What better way to begin than by starting with a hard-core Arthur Miller play?
Well, I have to say that if anyone can make you want to take a character and strangle the life out of him, it’s Arthur. Gosh, in “The Crucible”, I just wanted to grab those little girls and shake the living daylights out of them for causing so much damn trouble. But ANYway…
This is a story about Eddie, a man who works as a longshoreman on the docks near the Brooklyn Bridge. When his wife’s cousins from Italy (Marco & Rodolpho) are illegally smuggled into the country, they come to stay with Eddie, his wife Beatrice, and their teenage niece, Catherine. Eddie is very protective of Catherine, and when he sees she, and the dapper (and single) Rodolpho are getting seriously involved, he does everything in his power to part them.
Okay – so Eddie is a good guy. He loves his wife and his niece, and I found I totally sympathized with his struggle between his heart and his head. He has every right to be skeptical, he is letting these illegal relatives (complete strangers) crash on his floor, and he gets them work. He’s just a big, loveable lunk-head with some old-fashioned ideals. But man, he ends up all over the place, questioning everyone and every situation. He even questions himself, one minute calling the authorities to get Marco & Rodolpho arrested, and the next, running to warn them so they don’t get caught. He fights for everything he believes in at that moment and is so blinded by it, that he sacrifices everything.
But, even with wanting to strangle the main characters into sense, that has to be one of the great things about this script. The idea that just reading it can make you feel something so vivid, colorful and strong that you want to stick your hand right into the pages and bitch-slap all of the characters, is impressive. Catherine wants to run willy-nilly down the street, naively trusting everyone she meets, Rodolpho’s motives are truly questionable, and Eddie, well, like I said before…
The only one in this that really feels like an unwitting victim in all of this is Marco. He keeps his head down and tries to make money for his family back in Italy, and ends up getting the shortest end of the stick in the end. Honest work doesn’t win, and blind faith doesn’t win either. The only thing that wins seems to be hearts or smarts. It is never made clear if Rodolpho & Catherine’s relationship is really a ploy for him to get his Visa, or if they are truly in Love. So it’s the Lie that is the means to an end, or the genuine feeling of Love that wins out.
For my part… I think it would be insanely interesting if Rodolpho was lying the whole time…
And if that makes me just a tad bit of a romantic, so be it.
