Fuga d'inverno

(1984) Mrs. Soffel DRAMA/ SOCIAL COMMENTARY

Starring Mel Gibson as prisoner, Ed Biddle and Diane Keaton as Kate Soffel that was supposedly based on fact. That happened in 1901 centering on those two characters unusual love affair. 'The Biddle Brothers' of Ed (Mel Gibson) and his brother, Jack (Mathew Modine) are sentenced to death because of another former criminal's testimony, which this guy claims he saw the brothers shoot and kill a defenseless store clerk. Except that these claims are made by a convict who already has a criminal record. And since out of the many robberies the Biddle Brothers had done together, their had never been a recorded incident where someone had been killed as a result of those robberies, so it's more probable than not that it had never happened. Anyways, Mrs. Soffel is married to the warden of this particular prison where all she does is hand out bibles and blankets to all the inmates. At first, she doesn't believe Ed (Gibson) when he tells her that him and his brother are innocent in regarding a clerk's death, but as a result of putting one her daughters into bed, her daughter informs her as a result of saving newspaper clippings that it's more probable than impossible that 'the brothers' may be innocent. Ed then strike up an emotional attraction with Mrs. Soffel since she's not getting any from her impotent husband anymore, which her marriage seems to be lifeless. As viewers witness they sleep in separate rooms and act like husband and wife in principal only. And it was during that time, she of course does her best to prevent this death penalty to occur. Although, I liked both Mel Gibson and Diane Keaton's performances, the story structure is somewhat dull and predictable. For it was obvious the film is clearly arguing against the death penalty, solely for this reason is that the accused might be innocent. And this message was mentioned like in the first half hour before it drags and prolongs the movie by showcasing the two characters of Keaton and Gibson becoming intimate with one another, something one can get from a Harlequin novel. And that is boring which forced me to use the fast forward button on many scenes while playing.

This is one of the best American films of the 1980's. It is based on the true story of the wife of the Allegheny County Jail warden, Kate Soffel (Diane Keaton) who falls in love with a sexually alluring working class inmate, Ed Biddle (Mel Gibosn) in turn of the century Pittsburgh and plots to help him and his brother, Jack (Matthew Modine) escape. Director Gillian Armstrong and screenwriter Ron Nyswaner brilliantly decided to deal with the story in an elliptical and indirect way. We aren't telegraphed anything. We don't know if the Biddle's are innocent. We don't really understand why Kate falls in love with Ed. We aren't directly told why Kate is so disappointed in her life. The filmmakers takes this personal story and turns it into a progressive feminist mood poem. It is extraordinary to see a post 1970's American film this complex and this progressive.

Diane Keaton gives a remarkably complex and nuanced performance. The film is almost unimaginable with her in the leading role. Early in the film she communicates the torment and longing of Kate in a way that warrants comparisons with the greatest acting of the silent cinema. We see the depression and desperation in Kate's face in a way that rivals Maria Falconetti in Dryer's THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC and Lilian Gish in Victor Sjöström's THE WIND and D.W. Griffith's BROKEN BLOSSOM'S. One of the remarkably subversive aspects of the film is its relationship to Kate's Christianity (which becomes particularly pointed watched in the contemporary context and thinking about Mel Gibson's PASSION OF THE Christ fundamentalism). She is a bit scary creeping about the prison trying to sell doomed men on a faith that will set them free. The suggestion is that it is this same faith, or more precisely the way Christianity is used as a structuring device of patriarchy, that has trapped Kate into her own life sentence. When she becomes aroused by Ed everything shifts, she looks different, some kind of remarkable radiance shines forth from Keaton's face. Her bible lessons become a pretext for sexual release. She literally makes love to Ed through the bars with his brother nearby, which adds a remarkable charge of voyeurism to the proceedings.

Mel Gibson has never been photographed more sensually then in this film. There is a scene late in the film, in which, he is lying in bed with the sunlight playing on his face that in which his beauty is almost angelic. He's photographed and contextualized the way male directors have often shot young classically beautiful women (think of Julie Christie in David Lean's Dr. ZHIVAGO, Joseph Losey's THE GO BETWEEN, or Donald Cammell's DEMONSEED or Faye Dunaway in Roman Polanski's CHINATOWN or Sydney Pollock's 3 DAYS OF THE CONDOR). Armstong also allows Gibson's sense of humor to peek out to suggest layers to this character. We never totally trust Ed, yet we root for him or at least root for Kate's vision of him.

The cinematography by Russell Boyd is exceptionally original and the production design emphasizes the grimy oppressive nature of an industrial town. this was actually a critique of the film at the time of its release. It was too dark, mainstream reviewers said. Well actually its historically accurate. Pittsburgh was so soot filled and grimy that the street lights had to stay on all day long! This is the great environmental tragedy of the industrial revolution. Armstrong uses this look for strong dramatic effect and creates a kind of mood poem here that reminds me of the best work of Antonioni and of Werner Herzog remarkable NOSFERATU. Like in that great film we can never quiet situate ourselves, the oppressive dim look of the film suggests we might be in a kind of waking nightmare. Is the environment part of Kate's psychic and physical affliction? Who could be happy or healthy living in this kind of relentlessly dismal environ? When we finally leave Pittsburgh Boyd and Armstrong present us with some of the most lovingly photographed images of sun and snow in American cinema. The viewer so ready for these brighter images that they alter our the way we connect to the story.

That this film was neither a critical nor a commercial success is a tragedy for the contemporary Hollywood cinema. Its failure became one of the many excuses for the overwhelming turn to the banal cookie cutter cinema that Hollywood is known for today. One hopes that cinephiles everywhere will reclaim ambitious films like MRS. SOFFEL as an example

This one was a nice surprise, I hadn't seen it when it first came out, so I rented it and enjoyed it thoroughly. Diane Keaton and Mel Gibson carry the day in this true tale of a wardens wife who falls for a prisoner. Matthew Modine does a fine job as Mel Gibsons brother, and the entire cast is fine. It's beautifully shot in Pittsburgh, and there is a languid quality about it that I found alluring. Well done all around.

Mel Gibson's performance in "Mrs. Soffel" is superb in any event, but viewed in the context that it is the first time he played an American character on film, that his brother was played by American actor Matthew Modine, and that the film was based on a true story of two men from Pittsburgh, it is an even greater achievement.

"Mrs. Soffel" is a wonderful movie I have seen many times, but the last viewing was so many years ago I'm watching it right now on TCM.

I'm a sucker for movies whose main characters suddenly, inexplicably make a decision which goes against everything they seem to embody, or at least that which the viewer has come to know about them. That Kate Soffel's story is a true one makes it all the more intriguing.

In early 20th-century America, the lot of a wife, even that of a well-to-do-man and mother to lovely children, was a lonely, empty, barren existence. In a wealthy household with servants, there was very little meaningful work for the mistress of the house to do every day.

Even the layers upon layers of clothes Victorian women wore served no practical purpose except to restrict movement and render their wearers merely decorative. Express your opinions and you got packed off to visit relatives in hopes that maybe the change of scenery would "do you good." There were millions of avenues for creative expression and enterprise that were simply cut off for women.

Good minds went to waste. Souls shriveled and died.

Kate Soffel (Diane Keaton) was the wife of a prison warden in Pittsburgh at the turn of the last century. She served as something of a missionary to the prisoners, giving them Bibles, holding prayer readings with them and hoping to guide them towards remorse and redemption. She never expects to fall in love with one of the inmates. But fall she does, for the charming Ed Biddle (Mel Gibson), who along with his brother Jack, (Matthew Modine) are in jail on murder charges.

Kate is suffocating; the Biddles are desperate. Prone to fits of melancholy and depression, plagued with fears that she is not a good mother and that she has failed her husband -- whom she has come to learn she really doesn't know very well -- Kate, like so many women of her era, is desperate for something to end the tedium, the frustration, the despair. She is a perfect candidate for the dangerous voyage she helps plan and sets out on with the Biddle brothers.

"Mrs. Soffel" raises many ethical and moral issues, among them the divergent path Kate takes from her religious teachings, and the Biddle brothers' guilt or innocence. It can be appreciated equally on one or more levels, but it remains a remarkably restrained depiction of emotions and passion that are anything but.