THE STRAITJACKET OF FREEDOM

Sequence analysis of The Wicked Lady ( Leslie Arliss ,1945)

The Wicked Lady (Leslie Arliss ,1945) is a costume drama based on the Victorian Times that tells the story of Barbara, a woman who always acts how she pleases and always gets what she wants no matter what the price is. She doesn’t care about anyone else, not even her friend. She is so selfish and acts without thinking about the consequences. All her freedom finally ends when she marries her best friend’s boyfriend. The housewife life doesn’t matches with her style or her personality, but she had never realised it until she got married: “you never know what you’ve got until you lose it”, and what she had was freedom. She recovers that freedom when she falls in love with Captain Jerry Jackson, a known bandit, and becomes his lover. She joins him in his bandit affairs undercover.

The sequence that we’re going to analyse is when Barbara decides to become a bandit

that goes approximately from 00:24:30 to 00:28:46. As far as I’m concerned, this sequence is

one of the most important ones of the film because it marks a turning point in the plot of the film

and, of course in the woman’s life.

On the start of the scene, we can see Barbara playing cards with her sister in law Lady Kingsclere, Henrietta. During the game, Barbara decides to bet the brooch that her mother left her before dying and that she got on the day of her wedding (Figure 1). She’s so sure she’s going to win, but Henrietta snatches her brooch with a clever move (Figure 3). She’s very desolated, sad and feeling miserable for loosing it in such a silly way. That brooch was the only thing that was left from her mother and, as the strong and capricious woman she is, she is determined to get it back. As we can see, the camera shows us in a close up the brooch (Figure 2), pointing to the spectator how important is going to be this moment for the narration. The brooch is not just a complementary object to the story as the dress she wears, the brooch has a narrative meaning on the plot. In this scene, we can see its importance. It is the object that, from now on, is going to change the story. Before Henrietta took the brooch, Barbara never thought about becoming a bandit, but having a passional and personal motive to get the jewellery back she comes to the conclusion that becoming a thief will be exciting. If her brooch was never taken away, she would have never became the liberated and sensual bandit. Then there would be no film.

As Barbara leaves the game room, she is feeling sorry for herself (Figure 4), we can appreciate her pain and how miserable she feels about it. The camera does a light travelling in until it gets a loose close up all in order to make us pay attention to her acting (Figure 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10): by how her face changes, we will know that her pain and sorrow has gone away (Figure 11), she’s had an idea. All of a sudden, we can see in her face how she feels excited about the new era that’s coming for her: she will become the bandit in order to get what’s hers back (Figures 12, 13).

In the next scene, we see her riding a majestic horse trying to hide her identity and feeling free (Figure 14). Everything about this shot is really important. First of all, the fact that she’s the owner of a horse and that she is able to take it anytime she wants, makes her the strong and independent woman she’s seeking to be again. Transport, at any time, means freedom, because if you own a car (for example) you don’t have to depend on anyone to go anywhere you want to do whatever you want to do. With the horse, Barbara has that kind of freedom, and that allows her to be the woman she wants to be. With the recovery of her brooch, she finds the intrinsic desire of doing something spontaneous to get something back, but after this sequence we can see the brightness in her eyes. She’s had a very great time, and the boredom of her married restricted life slowly disappears.

When she’s preparing herself to rob the brooch, the camera shows us a close up of Henrietta holding the jewellery with a satisfaction face (Figure 15, 16). As spectators, we know that the satisfaction won’t last. And suddenly Barbara appears on the scene with her gun dressed like Captain Jerry Jackson (Figure 17) and takes not just the brooch, but also some of her bracelets as a reward (Figure 18). This is is the restoration of equilibrium for her character. During the marriage, she was blue and acting like she was someone else, but as she recovers her brooch, she’s smily and enthusiastic because her life has started to have amusement again (Figures 19-22). She keeps everything stored in a trunk so nobody discover she was the thief, but in her face of joy, we can discern she will do it again (Figure 26). The brooch is shown again with a detail shot to emphasise its importance for the narration and the story that will come after (Figure 23, 24). She kisses it (Figure 25) before locking it up because she’s grateful of her new self discovery and because of the memory of her mother. Her joy doesn’t come from the recovery of her brooch, but from the discovery of her true self.

Barbara is a woman that has always had everything she wanted, but her problem is that she gets bored of everything as soon as she accomplished it, and that’s because it was so easy to have. A great example of that would be her wedding. She always wanted a rich wealthy man to marry, and as soon as she meets her friend’s fiancé, she has to have him for her because of his lands and possessions. Her friend Caroline gives her what she wants without fighting and everyone agrees with her. On the contrary, when she becomes the bandit, it is actually difficult for her. The first time she assaults a diligence, the one that is shown on this sequence, it is easier because Henrietta is not a dangerous adversary, but on her second time, Captain Jerry Jackson who has inspired her to become a bandit, has to help her not to be killed. She worships him and likes him in a sexual way, so being a bandit with him brings excitement to her bored life. We can see here that her clothing is not what we normally associate to a woman of the 18th century. She has to be dressed as a boy to feel the freedom that she’s willing for, to not be questioned for what she’s doing. She’s a woman that invades the man’s world so she can feel free. For me, her character is very feminist, because she doesn’t care about gender rolls or rules, she just does whatever she feels she has to do to feel complete and full with her life and with herself. As this type of film were mostly watched by women, the feminine image that Barbara transmits to the spectator is important to the feminist ideal that was yet to come. She is clearly assuming the roll of the femme fatale, and she loves it, she has no regret. Her free character takes part of the costume melodrama as an unreal, funny and sexually free character to make the audience forget about their imminent reality: the war.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Aspinall, Sue (1993): “Sexuality in Costume Melodrama” (BFI Dossier no18) pp. 29-39

FILMOGRAPHY:

Arliss, Leslie (1945): The Wicked Lady, “Barbara becomes a bandit” scene