EXAMPLES:
La Femme infidèle (Claude Chabrol, 1969) (remade as Unfaithful (Adrian Lyne, 2002))
The husband seeks out his wife’s lover, curious to see what he is like. They meet and it seems friendly, but something the lover says incites an uncontrollable rage in the husband and he murders him.
The Postman Always Rings Twice (Bob Rafelson, 1981)
A married woman plots with her lover to murder the husband.
Body Heat (Lawrence Kasdan, 1981)
A married woman seduces a man she meets in a bar and then convinces him to murder her husband. Too late he realises that he has been used by her and is arrested for the crime, while she walks free.
This situation sits comfortably within the sequence that begins with situation 13, and many dramas have been crafted out of this sequence, often with each situation triggering the next.
ADULTERY was treated more seriously in the 19th century: social attitudes and the legal system lent it gravitas, and gender politics meant that men could treat women as possessions. Any period drama, therefore, can exploit these social conditions to the maximum and the audience will understand the psychology. Contemporary drama continues to be fascinated by this situation. Although adultery is no longer such a serious issue and marriage less common, this situation is as potent as ever.
Any relationship which is built upon the idea of intense love and/or desire has the potential to involve obsession, possessiveness, jealousy, paranoia and, ultimately, madness. If we compare Othello with Chabrol’s L’Enfer, we see very similar dramatic devices at work.
Most often there is a sexual element involved. Desire and passion are strong enough elements to override caution, moderation, philosophical understanding. Characters become irrational, headstrong and crazy, all of which is great for drama.
(1) The husband is murdered in order for the lovers to be together. In a period drama this would make sense because divorce is out of the question and there is no other solution.
(2) The husband is murdered by the wife, helped by the lover, in order to access the husband’s money either directly or in the form of insurance. In these situations there is often a twist: the wife is merely using the lover and then implicates him in the murder. This is a typical device in film noir, one that reaches its apogee in Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1947) and The Postman Always Rings Twice (Bob Rafelson, 1981).
(3) The wife murders the husband because she has discovered his adultery. This murder can be slow and pre-planned so that it seems natural or an accident, or it can be an act of blind rage, a ‘crime of passion’.
It would be an oversimplification to say that the exact same rules apply to a husband. Gender politics remain an unequal affair. Men are usually bigger and stronger than women, and within the hearts of most men there still remains the idea that they have some kind of ‘ownership’ of the wife or lover. So, while the categories are similar, the psychology is different.
Perpetrated by the betrayed husband or wife. The murder can be committed in a fit of passion (as in Chabrol’s La femme infidèle); another possibility is that the lover has become too possessive and the affair is over for the married person. The lover is now a threat to the security of the marriage and is therefore murdered (as is the case in Fatal Attraction (Adrian Lyne, 1987)).
An element to take into consideration: is the lover known to the betrayed party? In Pinter’s Betrayal (David Jones, 1983), the lover (Jeremy Irons) is the best friend of the husband (Ben Kingsley).
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MURDEROUS ADULTERY is fuelled by a heady mix of passion, greed, ambition, eroticism and seduction, all of which are useful dramatic components.