The Scarlet Coat (1955)
I was completely bored and befuddled and didn’t know what I would write about. John Sturges was a ‘man’s man,’ he made war movies and westerns. That would explain why everyone seems so very constipated in The Scarlet Coat; not even the emotional scenes are emotional. Anne Francis, who is quite pretty, has two scenes in which she is clearly meant to be the love interest for both the male leads, then promptly disappears. It’s a film by a man, about men. Remember The Great Escape? The quintessential buddy movie — about the bonds between men that transcend women and have nothing to do with them? (John Sturges directed that too.) I won’t attempt to explain the plot; The Scarlet Coat is supposed to be a movie about Benedict Arnold but Arnold is nowhere to be found. Maybe that gives you some idea of how crazy the plot is — I couldn’t follow it and didn’t care. What is important, though, is the idea of ‘honour,’ especially among males. In The Great Escape Steve McQueen personifies it every time he’s released from solitary confinement in the ‘hotbox.’ He keeps being sent there as punishment for doing bad things, but no matter how ravaged he is by what is obviously severe physical and psychological torture, he manages to come bouncing out with a smile, and all the other guys are watching him, and his jaunty expression says: ‘If I can take it, so can you!’ What’s so moving is that he does the brave act not just for himself, but for them; if he can inspire them with his stoic resolve, maybe they’ll get through another day in a prisoner of war camp. The Scarlet Coat has a similar moment, when Michael Wilding is sentenced to death, and Cornel Wilde — sweet little puppy he is — has quite forgotten about Anne Francis — because he’s too busy trying to get Michael Wilding pardoned. But Wilding refuses to be pardoned, because it wouldn’t be ‘honourable.’ And then he marches out onto the green and the drummers are drumming, and he thinks he’s going to be shot, and even quips: “I hope your soldiers have good aim,” but a few seconds later it’s clear he is going to be hanged. Then he says a few last words to Cornel Wilde “It’ll be a momentary pang, Jack.” And then they hang him. At that point there were tears in my eyes, and it’s because (and I know you’re tired of hearing this) it’s a completely gay film. A Shakespearean context may help. Shakespeare wrote (or co-wrote) a very strange play called The Two Noble Kinsmen — a play that shocked me. Now the poetry is a problem, because all the stuff written by John Fletcher is very accessible, but the stuff by Shakespeare is very dense — so it’s kind of a dizzying style rollercoaster. But what’s more dizzying are the sexual politics: Arcite and Palamon are Greek warriors, cousins, and friends to the death. They are both also extremely beautiful and kind and perfect. Then they happen to fall in love with the same woman, and they must (because of honour, you know) fight to the death to see who will win her. But as they are preparing to fight each other to the death, they are putting on each other’s armour, and one cousin asks the other ‘does it pinch you?’ — or something to that effect. The nonsensical idea is this: ‘I wouldn’t want to pinch you while I’m dressing you, in preparation for the moment when I am going to hopefully stab you to death with my sword.’ This is called honour between men, but it’s more than that, it’s a love between men that is purer and sweeter than love between man and woman. It’s what Shakespeare means when Antonio is so in love with Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice, that Solanio says: “I think he only loves the world for him.” No one has ever expressed so poignantly what it means to not be able to find a reason to live in this world without the presence of a certain someone; or more precisely, when there is nothing about the world to love, except, well — him. Michael Wilding has a ‘Shakespearean’ moment too. When he's depressed and chatting with to his manservant, he muses: “Do you suppose death is beautiful Peter?” And Peter say: “Only if life is ugly…..[because] you seem unhappy sir.” And Wilding says: “I’m just lonely.” He is supposedly lonely because Ann Francis doesn’t love him, or, he could also be lonely because Cornel Wilde is in love with Ann Francis. But, frankly, it’s clear neither of them are as in love with her as they are with each other. (No, hear me out.) After they find out they are rivals for Anne Francis, they stage a mock sword fight, and finish off with a conversation in which they fondly gaze into each others eyes and basically say ‘let the best man win.’ Eve Sedgwick talks about how, in a homophobic world, men use women to love each other, and though they compete over women, their relationships with other men are ultimately more important (she calls it ‘the homosocial’). But if you don’t buy all this, just remember that Shakespeare’s The Two Noble Kinsmen is rooted in a heterosexist/misogynistic/homophobic culture that says women are the body, and the body will drag you down into the mud, and the love men have for other men is purer than that. And in The Scarlet Coat Anne Francis’ boobies are kind of hanging there, staring at Cornel Wilde and Michael Wilding, daring them to fondle them, and they are decorated, somewhat forlornly, with cloth flowers, but neither man wants them, because they have something more noble to pursue. The misogyny only comes because homosexuality is -- in this context -- a symbol of the purest love; because it was assumed men would never be so gross as to want each other’s bodies, to want each other’s hanging things — so the love between men must be purer. Lytton Strachey called it ‘higher sodomy’ and Oscar Wilde described it as something “beautiful — it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection… That it should be so, the world does not understand.” And hey, sure, we all know that the chambermaid spoke in hushed tones of the disgusting ‘brown stains’ on the sheets at the hotel where Wilde stayed with Lord Alfred Douglas. Well there always are stains like that; but the sheets may be washed, and later hung out to dry, and we can imagine they have always been as white as the wings of angels.
