William Wyler (54 page)

Wyler's conversion scene is more indirect and vague than Wallace's or even Niblo's. The film's Judah seems less influenced by the teachings of Jesus—which, unlike his fictional counterpart, he never experiences directly—than by the dedication and love of Esther and the rehabilitation of his mother and sister. It is Esther who teaches him that “blessed are the merciful.” Nonetheless, Wyler's Judah has finally embraced a unity with his people and a vision of brotherhood that is seemingly divorced from hatred and touched by the spirit of forgiveness, love, and hope.

The personal journey of Judah Ben-Hur is more dramatically compelling than that of the characters in
The Big Country
because Jim McKay and Julie Maragon never really learn anything. Their attitudes and beliefs are set from the beginning, so the events that unfold do not mold them in any way. One wonders how Steve Leech and Patricia Terrill will evolve after the death of the Major and their association with McKay, but the film does not tell us. Although both Hannasseys are dead, it is unclear whether their blood will cleanse the “big country.” The pacifist argument of
Friendly Persuasion
poses similar problems. Jess and especially Eliza are steadfast from the beginning in their rejection of violence and the taking of another's life. Of all the central characters, only Josh is unsure, and he eventually joins his community's volunteers and fights in the war. Still, Wyler never delves deeply into the war's lasting effects on the Birdwells or even on Josh. In
Ben-Hur
, however, he offers a more spiritual journey, in that Judah learns something about the importance of love, and this realization changes his life.

What links the three films is Wyler's rejection, in each case, of the pacifist, nonviolent philosophy. After the war, his view of human nature had darkened, and the change would be even more clearly reflected in the three personal films that rounded out his career:
The Children's Hour, The Collector
, and
The Liberation of L. B. Jones
.

The Collector
(1965),
How to Steal a Million
(1966),
Funny Girl
(1968),
The Liberation of L. B. Jones
(1970)

After the enormous success of
Ben-Hur
, Wyler wanted to move away from big, expensive pictures and return to his roots by making a smaller, intimate drama featuring mostly interior sets. Choosing to return to the black-and-white format as well, he first took a second try at Lillian Hellman's
The Children's Hour
. As discussed earlier, that film was not successful, but its failure did not damage Wyler's reputation. He was by then one of the industry's giants and an elder statesman.

Darryl Zanuck, who was about to become president of Twentieth Century–Fox, wanted him on the board of directors, but after serving in that capacity for a short time, Wyler discovered that boardroom politics did not interest him. Zanuck's son Richard, who had been installed as head of production, then asked Wyler to direct the film version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's
The Sound of Music
, which had been running on Broadway for three years and won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 1960. Wyler went to see the play in New York but was not overly enthused about it. He remarked to his friend Bob Swink, “They want me to make this picture and I don't know what to do. The people in this musical are playing a scene and all of a sudden somebody starts to sing. Sometimes they're just walking along and somebody starts to sing. Why the hell do they start singing?”
¹
Wyler was obviously aware of the conventions of musicals; he just saw no compelling motivation for many of the songs in the show. Nevertheless, he thought it would be a challenge to direct a musical—something he had never done. Fox had already signed Ernest Lehman (
North by Northwest, West Side Story
) to write the screenplay, and he encouraged Wyler to take on the film.

Wyler agreed, and he cast Julie Andrews. “I had seen her play
My Fair Lady
in New York and was very impressed,” he recalled. “She was working on
Mary Poppins
. I went over to the studio and Walt Disney showed me some rushes and introduced me to her on the set.”
²
Wyler even went to Austria to scout locations and then traveled to Salzburg to meet the mayor and look at settings there as well. While making all these preliminary moves, however, he remained bothered by the idea of making a musical about the Nazis. When Lehman argued that they were really making a film about a heroic family who escaped the Nazis, he seemed at least partially convinced: “I knew it wasn't really a political thing. I had a tendency to want to make it, if not an anti-Nazi movie, at least say a few things. It was true that Nazism was not what the movie was about; I knew it would be a success; although not
that
big.”
³
Wyler, however, was never entirely happy during preparation for the film, and when circumstances intervened that offered him a chance to back out, he took it.

Those circumstances involved a script provided by two young former television writers, Jud Kinberg and John Kohn, who had moved to London and were producing movies for Blazer Films. After reading
The Collector
, the first novel by British author John Fowles, they purchased the screen rights and then interested Mike Frankovich, head of Columbia Pictures' overseas division, in the project. Next, they sent the galleys of the novel to their first choice to play the lead, Terence Stamp, who was riding high on his success as Billy Budd in Peter Ustinov's film and his follow-up triumph on stage as Alfie. Kinberg and Kohn also wanted Wyler to direct. When Frankovich was made head of Columbia, he sent the two to visit Wyler at his home. By this time, the producers already had a first-draft script by Stanley Mann (
The Mouse that Roared
), which they left with Wyler, along with a copy of the novel.

Wyler loved the story, telling
Time
magazine, “I found I couldn't put the book down,” although he thought Mann's script needed work.
⁴
He told Frankovich he wanted to do the picture and was even willing to relinquish his producer's hat to Kinberg and Kohn. Fowles's novel, which soon became a best seller, tells the story of Freddie Clegg, a compulsive, neurotic bank clerk who collects butterflies. One day, he wins the football pool and uses his winnings to buy a secluded mansion with a gothic cellar. It is there that he brings his latest specimen—Miranda, the girl of his dreams, an art student he has kidnapped off the street in London.

It is easy to see why Wyler was intrigued by this property. it features a protagonist whose obsessive nature recalls that of many of his earlier characters, including Seth Law of
A House Divided
, Martha Dobie and Mary Tilford of
These Three
and
The Children's Hour
, Julie Marsden of
Jezebel
, Heathcliff of
Wuthering Heights
, Regina Giddens of
The Little Foxes
, Catherine Sloper and Morris Townsend of
The Heiress
, James McLeod of
Detective Story
, and George Hurstwood of
Carrie
—all of whom work out their dramas within a confined space. Filming
The Collector
promised to be a more contemporary project than the remake of
The Children's Hour
, as the main character's seemingly innocent and gentle manner in fact camouflages a sick and damaged personality (much like Alfred Hitchcock's Norman Bates in
Psycho)
. Wyler thus agreed with his producers that the role should be played by Stamp, who embodied angelic innocence in
Billy Budd
but was equally convincing as a womanizer in
Alfie
, a role that mimicked his tabloid life.

To cast the part of Miranda Grey, Wyler had screen tests made of young British actresses in London. Eventually, Samantha Eggar won the role, although she had little professional experience. Wyler was afraid she would not be able to handle the part, but Frankovich was taken with her and insisted that she be given a chance. Eggar was fired three weeks into rehearsals, however. As she later recalled, “Terry Stamp's nasty attitude toward me undermined me so much that I just became sort of a squashed balloon and, rightly, I got fired.”
⁵
Wyler then contacted Natalie Wood and offered her the role two weeks before shooting was set to start, but a scheduling conflict prevented her from accepting. Finally, Wyler made a deal with Frankovich: he would rehire Eggar if she had an acting coach with her at all times. For that assignment, he chose veteran character actress Kathleen Freeman, who stayed with Eggar throughout the shoot, helping to mold her characterization.

At first, Wyler wanted to make the film in black and white because of the bleak subject matter, but he changed his mind after seeing Eggar's makeup tests, which were made both in black and white and in color. Cinematographer Robert Surtees was dazzled by Eggar's red hair and fair skin in the color test, which Wyler agreed was better, but he wanted the color to be subdued and muted. He also decided to film
The Collector
in sequence, hoping to help the young actress build her character more effectively.

Like
Ben-Hur
, the film version of
The Collector
departs significantly from the novel on which it is based. Fowles's novel is divided into two narratives, each relating the point of view of one of the protagonists—Freddie Clegg, the clerk who wins a large amount of money, and Miranda Grey, the doctor's daughter, art student, and political radical whom Freddie kidnaps. Her story is told in the form of a diary, which Freddie finds after her death. The film eliminates this dual perspective, effectively omitting Miranda's story; instead, it brings captor and captive together in one narrative presented from a detached, objective viewpoint. As he did in
The Big Country
and
Ben-Hur
, Wyler uses this material to examine themes of power and possessiveness, but this time, the story's more concentrated focus results in a much darker, more brooding and pessimistic film. Wyler was undoubtedly influenced by Hitchcock's
Psycho
and perhaps also by Michael Powell's
Peeping Tom
—both films about obsessive young men whose need for a woman's affection leads to destructive ends.

The film begins with a long shot of an open green meadow. Freddie then enters the frame chasing a butterfly, which he soon captures in his net and puts in a glass jar. He then moves toward a beautiful old Tudor mansion that is for sale. He jumps over the fence, approaches the side of the house, and enters a room that looks like a cellar out of a gothic horror film. The juxtaposition of field, house, and dungeon is jarring in its abrupt progress from freedom to confinement, and the concept of openness effectively disappears from the film after this first movement. We then hear Freddie's narration, which serves as a framing device at the beginning and end of the film. He talks of his decision to buy the house because of its remoteness and isolation but claims he had no idea he would actually go ahead with his plan to bring her (Miranda) there, even though he had made all the preparations. Wyler films Freddie from a low angle, emphasizing his freedom and power and making him seem almost larger than the house.

The dungeon that will be Miranda's prison becomes the film's central locus and metaphor. Wyler's framing evokes the dark, cave-like room where Buck Hannassey attempts to rape Julie Maragon, the dungeons where Tirzah and Miriam are imprisoned and the caves where they are kept as lepers, and the galleys where Judah Ben-Hur is confined. Julie, however, is redeemed by McKay's love, and the Hur family is saved in large part through divine intervention, while Miranda is afforded no such redemption. She will never escape her prison.

Our first view of Miranda is Wyler's. We see her through the window and blinds of Freddie's van as she exits the art school, vibrant and laughing. Wyler does not utilize point-of-view shots during these sequences; instead, the camera shows Freddie watching Miranda. She is then caught in a frame within a frame in the rearview mirror. Throughout these sequences, Wyler films Freddie mostly from behind in a silhouette-like shot. Dark and barely visible, he is associated with the dungeon, while Miranda is smiling and happy, enjoying the only moments of freedom she will have in the film before being captured like the butterfly.

Having subdued Miranda with chloroform and taken her to her “guest quarters,” Freddie returns to his house and sticks his head under the sink faucet, wetting his hair and face. He is ecstatic, barely able to contain his joy at accomplishing his goal. When it begins to rain, he runs out, dancing with his hands in the air, and then lies down in the grass to let the rain wash over him. Wyler thus inverts the rain-redemption scene from
Ben-Hur
(when Miriam and Tirzah are cured of their leprosy), here emphasizing its perverse implications by cutting from Freddie's face to that of Miranda, who is just waking up and realizes she is imprisoned in a dungeon. Freddie's antics also mimic the exuberance of Heathcliff, who escapes to the moors to revitalize himself outside the confinement imposed by Earnshaw, who has become his jailer. Freddie, however, is no child of nature, for his love is an aberration, and he himself is the jailer.

When he brings Miranda her breakfast the next morning, Freddie utters his first words in character: “I hope you slept well.” He seems solicitous and shy, but he betrays a total lack of understanding of her reaction to the situation she finds herself in. Apparently nonplussed by her demand to know where she is and why she was brought here, he expresses his conviction that, having been provided a room complete with art books and a wardrobe, she should be content to be his “guest.”

The thematic center of the film occurs in the scene in which Freddie shows Miranda his butterfly collection. For the first time, he is verbally unrestrained and able to speak with enthusiasm about his hobby—referring to himself as an “ornithologist.” Miranda, having been allowed to take a bath, is invited into Freddie's butterfly room, which is filled with framed exhibits. At first, she is dazzled by their variety and beauty, but she soon turns on him and bewails “all the living beauty you've ended.” Defensively, Freddie echoes Messala's comment about the Jews when he replies, “What difference does a few specimens make to a whole species?” When Miranda sees her reflection in a butterfly case, she realizes that she, too, is being collected. She cries out that everything in the room is dead: “Is that what you love? Death!” Here, Wyler resorts to shot–reverse shots in a film that is dominated by two-shots. His camera lingers on Freddie's face after Miranda's accusation—he can say nothing, for this perception goes to the heart of his psychosis. Her words force him to recognize, finally, that his obsession with capturing and pinning down objects of beauty is not a matter of class difference (as implied in an earlier retort) but a perverse need to kill what he loves. Wyler then cuts to Miranda, whose look indicates that she knows she will die, like all the beautiful specimens in the room.

Freddie is not really attracted to Miranda as a woman, despite his claims of love. In the novel, Miranda clearly recognizes and articulates this lethal irony: “I am one in a row of specimens. It's when I try to flutter out of line that he hates me. I'm meant to be dead, pinned, always the same, and always beautiful. He knows that part of my beauty is being alive, but it's the dead me he wants.” A reverse Pygmalion, Freddie really wants to possess an art object, and in this coldblooded pursuit, he closely resembles the Hitchcockian psychopaths Norman Bates, who also collects dead things, and Scottie Ferguson, who seeks to drain the humanity out of Judy Barton in
Vertigo
. All of them are slightly in love with death. As Miranda realizes that she will never be free—forever frozen, forever the same, forever beautiful, like the figures on Keats's Grecian urn—Wyler significantly cuts from her face to the pinned butterflies, which flutter as she closes the door, then to her drawings of Freddie hanging in her cave, and then to Miranda sketching a self-portrait while looking at her face, framed in a mirror, as Freddie watches her. Wyler, like Hitchcock in
Vertigo
, seems to be associating the preoccupation with art and beauty with an unhealthy, deathlike madness. Miranda, whose name is an ironic reference to the wizard Prospero's daughter, is herself an artist, and she is now fated to become an object like her drawing. When Freddie asks her for the sketch, she rips it half, telling him to put it in the drawer with the butterflies.