PARTISAN REVIEW
451
silling through another respectful literary adaptation-I stayed to like
Daisy
Miller.
A few genuinely inspired moments in Bogdanovich's coolly reverent
translation of the James short novel, among the care and exceeding taste of the
rest, save the movie from its determinedly modest self-importance.
The closing sequence is a particular triumph, a piece of audacity that
moves us in a way that nothing in the film prepares us to expect. We ex–
perience through Winterboume a sense of waste and lost, an irrevocable past
unspent, the shame of having willfully misperceived the object of his love (too
late to be done or undone). It is James's theme, and Bogdanovich seems pecu–
liarly alive to it as if it were a shared vision they had arrived at by separate
routes.
If
possible, Bogdanovich seems an even greater partisan of American
spontaneity and innocence-the very qualities lacking in his work-than
James. The freezing of the image of Winterbourne at Daisy's grave, as the color
bleaches out by degrees, achieves a visual correlative for Winterbourne's·
deepening realization of loss. The last dialogue between Winterbour.ne and his
aunt, an apparent flash forward, is heard on the sound track as if it were some–
thing rehearsed over and over again in Winterbourne's consciousness.
Bogdanovich, who relies heavily on performances in his other films, tran–
scends the limitation of Cybill Shepherd's Daisy through image. The last
scene, which evokes in a shocking revision of our perspective the allractiveness
and innocence of Daisy, makes Shepherd's performance seem richer in retro–
spect than it does from scene to scene. Her challering, spoiled princess of a
tease appeared for the most part out of period to me as if she were merely
visiting the nineteenth century, a tourist who will try anything once. Daisy's
modernism-or is it Shepherd's?-her insistent Impropriety, is intended no
doubt as an aspect of the character's being an American in Europe.
One of the few scenes Bogdanovich added to James's narrative is an ex–
ceptional sequence in which Daisy teases her suitor Giovanelli in Winter–
bourne's presence by coaxing him to sing "Pop Goes the Weasel" in his oper–
atic tenor. Her small cruelty to Giovanelli is a love message to Winterbourne
he fails to perceive. A moment later, by request, Daisy sings "When You and I
Were Young, Maggie," the song evoking the frontier West of our movie past.
It
is Cybill Shepard's best scene, and in it we glimpse the fragile bravado of her
peculiarly American innocence and her character gains new focus for us.
Daisy
Miller
may not be Bogdanovich's best film, but its inspired sequences are an
indication that the director, contrary to prior evidence, may not have already
sellied for the easy success of minor accomplishment.
As
Daisy Miller
is about the rediscovery of America (in Europe) by a Eu–
ropeanized American, Terrence Malick's first feature,
Badlands,
is a depiction
of the American landscape of the sixties as filtered through the influence of
European filmmakers-Godard
(Breathless
and
Pierrot Le Fou)
and An–
tonioni in particular. What distinguishes
Badlands
from other modish films
