MovieChat Forums > The Dark Mirror (1947) Discussion > Theories about the music box?

Theories about the music box?

posted 18 years ago by midfieldgeneral
5 replies | jump to latest

Anyone out there with any ideas about the significance of the music box or the tune it plays? It's obviously used by Terry to trigger hysterical anxiety in Ruth, and I guess it must be related to the mysterious event back in their early childhoods that is alluded to but never explained (the deaths of their parents, perhaps?). It's clear from the final scene that Ruth is now free of the associations it had for her while she was under Terry's evil spell. Seeing as this is a movie full of pseudo-psychoanalytical symbols, does the music box (a receptacle) signify Ruth's passive and submissively feminine nature as opposed to the knife and the scissors (instruments of castration) which are linked with Terry?

[–] Doylenf 18 years ago

Interesting question and I don't know the answer. De Havilland's expression in that final scene puzzles me, after LEW AYRES tells her she's more beautiful than her sister. She still looks uneasy and maybe that's because she just listened to the music box again--but, whatever, it's as though she's still very troubled over the loss of the bad sister.

[–] Noir-It-All 15 years ago

I couldn't help but be aghast at the way the law and the psychiatrist colluded on this one! And, the psychiatrist and each of the twins. Imagine what a real defense attorney would do to these two parties.

"Two more swords and I'll be Queen of the Monkey People." Roseanne

[–] 15 years ago

[deleted]

[–] timlin-4 11 years ago

Or was it the good sister...

[–] lolarites 11 years ago

The tune was Frankie and Johnny about a woman who killed her lover when she discovered he had done her wrong.