Anthropologists used to divide cultures into those of "shame" and those of "guilt." Can I suggest the Mafia as an example of the former and this lot as an example of the latter? Boy, do they have guilt. One of them even dies from it. They were really puritanical. They must have been, otherwise why would they be called "Puritans"? I suppose I shouldn't joke about what is essentially a tragic tale of sin and redemption by Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose New England ancestors were responsible for some lousy goings on in the early 1600s. The author was probably trying to expiate some of his own guilt about his native culture. It's the same reason Southern authors like Faulkner and Carson McCullers wrote about the cultures they grew up in.
Anyway, what this movie is, is a kind of extremely classy and thoughtful soap opera, rather like Rhett and Scarlett in "Gone With The Wind," except that here the comic interludes are provided by a couple of town goons along the lines of Laurel and Hardy, instead of by slaves as in "Gone With The Wind." There's no other viable comparison, I don't think. Margaret Mitchell stuck us with the perspective of Scarlett O'Hara, but Hawthorne gives us an inside view of an entire stilted community.
It's not a community that I particularly admire. Not when the women have names like Hester and Abigail and Hepzibah. Yet Hawthorne shows that, although they can be mean as hell, the rules hold the community tightly together. In the end, the author seems to justify those rules.
The rules are curious in themselves. All community norms are. They're constructed in such a way as to stratify the town. Somebody always must be at the bottom of the ladder. If we didn't have small-town bums, we'd have to invent them in order to have someone to point at and tell ourselves, "At least WE'RE not as bad as THEY are." Those whores on our city streets make us feel good.
At any rate, this story involves Hester Prynne whose husband has been absent and incommunicado for, lo, two solid years. She has a child by a man she refuses to name and, as punishment, is condemned to wear the scarlet letter "A" on her dress to signify "adultress." The child is aptly named "Pearl," which is what you get when you iritate an oyster. The poor innocent kid is treated miserably by everyone. The rapscallion responsible is her own Pastor Dimmesdale, who can't reveal his sin without plunging the community into chaos -- or something. I didn't quite get his reasoning. He pays for his few moments of pleasure (or hours, if he was lucky) by branding his own chest secretly with an "A" and by getting sick and finally dying as he confesses. Of course, guilt doesn't really make you physically ill but it's a metaphor for his spiritual malaise. Final scene, Dimmesdale with his bared chest lying dead across Hester Prynne's lap, surrounded by the townspeople who have evidently found forgiveness in themselves for the two sinners. So it seems, anyway. Everyone is silent and the men remove their hats.
The melancholy story of suffering aside, it's kind of fun to watch Hollywood's treatment of period detail. I don't think they were still using Middle English forms of address like "thee" and "ye," were they? But we get to see the kind of clothing that the Pilgrims wore, and we see breadpans wielded, stocks, a joke revolving around a courting trumpet, wash boards that were really "boards", and Alan Hale as a rambunctious and finally duped carpenter.
The movie illustrates the sentiment behind Christ's pronouncement, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." It's also a good argument for birth control.
Anyway, what this movie is, is a kind of extremely classy and thoughtful soap opera, rather like Rhett and Scarlett in "Gone With The Wind," except that here the comic interludes are provided by a couple of town goons along the lines of Laurel and Hardy, instead of by slaves as in "Gone With The Wind." There's no other viable comparison, I don't think. Margaret Mitchell stuck us with the perspective of Scarlett O'Hara, but Hawthorne gives us an inside view of an entire stilted community.
It's not a community that I particularly admire. Not when the women have names like Hester and Abigail and Hepzibah. Yet Hawthorne shows that, although they can be mean as hell, the rules hold the community tightly together. In the end, the author seems to justify those rules.
The rules are curious in themselves. All community norms are. They're constructed in such a way as to stratify the town. Somebody always must be at the bottom of the ladder. If we didn't have small-town bums, we'd have to invent them in order to have someone to point at and tell ourselves, "At least WE'RE not as bad as THEY are." Those whores on our city streets make us feel good.
At any rate, this story involves Hester Prynne whose husband has been absent and incommunicado for, lo, two solid years. She has a child by a man she refuses to name and, as punishment, is condemned to wear the scarlet letter "A" on her dress to signify "adultress." The child is aptly named "Pearl," which is what you get when you iritate an oyster. The poor innocent kid is treated miserably by everyone. The rapscallion responsible is her own Pastor Dimmesdale, who can't reveal his sin without plunging the community into chaos -- or something. I didn't quite get his reasoning. He pays for his few moments of pleasure (or hours, if he was lucky) by branding his own chest secretly with an "A" and by getting sick and finally dying as he confesses. Of course, guilt doesn't really make you physically ill but it's a metaphor for his spiritual malaise. Final scene, Dimmesdale with his bared chest lying dead across Hester Prynne's lap, surrounded by the townspeople who have evidently found forgiveness in themselves for the two sinners. So it seems, anyway. Everyone is silent and the men remove their hats.
The melancholy story of suffering aside, it's kind of fun to watch Hollywood's treatment of period detail. I don't think they were still using Middle English forms of address like "thee" and "ye," were they? But we get to see the kind of clothing that the Pilgrims wore, and we see breadpans wielded, stocks, a joke revolving around a courting trumpet, wash boards that were really "boards", and Alan Hale as a rambunctious and finally duped carpenter.
The movie illustrates the sentiment behind Christ's pronouncement, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." It's also a good argument for birth control.