The Films of Val Lewton Part Thirty Seven

Bedlam - part Seven

The mob awakens - Night of the Living Dead visuals

Sims enters with ‘good news’ for Nell of a new hearing, a sign that Wilkes has been as good as his word. He is back in his wig, observing an official formality for this announcement, and giving his subsequent demands the weight of authority. To ensure its success he orders his ‘most beneficial remedy’. It is a phrase which causes everybody to stop what they are doing and look fearfully on. He reveals that it is a cure of his own invention which has been tried out on the tiger man, and which, by implication, has caused the clouding of his mind. Nell’s insistence that ‘I need no cure’ is of no avail. Sims has failed to break her strength of spirit through psychological means, so now he will do it physically, a bludgeoning approach attacking the physiological matter of mind. He becomes insistent in the face of her intransigence and threatens to use force, confident in his power. But the inmates are beginning to stir, rising up and shuffling forward, shadows looming larger on the walls. It is like a scene from Night of the Living Dead, the Bedlamites milling somnambulently towards something which has attracted their attention. As with the zombies of Romero’s film, they are a representative cross-section of the powerless strata of society, the confused masses beginning to awaken.

The dog has its day - Dan restrains Sims

Nell points to the gathering crowd, who are beginning to sense the strength in unity given by their sheer weight of numbers. ‘Do you think your friends will help you?’, Sims scoffs. ‘I have helped them’, she replies. This is when it becomes evident that Nell’s efforts have been recognised, her character and example of positive action having made a definite, transformative impression. There is a reciprocity which is not instantaneously made evident, but which finds its expression when the appropriate circumstances present themselves. ‘You expect them to band together and overwhelm me?’ Sims asks with scornful disbelief. ‘If they could reason so they would not be here’, he states, still testing her beliefs. But revolution and insurrection area as much a matter of instinct and reflexive reaction as they are of reason. Again, inside mirrors outside, something which Sims, complacent with power, fails to recognise. The commonality, sufficiently aroused, agglomerate to form the street mob, a nigh on unstoppable force. They would gather in London to defend Wilkes, perceived as their champion, during his trials. Peter Ackroyd, in his book London: The Biography, quotes a German visitor to the capital who remarked ‘now I know what an English mob is’ when he witnessed it celebrating Wilkes’ release from prison in 1770. he characterised its components as comprising ‘half-naked men and women, children, chimney sweeps, tinkers, Moors and men of letters, fish-wives and elegant ladies, each creature intoxicated by his own whims and wild with joy, shouting and laughing’. A major factor in Wilkes’ own decline in popularity was his decision, when in a position of authority, to order the army to fire on the mob during the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots of 1780, killing several people. Nell is the equivalent figure to Wilkes in Bedlam, and is sufficiently aware of her status to feel that she can issue a warning to Sims. Her influence has been gained through kindness and compassion (‘Quaker nonsense’, Sims spits) but this can be turned indirectly into violence. Sims is grabbed from behind and restrained by many arms. He cries out, but she tells him that the warders will ignore him. They are used to such cries in here, particularly when Sims himself is present. Sims cruelty and violence are revisited upon him just as Nell’s kindness creates a co-operative environment whose inhabitants come to her aid. Nell plucks the keys from Sims’ person with an undisguised gesture of triumph.

The dumb speak - Todd and Nell

Todd runs over and speaks to her. His dumbness turns out to be a matter of choice, a way of filtering out the distracting noise of language. He directs her to the window exit which Colby had used, ‘and others before him I dare say’. He explains his own circumstances. ‘I’m not mad, Mistress Bowen. I have been placed here by my family to keep me from drink so that I may write to support them’. Here is the other side to the story, the important detail withheld which completely alters one’s perspective. It is not only wives who are incarcerated when they become a domestic inconvenience. Alcoholism and other addictions represent another route to madness, one which blends psychological and physiological elements. There almost seems to be an element of personal choice to Todd’s incarceration, as if he is using its strictures to escape the imprisoning power of his compulsions. The dangers of drink, and specifically of cheap and plentifully available gin, are dramatically displayed in one of Hogarth’s best-known prints, Gin Lane, a portrayal of social and personal dissolution in which only the pawnbroker thrives. Knowing the dangers of the escape route to which he is directing her, Todd suggests that Tom could lift her. Thus we learn from this supposedly voiceless writer the name of the man who has so long been caged as a brute beast. Tom is a name long associated with Bedlam. A Tom o’Bedlam was the name for a harmless street fool, a beggar with an antic manner (sometimes genuine, sometimes affected for professional purposes). There is also a well-known anonymous ballad called Tom o’ Bedlam’, dating from the early 17th century, which indicates the antiquity of the association of place and name. It includes the lines ‘come dame or maid, be not afraid/poor Tom will injure nothing’, which serve to describe the Tom of Bedlam whom Nell has befriended. The Steeleye Span song Boys of Bedlam, included on their Please to See the King LP, is also taken from a ballad from this time, and includes the line ‘for to see mad Tom of Bedlam/ten thousand miles I’d travel’. And, of course, the protagonist of Hogarth’s Rake’s Progress series, who ends up in Bedlam, is a Tom – Tom Rakewell. Generic name it may be, but in regaining it, the ‘tiger’ also reclaims his humanity, his sense of self.

Triumphal exit - Nell leaves Sims to his fate

Sims is now held by Dan the dog and another Bedlamite. The dog has turned upon its master, Dan casting aside the subservient bestial character which has been imposed upon him, rediscovering his human strength. Sims appeals to the ‘reason’ of Sidney, turning to the authority of the apparent head of ‘the people of the pillar’, what amounts to the establishment in the main hall of Bedlam. He holds out the threat of reprisal and plays up the angle of class solidarity, attempting to separate Sidney from the mob. ‘They’re lunatics’, he points out, as if Sidney himself is not. ‘They’ve been tried and found incompetent by fair trial’. This is nonsense, of course. We have witnessed the ‘fairness’ of these trials. Trial is a trigger word for Sidney, however, prompting him to issue forth a stream of Latin verbiage of dubious meaning. Sims placatingly presents a respectful front, saying ‘I’d forgotten you were a lawyer’. ‘A lawyer, sir’, Sidney replies, affronted. ‘I was a judge. I, the most skilled of them all’. The re-iteration of his catchphrase marks a swing in the delicate balance of his mind from reason to madness. He points with dramatic theatricality and adds ‘and you shall be judged’. The world is turned upside down, the insane and rejected become the establishment, and the judged and condemned the magistrate and jury. Nell sweeps by, putting on her cloak in preparation for her departure, and laughs at Sims’ appeals, sarcastically instructing the mob to ‘give Master Sims a fair trial’, as if it is within the power of anyone to control it. And with that, she makes her exit, leaving him to his fate.

Halfway between the gutter and the stars

The next scene offers one of the most resonantly poetic images in all of Lewton’s oeuvre. Nell looks out of the small window to the ground far below, and upwards towards the roof whose eaves she must reach. Tom climbs up and reaches down, grasps her hand and begins to pull her up. But he hesitates and looks up at the night sky, full of bright stars ,and is lost in wonder. It is a still moment of transcendence, of conceptual and spiritual breakthrough, a universe opening up after an age of confinement in obscure darkness. Tom, having regained his name, seems to be reaching out for what he has forgotten, a universal truth which perhaps stands in a wider sense for a fundamental understanding which mankind has misplaced. Meanwhile, however, Nell is left dangling between the gutter and the stars, a precarious position symbolic of the human condition. She could go either way; a precipitous descent onto the streets below or an ascension to the heavens. The key lies, as ever in Lewton’s films, in human connection. Nell calls out to Tom, and he returns for the time being from his reverie. Spiritual pursuits must always take into account more immediate earthly necessities. He pulls her up and they move across the rooftops. But the image of the man, newly raised from guttural brutishness, gazing at the stars, and the woman seeming to float between sky and earth, her cloak billowing around her, remains in the memory as a beautiful pictorial composition. It reminds me of the woodcut engraving known as the Flammarion Engraving, an anonymous work first used as the cover illustration for the popular scientist and early science fiction author Camille Flammarion’s L’Atmosphere: Meteorologie Populaire. This depicts a man kneeling upon the earth but thrusting his head through the skein of stars to gaze at the secret machinery of the cosmos beyond. It is often used as an image to represent the numinous, quasi-religious pleasures of science fiction, a depiction of conceptual breakthrough which is the modern-day analogue of divine revelation. Indeed, it is on the cover of the latest British Library programme, which looks forward to the Out of this World: Science Fiction But Not As You Know It exhibition.

Breaking beyond the boundaries - The Flammarion Engraving

Back in the hall of Bedlam, the trial has been set up. One of the inmates has dressed himself as a mock judge, a dirty sheepskin over his head for a wig. The roles which the Bedlamites take on in their madness, and which are depicted in Hogarth’s print, now gain temporary legitimacy through force. If this man declares himself judge, then judge he is. Another stands behind, affectlessly declaring ‘I’m Solomon the Wise – split him in two’; an alarmingly literal interpretation of part of the Biblical morality tale which focuses on the promise of bloodshed without adopting the wisdom which ensures it won’t be realised. It’s somewhat akin to Vincent Price’s vengeful Shakespearean actor Edward Lionheart in the film Theatre of Blood revising The Merchant of Venice so that a pound of flesh actually is extracted. These two members of the impromptu judiciary promise lunatic justice premised on an unpredictable internal logic. Fortunately for Sims, Sidney, lucid once more, asserts his authority and takes over proceedings. He is in his element, taking on the role he’s longed to play. He delineates Sims’ abuses before concluding ‘for all these crimes, I ask justice’. ‘Kill him’ comes the reply, the voice of mob justice. Sims now looks terrified as his status as the accused is given this formal statement. He will now have to defend himself. ‘Let me speak’, he pleads. He is overwhelmed by the mob, and sounds pitiful and afraid, all authority and strength gone, a diminishment emphasised by the snatching away of his wig.

At the mercy of the mob

We cut to Nell in the Quaker meeting house telling Hannay that ‘the loonies’ have Sims and ‘are trying him in mockery’. ‘They will kill him’, she predicts, as if this will be a satisfactory conclusion. Hannay tells her that she must save him by speaking to the ‘poor afflicted ones’. Sims is now almost seen as an inmate himself as Hannay counsels kindness to him as well, ‘to those whose sickness forces them to hurt their fellow men’. The distinctions between the world inside and that outside the asylum walls are not clearly drawn. ‘Has not Sims a madness that thee can pity?’ he asks. He is counted amongst the wretched and downcast, and as such even he deserves compassion. She thinks, her vengeful delight at his downfall tempered through reflection in this contemplative setting. They both leave to fetch Wilkes and go back to Bedlam.

Lunatic justice - the Bedlam assizes

Back at the trial, Sims defends himself. After initially weakly asserting that ‘I did not want to hurt you’, he threatens reprisal, through which they ‘shall really know what cruelty can be’. Todd now speaks, providing the calm voice of reason, one lettered and learned man talking to another. The trial now essentially becomes a dialogue between these two, with Todd asking questions with a writer’s curiosity for the psychological motivations behind behaviour and character, and also a writer’s distance from the object of scrutiny. Todd’s name echoes that of the doctor in The Body Snatcher, and there is a similarity in the following exchange to the scene in which Karloff’s character in that film, Gray, is confronted by him and bares his bitter soul. The Bedlam Todd notes ‘your vengeance isn’t our present concern’, with an equanimity which blocks off such an attacking approach, and he directs the trial in a different direction, away from Sims’ attempts to control it. ‘What you have done concerns us’, he prompts, ‘why you did it’. Sims begins with an argument based on determinism, an inherent propensity towards certain behaviours which effectively reduces, or at least lessens the individual’s culpability. ‘Because I had to’ he says, ‘even as you drink’. In religious terms, this could be seen as an advocacy of a Calvinist idea of predestination, of a world in which all proceeds according to God’s predetermined plan. It’s an inherently conservative theology which encourages an acceptance of the status quo, and is thus the opposite of the Quakers’ active engagement with the idea of social change in order to realise an ideal vision of universal brotherhood. In the harsher, more unforgiving philosophy of the Calvinists, mankind is still indelibly stained by the shame of original sin, his nature essentially debased and morally tainted.

Courtroom drama - Sidney inhabits the role

Sims, by comparing his compulsion towards violence and cruelty to Todd’s addictions, is ascribing a different kind of madness to himself. This is a reactive madness, motivated by constant fear, as he explains by adding ‘I was frightened’ to his plea of inherently rooted behaviour. It is the fear which put the glint of wild-eyed insanity into Nell’s regard when she was first admitted to Bedlam. But Todd presents him with his own terrorising actions, seemingly born out of contempt and revulsion for those in his care rather than out of fear. He has used fear as his tool to instil obedience and keep people in their lowly state. ‘Did you beat us out of fright?’ Todd asks. ‘Did you starve us out of fear?’ ‘Split him in two’ repeats the mad Solomon, and the mob has to be held back from doing just that. ‘Is that why you still threaten us?’ Todd asks, a rhetorical question which points to the change in his position. His threats may at this moment be motivated by fear, given that he is now in the power of the Bedlamites. But that his motivations were the same when they were so completely powerless and subject to his total control is more difficult to justify. Todd now asks him to do so, saying ‘you speak of fear. Fear of what?’

The thin line of civilisation - holding back the forces of chaos and violence

This gives Sims his chance for a great self-revelatory speech, in which he makes clear his place in the hierarchy of society, and the way in which his brutal actions are the price he pays for his position, and the means by which the wider social order enforces its stability. He is one of the operators of the grim subterraenean Piranesi mechanisms which underlie and maintain the glittering pageantry of the enchanted world above. His fear is of ‘the great world of this age that gave me my place. The comforts and the authority. What little I have of riches. What I know means nothing. I’ve had to fawn and toady and make a mock of myself till all I could hear was the world laughing at me’. There is genuine anger in this speech. He is talking of an anti-meritocratic age in which wit and intelligence is of no avail without the right parentage, or the requisite charms, neither of which he was blessed with. There is a close up of his face as he adds ‘but once I had what I wanted, this my place here’. This is his protected domain, and like petty autocrats throughout the ages he enjoys exercising every little bit of power it affords him. ‘You were afraid to lose it’, Todd concludes for him, with a degree of understanding.

Sims is now eager to explain himself, to reveal his inner workings to this sympathetic listener, and perhaps to articulate previously unexamined feelings. ‘I had to please those to whose favour I owed everything. I was afraid.’ In the Body Snatcher, Gray explains why he torments Dr McFarlane (Todd), his social superior. It gives him ‘pride to know that I can force you to my will. I’m a small man, a humble man, and being poor, I’ve had to do much that I didn’t want to do. But so long as the great Dr McFarlane jumps at my whistle, that long am I a man. And if I have not that, I have nothing’. Gray and Sims’ power is exercised in different directions, Gray’s upwards in the social spectrum, and Sims’ downwards. But when pushed, they are both honest about what drives them, and display an unsparing sense of self-awareness. There is a whiff of the ‘I was only following orders’ excuse to Sims’ soul-baring, his confession of doing terrible things in order to maintain his position in society. His whole speech would have been particularly resonant for a time in which the world had just emerged from a global conflict, and in which those many citizens who had occupied the lower positions in the hierarchy which had kept fascist political systems operating were having to come up with their own excuses. Ironically, relics and memorials of that conflict are to be found in the old site of Bedlam (the one built after the time in which the film is set) which now houses the Imperial War Museum. ‘You had to strike us’, Todd suggests, again elucidating Sims’ unspoken point. We have been shown the true nature of the beast, the heart of the monster. This is the third of Karloff’s three portraits of monstrous characters for Lewton; first General Pherides in Isle of the Dead, then Gray in The Body Snatcher, and now Sims. Each proves to be, if not sympathetic, then understandable, and each has been granted their justificatory speech in which they lay bare their soul, the fear and hatred which drives them to terrible acts; the monstrous anatomised.

Murderous Madonna - divine retribution

‘Let me go and there will be no punishment’, Sims promises, rather optimistically calling on them to trust him. Todd, who now appears to have become the primary legal and moral authority, declares ‘he is sane.’ He goes on to explain that ‘there is a fear within him. A fear that strikes out, that claws and tears at the world like a singed cat.’ Thus Sims gets his own animalistic attribution. He has, in effect, been found ‘guilty’ of sanity, in accordance with the topsy-turvy perspective of this court. His behaviour is sane in the context of a wider world which is itself filled with a violent insanity, and in which he struggles to gain and maintain his own place. The pocket society of Bedlam and the society which lies beyond it walls become inverted. As Sidney holds back the mob and insists ‘you cannot harm him’, lunatic justice is revealed as being more sane and compassionate than the establishment model. Sidney declares that ‘it is the order of the court that he is sane and that he shall be free’. Just as the ‘tiger’ man was tamed with kindness and restored to his humanity, perhaps there is hope for Sims, too. Maybe, in being shown judicial mercy, even from those whom he has maltreated for so long, he will change, transformed in a moment of scorching self-revelation forged in the extremity of terror. Sims is released and backs slowly away, still wary of turning his back on the unpredictable beast which is the mob. He comes within the orbit of the catatonic Madonna, who slowly and deliberately raises the trowel and plunges its sharp apex into his back. There are other forms of justice, amongst which is revenge. Sims would never have been held to account for the abuse which he has visited upon her, so she takes it upon herself to administer this summary execution. It is a sign that, despite her blank, affectless façade, which maintains even in the act of committing murder, there is a spirit flickering within which has borne an unbearable weight of suffering in complete silence. Her religious bearing, with its serene Marian radiance, along with Sims’ giving her the animal designation of the dove, also hints at the working out of divine justice; the weighing up, balancing and executing power of a higher and more unforgiving moral authority.

Living foundations - Poe endings

The use of the trowel is another instance in Lewton’s work of a tool becoming a weapon, a reversal of the notion of turning swords into ploughshares. The trowel has come to the Madonna from Hannay via Nell. The murderous ends to which it is put are an indirect expression of the violent impulses which both have chosen to suppress. They are both indirectly culpable for the killing of Sims, however. The rage of the Bedlamite mob is suddenly calmed. They gather round, and Sidney soberly observes ‘they will punish us for this’. The declaration is made that ‘the Apothecary General is dead’, an announcement which is akin to crying ‘the king is dead’. And so he is carried through the corridor of arms, and the trowel is once more put to use. He is placed behind the half built wall whose stones Hannay helped to carry in, and the Bedlamites complete the job. Just before the final level of bricks is about to be put in place, we see Sims’ eyes flicker open, registering a moment of silent terror as he becomes aware of the Poe-like fate to which he is being consigned. He is to become the living foundation for the new Bedlam, and for the new society, which will be built upon his bones. Such dreams of a new society, of an end to exploitation, insanity and violence, reflected the contemporary vision of a post war world to which the film’s 1946 audience were looking hopefully. Sims becomes an inadvertent sacrifice, an offering to propitiate the spirit of the future.

Official visitations - the conservative and reforming establishment

We now cut to a scene of official visitation, the chaos having been quelled and a studious semblance of normality restored. Nell and Hannay are present, along with Wilkes and the Commissioner, who has a glowering look of disapproval. Wilkes puts forward a narrative of recent events in which Sims, having been tried for his violent abuses, found sane and released, has been driven by his own guilt to flee, probably for good. It’s a conveniently exculpatory explanation which serves to obscure the continuum between Sims’ behaviour and outlook and that of the social hierarchy in which he had tried to attain and maintain his position. He takes the sole blame for the condition of Bedlam, and by extension, of the social conditions of which it is the symbolic representation. He thus becomes a kind of anonymous martyr in this whole inverted schema. He is the sacrificial offering, his body the foundation upon which a new edifice can be built – the necessary monster who can be displayed and vilified, taking on the sins of others so that they might remain unblemished. Hannay, with his builder’s eye, notices the fresh mortar between the bricks and immediately realises what has happened, and where Sims will really be found, and Nell notices his significant glance and draws the same conclusion. The Commissioner, meanwhile, is taking a more retributory stance, bringing the solemn voice of the establishment to bear in opposition to Wilkes’ reforming outlook. He suggest of the Bedlamites that ‘they killed him and hid his body somewhere’. He takes a similar view to Sims, regarding them as little more than dangerous animals. He is right in his suspicions, of course, but it is the least animalistic, the most passive of the inhabitants who has struck the fatal blow – the ‘dove’, as Sims had designated her, who has rejected peace and forgiveness where others had, reluctantly or not, accepted it. He threatens severe punishment if and when the body is found. Nell pleads with her eyes for Hannay not to reveal the hidden grave and provide him with that opportunity. Wilkes is delivering a speech about the need for reform, stating that ‘what you need here is a better man to fill the post that Sims has fled from’, someone who will provide ‘all the kindness and care for these poor, sick people’. Someone like Hannay, perhaps? Once more, Sims provides the singular counter-example motivating reform, the dictatorial figure-head whose demonisation excuses the functionaries who have kept the system running alongside him, and those who have sustained his power and accepted or turned a blind eye to his abuse of it.

Happy/sad - alternative endings

Hannay makes to speak, to reveal what he has perceived, but Nell holds him back, asking ‘is it not worth a little silence to save them suffering’. But Hannay insists upon observing his principles, asserting ‘I must tell the truth’. Nell still has her quick verbal agility at the ready, however, and deflects Hannay’s high-minded inflexibility by pointing out ‘but no one’s asked you’. A destructive truth can be left unspoken. She flirts with him, using her practised charms to deflect him from his purpose, and adds a biblical reference to further tailor her appeal to his particular beliefs. ‘Silence can win you a lost lamb, Master Hannay’, she says, presenting herself as an offering in a mildly blasphemous analogy. She is also announcing, in a lateral fashion which also suits her present machinations, her adoption of his worldview, and maybe even his religion, a conversion marked by her sudden shift into his Quaker mode of address. ‘I should never have thought that of thee’, she says, with a half-amused, half-besotted upward gaze. ‘I should have known that thy hand would not add to the weight that they must bear. Thee has too much heart for that’. This change in nature is mutual however. Hannay has modified his own strict principles of truthfulness in order to make accommodation with the ways of the world, ways demonstrated to him by Nell, who has taught him that means must be sometimes be adjusted slightly beyond the boundaries of the acceptable in order to allow beneficent ends to blossom. Together, they achieve a balance between worldliness and idealism, a fruitful marriage of different qualities which creates a whole transcending, whilst not eliminating, its separate parts. It is the emblematic Lewton relationship, both on a personal and social level, banishing the spectres of loneliness, isolation and madness which haunt so many of his characters. Hannay offers Nell’s words back to her, the hint of a smile lightening his sober features. ‘Are we lovers that you thee and thou me?’ he asks. It’s a recognition of their connection, of the fact that they now share something of each other’s natures. It also shows his appreciation of her independent spirit, her bright and combative wit, which is one of the main things which attracted him to her in the first place. This is to be a partnership of equals. Nell laughs at his novice attempt at wit, and we fade out for one last time on Hogarth’s Rake’s Progress plate of Bedlam, which offers a contrast to the smiling faces with which it is temporarily combined in double exposure. Hogarth’s conclusion offers a bleak dead end for its foolish and luckless protagonist, but a paragraph of forward looking historical context is overlaid upon it here, telling us of the improvements made in the treatment of the inhabitants of Bedlam and the building of a new hospital. Happy endings are general across the personal, social and political spectrum, an unusual outcome for a Lewton picture.

Well, that’s all for now folks. My survey of the RKO horror films of Val Lewton is finally at an end. Now it only remains for me to get a hold of copies of his Guy de Maupassant adaptation Mademoiselle Fifi (with Cat People’s Simone Simon in the title role) and his ‘social problem’ film Youth Runs Wild…

The Films of Val Lewton Part Thirty Six

Bedlam - Part Six

Dreams of cinema - Sidney and Gray

From Sims’ contemptuous dismissal of Nell, whose ‘Augean labours’ he implies will never be enacted, remaining nothing more than an idle ideological fancy, we cut to an exterior of a street scene. The street outside Bedlam, in fact, where Nell and Lord Mortimer had pulled up in their coach at the beginning of the film. A street seller hawks hot rolls, the fresh product of the baker’s early rising efforts, and the impression is thus given of time passing. Night has turned into day, possibly more than once. Back in the main hall of Bedlam, someone is demanding his theatrical script from Todd, still rooted to his desk. The Bedlamites are a cheap and readily exploitable source of labour, lowly and powerless. There is a definite sense that this overbearing and demanding visitor to the ‘closed set’ of Bedlam is a satirical caricature of a movie producer, or at least an antecedent of the type. The script or screenwriter is effectively a slave, his work seen as something which can be made to order, the art and care which have gone into its creation casually disregarded. He is little more than a scribbling or latterly typing monkey. It is the complaint of many an author who has strayed into Hollywood’s outwardly alluring web.

The satisfaction of purposeful labour - with discorporate onlookers

Sidney points out to the visitor that they have ‘been busy’ helping Mistress Bowen. She has managed to penetrate the aloofness of the people of the pillar, dissipating the haze of their indifference and engaging them in her efforts. She is proving a catalysing force for a more egalitarian environment, involving everyone who is able in general labour which would usually be considered menial and demeaning, the invisible provenance of the lowest social classes. All unite to better their own conditions. Nell is making up beds, and we see the spectating shadows surrounding figures on the wall. They are cast by the Bedlamites, but they could equally be those of a more spectral audience, watching and weighing her actions from a more ineffable plane. Sidney corrects Master Gray, the visitor, who assumes that she is a new warder, informing him that she is an inmate, and that ‘she is an angel in this darkness’. We have already seen her enactment of this symbolic role as the lady with the lamp, venturing into the darkest of shadows to soothe away the pain and terrors of the night.

Early motion pictures

Sidney explains what she can do via crude illustrations doodled at the corners of the law book which he has been pretending to study, and which form an animated flick book. It is a very primitive kind of motion picture, but Sidney has visionary notions as to how he might expand on these rough beginnings. ‘If I could only get a light behind these pages, I could throw them large as life upon the wall’. And so he dreams of the medium through which the audience initially watched Bedlam, anticipating the birth of cinema some 130 years before the event. Gray, the parasitic producer who appropriates other people’s creative labour, immediately sniffs the potential financial gain to be made from the idea, speculating as to how ‘one could charge admission’. The idea of the movies as business is made clear, with the attendant dimension of exploitation. It is difficult not to suspect that Lewton is producing his own mildly Hogarthian portrait of the studio tyrants who attempted to interfere with his work at RKO. His hated head of department at the time was Jack Gross, a surname not too far removed from Gray. The cinema, even in early dream form, is an uneasy marriage of commerce and art, an unequal union characterised by bickering and a laying down of the law by the dominant, finance-providing partner. Todd is once more cast as the slaving screenwriter as Gray suggests ‘you could even tell the story Todd’s writing that way’.

The calculating producer - exploitation cinema

The cinema is a natural extension of the Vauxhall Garden spectacles, the masques full of stage magic and mechanical illusion. Todd could even be writing the story we are currently watching as it unfolds before our eyes, the self-reflexive tale which tells itself. It’s a rather dizzying aside, one which momentarily leads us to distance ourselves from the action and become aware of ourselves as spectators of a mechanically produced and projected work of art. Sidney ends this playfully modernist reverie with a reminder that ‘it’s because of these pictures that I’m here’. Creativity, genius and madness are close bedfellows, and the truly innovative can, in its very newness and initial incomprehensibility, be taken for simple derangement. Sidney’s signature ‘crazy’ catchphrase kicks in to end the exchange and effectively discredit his ideas. Gray excuses himself with an embarrassed cough, having been infected with the excitement of Sidney’s mad dreams: dreams which he fed off for a few intoxicating moments. In a reactive gesture, he reflexively reasserts his power by threatening the mute Todd with a withdrawal of support for his family should he fail to deliver the next chapter by the stipulated deadline. The power of the moneyman calling the shots. Todd is a ghost writer, unheard and unseen in the world beyond the walls, his voice stolen for another’s ventriloquial purposes. It’s

Dreams of travel - Nell and Dan

Nell is still asking about the trowel, thereby alerting us to its continued narrative import. She approaches Dan the Dog, who crouches down below a picture of a ship sailing on ocean waves, a manifestation of his romantic dreams of travelling to far off places. He makes a sweeping romantic gesture, offering to build her a wall. It’s a rather redundant offer, given that they are surrounded by confining walls, but we are reminded of the Quaker ideal of building the foundations of a new society. It’s a promise of constructive action, made as an apparently empty gesture, which is realised in an ironic form at the end of the film. Dan will indeed help to build a concealing wall with the trowel. Meanwhile, his romantic outburst is an indication of a new confidence, his outspread arms an unfolding from his cowering crouch. Sidney responds to Nell’s continued enquiries about the trowel with the diplomacy of one used to dealing with delusory behaviour. When the presence of madness is assumed, the distinction between the real and the illusory becomes less clearly defined. Nell wonders if she is indeed going mad, but with a self-deprecatory laugh which expresses the opposite, a sense of self-discovery through meaningful activity. This is a different sort of madness, a spirit which possesses her and fills her with purpose. When she suggests that she is doing all of this for the benefit of ‘people who don’t even know I’m trying to help them’, Sidney tells her ‘they know’. The effects of and responses to the actions in which one is intuitively engaged area not always immediately apparent. She has to rely on her sense of the rightness of what she is doing – to have faith.

Refusing to flinch - the dog stands up to its master

Sims enters and makes to strike Dan, but the young man no longer cowers like a dog. He has gained in strength through his acquaintance with and acceptance by Nell, and his assistance with her labours. Sims pushes him aside, but such a resort to brute force where previously a mere gesture would have sufficed carries with it an admission of defeat. His sarcastic compliment to Nell contains within it a threat of permanent incarceration and a reminder that she is still under his power. ‘What wonders you will not accomplish in a lifetime’, he sneers. He offers her ‘a pretty chamber’ in which to sleep as a reward for her efforts, a mocking reminder of her former accommodations. It is, of course, a poisoned gift, a new trial to test her ideals. She is to be left in the room in which the bestial ‘tiger’ man is caged. Sims’ duel with Nell has progressed to the level of ideological conflict. He may have defeated her in the social arena, but this is not enough for him. She troubles him on a more metaphysical level, and he needs to discredit the benevolent view of human nature which she professes and has begun to translate into action. His bitterness and suppressed rage roil beneath the surface as he spits back at the challenge to his comfortably misanthropic worldview. He is placing her with the most savagely animalistic of his inmates to demonstrate ‘that all those mawkish theories you learned from the Quaker are lies. Men are not brothers, men are not born good and kind. Even the mindless are savage and must be ruled with force’. It is a statement of belief made with sufficient force, with an underlying trace of desperation to indicate that it has come to define his nature, and is something which he needs to defend in order to justify his life. It is the outward expression of his own fearful soul. Putting Nell in the cage with the tiger man amounts to an extreme test case.

Inarticulate pain - trying to remember

‘Gentle him with a word’ he taunts. ‘Conquer him with kindness’. This is in fact exactly what Nell does. She slowly approaches this huge man, made more frightening by the shadowy conditions in which he is kept. She calmly faces him, looking up into his eyes, and says ‘my friend, you do not wish to hurt me, nor I you’. He has emerged from the shadows from which we have previously seen him ferociously lunging, and he no longer seems like a vicious beast. We can now see that his face is filled with pain and confusion. He cannot talk, but is desperately trying to articulate some half-formed idea or explanation, making sounds which never quite cohere into language. ‘I will listen to you’, Nell tells him, indicating an openness to communication which goes beyond words. She doesn’t pressure him, but empathetically voices his bewilderment for him. ‘I know you’re trying to remember’, she says. ‘Someday you will. You will remember’, she re-iterates with supportive conviction. He makes a supplicatory gesture of gratitude, of relief at this recognition of his fractured but still present humanity, which Nell grants him once more. The camera looks out from the interior of the cage to focus on Sims, who is framed by the bars. The prison suddenly appears inverted and, as with Hannay’s surreptitious visit earlier, it is momentarily unclear who is on which side of the confining bars. Nell and the tiger have found connection and release whilst Sims is left alone with his comfortless worldview. His face is filled with the hateful knowledge of defeat. He must retreat to plan his next move.

Inverted prisons - the jailer jailed

The next scene switches to the outside world, and a return to the printers press. As the place where words and images are prepared for general promulgation, this is the democratic heart of society. Here are gathered Varney, Hannay and Wilkes. Each wears contrasting headwear which reveals something of their character and social position. Wilkes’ tricorne hat is raffish, with brocaded brim, the affectation of a dandy with means. Varney’s is of a similar style, but without the decorative filigree, a more down at heel dandy. Hannay’s Quaker hat is simple and plain, without the folds or embellishments of Varney and Wilkes’ tricornes, its broad brim shading the wearer from the ungodly glare of the surrounding city and its manifold vices. These are the three very different men who are working towards freeing Nell from her arbitrary imprisonment. Wilkes was indeed instrumental in revising the law which allowed the government to issue General Warrants based on a particular offence (usually involving sedition) to be issued for the arrest of unnamed individuals. This was an action at least partly prompted by the initially successful outcome of his own arrest and trial over the publication of issue 45 of his North Briton magazine. Wilkes, who has obviously been brought up to date on Nell’s disappearance, observes that ‘apparently Sims fears an investigation. Men have rid themselves of unwanted wives by that sweet expedient’. The means of dealing with personal and political trouble are one and the same, with the personal and political often indistinguishable anyway. Sims seeks to ‘forestall criticism through imprisonment’. This criticism, coming from Nell, also embraces the personal and political, threatening not only his social and professional position but also his view of the fundamentally adversarial nature of human existence.

Men with hats - and a common purpose

Wilkes’ comments about the ‘sweet expedient’ with which men dispense with and silence their wives shows that he’s not exactly a beacon of morality when it comes to sexual politics. Wilkes was well known for being a rakehell and prolific womaniser, and was a member of the infamously debauched Hellfire Club, which had its out of town headquarters amongst the erotically landscaped gardens of Medmenham Abbey and West Wycombe Park in Buckinghamshire. Wilkes himself wrote about the symbolism of West Wycombe's gardens in the Public Advertiser in 1763, rather betraying their supposedly secret nature. He commented on the Parlour of Venus, located beneath the Mound of Venus, noting that it was designed to resemble ‘the same Entrance by which we all come into the World, and the door is what some idle Wits have called the Door of Life’. Perhaps these are the kinds of country retreats to which Lord Mortimer was planning to retire with Varney. Dan Cruickshank, in his Secret History of Georgian London, notes that ‘they remain an outstanding example of the libertine vision of antiquity, a perfect fusion of nature, the classical world, ancient British traditions and virtually ungoverned sexual encounter’. Even the National Trust, current owners of West Wycombe, acknowledge this aspect of their property. Wilkes also co-wrote, around 1754/5, a pastiche of Pope’s Essay on Man entitled Essay on Woman. This took satirical and deliberately obscene (and, potentially more seriously, blasphemous and libellous) aim at the prominent cleric the Reverend Dr William Warburton, whose self-promotion and naked ambition had irked Wilkes and, more particularly, his fellow author Thomas Potter, a typically wayward son of the clergy (in this case the Archbishop of Canterbury). Wilkes’ efforts to get this scabrous piece of lewd and lubricious verse published led to a tragic-comic trial in 1764 (3 years after the period in which the film is set), during which passages were read out in the House of Lords. As is the way with official condemnations of and outraged expressions of disapproval over ‘obscene’ art and publications, this resulted in the Essay receiving massive publicity and a far wider circulation that the handful of copies for friends which Wilkes had originally intended. It was his prosecution (for libel and obscenity, but not in the end for blasphemy) for the publication of the Essay on Women, which trailed with it further citations of the royal baiting issue no.45 of the North Briton magazine, that led him to a four year exile in France followed by a two year term in prison. It’s a perfect example of the way in which sex and politics were intricately entwined at the time; and indeed, in all times, power and desire tending to closely orbit one another.

Erotic landscape - The mound of Venus at West Wycombe Park

The libertine Wilkes muses on the character of Nell, ‘with that bright quick mind of hers’, which makes her ‘saner than either a politician or a Quaker’. His feelings for her are a blend of admiration and desire. He grasps his lapels and delivers a politician’s speech, patriotically painting England as a land in which laws operate to protect the common man. It’s as if he is rehearsing for a parliamentary address. He switches back to an informal and light-hearted vernacular as he pledges to get Nell out ‘in a twinkle’. We fade from his reassurances to Hogarth’s Bedlam etching, the last plate from the Rake’s Progress which offers a rather less rosy view of England. This final use of the print which is the centrepiece of the entire film is an indication that the story is reaching its climax. As far as the protagonist of the Rake’s Progress, Tom Rakewell, is concerned, of course, Bedlam is where his tale finds its woeful and permanent end.

Reading Smart - disputing The Word

Squatting on the floor of the main hall, a man reads with excited and tongue-tripping semi-coherence from a battered book to a wild-haired woman who violently demurs from its declarative verses, shouting ‘that’s not right’ after each line. The words have a definite biblical cadence, and are in fact taken from Christopher Smart’s lengthy and ecstatically visionary poem Jubilate Agno. Smart was confined in St Luke’s Hospital asylum in Bethnal Green between 1759 and 1763, during which time he wrote the poem. He had only his cat Jeoffry for company, to whom he dedicates several verses, such as ‘For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements./For, tho he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer./For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadrupede./For he can tread to all the measures upon the musick/For he can swim for life./For he can creep.’ The poem wasn’t in fact published until 1939, when it appeared under the misleading title Rejoice in the Lamb: A Song From Bedlam. As with Sidney’s dreams of the cinema, it often takes time for the value of the art of the ‘insane’ to be recognised and appreciated. Smart’s poetry certainly fits in surprisingly well with the declamatory modernist verse of Eliot and Pound, and would be the perfect anthology partner to some of Allen Ginsberg’s work. The lines which Wallace, the reader, quotes are ‘Let Hull, house of Hull rejoice with Subis a bird called the Spight which breaks the Eagle's eggs’, ‘Let Scroop, house of Scroop rejoice with Fig-Wine - Palmi primarium vinum. Not so - Palmi-primum is the word’ and ‘Let Hollingstead, house of Hollingstead rejoice with Sissitietaeris herb of good fellowship. Praise the name of the Lord September 1762’. Taken out of context, they have the authentic sound of the meaningless babble of self-absorbed madness.

Christopher Smart - the 'mad' poet

The disputation between Wallace and his vocal audience, Betty, centres on the nature of the ‘word of truth’, which she insists is peace, as she makes a violent grab for the book. Their pointless altercation is a vignette of religious and political conflict, and the power of words to rouse men to violence based upon barely understood ideas. The paradoxical nonsense of fighting for peace only truly makes sense in a madhouse. Bedlam, like the ship of fools in The Ghost Ship, contains a representative panoply of human behaviour and belief, her cast in warped caricature which throws its underlying absurdities into sharp relief. Thus far, we have encountered figures representing art, religion, the law and politics. It’s a similar satirical inversion of the varied manifestations of society and the establishment to be found in Hogarth’s Bedlam print, with its bishop fools, naked monarchs, musicians playing cracked compositions and scientists looking up through the wrong end of a telescope.

Tamed tiger - Nell and her guardian

Nell becomes the arbitrator in this dispute, coming along to stop the squabbling. ‘We were fighting over truth’, they proudly announce, as if this somehow gives their bickering an inherent nobility. They are like naughty children who have been caught aping the behaviour of adults. ‘Wiser people than you have fought over it’, Nell wryly observes, making explicit the connection between Bedlam and the world beyond its walls, its illuminating refraction and magnification of accepted social and political norms. Nell is now accompanied by the hulking figure of the giant from the cage, her tamed tiger. His release from confinement is testament to the effectiveness of her attempts to communicate with him. It also suggests an uncharacteristically humane gesture on Sims’ part. The tiger man’s freedom is necessary in terms of the narrative, and the disjuncture in the consistency of Sims’ character is perhaps best left unexamined. He has certainly not experienced a sudden and revelatory change of heart, as we shall soon see.

The Films of Val Lewton Part Thirty Four

Bedlam - Part Four

Pompey's pompous preening

From the night streets of London, we dissolve to the corridor outside Lord Mortimer’s bedchamber, which serves as the waiting room for his summoned guests and supplicants. We see Pompey, the black boy, seated to one side of the door. His immaculate turban and princely peacock finery lends him an air of affected aristocracy which he plays up by closely examining his fingernails with studied disdain, directed to the unseen person for whom he is acting as usher and gatekeeper. This costume is taken from the Hogarth print The Countess’ Morning Levee, the fourth in the Marriage a la Mode series, in which the black boy is one element of the extravagant foppery with which the Countess in the story surrounds herself. Pompey’s absurd headgear is another example of the array of hats and wigs sported throughout Bedlam, all of which convey something of the status or self-definition of the characters wearing them. In Pompey’s case it is a displaced indication of Lord Mortimer’s self-importance and rich, gilded tastes. Pompey is a reflective barometer of his Lord’s current moods and the direction in which his favours are likely to be dispersed. Our gaze is directed by his sideways glance, and we realise that it upon Sims, who sits on the other side of the door, that his smug, appropriated superiority is focussed. Sims sits with his chin resting on the ball of his cane, a pose which echoes the one in which we first encountered him. On this occasion, however, he is not impatient and agitated, but reflective and still, poised for the duel which he knows is imminent, and for which he is now ready. When summoned by the footman, he rises and adjusts his wig before entering. It is his customary and almost unconscious preparation for entering the courtly world in which appearance, pose and the witty turn of phrase are the feints and stabs of social sparring. His wig is akin to a helmet, and his reflexive adjustment of it, his need to check that his fashion armoury has not slipped, indicates his lack of ease at this strata of society. Its all important manners and gestures are not those with which he has been brought up and educated, and he has been obliged to study and adapt them himself in order to further his aspirations to social advancement through patronage.

Surrealist toilette - Lord Mortimer at powder

Within the bedchamber, Lord Mortimer is having his wig powdered, his face covered and protected by a paper cone. He looks like a figure from a surrealist collage, his head transformed into a grotesquely outsized beak. It is another form of helmet, donned to make ready for the to and fro of social interplay. This powder protector is no doubt the kind of idiosyncratic historical detail which Lewton delighted in discovering, and is one of the minor background elements which combine to give the film, for all its low budget, a richly textured period feel. Lord Mortimer’s morning powdering and care for his appearance are another instance of the feminisation of men in Bedlam. Nell sits towards the rear of the room, a spectator at his toilet, having evidently finished herself with far less laborious ceremony. He is the foreground object of her disinterested gaze as he undergoes his beautification, an inversion of the usual pattern. Sims gives a deep bow to ‘Mistress Bowen’ as he enters the room, an acknowledgement of her status and current ascendancy, and an formality akin to fencers bowing to each other before the commencement of their duel. Such tactical deference is in contrast to their first meeting in Lord Mortimer’s bedchamber, during which Sims initially ignored Nell, directing his supplicatory gestures to Lord Mortimer. ‘I trust you enjoyed the fete’, he enquires of her now, knowing full well the strident outrage at the deathly nature of his masque which she exhibited. ‘You will hear presently how much I enjoyed it’, Nell replies with a terse air of self-satisfied triumph. Lord Mortimer eagerly divulges ‘what we’ve decided’, explaining how Nell (‘a practical lass’) ‘wants to turn Bedlam upside down and make all the loonies happy as linnets’.

The notion of the world turned upside down relates to a custom popular in households at Christmas in which the servants became the masters for a day. In a wider sense, it suggests a revolutionary state of affairs in which commonly held assumptions and values are upended. It’s a phrase which was used in the King James version of the Bible, first published in 1611, 500 years ago, where it can be found in Acts 17 verse 6: ‘and when they found them not they drew Jason and certain brethren unto the rulers of the city, crying these that have turned the world upside down are come hither also’. The sermon on the mount is effectively announcing that heaven is the world turned upside down (‘blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth etc.), offering a series of inversions of the accepted order of things. The phrase was commonly used to describe the revolutionary aspirations of the radical movements of the 17th century, its scriptural provenance pointing to the religious origins of their non-conformism. A pamphlet entitled The World Turned Upside Down was published in 1647, with the explicatory sub-heading ‘a briefe description of the ridiculous fashions of these distracted times’. In the context of the film, Bedlam and its inhabitants both form a microcosm of society at large and represent the downtrodden elements of that society, so the metaphor applies both to the world within its walls and to the way in which it relates to the world beyond. Nell’s proposals resonate well beyond their specific aim of improving conditions for the mentally ill.

Balance of power - Nell and Sims

During Lord Mortimer’s deposition, both Nell and Sims are seated in their chairs facing him, a position from which they can best vie for his limited and easily distracted attention. Sims responds to his latest assumption of another’s words and ideas in a voice thick with bitterly underlined irony, the kind of response which Nell would have been expecting. ‘You can’t imagine the gratitude I bear you, Mistress Bowen’, he hisses. She is threatening to dislodge him from the comfortable niche of unaccountable power into which he has settled and to which he has grown accustomed. He is not about to relinquish it lightly. Addressing himself to Lord Mortimer, he plays on his vanity, as he had done in the first bedchamber encounter, emphasising his ownership of the idea and suggesting the reflected glory which he will enjoy as a result. ‘These reforms you propose will make my name stand out in the history of Bedlam’, he declares. ‘We knew you’d agree’, his lordship replies with satisfaction, having entirely failed to detect the undercurrents of meaning contained within the tone of delivery. As far as he is concerned, the matter has been swiftly and decisively settled.

Shift in power - Nell worried

But Sims now interjects a new element into the proceedings, one which indicates his insight into the shallows of Lord Mortimer’s character. ‘One small point’, he adds, with calculated Columbo-style afterthought. ‘The trifling matter of money’. He thanks him for his generosity, which immediately causes Nell to sit up alertly, rousing her from her complacent certainty in her own success at manipulating Milord’s favours. Lord Mortimer is pleased to proffer generosity which costs him nothing, but Sims points out that, since he has taxable property in the Moorfields area, ‘this reform will cost you not less than 500 guineas in additional taxes’. He has clearly prepared his figures beforehand. Human dignity and the cost of compassion have been carefully weighed and valued and given financial expression. There is a close upon Nell’s face, from which all the glow of self-satisfied triumph has blanched. Sims then shifts the focus of expense directly on to her person, pitching the cost of reforms as ‘some little gift you’d gladly give to Mistress Bowen’. Suddenly, the idea has become hers once more, given back to her once it has become tainted with financial consequence, and the notion of human currency is once more introduced. Sims has manoeuvred Lord Mortimer into considering how much Nell is really worth, and he has sufficient insight into his nature to know that he will hold her cheaply. Nell realises that the foundation of her plans is crumbling, and quickly relinquishes any such gift (‘a gift she’s not going to have’, Sims immediately ripostes). Knowing that he is gaining the upper hand, Sims introduces the decisive element of politics, bringing up the question of what Wilkes and the Whigs would say to the notion of reform. Wilkes is a name guaranteed to trigger a pre-conditioned response from Lord Mortimer, and he immediately comes back with ‘he would say loonies don’t vote’. Putting the debate on a political level, everything is once more reduced to its cynical and self-serving essence.

Allowing your enemies to destroy themselves - Sims amused

Lord Mortimer is now left to balance the relative merits of Nell’s ‘good deed’ with the 500 guineas which is the price which Sims has put upon it. There’s never really any doubt as to which will rise uppermost in his considerations. ‘There would be so much I’d have to do without’, he muses to himself. Nell and Sims are both now standing as the duel for his Lordship’s favour reaches its concluding moments. Sims further prompts him, suggesting that ‘Milord has to keep up appearances at court’. Lord Mortimer adopts a wheedling tone to justify himself to Nell, his decision evidently now made. ‘You have no idea, Nell, what a great responsibility it is to be rich’, he tell her by way of explanation. Recognising defeat, she bitterly sums up his stingy attitude: ‘I’ve asked you to do a good deed and find the very thought of it too expensive’. By implication, she is also realising the paltry limits of her own value, just how cheaply she is held. She now lets her pride spill over into anger, expressing her authentic feelings and dispensing entirely with the ritualised and carefully controlled employment of irony and arch sardonicism. There is undisguised contempt in her voice as she lets him know how she has put up with him, ‘trying to make you laugh and then listening to that fat laugh of yours as it comes tumbling out of your fat throat’. It’s a vicious image which expresses in words the kind of savage caricature Hogarth might produce of his Lordship. Sims is shown suppressing a smile. He knew that her temper was liable to erupt in such a manner and has led her deliberately towards such an ill-considered outburst. He now simply has to leave her to dismantle the framework upon which her own standing has been built.

Origins - Hogarth's Strolling Actresses Dressing in a Barn

Lord Mortimer responds in the classic ‘I made you what you are’ manner, telling her ‘you’d be camping in the rain on Strathmore Common with the other strolling players if you hadn’t caught my eye’. This lets us know a little more about Nell’s background. She had evidently been an actress before becoming Lord Mortimer’s pet and kept wit. The reference to strolling players refers back to the Hogarth print which we saw in the opening credits, ‘Strolling Actresses Dressing in a Barn’. Hogarth’s print memorialised the demise of travelling theatre troupes who put on performances on makeshift stages. Their days were effectively ended by the passing of the Theatrical Licensing Act of 1737. This was swiftly drafted in response to a series of increasingly savage satirical plays, whose mockery was often pointedly directed at the prime minister Robert Walpole, particularly in the plays of Hogarth’s good friend Henry Fielding, whose Tom Thumb, Covent Garden Tragedy and Pasquin did as much as any to rouse the ire of parliament. Theatrical performances now had to be licensed, which effectively restricted them to theatre buildings, and were open to censorship by the Lord Chamberlain. This was censorship of a political rather than moral nature, specifically designed to silence attacks on establishment figures. The Lord Chamberlain held the powers granted by the act right up until 1968, causing problems in the latter half of the last century for radical theatre groups such as Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop. The action of the film takes place in 1761, but with allowances made for a little dramatic license, it’s easy to suppose that Nell has fallen victim to the consequences of the act, her career as an actress suddenly and unceremoniously cut short. She brings the satire which the act was supposed to defuse into the home, presenting it directly to its intended target. In the small, insular world of the political and landed classes she finds its effect blunted by the general disconnection between words and meaning, the abandonment of direct expression in favour of devious circumlocution. Unvarnished insult in this context becomes a quaintly primitive amusement. Nell has much in common with Sims in coming to this world from a humble background, and she must adopt some of his strategic nous in order to really make herself heard.

Prideful anger - Nell lets fly

Meanwhile, she sticks with an escalation of insults. She portrays Lord Mortimer as a hollow man, a large empty vessel whose position is maintained through expenditure and toadying rather than innate merit of any kind. Her attack swiftly expands from the personal to encompass wider social disaffection, making clear the connection between the two. Her invective takes the form of a rejection, distancing herself from that for which she expresses moral repugnance, and refuting the values which she sees Lord Mortimer as standing for: ‘I would not want to be a dull man forever in need of amusement. I would not want to bribe and be bribed, to fawn upon the king and kick the commoner. In short, milord, I would not want to be Lord Mortimer’. Hannay’s egalitarian ideals have evidently awoken a dormant part of her conscience, and she has descended from the lofty and aloof equestrian pedestal from which she first parted company with him. Having effectively resigned her position, definitively burning any bridges which might have allowed her to return, she storms out. ‘Such angry words’, Sims sighs with an air of sardonic reproval. In the corridor, we see Pompey playing conkers with himself, the clash of the horse chestnuts replicating the pendulum swings of the duel which has just reached its conclusion. When Sims comes out, he ushers him to the exit with a sweeping, grandiloquent bow. Once more, he is a reliable barometer of status. Nell is history and it is Sims who is now in the ascendant.

Left with nothing but the parrot

We cut to the staircase of a house whose furniture and paintings are in the process of being moved out, leaving it looking bare and Spartan. This is one of a number of scenes whose action is directly consequent upon what has been said immediately before. Words have significant power to affect events in this world. The empty shell of the house clearly demonstrates the ease with which the elements of Nell’s life can be dismantled, and the extent to which its objects and appurtenances were subject to Lord Mortimer’s continued benefaction. They were always contingent upon her continued compliance, and the hire has now been revoked. Varney gets upset at the prospect of the parrot being taken and manages to keep hold of it. He points out that Poll has ‘been with Mistress Bowen since Mistress Bowen played Aurora in The Rivals. We were very good in that’. He’s presumably not referring to Sheridan’s comic romance, since there’s no character of that name in the play, and it wasn’t performed until 1775, 14 years after the action of the film, anyway. Varney’s wistful theatrical reminiscence of times now gone indicate that his relationship with Nell extends back to a shared life on the stage. Nell has brought Varney with her from these theatrical days and has been supporting him ever since. Her loyalty to old friends once more belies her assertion of self-interest and claim that her ‘heart is like a flint’. As the removal men depart, she puts aside her combative persona and sighs to Varney that ‘a kind heart butters no parsnips’, but it is said without any real sense of regret at what she has done. Now she is left with nothing but her parrot, which is the external emblem and reminder of her former status as amusing pet. The analogous link between human beings and animals is once more made clear, with lower levels of society regarded as little more than mindless beasts and ignored accordingly. But this very lack of regard can be turned to advantage, as Nell begins to realise. Poor Poll is all they’ve got, but ‘Poll’s enough’.

Social embarassment - Kitty and Sims

We return to Lord Mortimer’s waiting room, where Sims has brought along his niece Kitty. She is described in uncomplimentary terms in Lewton’s screenplay as being ‘dressed in the mode, with perhaps a little more elegance than an honest woman would display. On her face are several decorative patches, their placement, as was the manner of the time, dictated by such skin blemishes or marks of disease as they were intended to hide’. The description of her appearance sounds very much like that of the protagonist of Hogarth’s A Harlot’s Progress, somewhere midway on her descending path to degradation. Kitty’s experience is implied in the truncated comment ‘I have known some gentlemen’, which is accompanied by the flutter of a fan. In the event, all but one of the beauty spots used to cover syphilitic scars are dispensed with. Kitty is played by Elizabeth Russell, who gives a restrained performance as a comic but perceptive soak, a role which might have encouraged a lesser actress to go over the top in a scene-stealing fashion. Kitty is in complete contrast to the haunted or haunting characters which Russell had previously portrayed for Lewton in Cat People, The Seventh Victim and Curse of the Cat People. Once more her appearance is brief but memorable. Sims is bringing Kitty along partly as a replacement for Nell, and partly primed to claim that she’d offered to by Poll on behalf of Lord Mortimer. She immediately voices her contempt for him by sneering ‘a fine lord indeed – mocked by a parrot’. Poll has evidently been set loose on the streets to spread Nell’s insults to a wider audience. Sims is embarrassed by his niece’s lack of fine manners and is nervous that she will show him up, perhaps exposing his true social background, which his carefully contrived politesse serves to disguise. Kitty’s common nature is revealed through her declared fondness for gin. Gin, cheaply and readily available at the time, was one of the major social problems of the age, a fact highlighted in Hogarth’s famous print Gin Lane. Sims instructs her that she’d ‘best leave the wit to me. I’ll make you seem witty’. Although she may be able to ‘crack a joke well enough’, this is not really what her uncle has in mind for ‘good company’, although his familiarity with her cheerful vulgarity suggests that he’s well enough acquainted with the other kind. As they are ushered in to the bedchamber once more, Sims makes his usual adjustments to his wig to assure himself of its correct positioning.

When they enter, the wind is rather taken out of Sims’ sails by the fact that Lord Mortimer has already received the news that Nell has put her parrot up for sale in the market place, where it incessantly squawks its idiot couplet ‘Lord Mortimer is like a pig, his brain is small and his belly big’. What’s more, he seems to find the whole thing ‘a great bit of japery’, as he had when we first heard Poll parrot the lines as their carriage pulled up outside Bedlam at the start of the film. However, when Pompey returns to inform him that Nell has refused the generous 500 guineas proffered for the bird, his amusement recedes. The game is no longer being played by his rules. The insults are now being broadcast beyond the enclosed environments of the carriage or the bedchamber, taken out onto the streets. ‘The girl digs her spurs too deep’, he muses, reminding us of the purposeful riding attire which Nell has sported on several occasions. A jest is, after all, something inconsequential which can be instantly tossed to one side once it has been enjoyed. This joke threatens to linger, exposing him to prolonged public ridicule which might come to define him in the popular mind. It aspires to the condition of a Hogarth print, to satirical caricature.

Conspiratorial asides in the tea room - balancing fates

Sims draws his lordship to one side for a conspiratorial conferral, suggesting ‘we can always make her my guest’. The unofficial channels of power and coercion are discretely available for the convenient removal of the powerless who have somehow become awkward, and who can be ‘disappeared’, leaving no trace. Confinement in mental hospitals was a favourite solution for silencing dissidents in Soviet era Russia and its satellites. After all, isn’t it madness to oppose the natural order of things? Lord Mortimer is reluctant to take this course, recalling the good times he’s had with Nell. ‘We’ve been good comrades, Nell and I’, he says, a declaration of continued loyalty which suggests that he still has a vestigial trace of decency and conscience left in him. His use of the word comrade indicates the true nature of their relationship. His momentary display of nobility is soon redirected towards his more customary self-interest, however. When he insists that ‘she’s as sane as you and I’, Sims responds with the rhetorical question ‘was Colby mad? He was my guest’. It’s both confession and offer of collusion. Colby was an obstacle to Sims’ ambitions, and Nell is now an inconvenience and embarrassment for Lord Mortimer. That Sims is now willing to admit to Colby’s unjust incarceration and by implication his culpability for his subsequent death is an indication of how confident he has become of his own standing in his lordship’s estimation. He has begun to manoeuvre him into acting against Nell. He turns back to the issue at hand, and reflects ‘it’s a shrewd trick – you can’t restrain a parrot from slander’. The parrot’s repetitive refrain, designed to lodge in people’s memory, represents the voice of the street, the unwritten and unpublished opinion of the commonality. Treated as animals to be herded and controlled en masse, as individuals they fall beneath the legal sanctions operating within higher social circles. Nell has chosen a symbolically pointed way of getting back at her former keeper. If she was nothing more than a pet, than it is through her pet that she will spread poisonous ridicule. Sims suggests issuing a writ of seizure for the bird, prompting Kitty to chime in with ‘arrest a parrot? I’ll drink to that’. In her own blunt and unfanciful way, she has seen through to the absurd heart of the matter.

Cowardly display of bravery - threatening a Quaker

In the next, consequent scene, we come across Varney being dragged into the bedchamber by a footman, keeping a hold of Poll all the while. Nell and Hannay follow on close behind, and all is a noisy contrast to the deferential formality usually observed by Lord Mortimer’s guests. Hannay reprimands Nell for having mocked his lordship via her parrot, but she is unrepentant, threatening ‘he’ll wish I’d only mocked him when I’m finished’. Her prideful anger is still raw and close to the surface. She lays claim to possession of the parrot and Hannay backs her up. Lord Mortimer, once more reacting with childish indignation at not immediately getting his way, puffs himself up at such a reasoned assertion of rights. Amidst the chaotic melee which has disrupted the order of his inner sanctum, he fetches his sword and insists that Hannay fights him. This is the height of his bravery, threatening a Quaker with violence (a reversal of the Woody Allen line from Sleeper: ‘I’m a really timid person – I was beaten up by Quakers’). Hannay refuses this ridiculous challenge, and as he advances to reason with him, Lord Mortimer steps back and trips over, falling in an undignified heap onto his big soft bed, from which he struggles comically to rise. Nell laughs with harsh heartiness and the parrot lends mocking harmony as they all retreat and make their exit. We are left with a close up of Lord Mortimer’s red face, puffed up and pouting, filled with outrage at his humiliation.

The prospect of manual labour - Hannay, Varney and Nell

We fade in on the stonemason’s yard, a complete contrast to the pampered luxury of Lord Mortimer’s bedchamber. Hannay is standing in his shirtsleeves, hammer in hand, whilst Varney and Nell sit idle beside him. For the first time, we see him hatless. Wearing a hat for such labour would obviously be impractical, but its removal also suggests that honest work is considered godly. The issue of how Nell and Varney are to find work is raised. Nell might sew, as she did to repair garments in the theatre. The paltry rewards are summed up in stark economic terms: ‘two shillings a week and all found for a seamstress’. As for Varney, he is sized up and declared unfit for any but the lightest labour. Hannay offers him a broom with which to sweep the yard. The looks on both their faces make it clear that neither are enamoured with the idea of manual labour, and Varney confesses ‘I like a merry life, Mistress Bowen’. Nell, awakening from a momentary contemplation of the livelihood Hannay has suggested, regains her spark and declares ‘and so by blazes do I! Everyone makes his living with his own tricks’. Both have become accustomed to an existence predicated on wit, appearance and performance, with actual work carried out by others. Deciding to make use of the network of friends and allies she has made during her time in Lord Mortimer’s company, she settles on the most infamous, the one man guaranteed to inflame his lordship’s anger – ‘that Devil Wilkes’.

First edition - Hogarth's That Devil Wilkes fresh off the press

We dissolve to a printer’s workshop such as the one depicted in plate 5 of Hogarth’s Idle and Industrious Prentice series, which we saw in the opening credits sequence. A print is being produced from the manually operated machinery, and when it is pulled from the frame we see that it is Hogarth’s caricature ‘That Devil Wilkes’. This effectively acts as another intertitle, but here we are privy to the means of manufacture. It makes us aware of the labour which goes into the creation of a work of popular art. In terms of the making of a film, it is an acknowledgement of the collaborative nature of the endeavour. Hogarth’s print was the culmination of a dispute between the two men, formerly friends and allies. Wilkes had been incensed by an anti-war print that Hogarth had produced in 1762 called The Times, in which he visually implied that William Pitt had been fanning the flames of war for his own profiteering ends. Wilkes had warned Hogarth that he would retaliate if he went ahead with the publication of the print, and he was as good as his word, launching an attack on the artist in his magazine The North Briton. In 1763, Wilkes was arrested after an attack on the king in The North Briton. Hogarth, who at this late stage in his life had begun to nurture any slights, and who, for all his willingness to ridicule authority remained a loyal royalist, made a portrait of him at his trial. It was an unkind caricature which exaggerated his slight squint and made him appear a leering and thoroughly untrustworthy sort. Wilkes filtered through the bitter and grudgeful lens of Hogarth’s personal and subjective perspective, in other words. The date of the print’s production postdates the setting of the film by two years, so a little dramatic license is once more required. The freshly inked caricature is handed to its intended recipients, Sims and his companion, whom the script describes as ‘a stout gentleman who looks not unlike Dr. Samuel Johnson’. They both laugh to see it.

Wilkes in person

There is something of a self-reflective recession of spectatorship here. We watch the image of Sims and his co-viewer looking at another image, which is in the same lineage as the images which we have become used to as intertitles. The dislocating effect is furthered as the camera pans from their examination of the print to find Nell and Wilkes himself sequestered in a private nook of the workshop. The relationship between image and actuality and the influence that the one can have on our interpretation of the other is reflected in the fact that we have seen Wilkes’ caricature directly before we are introduced to him in this scene. We become more aware of the slight forward thrust of his head and narrow-eyed squint of his regard, and are immediately disinclined to trust him. He and Nell are in the midst of some sort of bargaining dialogue, sizing up what each has to offer the other. Nell is not above using her own person as a bargaining tool, asking Wilkes if he’s ‘not interested in Bedlam nor in me’. The personal and political are inextricably intertwined, and there is an element of flirtation to their exchange, as Wilkes declares himself to be different from Lord Mortimer in that he is ‘not easily pleased’. There is a pause to allow whatever layers of meaning Nell might want to construe from such a statement, before he adds ‘I offer more’. In this case, a political alliance to fight the corruption of Bedlam and the system which allows it to flourish. The arts of politics are akin to the arts of seduction. Wilkes suggest that ‘one gives a girl a kiss to seal a certain sort of bargain’, quickly going on to add ‘but one shakes hands with a comrade and a friend’, to make it clear that this is not a bargain of that sort (whilst perhaps holding out the hope that it might develop into such). The reference to Nell as a comrade echoes Lord Mortimer’s use of the word, and similarly implies a platonic relationship with mutual goals and shared values. The camera pulls back across the workshop to rejoin Sims and the Samuel Johnson lookalike. The latter opines that the print is ‘a real blow to Wilkes’. Satire, even when relatively crude, is seen to have real impact on a person’s reputation, which underlines the seriousness with which Nell’s employment of her parrot is viewed. Sims’ mirth has been curtailed by his observation of the handshake with which Wilkes and Nell seal their bargain. He tells his companion that ‘it’s a blow I’ll leave you to administer. I have one of his to ward away’. His duel with Nell has entered the realm of politics, and Sims has a natural politician’s instincts.

Banknote sandwich - Nell removes herself from the human currency exchange

We fade from the printers’ workshop to Lord Mortimer’s sitting room, where he, Sims and Nell are taking tea with dainty and hypocritical politeness. Once more, the contrast between workplace and extravagantly luxurious leisure is made in the juxtaposition of scene settings. Lord Mortimer is regaled in silken finery whilst Nell is in practical velvet with tricorne hat, attired for action. The masculine and feminine norms are inverted again. Sims, as ever, is in neutral, funereal black. He acts here as if he is a disinterested arbiter trying to clear up an unfortunate misunderstanding. ‘Milord thought it would be best to make amends again’, he tells Nell, and ‘Milord would like to be kind to you’. She remains unmoved, noting ‘I’m duly warned’. Sims offers her a monetary note by means of which she can take a rest in the ‘waters of Bath’. Bath was a fashionable spa town at the time where the wealthy retired to enjoy the supposedly curative properties of the mineral springs. The implication is made that Nell’s recent behaviour is the result of her having succumbed to some sort of nervous disorder. She is also discretely being asked to make herself scarce, to stop causing an embarrassment for Lord Mortimer. She is not to be so easily bought off, however. As she calmly reminds them both, ‘you know I have a contempt for certain kinds of money’. To demonstrate this in the customary form of a jest, she folds the note, sandwiches it between two pieces of bread and takes a bite. It’s a substantive jest, making the comparison between the abstract value represented by the promissory bank note and the material sustenance of daily bread. With this calculated gesture of contempt, she removes herself from the system of human currency exchange. Like her parrot familiar, she is not for sale. Sims soberly informs her ‘the Bank of England thanks you for 300 pounds’. Money is no laughing matter. She slaps him, a second blow, and sweeps out, her point made and the architect of the bribe revealed.

Inventor of the banknote sandwich - Kitty Fisher with the Artist's Parrot by Joshua Reynolds

Nell’s expensive snack is based on a real incident from the era. The renowned courtesan Kitty Fisher, immortalised in several portraits by Joshua Reynolds, had worked her way up to the highest levels of society. She was offended by the amount offered to her by one Sir Richard Atkins, his insultingly low estimation of what a night with her was worth, and ate the banknote he had sent her between buttered slices of bread. This gesture acquired legendary stature, with the variances in the telling which that entailed, the value of the note tending to fluctuate significantly. Dan Cruickshank, in his highly entertaining and informative book The Secret History of Georgian London, quotes the journal entry of one Johann Wilhelm von Achenholz, who wrote of Fisher ‘this lady knew her own merit; she demanded a hundred guineas a night, for the use of her charms, and she was never without votaries, to whom the offering did not seem too exorbitant. Among these was the Duke of York, brother to the King; who one morning left fifty pounds on her toilet. This present so much offended Miss Fisher, that she declared that her doors should ever be shut against him in the future; and to show, by the most convincing proofs, how much she despised his present, she clapt the bank-note between two slices of bread and butter, and ate it for breakfast’. It seems highly likely that Kitty, who was at the height of her powers in the 1760s, the period in which the film is set, provided Lewton with some inspiration for the character of Nell, particularly when you also note Reynold’s portrait of her with pet parrot on her finger.

Sneer of triumph - Sims gets his way

Lord Mortimer laughs at her chutzpah, but Sims is stony-face. He purposefully picks up quill and parchment, the fact that they are on his person indicating that he always had an alternative plan should Nell have continued with her truculent non-compliance. ‘Tomorrow, after the Commission for Lunacy examines her, she’ll strike no more blows, not at you nor at me’. It’s a statement which reveals Sims’s true motivations for trying to incarcerate Nell. He wishes to do so not to protect Lord Mortimer’s reputation and political standing, nor even wholly because she’s his rival for the Lord’s favours, but because she has treated him with contempt and reviled him for his ugliness and lack of the natural graces. His motivation is hatred. Lord Mortimer is still reluctant to sign the document, protesting that ‘she’s not a danger to herself and others’ as is required for admission to Bedlam. He is weak, vain, selfish and easily manipulated, but not necessarily wicked. Sims has exerted his influence over him now, though, and knows exactly how to appeal to his self-interest. ‘She’s a danger to my position and your properties’, he scowls, reducing the matter to its essential details. He provides the decisive political addendum again, letting Lord Mortimer know that ‘with Wilkes behind her she’s more dangerous to us than any madwoman’. The personal and political are intertwined, and this act is sold to Lord Mortimer as a political one. A grim sneer of triumph cracks Sims’ face as we hear the scurrying scratch of quill across paper.

Nell presents herself before the Committee

The next scene is another consequent one, following on directly as a result of Lord Mortimer appending his signature to the form presented to him by Sims. We see the intertitle card of Hogarth’s The Committee, which depicts a group of men sat around a table, their wide-brimmed hats hung on pegs behind them, forming a row of black circles. This is plate IX from his series of illustrations for Samuel Butler’s Hudibras, made in 1725, quite early in his artistic career. Hudibras was a Cromwellian satire, and in this scene a group of puritans are engaged in heated debate over religious and political matters. Hogarth’s print fades to be reproduced in a more static form, the seated figures at rest and clearly waiting for someone to arrive before proceedings can get underway. Their hatlessness echoes that of the Quakers when gathering before the Lord. This is a less holy assembly, however. God is not present in this house. Nell duly enters draped in a cloak, which she keeps on, as if she doesn’t expect to be detained long. ‘Well, gentlemen, here is your lunatic’, she announces brightly. She answers the questions put to her by the dour spokesman of the Committee with a swift wit which reflects them back at him. When questioned about her knowledge of right and wrong, she observes that ‘what is right for me is wrong for you, that much I know. And vice versa’. It is a wry recognition of the partisan nature of power and its associated values and customs, which are afforded the status of absolute verities. But to these sour-faced gentlemen, who nod knowingly at each other, it is a sign of a confused mind. Noting their reaction, she explains ‘oh, don’t fool yourselves. A merry answer does not make me a fool, gentlemen. Ask me a sensible question and you shall have a sensible answer’. She is careless in her language and manner, not realising that charm and gaiety have no power here. She doesn’t have Sims awareness of the differing modes of address and behaviour demanded of particular environments. Wit may have been the commonly acceptable mode of discourse in the aristocratic and political circles from which she has just taken her leave, but here its play with meaning and pleasure in absurd reversals are taken to denote an antic disposition.

Nell despairs - fear creating madness

Sims makes his late entry at this point, making no effort at apologising and going directly to the head of the table to sit next to the questioner. His manner betokens someone who is confident in his authority within this setting. He has a whispered conference with the interrogator which results in a sly smile appearing on his face. These are evidently people with whom he is well acquainted, and for whom his word counts. The question of money is raised, presumably upon his advice. Firstly, the refusal to sell her parrot is brought up. ‘Why did you refuse 100 guineas for a parrot worth 5 shillings?’, they ask. Sanity is equated with fiscal prudence and a general concern for monetary value. Alternative values of honour and principle are not taken into account. Nor is the notion that a jest might be a way of presenting an important moral or political point, or drawing attention to an underlying issue. Nell’s extraction of herself from the human exchange currency is tantamount to a mental breakdown in the eyes of these men for whom money is the central fact of life. They continue with this line of questioning, asking ‘knowing the value of money, Mistress Bowen, can you explain why it was you ate a banknote?’ Sims smiles, his chin at rest on his hand, waiting for the anticipated reply with which Nell will further condemn herself. She has failed to grasp the gravity of her situation, or to adjust her manner to the requirements of the surroundings, which are wholly different from those to which she has grown accustomed. Once again, she insists it was ‘for a jest’, adding that ‘Master Sims knows why I ate the money. To show my contempt for it’. Sims coughs out a hollow, contemptuous laugh of his own.

Certificate of ownership

Nell now knows she is in trouble and requests that she be allowed to communicate with Wilkes. She is refused a witness, since, as she is informed, ‘this is not a court’, although the questioner goes on to say that they shall judge the worth of her sanity. After a whispered conference, the quill is brought out to record the judgement. It is coming to resemble an instrument of fate. The decision is a foregone conclusion, and is already evident from the look of smug satisfaction creasing Sims’ face, the look of power. The head of the Committee reads out the fateful words: ‘you have asked for voluntary commitment to enter St Mary of Bethlehem’s asylum. The charges for your care and keep to be borne by Milord Mortimer’. So she is to be kept by him here just as she was in his bedchamber. Another enclosed environment within which her sharp wit and questioning intelligence can be safely contained. The certificate is forged, but it is of no matter. It is signed and she has been declared mad, so any objections on her part will carry no weight whatsoever. She is safely in the system now. She is thrown into a panic which, in its uncontrolled terror, really does begin to resemble madness. ‘You’re not going to put me in Bedlam’, she pleads, incredulously. ‘Not for a little joke. Not for playing a trick’. The committee files out, taking up their hats now that their business is concluded. None of them look at her as they hurriedly take their leave. Only Sims looks back as he leaves, a look of triumph on his face. He grasps the scroll of parchment in his hand, effectively a deed of ownership. Nell is left on her own in the empty hall in which she has just been judged and is now not allowed to leave. The shadows of bars cast upon the wall presage her incarceration. She collapses into a heap on the floor.

Debased coinage

We fade in on a close up of Nell in the next scene. She is sitting with her back against the wall, her face a fixed mask of wild-eyed, fearful alertness. The camera pulls back to reveal the wider hall of Bedlam in which she now resides, its floor covered with straw and its space filled with nighttime murmurings and mutterings. The script describes ‘a little of the space around her. On the walls, crouching, rounded shadows can be seen moving; almost as if animals were crawling, indistinct and horrible through terrible darkness’. Lewton evidently wanted to convey the feel of a human zoo. Sims enters with a couple of attendants holding lanterns. He has no wig. The duel is over and in this environment the observance of manners and etiquette is unnecessary. This is the lowest level of society, and it is a domain over which he has total, unassailable command. He walks directly over to Nell and bends down over her crouching form. ‘Here in Bedlam, my dear, we can’t feed you banknotes’ he says with a viciously sarcastic pretence of unctuous concern. ‘Try chewing on this’, he adds, thrusting a coin into her mouth. He is reintroducing her to the human currency exchange, but here the coinage is debased, and her worth has been considerably deflated. It is now measured in terms of the few pennies visitors are required to pay to see her and the other animal inmates. The hard currency at this level of society is much less digestible than the more notional paper note she had previously been offered. Here, it as at less of a remove from the daily material needs, the meeting of which its meagre value represents. Sims' 'payment' is also a violating gesture which lets Nell know that she is now physically at his mercy. She is in his power, body and soul, and she is utterly and terrifyingly alone.