Over at Girish Shambu’s immensely stimulating Web site, the latest discussion turns to what he calls “small, striking moments” in movies, and he asks his readers to post about some they’ve picked up on. Few did; the commenters quickly waxed theoretical, with references to Roland Barthes’s notion of “studium” and “punctum” (which, in the interest of full disclosure, I made, too, in a post here several weeks ago, regarding the grain, or, rather, the insinuating grainlessness of the actor Howard Da Silva’s voice). In any case, I’m tempted to joke that there are no small moments, only small viewers. But there are directors who work in exquisite touches, who leave perceptible, hyperrefined brushstrokes on the screen—who are more Fragonard than Van Gogh—and the master of that manner is Ernst Lubitsch (whose art was justly celebrated as the “Lubitsch touch”). And the point of his touch is that it usually took the place of touching—it was a way of getting to the erotic by allusion. In his 1941 comedy “That Uncertain Feeling,” which I discuss in the clip above, he built a daringly sexy story (in which adultery takes place brazenly and goes unpunished) on a series of finely pointed gestures.
A moment is proven to be striking by its quotability. The toast that a Park Avenue insurance executive (played by Melvyn Douglas) teaches his docile, frustrated young wife (Merle Oberon) to offer his prospective Hungarian clients—“Egesegedre!”—which she delivers with a mechanical politeness and they take up with a hearty satisfaction—is a catchword in our household. It wouldn’t be amiss to refer to the repeated, er, ejaculations of the word “Phooey!” by the interloping bohemian (Burgess Meredith) who pursues her, nor to see a Freudian implication or two in his repeated tucking-away of a cylindrical vase in a small, rectangular cupboard. After all, the plot is launched by a double entendre so blatant as to reduce the Hays Code to blithering, um, impotence: tormented by recurring hiccups, the young woman consults a psychiatrist but is unable to display her symptoms, because, she says, “When I come, it goes, and when I go, it comes.” What he prescribes is, of course, all too apparent; the resulting machinations for a divorce are a peculiar effect of New York’s law, which requires one party to bring suit against another on specific charges. And I heard from Lynn Oberlander, The New Yorker’s general counsel, that this is so even today: New York State still doesn’t have no-fault divorce. I wonder who’s got a script on hand to make fresh hay of this ancient anomaly.
