front of the frame, giving orders to another household servant. The stairs function (as they do in
Jezebel
and
The Little Foxes)
as locations for power and dominance; mirrors and window frames (as usual in Wyler's films) are their opposite, outlining images of restriction and powerlessness. Catherine is next seen buying fish from a fishmonger to make her father one of his favorite dishes, but Dr. Sloper's dismissive response is that, next time, she should “let the man carry it for you.”

The dance itself has no equivalent in the play (there, Morris meets Catherine while visiting the Slopers with his cousin). The festive scene is visually interesting, and it serves to extend the pacing and rhythm of the play, where the young couple seem to fall in love all too quickly. The film's tempo is more effective, as it makes their courtship seem lengthier and more realistic. Morris's introduction is dramatic, initiating Wyler's visual strategy of situating the young man in the frame to suggest his aggressive intentions. Catherine sees him before we do, and her face reflects the intensity of her reaction. Before his face appears, he is shown from the back as he walks across the frame, momentarily blocking our view of Catherine and her aunt. Morris then takes the place of Aunt Penniman beside Catherine, sharing her screen space as he, too, attempts to dominate her. During the dance, Wyler films them both in medium two-shots; they seem to be the only two people at the party, and Catherine appears happy and relaxed. This effect contrasts strongly to her first scene with her father, when she models her new party dress for him. There, the composition is formal and strained, emphasizing the considerable space between them, with Aunt Penniman in the middle.

In the following scene, as Morris comes courting at the Sloper home for the third time that week, Wyler's framing is similar, but with subtle differences. Morris arrives to find that Catherine is not home, so he must pass the time with Aunt Penniman. When Catherine comes in, he immediately goes to the hallway to greet her, and once they are alone in the drawing room, he moves in very close to her. Catherine tries to walk away from him—even bending backward to reduce their proximity—but Morris persists in invading her space. At one point, she manages to move into a separate frame, but Morris soon occupies that as well. Then, as he walks to the piano to play the French love song he learned in Paris, Wyler suddenly emphasizes the space between them. Morris sits at the piano while Catherine sits at a distance, allowing the viewer to take in the beauty and elegance of the rooms. As Morris plays and sings, “The joy of love lasts but a short time but the pain of love lasts your whole life,” Wyler cuts between them for the first time with shot–reverse shot sequences. On that line, the camera lingers on Catherine's face.

Wyler also places significant objects in his composed shots. After Morris proposes and then leaves, Catherine is shown framed by the doorway and reflected again in a mirror, along with a lighted lamp that will be used in subsequent scenes. When she informs her father of her engagement, he moves toward a similar lamp to get a cigar. We then see Catherine happily ascending the stairs with the same joy and alacrity she showed when descending them at the beginning of the film. This time, however, her shadow and the shadows from the stairwell reflect ominously on the wall behind her. This hint of foreboding is followed by a wide-angled shot of Dr. Sloper's face—in the front of the frame and lined up with Catherine's latest embroidery—looking worn and concerned.