Sex, Lies, and Motion Pictures

Iain Softley's The Wings of the Dove, the most successful of the films recently inspired by Henry James's novels, is also the film that most thoroughly jettisons his text. Both its representation of sex and its representation of lying alter the ratio between the direct and the oblique in the novel--forcing to the surface what James identifies only by metaphorical indirection and silence. But Softley's moving pictures effectively translate into their own terms a Jamesian dream of triangular intimacy. The highlight of this process is the cinematic ekphrasis of Gustav Klimt's Danaë, which replaces the Bronzino at Matcham.