the Piazza (1962) is an odd film; the premise is a bit difficult to handle. Yvette Mimieux has the mental age of a 10 year old girl because she was kicked by a horse as a child. She is, however, ravishingly beautiful. George Hamilton (actually quite good here, as he is speaks very little and most of it is in Italian) falls in love with her. Olivia de Havilland (who died last year at the ripe old age of 104) dreams of her daughter marrying, and encourages her to do so. At her wedding at the end, in a moment which is conspicuously but inappropriately comic — like much of this film — Yvette Mimieux bends down to pick up -- what appears to be a bit of popcorn -- off the ground, and eats it. De Havilland is worried — will her daughter be exposed as mentally deficient? But George Hamilton proves to either as mentally deficient as she is — or just terribly in love with her — as he picks up a piece of popcorn off the ground and eats it too. De Havilland intones, quietly (to herself) — ‘I think I did the right thing.’ But did she? Earlier, when her husband objects to their mentally deficient daughter marrying, de Havilland says “She may not know long division, but she is woman.” This is perhaps the most disturbing sentence in the film. Why might not knowing long division be an integral part of ‘being a woman’? The suggestion seems to be that all you need is breasts, not a brain — or simply you only need to be as beautiful as Yvette Lemieux — which no one ever will be. I’m a hopeless romantic, so I couldn’t help getting wrapped up in Olivia de Havilland’s plans for her daughter. But when Rossano Brazzi says of George Hamilton — ‘he’s no scholar’ the implication seems to be since his son is dense as a post it’s alright for him to marry a mentally deficient girl. In other words, it’s fine for stupid people to find other stupid people and marry them. You see what I mean? One doesn’t quite know what to say; on the one hand the film seems to want to raise profound moral questions (does it matter if you don’t tell someone that the person they are marrying is — what we used to call — ‘retarded’?). On the other hand the movie is a kind of ode to love. And the message seems to be that love transcends intelligence. Well let me clear this up. Wouldn’t all this make sense if both members of the betrothed pair had an ‘intellectual disability’? Though I must say I am not fond of that particular politically correct euphemism. ‘Retarded’ is at least clear, you know what you’re talking about, and frankly ‘intellectual disability’ seems more to define someone who believes in QAnon, is against abortion, or believes that an aliens has have probed their anus — i.e., there are those who are quite intelligent and even entertaining, but when it comes to certain topics they have a couple of screws loose. Sometimes it has to do with trauma — not getting kicked in the head by a horse, but— having an unfortunate experience that makes it impossible for you to think about something rationally. I have a friend, for instance, whose brother — a sex trader worker — was brutally murdered. To this day I know he cannot stand to hear me talk about ‘sex trade work’ in a positive way. Although I do understand, this does seem to me to be an affliction. Okay let’s use the damn term (because we have to): I have no problems with people who are ‘intellectually disabled’ —I think they should be able to live their own lives, but it might not make sense for an intellectually disabled couple to have children. But even that gets into a sticky wicket, because The Nazis routinely sterilized ‘idiots.’ Montgomery Clift plays one such person in Judgement at Nuremberg — the filming of which raises the same moral questions as does Light in the Piazza. Apparently Clift was so addled and drugged during filming that he couldn’t remember his lines; Stanley Kramer suggested he ad lib his speeches. Kramer claimed that Clift still achieved the essence of the character. He certainly did, Clift’s unhinged, wide-eyed, stuttering performance is utterly chilling — the problem being only that it is so effective because Clift was at that point in his life certifiably nuts — and not in any way acting. I will now take the opportunity to implicate myself in a fundamental way. I am somewhat attracted to people who are deficient in some way. Of course we are all deficient in some way, and I am perhaps the most deficient of all (something which my present partner constantly reminds me of!). But one of my ex-boyfriends also had a disability, and I know this was perhaps part of my attraction to him. This is not quite as evil as it sounds. It can be evil, though. I know a straight man who is perpetually attracted to only blind or disabled women. It may just be a matter of needing to be deeply needed. Robert Wilson (the esteemed avant-garde American theatre director) fell in love with, lived with, and adopted a young man (Christopher Knowles) who was severely autistic. The boy also inspired -- and starred -- in Wilson’s play/opera/extravaganza Einstein on the Beach. Now I never starred my ex-disabled-boyfriend in a play (though he claimed he was a very good actor) but I starred him, for a time, in my life. I think I did that partly because I was attracted to the fact that he was more controlling than even my mother (who, when she died, was so controlling that her bowels were as hard as lead). However, the reason he was so controlling was because he had been a mistreated, disabled child — so when he grew up, he decided he would have no more of that. I must also admit that I am a little bit in love with another young man with a disability — right now, today. (But I won’t go on, because he might read this blog.) I’ve tried to make The Light in the Piazza relevant, and in the meantime I have turned myself into a monster in your eyes. Good. Anyone who writes anything — or calls themselves a writer -- is a monster. Everything a 'writer' tells you is suspect. Enjoy, but — watch out.
