Ligeia313-1

I watched this film forty years after it was made, in a theater in downtown New York City that plays only art films. Still, I was impressed by the audience's rapt attention over the 3 and 1/2 hours of the film. I too was sitting fascinated the entire time. We seemed to understand that a part of the experience of watching it was familiarizing ourselves with the details of the dignified Jeanne's existence. Every piece of furniture in her apartment is viewed over and over, and her daily routine is so minutely reviewed that it is imprinted in the mind; so, any tiny deviation jumps out as a sinister departure portending -- what? You wait worriedly to find out what it could mean. Mostly you feel a great sadness for someone who is clearly desperate to make ends meet financially, so she and her child will be okay. You see a perfectionist at work as she proceeds through the day, as though the great care she is taking shining and folding and washing will somehow result in safety for her and the child. There is a spirituality in this, and it begins to take hold of you, and you fervently hope for her survival.

This film has at its heart the problem of young people desperately in need of medical knowledge that neither the family doctor nor the parents will provide. It was not considered appropriate. Deanie's mother says, after the stresses of the girl's situation has caused a nervous breakdown, "Deanie, I told you what my mother told me." Bud's family doctor refuses to help him. In Dreiser's An American Tragedy (which became the film A Place in the Sun) the hero, Clive,is similarly not helped by the doctor he consults. His girlfriend becomes pregnant and she then "dies" in a boating accident. The older generation sees the whole subject as Trouble, and doesn't see medical information as important to impart.