DANIEL BELL
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Greenwi ch Vill age was then abuzz with Bergson a nd Freud . A
doc trine called the Life Fo rce (derived in some mys terious way from
the asse rtions of Hugo de Vries, tha t evolutiona ry cha nge occurred
not in tiny, gradual steps, bu t in leaps) spurred a bel ief in V ita lism.
One had to be psychoana lyzed , Floyd Dell expla ined , to "unravel
one's compl exes," a nd achieve in stinctua l self- express ion . Emma
Goldma n , who call ed he r magaz ine
M other Earth ,
lectured boldl y on
such topics as "The Intermedi ate Sex (A Study of H omosexua lity),"
and "Is M a n a Va ri eti st or M onogami st?" When seve ral thou sand
Paterson strikers ma rched from the J ersey ferries to M adi son Squa re
Garden , with red ba nners fl ying a nd the I.W.W . ba nd playing the
Marse ill a ise, M abel Dodge, a t whose salon thi s pageant had been
conce ived by J ohn R eed , rema rked : "One o f the gayes t touches, I
think , was teaching them to sing one o f their lawl ess songs to the
tune of 'H arvard , Old H a rvard .' "
J ohn R eed , as one o f the edi to rs of the
M asses,
was a t the cen te r
of this wo rld . "Long befo re they met ," as R eed's biographer R obert
A. R osenstone writes, "Loui se was famili a r enough with R eed's
repu tation to weave fa n tas ies a bout this local rebel whose stage was
the world . H e seemed a heroic fi gure whose life bristl ed with exc ite–
men t, a man 'who wouldn't ca re wha t hour you went to bed or wha t
hour you go t up .'"
The film captures a ll thi s brillia ntl y . In their fi rs t encounter ,
Loui se goes na ttering through the ni ght on culture a nd politics,
while J ack shifts impa tiently, wan ting to take her to bed , but wa ll ed
off by her ta lk . The nex t night , after they leave a formal dinner pa rty
(in the first sce ne, cleverl y, she is dressed casua ll y, in thi s one she is
elabora tely a ttired ), she says to him abruptl y, "I'd like to see how you
look with your trouse rs off," a nd they sink to the ground in a clinch .
The next ste p is inev ita ble: Loui se leaves the provinces with J ack
and goes to the Vill age.
In the Vill age, Louise a ngril y wants to be accepted on her own ,
as a writer , but she senses tha t she does not have the talent a nd is
tolera ted onl y as R eed' girl. She sulks a t the thought tha t R eed
might be "unfa ithful" to her , but ensna res Euge ne O 'Neill in
Prov ince town (where she proves a medi ocre ac tress a nd a portentous
play of hers is staged ,
T he Game,
a symbolic drama whose cha racters
are Life a nd Death , Youth a nd a Girl), in order to asse rt her own
freedom - a nd j ealou sy.
R eds,
Pa rt I , captures thi s surface in a rutila nt glow, the more so
since Diane Keaton is as much Emma as Louise, a hoydenish quick-
