A Pearl of a Movie

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Lisa (Janet Margolin): What do you see when you look at me?

David (Keir Dullea): I see a girl who looks like a pearl. I see a pearl of a girl.

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When I was in elementary school, I had a rather intense crush on a girl named Lisa.

I thought she was an exotic creature — well, as exotic as one can be, I suppose, when one is 7 or 8 years old. She told me she was part Indian (Cherokee, I think she said), and I believed her — I had no reason not to. It seemed plausible to me even though Arkansas' Native American population at that time was quite small.

But I was 7 or 8, and I knew nothing about population totals. I believed what my eyes and Lisa told me. Lisa had long straight black hair, and she had the bone structure of the Indian maidens I had seen on TV. She told me her family had moved to my little hometown from some other state. She probably told me which one, too, but it meant nothing to me.

It's hard to be sure now, but I think we met when we were in second grade. It seemed everyone who knew me knew of my infatuation with this girl, but then we took a family vacation that summer to visit some of my parents' friends who knew nothing about it. During that visit I recall that the subject came up one evening, and my mother made a remark of some kind about Lisa and me and a movie called "David and Lisa." I didn't know what she was talking about — I don't even remember the remark except that it included that title, and I gathered that there was some sort of irony about the names. I didn't know what it was, but all the adults apparently understood. I recall much chuckling and many knowing nods.

Well, Lisa's family moved away the following year, and I have not seen her since. It was many years after she moved away that I finally saw the movie that was mentioned that night. I thought it was very well done — but I saw no connection between my little schoolboy crush and the characters in the movie — other than the names and the fact that it was a love story (albeit an unusual love story).

As love affairs go, ours was sort of the Walt Disney version. But, really, what else would you expect from 7– or 8–year–olds?

Anyway, I guess that was a sort of sneaky way of getting around to saying that it was 55 years ago today that Frank Perry's "David and Lisa" made its big–screen debut in the United States (it premiered in Italy a month earlier).

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As the movie began David (Keir Dullea, who is probably best known for his work in "2001: A Space Odyssey") was brought to a psychiatric facility by his mother. His chief problems were a fear of being touched and an obsession with clocks. He tended to keep to himself and absorbed himself in his studies — especially clocks.

Dullea's tantrums when touched were thoroughly believable, and he deserved praise for his work. He received a Golden Globe for Most Promising Male Newcomer.

While David was at the psychiatric facility he met Lisa (Janet Margolin), who suffered from split personality. One personality could only speak in rhymes; the other could not speak but could write.

Margolin, an unassuming beauty making her first movie appearance, could light up any room (or movie scene). She was just one of those totally likable personalities — even when her characters required her to do unlikable things. And Lisa did some pretty unlikable things.

Margolin's work earned her a Golden Globe nomination for Most Promising Female Newcomer.

Both performances packed the kind of emotional punches that are rarely seen in movies anymore.

As time passed David began to open up to his psychiatrist (Howard Da Silva), but after he got into an argument with his mother during a visit, his parents decided to take him out of the facility and bring him home. It didn't take long for him to decide he didn't want to be home; with nowhere else to go, he returned to the facility.

Lisa discovered she was both girls and tried to share this revelation with David, but he was listening to another student play Bach on the piano. She ran away from the facility and got on a train to Philadelphia — where she had earlier put her arms around a statue of a mother and child.

David joined the facility staff in searching for Lisa, but of course they didn't find her. Then David realized that Lisa might have returned to the museum so he and his psychiatrist went there and found Lisa on its steps.

It seemed to be a turning point for both of them. Lisa, for the first time, spoke in prose, and David overcame his fear of being touched, allowing Lisa to hold his hand.

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Perry was nominated for Best Director but lost the Oscar to David Lean for "Lawrence of Arabia." The movie was also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay but lost to "To Kill a Mockingbird."

But the absence of Oscars on its resume is no reflection on the quality of the movie. The story was powerful. The performances were memorable. The black–and–white cinematography was brilliant.

There just aren't many movies that are as good.

(And you can see it on Turner Classic Movies Saturday, Jan. 6, 2018, at 9:45 p.m. Central.)

The Science of Sex

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Alfred (Liam Neeson): When it comes to love, we are all in the dark.

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I have often wondered if the life of sexologist Alfred Kinsey inspired the story that was told in 1989's "sex, lies and videotape." After all, didn't James Spader's character do almost precisely what Kinsey did?

Well, not exactly, I suppose. Spader just switched on the video camera and let the women start talking. He did ask them questions as they went along, but the women introduced the topics, and it was entirely up to them how explicit they were.

Kinsey, on the other hand, asked a lot of specific questions. For his research, questions needed to be asked of many women to get an idea of how common certain sexual behaviors were. (The account of his life was provided in the movie "Kinsey," which premiered 10 years ago today.)

And, of course, Kinsey did not video tape his subjects. The technology didn't exist until near the end of his life. (He may have made audio tapes, though.)

Beyond that, Kinsey was raised by a sexually repressive father (John Lithgow), from whom he apparently received little useful instruction. That could well account for his curiosity about sex. I don't recall ever hearing anything about Spader's character's upbringing, only that he was sexually dysfunctional.

Anyway, back to the subject at hand.

Kinsey began his professional life as a professor of biology, which evolved into sexology, largely from personal experience — or lack thereof. There was a shortage of scholarly research on sexuality, you see.

"The staggering truth," wrote historian William Manchester, "was that men and women knew more about gall wasps [which had been Kinsey's previous field of study] than each other. Human beings were even uninformed about the erotic behavior of members of their own sex, and therefore had no way of knowing whether or not they were normal."

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Kinsey (Liam Neeson) fell in love with and married one of his students (Laura Linney, in an Oscar–nominated performance). Neither was sexually experienced before marriage, and their physical relationship suffered initially, but they worked it out, as I gather spouses had to do at that time; they had to find the solution to their problem almost entirely on their own through a kind of trial–and–error method.

As I say, there were few sex resources to which people could turn for answers, and most of the conventional wisdom was based on myths and old wives' tales. Thus, Kinsey's academic specialty was born.

I don't know a lot about Kinsey's life and work, but the movie seemed to have the ring of truth to it. My generation's teachers probably were students of people from Kinsey's generation — once or twice removed, perhaps — and many of them perpetuated the same sexual myths that were almost universally accepted in Kinsey's day.

That's kinda how it is with misinformation.

The findings from Kinsey's interviews informed people that nearly everything they had been told about sex was not true, and it changed a lot of things. In fact, my guess is that, were it not for Kinsey's research establishing that homosexuality was not a rare deviation but was actually much more common than had been believed, the subject of gay marriage would not be as prevalent as it has become in recent years.

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Kinsey himself was bisexual and had a relationship with one of his male assistants (Peter Sarsgaard in the movie) — who then went on to have a relationship with Kinsey's wife.

It was that kind of marriage. The Kinseys had their own definition of love, and Kinsey acknowledged in the movie that love was the one thing that couldn't be measured scientifically.

As I say, I don't know much about Kinsey's life, but I got the sense that he treated his sex research with the same clinical detachment he brought to his voluminous studies of the gall wasp. Film critic Roger Ebert confirmed that.

"The film's director, Bill Condon, who is homosexual, regards Kinsey's bisexuality with the kind of objectivity that Kinsey would have approved," wrote Ebert. "[T]he film, like Kinsey, is more interested in what people do than why."

The acting was great. Linney, as I mentioned, was nominated for an Oscar — for Best Supporting Actress. She lost to Cate Blanchett.

Neeson and Sarsgaard deserved to be nominated but weren't. Neither was Oliver Platt, who played the university president who tried, unsuccessfully, to get Neeson to consider the P.R. ramifications of his activities.

I guess "Kinsey" was the kind of historical movie I like best — one in which I have little knowledge going in and can readily confirm what I learned from watching it. If such a movie has been unnecessarily embellished or the facts have been altered, its credibility with me goes way down.

Ten years later, "Kinsey" remains a highly credible story in my book.

True Love

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For those who are in love, whether they are married or not, Valentine's Day is perhaps the most important holiday on the calendar.

It may not be as lucrative for florists or candy makers or greeting card printers as it has been in more prosperous times — although, as I observed last year, even the recession didn't seem to dampen some people's enthusiasm and it may be that way this year as well — but it seems to me that, if ever there was a holiday when the old adage that "it's the thought that counts" should apply, Valentine's Day would be the one.

Expressions of true love come from the heart, not from the wallet.

Of course, money is no object if one is as prosperous as Niles Crane. And, while longtime watchers of Frasier could tell you that Niles' relationships with his first two wives lacked something (although, with both being independently affluent, those relationships certainly didn't lack money), his relationship with Daphne never lacked the most essential ingredient for a happy Valentine's Day — love.

And his money did give him the means to travel to England to try to reconcile Daphne's estranged parents — because he believed it would make her happy.

Certainly, money is important. But a relationship that relies only on money isn't much of a relationship, is it?

Personally, I found the relationship between Niles and Daphne to be wildly improbable, and I stopped watching the show for awhile. But I came back after I saw the episode that included the clip I have attached to this post.

Men and women have been so stereotyped over the years — men as unfeeling brutes who care only about satisfying their primal lusts, women as nags, shrews, harpies — that the scene appears to be contrary to the truth, but I believe it expresses a truth that is seldom acknowledged.

I believe that most men who are in love would make any sacrifice for the object of their affection, even fly halfway around the world, as Niles did, although most can't afford something like that. And I believe most men secretly wish the women they love would acknowledge their efforts as openly as Daphne did.

I'll admit, that is probably a little presumptuous on my part, but I do know this: If any woman ever spoke to me the way Daphne spoke to Niles, there would be nothing I would not want to do for her.

I still don't know how likely it is for a woman as beautiful as Daphne to fall in love with someone like Niles, although — in my mind, at least — it seems like a good argument for that old platitude, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

But love isn't really about beauty. It's about a connection between people.

I hope you are fortunate enough to have found that connection in your life.

And, if you have, I hope you have a wonderful Valentine's Day — in spite of the economy.

The Eye of the Beholder

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When I was growing up, there were many times when I heard my parents lamenting the fact that they had lost touch with good friends.

Most of these friends were people they had known when they were all serving as missionaries together in Africa, but each returned to the United States at different times.

As time passed, many of the mailing addresses my parents had for these friends became outdated. Letters and Christmas cards may have been forwarded to new addresses for awhile. Perhaps some found their destinations initially, but eventually they must have stopped reaching their intended recipients and wound up undelivered, collecting dust in the post office.

I have often thought that it is a shame that the internet didn't exist in those days. My parents could have used it to look for lost friends. Once they found those friends, they could have used e–mail to stay in touch.

And they could have used sites like Facebook to reconnect with people. I signed up with Facebook in January, and I have been amazed at how many old friends I have reconnected with in a matter of months.

One is a friend I have probably known since we were about 11 or 12. I don't think we went to the same elementary school, but I am pretty sure we were in middle school together, so we probably met in sixth or seventh grade.

Many of our classmates got married not long after high school graduation. Some of those marriages have proven to have staying power, but many have not.

In my friend's case, love came to her later in life, but it seems that it is of the lasting variety. We were "chatting" on Facebook recently, and she was talking about her relationship with her husband, how it is based on mutual love. My friend has had some serious health problems in recent years, and she mentioned (in what I could only imagine were tones of amazement since the conversation was written and not spoken) that her husband "thinks I am beautiful and sexy even when I know I can't possibly be."

That, it seems to me, is the definition of love — an attraction based not merely on physical desire but on other, more intangible factors.

And, with all due respect to my friend, this isn't about what she thinks of herself. It's about what her husband thinks. If he thinks she is beautiful and sexy, she is. No one else's opinion matters.

It is often expressed this way: "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

That quote is frequently attributed to Plato, but, apparently, it is a misquote, a boiled–down version of what was actually a more profound statement:

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"Remember how in that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may."

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I have written about the subject of beauty before, but poets and philosophers clearly disagree on what beauty is. It is a topic that has bewildered writers for a long, long time.

Here are some examples:

• "Beauty is not in the face," wrote Kahlil Gibran. "Beauty is a light in the heart."


• Although he wrote of very young lovers in "Romeo and Juliet," it seems to me that Shakespeare was on to something more lasting and meaningful than physical attraction when he wrote, "Did my heart love till now? Forswear it sight, for I ne'er saw true beauty till this night."


• Aristotle called beauty "the gift of God."


• Socrates, perhaps thinking only of physical beauty, called it "a short–lived tyranny" — and, in truth, few people are fortunate enough to retain their good looks as they age. So, possibly, Socrates was right if one thinks of those who learned little when they were young except how to use their looks to get by without having to do much.


• I've always been fond of what Lord Byron wrote: "She walks in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies; and all that's best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes."
  
  Now, that's poetry.

Love and beauty remain enigmas to modern observers. Many people mistake lust for love. People want to possess that for which they lust. And lust is based on the external, not the internal. No wonder so many marriages fail.

This ongoing quest may have been best summarized by Dr. Frasier Crane, who said in an episode of his popular TV series, "We do not choose love. It chooses us." And it chooses on its schedule, not ours.

In my experience, the relationships that have lasted have been the ones in which people describe each other as "soulmates." That is a concept that transcends physical beauty and speaks of something that will endure through the phases of life.

So, while it may not be exactly what Plato said, beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.