Word: torvald
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...wife and ravishing matron of a quite proper bourgeois household. She flutters about as if domesticity were giving her a giddy high. She coos over her babies, she makes a delighted to-do about dressing the Christmas tree and saving pennies when she shops. Set up by her husband, Torvald, as queen of his private life, she manages his home with charm of a born peacemaker. She doesn't question the rightness of the fact that she has to steal sweets behind her husband's back because he disapproves of candy-eating women. And she never questions his need...
...Women's Lib heroines (Jane Fonda). Have it directed by Joseph Losey (The Go-Between), a sympathizer with the feminist cause. Shoot it on location in the Christmas-card setting of Røros, Norway, and bring in such supporting players as David Warner (Nora's husband, Torvald), Trevor Howard (Torvald's friend, Dr. Rank), Edward Fox (the blackmailer, Krogstad) and France's Delphine Seyrig (Nora's girlhood companion, Kristine). Terrific, right? Says Losey: "I hated every bloody minute of it." TIME's Jesse Birnbaum, who was on hand for some of the action...
Jane also implied that the adaptation had been written by a misogynist. Torvald, Rank and Krogstad-all the men-had been portrayed much too sympathetically. The script failed to reflect a true understanding of women, especially their relationship with one another as expressed in the scenes between Nora and Kristine. Jane devoted long hours to working out these scenes with Delphine. So much did the two women kiss and touch each other before the camera that Director Losey had to complain about the unwarranted intrusion of lesbianism into the story...
...affair with Bergman, Liv resembled another famous Norwegian woman, Nora Helmer in Ibsen's A Doll's House (1879). Like Nora, Liv was loved and protected but also patronized. "I have existed merely to perform tricks for you, Torvald," said Ibsen's heroine to her husband. "But you would have it so." Like Nora, Liv rebelled. As Nora's husband commented shortly before she closed that famous door on her domestic life, "she is terribly self-willed, this sweet little person...
...different ending, Torvald might say, "O.K., Nora. I agree it's been a bad marriage. I'm leaving, too. Let the children fend for themselves." Viewed in that light, the cost Nora is inflicting on others by her abandonment is clearer. She is being selfishly irresponsible. The logic of her act is that one no longer honors a commitment as soon as it displeases...