“I’m not offended.”
“And you could at least express a tiny bit of interest in my thesis. I mean, Bert, you can at least ask what it’s going to be about.”
“What’s it going to be about?” he asked.
“Go to hell, I don’t feel like telling you now.”
“Okay, fine.”
“Fine,” she said.
They were both silent.
“Cindy,” he said at last, “I don’t even know you when you’re like this.”
“Like what?”
“Like a bitch.”
“That’s too bad, but a bitch is also part of me, I’m awfully sorry. If you love me, you have to love the bitch part, too.”
“No, I don’t have to love the bitch part,” Kling said.
“Well, don’t, I don’t care.”
“What’s your thesis going to be about?”
“What difference does it make to you?”
“Good night, Cindy,” he said, “I’m going home.”
“That’s right, leave me alone when I’m feeling miserable.”
“Cindy…”
“It’s about you, you know, it was only inspired by you, you know. So go ahead and leave, what difference does it make that I love you so much and think about you day and night and even plan writing my goddamn thesis about you? Go ahead, go home, what do I care?”
“Oh boy,” he said.
“Sure, oh boy.”
“Tell me about your thesis.”
“Do you really want to hear it?”
“Yes.”
“Well…” Cindy said, “I got the idea from Blow-Up.”
“Mmm?”
“The photographs in Blow-Up, you know?”
“Mmm?”
“Do you remember the part of the film where he’s enlarging the black-and-white photographs, making them bigger and bigger in an attempt to figure out what happened?”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Well, it seemed to me that this entire experience was suggestive of the infantile glimpse of the primal scene.”
“The what?”
“The primal scene,” Cindy said. “The mother and the father having intercourse.”
“If you’re going to start talking sexy,” Kling said, “I really am going home.”
“I’m very serious about this, so…”
“I’m sorry, go ahead.”
“The act of love is rarely understood by the child,” Cindy said. “He may witness it again and again, but still remain confused about what’s actually happening. The photographer in the film, you’ll remember, took a great many pictures of the couple embracing and kissing in the park, do you remember that?”
“Yes, i do.”
“Which might possibly relate to the repetitive witnessing of the primal scene. The woman is young and beautiful, you remember, she was played by Vanessa Redgrave, which is how a small boy would think of his mother.”
“He would think of his mother as Vanessa Redgrave?”
“No, as young and beautiful. Bert, I swear to God, if you…”
“All right, I’m sorry, really. Go on.”
“I’m quite serious, you know,” Cindy said, and took a cigarette from the inlaid box on the table beside the chair. Kling lighted it for her. “Thank you,” she said, and blew out a stream of smoke. “Where was I?” she asked.
“The young and beautiful mother.”
“Right, which is exactly how a small boy thinks of his mother, as young and beautiful, as the girl he wants to marry. You’ve heard little boys say they want to marry their mothers, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” Kling said, “I have.”
“All right, the girl in these necking-in-the-park scenes is Vanessa Redgrave, very young, very beautiful. The man, however, is an older man, he’s got gray hair, he’s obviously middle-aged. In fact, Antonioni even inserts some dialogue to that effect, I forget exactly what it was, I think the photographer says something like ‘A bit over the hill, isn’t he?’ Something like that, that’s the sense of it, anyway. That this man, her lover, is a much older man. Do you understand?”
“Yes. You’re saying he’s a father figure.”
“Yes. Which means that those scenes in the park, when the photographer is taking pictures of the lovers, could be construed as a small boy watching his mother and his father making love.”
“All right.”
“Which the photographer doesn’t quite understand. He’s witnessing the primal scene, but he doesn’t know what it’s really all about. So he takes his pictures home and begins enlarging them, the way a child might enlarge upon vivid memories in an attempt to understand them. But the longer he studies the enlarged pictures, the more confused he becomes, until finally he sees what might be a pistol in one of the blow-ups. A pistol, Bert.”
“Yes, a pistol,” he said.
“I don’t have to tell you that the pistol is a fixed psychological symbol.”
“For what?”
“For what do you think?” Cindy asked.
“Oh,” Kling said.
“Yes. And then, to further underscore the Oedipal situation Antonioni has his photographer discover that the older man is dead, he has been killed — which is what every small boy wishes would happen to his father. So that he can have the mother all to himself, you do understand?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, so that’s what started me thinking about the detective as a voyeur. Because, you remember, there was a great deal of suspense in that part of the movie, the part where he’s blowing up the photographs. It’s really a mystery he’s working on — and he, in a very real sense, is a detective, isn’t he?”
“Well, I suppose so.”
“Well, of course he is, Bert. The mystery element gets stronger and stronger as he continues with the investigation. And then, of course, we see an actual corpse. I mean, there’s no question but that a murder has been committed. Antonioni leaves it there because he’s more interested…”
“Leaves what? The corpse?”
“No, not the corpse. Well, yes, he does leave the corpse there, too, as a matter of fact, but I was referring to the mystery element, I meant…” She suddenly looked at him suspiciously. “Are you putting me on again?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, and smiled.
“Well, don’t be such a wise guy,” she said, and returned the smile, which he thought was at least somewhat encouraging. “What I meant was that Antonioni doesn’t pursue the mystery once it’s served his purpose. He’s doing a film about illusion and reality and alienation and all, so he’s not interested in who done it or why it was done or any of that crap.”
“Okay,” Kling said. “But I still don’t see…”
“Well, it occurred to me that perhaps police investigation is similarly linked to the primitive and infantile desire to understand the primal scene.”
“Boy, that’s really reaching, Cindy. How do you get…”
“Well, hold it a minute, will you?”
“Okay, let me hear.”
“Got you hooked, huh?” she said, and smiled again, this time very encouragingly, he thought.
“Go on,” he said.
“The police officer… the detective…”
“Yes?”
“… is privileged to see the uncensored results of violence, which is what the child imagines lovemaking to be. He can think his father is hurting his mother, you know, he can think her moaning is an expression of pain, he can think they’re fighting. In any event, he’ll often explain it to himself that way because he has neither the experience nor the knowledge to understand it in any other way. He doesn’t know what they’re doing, Bert. It’s completely beyond his ken. He knows that he’s stimulated by it, yes, but he doesn’t know why.”