Stanwyck arrived at this interpretation intuitively
or at Vidor’s suggestion.
Let’s look more closely at what Stanwyck
expresses facially and through gestures with a
handkerchief, which film scholar James Naremore,
borrowing Russian director Vsevolod Pudovkin’s
term, calls an “expressive object.”^50 As the wedding
progresses, Vidor cuts between long and middle
shots of the interior from Stanwyck’s point of view
and middle shots and close-ups of Stanwyck’s
face—a classic method for emphasizing the con-
trasts inherent in the scene.
As the ceremony begins, Stella’s face is open and
curious, but what is she thinking? Within the narra-
tive context, it must be how happy she is to be there.
As Richard places the ring on Laurel’s hand, how-
ever, Stella runs through a range of emotions. She
smiles tenderly, she shudders slightly, tears well up
in her eyes, and finally she swallows hard to sup-
press her emotion. When a police officer asks the
crowd to disperse, Stella asks for another minute,
the only time she speaks in the scene, which other-
wise is underscored by the kind of highly charged
music intended to make the audience cry. After the
officer gives Stella extra time to see the bride and
groom kiss, Stanwyck brings the handkerchief into
play. Looking like she’s about to lose control of her
emotions, she slowly lifts the handkerchief as
though to wipe away tears. Instead, she puts a cor-
ner of it in her mouth and, like a child, begins to
chew and suck on it. She looks down in a moment of
perfect maternal happiness, then looks up, her eyes
shining and brimming with tears.
Vidor then cuts to a long shot of Stanwyck walk-
ing confidently toward the camera, looking fulfilled
and swinging the handkerchief back and forth
freely. As she crumples the handkerchief into
her hand, squares her shoulders, and straightens
her posture, the film ends. This is the sort of tear-
jerking ending that made Hollywood’s “women’s
films” so popular, and Stanwyck’s performance is
consistent not only with the character she plays
but also with the melodramatic narrative. She gives
us Stella’s range of character between tough and
sensitive, but with her final self-confident stride,
she also emphasizes the fulfillment in a mother’s
dream of seeing her daughter happily married.
Ultimately, Stanwyck’s performance transcends
the story’s melodrama. In her natural physical
appearance, movements, and gestures (especially
with the handkerchief ); expressive coherence
(aided by our belief that Stella is doing the right
thing); and emotional consistency (alternating feel-
ings of happiness and sorrow, determination and
doubt), Stanwyck remains true to the good-hearted
character that she has been building from the first
scene.Michelle Williams in Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine
Blue Valentineis a story about a marriage that was
off course from the beginning, a union of Cindy
(Michelle Williams), a talented, promising young
woman, and Dean (Ryan Gosling), a romantic who
is contented with only being her husband, not striv-
ing for more. His love for her is genuine, hers isn’t,
and it’s clear from almost the beginning that she is
not committed. It is basically a two-person story
that requires two superb actors to handle the char-
acters’ development from needy teenagers to disil-
lusioned parents. She’s a pre-med student living at
home and looking after her aging grandmother; he
works for a moving company. He may be a high
school dropout, but he doesn’t lack intelligence,
sensitivity, or a desire to be a good husband and
father. But it doesn’t help their situation that she’s
running away from her unhappy parents, that he
hasn’t seen his parents in some time, that their child
was fathered by Cindy’s high school boyfriend, or
that she attempted to abort it before agreeing to
start a family with Dean.
They move to rural Pennsylvania, where she
works as an aide in a doctor’s office and he as a
house painter, a job that he jokingly says allows him
to starting drinking at eight in the morning. She
soon becomes disillusioned with him and their life
together. From the marriage to the ultimate
breakup, their situation changes dramatically, and
the movie charts those changes through frequent(^50) See Naremore’s excellent discussion of this scene in Acting
in the Cinema, pp. 86–87, quotation, p. 85.
LOOKING AT ACTING 333