Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

193
He shows her his world, the world that he has, the magic that he creates. And
from her point of view, the world is obviously quite frightening, it’s an act of
courage for her to be there. A lot of the imagery in the piece is quite religious
and so her view of him was probably like the angel of death or something like
that. And so for me, within the scene I was just looking at the practical things
that he does which I don’t think were particularly conscious. He’s not trying to
seduce the girl or win her over or anything […]. But for a man who’s used to
working with animals, he recognises fear and signs of suspicion. And so I was
just looking for a particular gesture to do with calming down, because you can
calm an animal down if you stroke their forehead. You can do it with human
beings as well […]. I mean this was all in my head, and this is what I mean
when an actor goes through with a proposition. And then her instinct was to bite
the fingers. 637
This scene is a very powerful one. Toss’s complex response lends itself to a simplified
sexual interpretation (which is what Liz later takes from it).
One scene that Whitten recalls as being difficult was the lovemaking scene between his
character Ethan and Liz. It was scheduled very late in the shoot and it was a
painstaking scene to film, since it had a relatively large number of shots. Both Whitten
and Penelope Stewart, who played Liz, were nervous about the scene and talked about it
a great deal beforehand. When it came to playing the scene, they were given very few
cues, but Whitten feels that the scene’s intimacy is evident in the finished film, and that
“it’s quite beautiful when you look at it”. 638 Graham Tetley comments that the sex
scene was “hugely hard to write”, but for him, “the nub of it was to throw the seduction
onto Elizabeth”. There is however, “a sort of excitement for both of them in it, but all
that stuff is very subdued really because no-one admits to anything”. 639 This scene is
one that has sometimes been seen as being unconvincing in the way Elizabeth offers
herself to Ethan, and criticised by feminist critics as having been filmed from a male
point-of-view, but Ward’s response to these criticisms is: “I tried to portray earlier on in
the film that she’s attracted to this guy, but doesn’t want to be. There’s an internal
637 Lynette Read, interview with Frank Whitten, 13 April 2002.
638 Lynette Read, interview with Frank Whitten, 13 April 2002.
639 Lynette Read, interview with Graham Tetley, 4 December 1998.