back

Orange County Register
This performance a class act
MOVIES: A UCI literature professor applauds Gillian Anderson,
hemmed in by high society in 'The House of Mirth.'
By VALERIE TAKAHAMA
The Orange County Register

For fans of Agent Scully, the truth is out there. On Gillian Anderson Web sites, devotees of "The X-Files" star are gushing about her new movie, "The House of Mirth," calling it "raw and beautiful" and "stunning and moving."

And at least one member of a tougher, more critical audience - university literature professors who teach the Edith Wharton novel the film is based on - also gives the movie and the actress an A-plus.

"It's a beautiful movie. I think translation from a very rich novel to film is difficult," said Margot Norris, chairwoman of the English and comparative literature department at the University of California, Irvine.

"I thought Gillian Anderson looked quite marvelous. Part of it was that she has a strong face; her beauty is in a kind of character rather than just prettiness," said Norris, who doesn't watch TV and has never seen "The X-Files."

Like the novel, Terence Davies' movie traces the decline of Lily Bart (Anderson), a beautiful and charming 29-year-old socialite who needs to marry a man with a fortune big enough to finance her love of luxury and ease. Instead, she falls in love with Lawrence Selden (Eric Stoltz), who is well-bred but by no means rich and finds that she can't bring herself to marry for money alone.

Wharton's first major novel, "The House of Mirth" resonated strongly with readers when originally published in serial form in 1905 in Scribner's magazine. When the publisher released it as a novel late in the year, it sold about 140,000 copies in a month, making it the fastest-selling novel of its day.

"I think that the fact that it gave them an inside glance into high society - and an unflattering one - was probably not displeasing to a middle-class readership," Norris said.

"People may have responded also to the tragedy and the kind of moral exploration that the novel makes."

The rigid, unforgiving high society of the novel was a world Wharton knew well. Both her parents were from prominent, wealthy New York families. Her father was George Frederic Jones, and the expression "keeping up with the Joneses" is said to refer to Wharton's parents. Educated at home and for several years in Europe by tutors, she also made use of her father's vast library.

"Her family had 'old money,' and what this meant was that she was raised to have a perfect grasp of decorum and custom and propriety," Norris said. "Her mother was a stickler to make sure she was absolutely perfectly trained. She came out. She made her debut when she was 17. She married a wealthy man the family approved of. She saw the society up close."

And from her novels - including "The Custom of the Country" (1913) and "The Age of Innocence" (1920), winner of the Pulitizer Prize - it's apparent that she disliked much of what she saw of her class.

"My only real insight into why she was so critical is she must have had a very acute - even though it was autodidactically trained - she had a very sharp intelligence," Norris said.

"Also, I think she suffered from the system to some extent. Her marriage was not a happy one. Her literary ambitions were not supported. They were not entirely hindered, but it was clear that women of her class were not expected to be intellectuals or writers. I think that must have grieved her, clearly."

In interviews, Davies said the book's modernity is what attracted him: "It's about how much money you've got, what you look like - and what is modern society about if not how much money you've got and what you look like?"

So is Lily Bart the Gilded Age equivalent of a would-be trophy wife?

"Coming out of a critical tradition, I'd put it a little differently," Norris said. "One of the things that Lily Bart has to come face to face with is that she feels obliged by her society to treat herself as a commodity on the marriage market.

"One of the things that's very poignant is that (Selden) is in the same situation that she is. He doesn't have any money, either, but he has a profession. He's been trained. She hasn't been trained. She's useless to herself for anything other than how she can leverage her beauty into marriage."

A few years ago, Norris visited the great mansions of the era in Newport, R.I., and was amazed at how accurately the novelist captured them and "all their European affectations."

"It's kind of a mishmash of European architecture and frescos and marble. The estate or the manor that they used for some of the interiors in the film, I could have sworn they filmed them in the Newport mansions," she said.

Also spot-on was Anderson - even though Lily is described in the novel as a blonde and Anderson is a redhead. Davies, a London-based director best known for a pair of autobiographical films, said he had never heard of "The X-Files" when he cast the actress. He had seen a photograph of her from the 1998 movie "The Mighty" that reminded him of portraits by turn-of-the-century society painter John Singer Sargent.

But her looks alone weren't what impressed Norris.

"She also did something quite marvelous, which was throughout the film, she managed to project simultaneously a sense of strength and vulnerability," she said.

"There are some scenes that are just heartbreaking. I thought she communicated that perfectly."

THE END

back