Considered in conjunction with his apparent lack of any sex life for however many years (not to mention any maternal hang-ups), might Nicholas's limp and need of a stick be suggestive of some sexual incapacity? Cf Jake Barnes, Amfortas, etc. One trusts his eventual bride will not be doomed to disappointment...
"I beseech ye in the bowels of Christ, think that ye may be mistaken."
You are right of course. And there's that scene where Nicholas asks Francesca to stroke his penis.
shareNicholas asks Francesca to stroke his cat. Ostensibly. I think there's too much sexual tension between the two characters to suggest that Nicholas is impotent. Plus, the film book states that he was much in demand among his social circle. I think Nicholas sleeps with women but doesn't allow any further intimacy due to his emotional hang-ups. Also, as I noted in another thread, he is her guardian and she is living in his house under his care - are we talking potential scandal? And, as they both keep insisting, she is his second cousin, another source of scandal. I would think that these factors added to his fear of intimacy explain why he denies to her and himself his love/need for her. It must be terrifying for him when he realizes that he can't live without her.
shareIn the book, it is explained that Nicholas was thrown from a horse and his leg shattered, hence the limp.
shareMovie girl: Sexual tension, yes. But not below propriety of human behaviors.
shareMovie girl: I don't think so! It was a beautifully cultured film with nothing to sully the contents!
shareMovie girl: MY answer was out of line in how it was shown here. I meant that Nicholas was not inviting her to do anything besides patting his cat! So there was nothing below board.
shareYs, that was Nicholas' intention, but, I think the script writer had a double meaning in mind. Very clever to have sneaked this one by the censors.
shareMovie girl: If that is so, they were very clever! MY feeling is that the romance is immediately out of the film with this other person's description of our Nicholas's intent. I don't really think he was thinking of sex; when they had just met and he was turned off by women. Besides, she was supposed to be 15 years old when she came to live there.
(But it could have been a double meaning; tactfully expressed?). Whichever way, we love the film and James Mason was superb in his role. The part where Nicholas says, "I won't eat you" - I have seen and heard that said before; simply a person getting used to a forbidding looking person. He was saying that he was not an ogre! (Remember our fairy tales as kids? Those ogres were pretty scary, but some of them were in disguise because of a spell on them. Nicholas appeared formidable, but that was an outside shell because of his previous hurt.
(Someone else was responding to me but their post was blacked out. Maybe it was not very nice). You are usually right on, Manderstoke, so Movie Girl will bow to your judgment as a super fellow Mason admirer.
Movie girl: If that is so, they were very clever! MY feeling is that the romance is immediately out of the film with this other person's description of our Nicholas's intent. I don't really think he was thinking of sex; when they had just met and he was turned off by women. Besides, she was supposed to be 15 years old when she came to live there.
(But it could have been a double meaning; tactfully expressed?). Whichever way, we love the film and James Mason was superb in his role. The part where Nicholas says, "I won't eat you" - I have seen and heard that said before; simply a person getting used to a forbidding looking person. He was saying that he was not an ogre! (Remember our fairy tales as kids? Those ogres were pretty scary, but some of them were in disguise because of a spell on them. Nicholas appeared formidable, but that was an outside shell because of his previous hurt.
(Someone else was responding to me but their post was blacked out. Maybe it was not very nice). You are usually right on, Manderstoke, so Movie Girl will bow to your judgment as a super fellow Mason admirer.
Movie girl: If that is so, they were very clever! MY feeling is that the romance is immediately out of the film with this other person's description of our Nicholas's intent. I don't really think he was thinking of sex; when they had just met and he was turned off by women. Besides, she was supposed to be 15 years old when she came to live there.
(But it could have been a double meaning; tactfully expressed?). Whichever way, we love the film and James Mason was superb in his role. The part where Nicholas says, "I won't eat you" - I have seen and heard that said before; simply a person getting used to a forbidding looking person. He was saying that he was not an ogre! (Remember our fairy tales as kids? Those ogres were pretty scary, but some of them were in disguise because of a spell on them. Nicholas appeared formidable, but that was an outside shell because of his previous hurt. As time went on, we do discover that he had been very hurt in the past and was repressing his feelings for Francesca.
(Someone else was responding to me but their post was blacked out. Maybe it was not very nice). You are usually right on, Manderstoke, so Movie Girl will bow to your judgment as a super fellow Mason admirer.
Movie girl: No. and No. I took this to be a physical handicap. His anger towards women was because of his mother's desertion of him and his father.
I do think he did not think of sex because of his anger, but when he fought his attraction to Francesca later it was different. (In other words, only love of the deepest kind would go hand in hand with sex. IF Francesca had chosen someone else in the end, he might have gone on as embittered man as the years passed and never married.