Appendix 3.1: Analytic methods - 6 films from 1954
by virtue of both her wealth and her judgement. She is
opposed, within the diegesis, to Mrs Figgin, Will Mossop’s
(John Mills) landlady and mother of Ada Figgin to whom he is
apparently 'promised1. Will's choice is between Ada and
Maggie (Brenda da Banzie); if Ada will become like her unkempt
and foul tongued mother perhaps, the film suggests, Maggie
will become like Mrs Hepworth. In both the scenes in which
she appears she motivates ensuing narrative development. In
the first she visits the shoeshop, demands to know who made
her boots, and congratulates Will Mossop on his craftsmanship.
Her recognition, offered to the Hobson family and to the
audience, of Will's exceptional skill then motivates Maggie's
choice of him for her husband (and business partner). In Mrs
Hepworth's second scene Maggie and Will have visited her at
her sumptuous home to ask for a loan to set up their business.
Despite the unsuitability of their proposed marriage in class
terms Mrs Hepworth recognises the strengths of their bargain
and gives them both her congratulations and the loan.
There is no audience access to her own point of view, but
through her presence in these scenes and implicitly when she
is referred to in dialogue at other points in the film she
enables the audience to evaluate the actions of other
characters within the terms of the diegesis.
Group 4 : The female guests at the Lansdowne reception in The
Million Pound Note.
This reception is the scene where Henry Adams (Gregory Peck),
an American alone in London enjoying temporary possession of
the million pound note, is introduced to 'London society'.
Without exception the guests are late middle-aged couples with
young adult daughters, and Henry Adams is introduced to and
whisked away from them all in turn. The elderly mothers do
most of the talking and their subject matter is the special
qualities of their daughters. This group of characters, or
figures, represent the avaricious English aristocracy anxious
to get their hands on American money, and the desire of
elderly women to 'settle' their daughters in marriage. Some of
these figures may reappear in a subsequent scene, a charity
affair, but it is immaterial to the unfolding of the narrative
whether or not they are the same people. Apart from their
representation of the two diegetic assumptions suggested
above, they also act as a foil for another female character,
Portia Lansdowne. Their collective similarities enable her
difference.
This classification of characters across the six films into
four groups allows for detailed questions concerning the
definitions of and assumptions about women as they are
structured into the narrative, and thence about the possible
consequences of these definitions and assertions for
contemporary audiences.
187