This is not a review of the movie. It is a HALF review. I shall say the bare minimum about the male' side. The extensive interest of a young boy, Freddie, is collecting butterflies. Although he is an amateur, his great knowledge is respected by professional entomologists. Freddie is secretly in love with an art student, Miranda. But he is too shy to attempt a normal approach. When he wins a lot of money, he buys a lonely country estate, and transforms the cellar of the annex into a comfortable and rather large room, though without windows. In turn, he chloroforms and kidnaps Miranda and locks her up in the annex. He imagines that if she gets to know him, she might fall in love with him. After a few weeks he says with rage: You COULD fall in love with me if you tried. You just DON'T TRY.' After a month Miranda gets the opportunity to hit his head with a shovel. But he manages to lock her up before he goes to a hospital. While he is away for some days, the warming apparatus in the annex breaks down. Miranda becomes ill and dies. - This is the half part of the movie about which I shall say very little. Clearly, something is wrong with Freddie's mind. And his subsequent logical reflections', assessing the pros and cons whether Miranda's death was his fault or not, reveals the credit writer's insight into some kinds of mental diseases. Moreover, the situation into which Miranda is thrown is so distant from ordinary experience, that normal people cannot be expected to act in a perfectly rational manner. Miranda tries out many strategies. But it must have been manifest to Freddie that she never takes any step, until every less costly step has failed. - - - Henceforth I shall turn to the female' part and, in particular, to aspects that may easily be overlooked. Even before Miranda was kidnapped she had certain hypocritical attitudes, which prevented more adequate strategies. I entertain no illusion that Miranda could easily have got herself released. But it was indeed in her power to refrain from making things worse. She felt contempt for such people as Freddie, and would have demonstrated her contempt if he had approached her in a normal way. When he eventually showed her his impressive collection of butterflies, her only reaction was that he was an abhorrent mass murderer. She was overwhelmed with pity with one single butterfly in a glass that was not yet dead, and she begged Freddie to release it. However, her own father was a medical doctor. And whatever our ethical evaluation, a very large part of medical science and contemporary medical research involve extremely painful experiments on animals. If Freddie was cruel to hundreds of butterflies, what was Miranda's father to millions of vertebrates? Probably her fundamental ethical rule was that whatever is kept out of view, is kept out of ethics. Do professors of entomology constitute a specific category of scoundrels? At a time when Freddie had promised to release Miranda at a certain date, and when she seems to have believed him, she said with genuine kindness: `I do wish you would come to London. This [= the life Freddie is living now, alone and with one special interest] is death.' With less hypocrisy Miranda might have understood that her kidnapper would be seriously wounded, if she depreciated his deepest interest and greatest skill. In fact, the event when he showed her his butterfly collection was the first emergence of anything external to the prisoner-and-guard-relation. Miranda worked with the beauty of colour and form of art, and Freddie worked with the beauty of colour and form of nature. Here was one topic about which both could talk in reciprocal respect. If Miranda had been a more skilled strategist, she might even have said: Why didn't you think of making a photo of some of your boxes, and post them to me and ask if I would like to see your entire collection and maybe paint some of the butterflies?' And, truthfully or not, she might have added: I would have come. Definitely.' - Elsewhere in the movie Miranda makes another big strategic flop. She assures Freddie that he could read Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye', understand the book, and discuss it with Miranda's usual friends. He does read it, but their subsequent discussion ends with Miranda reproaching Freddie for rejecting the book just because you cannot understand it'. And when his desperation grows because of his incapacity of communicating with Miranda, Freddie finally says: You see, I was right in bringing you here. We could never have made friends outside.' Now, I happen to be highly acquainted with Novels, poems, and dramas. But I think that Miranda's perception of Salinger's book is sheer nonsense, while I would have no difficulty in discussing the book with Freddie. If Salinger's aim was to depict an exceptional boy who cannot help being the way he is because of some endocrine disease, I might have felt sorry for him. Perhaps even his flagrant intolerance could be excused, despite his own dire need of tolerance from others. But I see no personal charm in his intolerance. Nor can I find any trace that he hates everything that is false'. And if Salinger intended to illustrate how similar this boy is to all human beings in not fitting anywhere, Salinger has failed miserably. - - - Formally the movie could be called a horror film. But contemporary users will hardly be upset by so little horror; they may profit more from focusing on the psychological interaction. In the 1960s a gasp pervaded the entire audience in the ultimate scene, when it becomes clear that Freddie is preparing for kidnapping a certain other girl. No such reaction emerged when I saw the movie two years ago. - - - Special admiration deserves the butterfly-thin music, mostly played on a zither, but nevertheless highly threatening.
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