“Marina liked Italian cinema, loved Fellini films so much.
Those movies certainly gave her ideas!”
—Norman Mailer, Oswald’s Tale; 1995
“Can we go to the movies?” Marina asked when Lee Harvey Oswald picked her up for their first date on March 19, 1961. The two had met five days earlier at a social function in Minsk, a gala prelude-to-spring celebration at the Palace of Culture.
“Sure. Anything in particular?”
“La Dolce Vita. The Soviet censors have finally allowed it to be shown here without cuts.”
“Who’s in it?”
“I don’t know. It isn’t like one of those Hollywood films where you can identify a movie by the stars.”
“Who, then?”
“The director, of course. In this case, Federico Fellini.”
“I heard of him back in the states.”
“I’ve seen every one of his pictures. I believe him to be a true genius. So?”
“Your wish is my command, lovely lady.”
“Precisely what I hoped to hear, Alik.”
From the moment that film began, Lee, aka Alik, knew that he was witnessing something special. In the opening, a plane carried a statue of Jesus out of the city of Rome, off to be repaired. Over the rooftops they fly; down below, beautiful young women, in daring bikinis, sun-bathe on top of apartment buildings, their radios turned to stations that play American rock ‘n’ roll. The pilot waves; they respond in kind.
But it appears as if they’re waving ‘bye-bye’ to Jesus.
A metaphor, just like my English teacher used to say. This is about life not only in Rome but any modern city. Christ is removed. All that’s left below is hedonism: ‘The Sweet Life.’
*
Though she didn’t appear in that movie, no single person more perfectly captured the essence of ‘La Dolce Vita’ than the French actress Brigitte Bardot. Lee, like most every other male in America, rushed out to a theatre to catch her first important film ... And God Created Woman, when released late in 1957.
Previous to his first view of ‘Bebe,’ Lee had, like pretty much all American men, considered Marilyn Monroe The Dream Girl: sweet, flirtatious, kookie. For five years Marilyn defined what sexiness meant in the late-Eisenhower era, via onscreen roles and a 1954 nude lay-out in Playboy.
Already, though, the fifties were moving toward end-game. This newcomer from France stole away much of Marilyn’s steam.
Bebe flaunted all the conventions. In several films, the character Bardot played, based on herself, casually married. Soon she engaged in adulterous affairs. Not out of some deep, uncontrollable passion. On a whim, just for the hell of it.
“It is better for a woman to be unfaithful by choice,” the Gallic beauty stated without shame, “than faithful and unhappy.”
Here, Lee knew, falling madly in love with her precisely as several million other men simultaneously did, appears the shape of things to come.
Bardot is not some aberration, rather a role model for a New Woman about to emerge. Girls will see her and imitate her, even as only a few years back they did M.M.
My guess: by 1960, every female in every remote corner of the world will mimic Bebe’s swagger, her smile, that casual display of her body. They’ll dress like her, talk like her.
And style their hair in the careless, devil-may-care way Bebe’s blonde locks fall down all over her face.
*
“You look just like Brigitte Bardot,” Lee Harvey Oswald, calling himself Alik, said to Marina the first time the two met. Each had arrived separately at the dance, Lee showing up early, anxious as always to meet women. Marina waltzed in three hours late, only a short while before the party was about to conclude.
This was entirely deliberate on her part, planned as if Marina were a military leader executing a strategy planned out far in advance. As she drifted in, dream-like, wearing a heavy black overcoat, a cowl covering the top and sides of her head, all eyes turned to consider the late-comer: those delicate near-perfect facial features and intense eyes initially demanded the crowd’s attentions. Then, with the precision that can only be achieved through hours of rehearsal, the actress (for that’s what Marina was in this theatre of life; character might be a better term still, as Marina was not this woman’s actual name but the role she had agreed to play) drew her shoulders inward.
As she did, the cowl fell back, the coat slipped off her deliciously slender frame. Anatoly and Sasha, two young men enamored of Marina, had waited patiently for her to arrive. Each had grown fearful Marina would not show. At once they rushed to grab her wrap before it could reach the floor.
Marina meanwhile stood, like a professional fashion model, still as a statue, posing, preening, glamorous in a bright red Chinese brocade dress, white slippers out of some old fairytale adorning her tiny feet. Her bright eyes were overly made up, midnight-black Mascara adding a dark, decadent aspect to her otherwise pert, Lolita-ish girl-woman’s facade.
Perhaps most breathtaking was Marina’s hair, precisely styled like that of Bardot in glossy magazine layouts that first appeared in Paris, then the U.S. and free world, finally here in the Soviet Union, even provincial Minsk.
“Your accent is strange,” Marina answered the intense young man. “Do you hail from one of the Baltic regions? Estonia—“
“I’m an American.”
Lee noted that the young beauty lit up at this statement. She could not, he guessed, know his secret: that, in his youth, other boys wanted nothing to do with him, so atypical was Lee of what a U.S. male was supposed to be. Yet as is the way of the world she would assume he represented his homeland. For those living in Russia, dissatisfied with the ways of communism and its dull lifestyle, America provided a dream of excitement, fun and wealth. The grass is always greener, as the cliché goes.
Marina fell in love with Lee, or Alik, or whoever he was at first sight. What she fell in love with was not the person but her idea of him: the American male, her American male, the long hoped for example of that seemingly glimmering culture, arriving on the scene none too soon. The longed-for prince approached the unappreciated princess, he a half-formed idea out of her wildest fantasies. If she played her cards right, he might whisk her off to his American castle, where they would live happily ever after.
Take me away from all this. Please? I’ve been waiting!
Lee fell in love with Marina at first sight. What he fell in love with was not Marina the person (who did not exist now and never had) but an idea of her: the enchanting European dream girl, slim yet with lush, upturned breasts beneath that exotic costume, hungry to be touched by the right male. And the hair! Free flowing, seemingly unkempt, carefully fashioned to allow for that impression. A princess, lost here in the outer reaches of her world, longing for a prince among men to appear ...
There must be a dragon to slay; merely tell me where it is and I’ll rush out to conquer the thing and win you forever...
All those boys, those Russian boys, some wealthy as far as was permitted in this communist state, most far more appealing than this scrawny youth before her, fell away in comparison.
He had said the magic words: ‘I am an American.’ Where do you keep your Bowie knife, your Winchester repeater? When do I meet your faithful Indian companion? Why are you not wearing a buckskin jacket? Where do you stable your great stallion?
Lee fell in love because everyone wanted her and no one could have her, as the situation made clear. Marina fell in love because here was her American at last.
Your shortness, that in-truth homely face, the leering grin are all wonderful, though I would reject any Russian boy with any of those defects.
You are you; or, at least, my dream of you.
I love a man who exists only in my imagination. My vision of him, I impose onto whoever might be standing here now ...
I love a woman who exists only in my imagination. My vision of her, I impose on whoever might be standing here now ...
That night, Marina and Lee each fell in love with a persona rather than a person; an image, not a reality; a projection of each individual’s needs, these rightly or wrongly conceived as belonging to the imperfect person standing there. Love at first sight, if with an already existing fantasy the dreamer falsely believes has miraculously become actualized. There is, in the world, no more certain a formula for disaster, though neither would have believed so during this spectacularly silent moment.
The world appeared to open as their oyster. The future would be a great mutual adventure. They would share everything, their love a great novel, each day the next chapter.
How could anyone doubt it? For they had fallen in love at first sight.
*
Nineteen months earlier, on August 18, 1959, a beautiful seventeen-year-old girl, worldly beyond her years in emotion and intellect if not experience, stepped into Moscow’s KGB headquarters. To her surprise, she was ushered into the office of the director as though a Very Important Person had just arrived. This, she had not expected. She was, after all, only an ordinary girl, other than her remarkable looks and sharp mind; from the most average sort of family.
She had applied in May to the Leningrad KGB post offering her services as a spy, was accepted into their program, and went through extensive training. She had no idea what sort of mission she might be sent on. She didn’t care; anything to break the monotony of her boring life. I’ll take anything!!
After all, she’d seen movies. And in movies, particularly Hollywood films, young women, born bright and beautiful, got to live exceptional lives. Not your average marriage and/or job; something ... Romantic! Yet her outstanding attributes aside, that hadn’t happened. As a result, she determined not to settle but venture out in the world, or her corner of it; make her own fate, seeing as it had failed to come and find her.
Recently, she’d caught a spy film, knowing that it was only a movie. Still, it had to be based on something real. There were spies. Everyone had heard of Mata Hari, the German seductress from World War I who almost changed the conflict’s outcome and the course of world history owing to her irresistibility, which allowed her to draw secrets from formidable enemy officers.
So this young Russian woman had decided to give it a try.
On a whim, of course. Most things that most women do are whimsical. Beautiful women? Their very lives are whimsy!
“The situation is this,” Alexander N. Shelepin, head of the country’s KGB, a bloated middle-aged man who looked more like a butcher than a high-ranking government official, explained: “We received word only a few days ago that a young American, just now returned to California from service with the marines in the South Pacific, has filed for permission to withdraw from any further duty to care for his ill mother. In fact, this is but his cover. He plans to leave for Europe under the auspices of attending university in Helsinki, upon arrival there applying for a six-day Visa to visit Russia, intending to defect.”
“And your correspondents believe him sincere?”
“We can never know such a thing for certain. But our agents in the U.S. followed his course of action for some time. Since late childhood, he has expressed serious interest in communism. While in the service he condemned American imperialism in the Third World while secretly joining our secret cells, passing along classified information he’d obtained on his base.”
“It doesn’t smell right to me. If he feels so for our way of life, why would he join an elite fighting force?”
“There’s the question we must attempt to answer,” piped in the other man occupying the room. Yuri Nosenko, the KGB agent assigned to Lee Harvey Oswald, even now had that American’s file open on his lap. “It could mean that he is a plant, an agent for the CIA, sent here as a spy.”
“Precisely what occurred to me as you were speaking.”
“It’s also possible he’s the real thing,” Shelepin added. “We can’t ignore the possibility this may be the case and pass up information he apparently has about America’s new super-spy plane, the U2, as well as other significant military details.”
“What makes me believe this could be the case,” Nosenko said, flipping through the file, “is that he has a history of strange, self-conflicting activity. Our agents who have been in contact with him in the U.S. and Japan during his tour of duty suggest that once a person comes to terms with his own self-contradictions, it’s logical, at least according to this man’s unique logic— the world as it exists in his individualistic vision—he’d volunteer as an American warrior, simultaneously dedicating himself to the seeming opposition of communism.”
“It’s not unheard of,” the young woman, extremely well-read and university educated, agreed. “One of their greatest generals from the Second World War, Carlson, was a dedicated communist.”
“True. Which of course explains why the public does not know his name as they do Eisenhower, Patton, or MacArthur.”
“My assignment then will be to seduce him in order to learn one way or the other who he is and who sent him, if anyone?”
“More ’involved’ even than that. You will marry him.”
Her jaw dropped. “I didn’t expect anything so ...”
“If you wish to back out,” Nosenko offered, “you may.”
“When I committed, I did so with the understanding my mission might be ... how to put this ... ‘extreme’.”
“Why? Of course. You have a right to know, and in fact must know if you are to fully grasp what is expected. If this fellow—Lee Harvey Oswald is his name-—turns out to be what he says he is, marriage will allow you to draw from him all he knows about rockets, radar, other bits and pieces of information we can fit into the jigsaw puzzle that we daily attempt to complete so as to achieve a full picture of America’s defensive and offensive capabilities. Even if he agrees to speak with the KGB, as we imagine he will in exchange for Soviet citizenship, a wife—you—will on a daily basis be able to learn considerably more.”
“Supposing he knows nothing, says nothing?”
“A quick divorce could be arranged. You would not be stuck with him permanently, if that’s what concerns you.”
“Precisely! I want to pursue this career—“
“And you will, particularly if he turns out to be not what he claims but an American agent. If that’s the case, Oswald will want to remain here just long enough to learn as much as he can while spreading disinformation. The CIA understands that to mis-lead us about, say, the U-2 will do more harm to our side than any secrets he might share. At any rate, if that is the case, he will, that job accomplished, decide he is not as happy here, choosing to return to America. That’s where you come in.”
“Now, I’m confused again.”
“In-between attempts to achieve his aims and a departure, you seduce and marry him. Then, you will return with him to the U.S. There, you will be in a position to observe and provide us with up-to-date reports even as you spread disinformation.”
This is even better than I thought! The one thing I always dreamed about, even more than an exciting life as a spy, was to go to America. I can either do what the director asks, serving in the U.S. Or, if I do fall in love with this man, and his country, cut off all communications.
What can the KGB do other than brood? In that case I will become, in time, what I initially pretend to be: an emigrant housewife. There is no need for any rush as to deciding.
“That certainly sounds an effective strategy.”
“As we discussed earlier, ‘you’ will cease to exist. A missing person who will never be found. From this moment forth, no communication at all with family or friends. Hoping that you would accept, we have already created your new identity.”
Excitedly, she said: “I can’t wait to start.”
“Then we’ll start now. Here is your ‘legend,’ as our CIA counterparts would put it. You come from poverty, born out of wedlock on July 17, 1941, in the remote town of Molotovsk.”
“By the seaside, in the province of Arkhangelsk? Oh, but I went there once on holiday.”
“We know. That’s why we picked it. At any rate, you never knew your father, not even his name. Your mother—we’ve decided to call her ‘Klavdia Vsilyevna Prusakova’—couldn’t care for you and so turned you over to her grandparents to raise.”
“Interesting plot point.”
“More than merely interesting. This Oswald experienced something similar as a child. When the two of you meet according to our schedule, this creates an immediate symbiosis. Besides being entranced by your beauty, he will see you as his soul-mate. To further this, we have included in your ‘legend’ that when your grandfather died—you were four at the time—you rejoined your mother, now living in Zguritsa near the Rumanian border, she remarried to an electrical engineer. The family soon moved to Leningrad.”
“My home city. Of course! That way I can speak fluently of where I recently lived. Now, this again parallels ... what did you say his name was, the man I am going to meet and marry?”
“Lee Harvey Oswald. Yes, his mother remarried. Constant moving about appears to have had a significant impact on the boy, creating disorientation, as we know from reports written by various doctors. One more thing you will have in common.”
“Will all this happen in Leningrad, or Moscow?”
“Neither. Minsk.”
She was flabbergasted! Minsk? “So out of the way ...”
“Precisely as we wish. No question that he will request to live in Moscow. That’s where he could be the most dangerous to us, if Oswald is what we fear instead of what we hope for. By relocating him in Minsk, Oswald will be temporarily diverted into a holding pattern while we determine which side he’s on.”
“Minsk will render him harmless. When am I to leave?”
“Three days. As to your motivation: Your mother died, your stepfather remarried. You no longer felt comfortable there. You have an ‘uncle’ in Minsk. A charming, gruff old Colonel, Ilya Vasilyevich Prusakov. He and his wife share a comfortable, large apartment in one of that city’s finest areas, Kalinina Street.”
“As to this ‘uncle’: Who is he, really?”
“Officially, a high-ranking official in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Secretly, the top KGB agent in that sector.”
“Why, you’ve worked this out to perfection!”
“Thank you for the compliment. As for your personality, you must strike Lee Harvey Oswald, when you meet him, as none-too-bright, despite some upward aspirations toward gentility. You know nothing much about classical music, but are enthusiastic as to learning. This will allow him to perceive himself as your mentor as well as lover; that he, however superficial his knowledge of such things, can lead this beautiful girl into a more sophisticated realm that they, together, will share.”
“Naïve. That’s what I’m to be?”
“I hadn’t thought of it, but you are absolutely correct.”
“As for your ‘look’: On that day when you first come in contact with him, your hair should be styled in the manner of the French actress Brigitte Bardot. You are familiar with her?”
“Yes, of course. Rather decadent, don’t you think?”
“Absolutely. But our agents in America who are in contact with Oswald made clear he, like most men, is enamored of her. You see, sheer beauty, which you already possess, is not enough. We want you not only to be ‘a’ dream girl, but ‘his’ dream girl. The character you will play—become, as the Stanislavski method would have it—must not only be highly attractive to all men but Oswald’s vision of the perfect woman. That way he can’t resist.”
“So thorough! And my new name will be?”
“We gave that much thought. Apparently, young Mr. Oswald has all his brief life been involved in a bizarre love-hate relationship with his mother. That’s something we can make use of. Her name is Marguerite. The only other thing he appears to have ever truly loved is the marine corps. So we have devised a name for you that partakes of both. From now on you are Marina.”
*
For their second date Lee, or Alik as he insisted everyone address him, escorted Marina to yet another dance. Her earlier boyfriends Anatoly and Sasha, both anxious for her to arrive, saw her enter with the American and realized both were lost as to ever winning Marina. The former competitors found common ground for friendship and left to drown their tears in vodka.
Marina agreed to go to Victory Square with Lee later, the two slipping into a booth at one of the coffeehouses so popular with the elite of Minsk’s youth: Those attending the university, mostly boys, and girls pretty or bright enough to be escorted here, where everyone talked politics and culture late into the night. Marina spoke plainly about her current life. She worked at the pharmaceutical section of the Third Clinical Hospital, in the city’s central hub. As she lived with her uncle and that man’s wife, who did not charge room and board, Marina was able to spend most of her 45 ruble salary on clothes, explaining why a woman of such modest means could always appear so striking.
Lee talked openly about himself and his current situation, or more correctly presented Marina with his “legend,” then only recently re-aligned with current realities. Each, oblivious to the other’s play-acting, hoped that the person seated across the table would accept fantasy as reality.
Lee, according to his tale, had arrived in the Soviet Union full of high hopes, these gradually dashed. In America, he had devoured the works of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, drawing from the philosopher who had crystallized the communist manifesto and the revolutionary who put those values into action back in 1919.
Lenin: a pure idealist! All men could be equal; everybody must share and share alike. In time, experiences in Moscow and Minsk made all too clear that the dream did not transfer into reality. High-ranking Party members enjoyed all sorts of special luxuries that were obviously denied the common man and woman.
“Oh, Lee! That is so true, so true ...”
Worse, instead of having more than the average American, the working poor possessed considerably less. Lee rambled on and on about the lack of bowling alleys and nightclubs, the déclassé entertainment enclaves where blue collar workers congregated on Friday and Saturday nights in America to spend however little they had on simple pleasures. These did not exist here and, had they, the masses would not have been able to afford them.
Even the movies, which almost every U.S. citizen could enjoy owing to low ticket prices, were here mostly attended by the elite, as their date to see La Dolce Vita made clear.
“Back home,” Lee/Alik waxed rhapsodic, “there is so much more democracy. Every person can say what he wants in the press, radio, TV. Censorship here is worse than I expected. Not that my country is perfect. All in all, though, I’d have to say that ordinary people have it far worse than where I come from.”
“I’d like to see America for myself someday.”
Lee eyeballed the ravishing young beauty as her eyes danced at the thought. “Maybe we could do that together, you and I?”
“That would be ... a dream come true, Lee.”
“Sometimes dreams do come true! Or so Americans like to believe. If we strive, perhaps you and I can make that happen?”
Her eyes remained locked with his. “Do you know what I like most about you?” she finally asked, smiling like some Sphynx.
“Uh-oh! I don’t know if I want to hear this.”
“Well, you shall. There is a quality of innocence to you. So much passion in your voice. I am very attracted to that.”
“I see. Do you know what I like most about you?”
Marina laughed: “That with my hair styled is this manner, and my dark eye-make up, I look like Brigitte Bardot.”
Lee laughed too. “No. That’s what first attracted me to you and what I like second-best. Beyond that, there’s a quality ... not ‘innocent’, as you said of me ... for there’s a kind of quality to you ... how shall I put it ... a naivete?”
“You think me a silly girl, not a true woman?”
“I think you are quite remarkable. The ultimate female I have searched for all my life. To me, you could be wife, lover, sister, mother, friend, comrade—“
“Alik! You are moving far too fast.”
“Sorry. I hope I didn’t spoil everything.”
“Not at all. Come, walk me home. Meet my aunt and uncle.”
Lee feared they might resent any American. Certainly they would express concern if he dared admit that any loyalty to Russia was fast-fading. To Lee’s happy surprise, they enjoyed him, commenting on Lee’s excellent manners, as compared to many of the local boys whom Marina brought home. In addition to being polite to a fault, Lee was provocative, interesting to listen to and converse with. Clearly, they heartily approved.
“Come back soon, and often, Lee. Always a pleasure.”
Within a week the family extended to Marina her freedom to visit Lee at his apartment, with the understanding Lee would behave as a perfect gentleman. The two kissed on the couch and stood together on one of the twin balconies, holding hands, her head on his shoulder. They watched the ships slowly move up and down the river, from and to the sea.
Hours were spent listening to records, Tchaikovsky Lee’s favorite. He would, between movements, explain details about the work. Marina said that she had listened to such music before, enjoying live performances in Leningrad. Now, through Lee’s mentoring, she truly understood them. He introduced her to Sinatra, opening up a whole new world for the wide-eyed girl.
In between passionate kisses, though no more than that as promised, each revealed his or her own inner lives, or at least the “legends” concocted for them, to the other.
Your mother abandoned you? So did mine!
You never knew your father? Nor did I!
You were moved from place to place until you believed that you belonged nowhere? Me, too.
Why, we are soul-mates! This is not merely some temporary attraction. I believe we were made for each other!
In a bizarre sense, that happened to be the truth.
*
Another date was set for March 31. To her surprise Marina received word Lee would not be able to keep it. Suffering from an ear-ache, he had admitted himself to the Fourth Clinical Hospital, where he was to undergo an operation on his adenoids.
Lee hoped she would visit, mentioning that he would be stuck there for two weeks. Marina rushed to his side, her big eyes full of concern for her skinny American. The doctors told her that they were having difficulty locating the infection, though the patient continued to complain of insufferable pain.
While with Lee, who certainly looked none the worse for wear, Marina was taken by a sudden personality shift. When Lee spoke, his voice sounded ever so slightly different than before. This she wrote off to his throat problems.
Far more perplexing was what he had to say. Her Alik seemed tougher, which impressed Marina. If there had been anything lacking in him during their time together, it was masculine assertiveness. Gone, though, was a certain quality she adored, in Lee’s words and his eyes; that innocence she had mentioned.
In its place, a jaded element appeared. So when he without warning proposed, Marina could not answer at once. Back in the apartment, likely she would have capitulated while in Lee’s arms. Instead Marina insisted she had to think about it.
Still, she came to see him every day. For whatever reasons, Alik chose not to discuss intellectual matters, as before. Now, he spoke of mundane things, like the quality (or lack thereof) of food here; which nurses were pretty, which were not.
Previously, she’d had the impression that when with Marina, Lee remained oblivious to other woman.
So what am I to do now? At first, I felt myself falling in love with my prey, though as a secret agent that is verboten. That caused concern; such emotions leave one vulnerable. I could easily have said ‘yes,’ traveling with him to his wonder-land, sharing his bed, as my orders insist I must.
Now all of that is changed. I don’t love this man as I thought. Me, the real me, that is; not Marina. She must. I can pretend to do so, despite a sudden hardness in his character.
I will do whatever I decide is best for me ... or, more correctly, Marina will do whatever I decide is best for her and me—the real woman who performs that character daily, but never forgets that beneath Marina’s persona, there still exists an entirely other person, filled with hopes all her own ...
Though every day I play this role, I lose a little more of her ... of me.
*
As Lee and Marina exited the theatre, she anxiously tried to get him to talk about the film. The two headed to their favorite coffee shop, taking their regular booth. But while she rhapsodically recalled the contemporary clothing the women had worn, and the wild, decadent parties—the men literally forcing women down on all fours, riding them about a huge chateau like horses—Lee remained silent for the longest time.
When Marina asked if something were wrong, fearful this intriguing American had grown bored with her, Lee snapped back into the moment. He assured her that that was not the case.
In truth, he’d been so engrossed with La Dolce Vita’s implications he found it necessary to think them through before responding. Now, he was able to do so ...
The main character, Marcello, was the first true paparazzi ever to appear on screen, photographing superficial/celebrity Beautiful People on their late-night odysseys through Rome. The city’s classical architecture served as an almost surreal foil for the ultra-contemporary goings on.
In the most memorable scene, one tall, busty blonde movie star, Anita Ekberg, drunkenly sloshed her way into the Trevi Fountain, her jet-black gown soaking through, shimmering in moonlight as her impossibly long, tangled mane of blonde hair, seductively wet and messy, fell across her oblivious face.
Marcello pursued her throughout this momentary madness, hoping to seduce an icon of The Sweet Life. She laughingly dismissed him and all other men. Untouchable, yet at the same time available, Ekberg captured the essence of this still new decade, the Sixties, a lifestyle emergent; she like Bardot (and Sue Lyon as Lolita when Lee eventually saw that film) served as replacements for Marilyn Monroe and all those other blondes of the Fifties. They suddenly seemed outdated, nostalgic even.
This Marcello was one of the jet-set yet always there existed the possibility that he, and he alone, might prove capable of something better—an earlier sort of traditional life these others abandoned in their hungered search for immediate gratification, their senses all important, anything spiritual out of sight and mind—like that removed statue of Jesus; Marcello alone capable of a return to simpler times, before life roared out of control and nothing signified anything of lasting value.
The world, Christ removed, belonged to those young girls who wore bikinis while listening to rock ‘n’ roll: The Moderns.
In the middle of the film, when Marcello’s father arrived to try and persuade his son to return with him to their small village and the values still existing there, Lee had, on the edge of his seat, hoped Marcello would do so. For the old man offered earthy salvation from such superficial pursuits.
Throughout the film Marcello regularly came in contact with a lovely girl, not one of the In Crowd, the last old-fashioned female in all Rome. She happily did laundry while singing a folk tune, her smile sweet, genuine rather than cynical or sardonic.
Always, she beckoned for Marcello to join her. But to do so he must abandon his current companions.
In the film’s final shot, Marcello and the partygoers, hung-over from the most perverse of all orgies, drifted down to the beach at dawn. There they discovered the grotesque remains of a fish consumed by nuclear waste that had been dumped into the ocean, the nightmare aspect of our modern world destroying all that is natural and best.
Those with Marcello took perverse delight in viewing this monstrosity. Only he seemed unconvinced this was ‘fun.’
Then, far down the beach, he spotted that girl again, she once more washing sheets, humming that ancient ditty, smiling. Recognizing Marcello, she waved to him, hoping he would leave the others, join her. For one moment, his eyes grew thoughtful, mournful, simultaneously sad and happy. Some capacity he once possessed for living in the fast-fading old world order, put aside for contemporary kicks, rose again in his consciousness.
Momentarily, a hunger for tradition appeared ready to reach the surface of Marcello’s mind. By her very presence, she offered him a return to the way things were, before the world went mad, embracing nihilism rather than fighting against it.
Marcello appeared about to desert his current company, as she cooed: “Come! Come to me!” Then their howling at the sight of the all-too-real monster drowned out her voice. “I can’t hear you,” Marcello apologized, any recollection of an earlier sort of knowledge, about to be reborn, disappearing from his eyes.
He shrugged, turned away, rejoined his companions as they moved on to their next round of drinking, drugs, sex.
Down the beach from this representative gathering of La Dolce Vita, the girl, knowing on some non-intellectual, deeply spiritual level that Marcello was lost to her, now and forever, smiled sadly. Then she returned to her work, humming again.
Marina, in her naïve way, had accepted the film’s gaudy details at face value: the gowns, the diamonds, sleek cars, rock ‘n’ roll, casual sex. Lee, in the darkness of the theatre, experienced one of those epiphanies he, on rare occasions, did when he had just seen a movie that spoke directly to him.
The film, he grasped, was not a celebration of The Sweet Life but a condemnation of it; a profoundly traditionalist work, a warning to each Marcello out there in the audience. If given this hero’s final choice, we ought to accept that gentle girl’s offer, flee from La Dolce Vita, re-embrace the Good Life of hard work, a man and a woman sincerely, simply surviving together.
Finally, Lee shushed. Locking eyes with Marina he feared he spoke above this beautiful but none-too-bright girl’s level. Here she was, with her Bardot hairstyle, her enthusiasm for fun and pleasure. What was the title of a Bebe film he had seen? A Ravishing Idiot. Yes, that was her. And Marina as well.
He dared not reveal just how ‘square’ he himself was deep down. Yes, the traditional life had always closed him out. But what did someone once say in a movie? Just because you love something doesn’t mean it has to love you back.
Lee did not want to lose her, not this one; couldn’t stand the thought of Marina heading back to other boys, they more open to the swinging style. Reveal too much of his own sentimental soul and Marina might dismiss Lee as a hopeless innocent.
If Lee Harvey Oswald, the homely runt most men thought of as beneath them, even “queer” perhaps, had worked his way up the shimmering rope ladder this high, there remained a part of him that did not want to lose everything by opening his mouth and saying something ... embarrassingly innocent. Then he would never reach the top rung and sleep with ... Brigitte Bardot.
Still, such a reasonable facsimile as he gazed at now was more than most men could or would ever know. These included many who had laughed and scorned him, but now led the most ordinary lives with the most ordinary wives. Like James Stewart in another of Lee’s favorite films, Vertigo, he could at least embrace the twin of his dream girl. That would have to suffice.
Always, though, there would be the other Lee. The Lee who, like Marcello in the movie, wanted to abandon superficiality. Embrace something true. Hold on to that. Who knows? Perhaps Marina could be both, the Beautiful Person, glimmering in the moonlight but also a substantial young woman, able to boldly move in daylight, solid, strong. The woman who could bear him children, turn Lee into ... a Normal.
Was it possible for any woman to be first one, then the other? Or perhaps better still both at once, the hardworking life’s partner by day, the elusive, alluring mistress when the lights were turned low? Was every woman all women? Or was this only what Lee, like every other male who had ever walked the face of the earth, most wished?
However impossible it might be, however unfair to the woman in question to expect so much, he wanted all that.
Terribly, completely, heartbreakingly wanted it.
Lee didn’t know, couldn’t answer that one. But he would know. In time. For he had determined already that Marina would be the one. The girl he would try to “have it all” with.
Marina, Lee grasped, was the woman he must marry. Yes, they truly were soul-mates, made for each other, as the saying goes.
Marina. The woman he fell in love with at first sight.