Published in 24fps, February 2004.
Part Two (Dan Sallitt)
Hello,
all.
Just turned off the VCR after refreshing my memory of DAISY. What
a wonderful film. I do not think there are ten better in the
entire cinema.
Let's look at that "I love you" moment. The dialogue before it is
a mix of mundane conversation, well-rendered, and Peter's slightly
tipsy pushing against boundaries. Daisy had a nice date and is
open to another; Peter is in love already, knows he shouldn't talk
about it yet, eventually does anyway. At the Stork Club earlier,
we've seen that he has a capacity for joy, and that drink can improve
him - his lack of inhibition pleased Daisy. But before that, in
her apartment, we found out that his wife
has died, and that he is struggling with life. Now, on the street
in front of Daisy's apartment, the two frequencies are superimposed
upon each other - he's drunk, in love, and connecting to something that
is making him quite sad. The "I love you" comes as a complete
surprise, because Daisy has just established the proper, restrained
code of communication for them, picking the time and place for a second
date. So the "I love you" is in a way a domination on his part,
an overriding of Daisy's control. He speaks with melancholy,
which also disturbs the codes of romantic communication.
Preminger leaves the camera on him in an over-the-shoulder shot as
Daisy responds with inarticulate surprise and bafflement. Her
reaction re-establishes the ground rules of realism that Preminger and
Hertz are observing: she knows, and we do, that the "I love you" is
inappropriate, though not exactly unpleasant. Then Peter wheels
around abruptly and walks away without a goodbye as she is speaking -
he is in love, sad nonetheless, and in complete, though drunken,
control of the moment. Daisy is left to stand and react, as she
does so often through the movie with both of her men.
Point one: there's some very grown-up, very pleasing dialogue
here. Has anyone read Elizabeth Janeway's novel, which Hertz
adapted? I'd like to find out whether some of the script's
qualities might originate there.
Point two: it's very Preminger to show the "I love you," Daisy's
modifying reaction to it, and Peter's surprise departure all in the
same shot. More than anything, Preminger is about using style to
make a unified presentation of elements that are in dramatic opposition
to each other.
Point three: the last three lines of dialogue in the movie are a key to
the structure of the entire drama. DAISY is about war, about a
struggle for dominance between two power-oriented men: the more direct,
dominating, impulsive Dan, whose joy is in his exercise of power; and
the more indirect, passive Peter, who nonetheless has techniques of
emerging victorious, or at least unbloodied, from every skirmish.
Daisy, intelligent and balanced, is not a creature of power, and is
buffeted about by the superior strategy of her lovers.