TOWER OF SCREAMING FREUDIANS

The KINETIC is a potentiality that describes the relationships of excitation-quanta.

The DRAMATIC is a potentiality that describes the relationships of emotion-quanta.

The DIDACTIC (formerly "thematic") is a potentiality that describes the relationships of correlation-quanta.

The MYTHOPOEIC is a potentiality that describes the relationships of cogitation-quanta.

           --STALKING THE PERFECT TERMS: THE FOUR POTENTIALITIES

          

So I've just finished reviewing the 1968 French thriller TOWER OF SCREAMING VIRGINS,only to find that the movie's diegesis contained more material than I could fit into a film-review. It's a shame I'm not a Freudian, because the film is really a treasure trove of Freudian tropes, for all that the narrative was based on a story written some twenty years before Freud was born. I judged that the film has only "fair" mythicity because it was not as interested in what I have called "correlation-quanta" as on "emotion-quanta." 

Here's the setup material I wrote the review.

This English-dubbed French thriller, despite its exploitative title, boasts a distinguished lineage. The source material is partly from a legend from French history: that, in the 14th century, Margaret of Burgundy, wife to King Louis X, committed adultery within a Parisian guard-tower, the Tower of Nesle, for which offense the unhappy French queen was imprisoned for the remainder of her life. A writer named Frederic Gaillardet dramatized the incident, though Alexander Dumas rewrote the play, possibly because he'd become famous for a stage-success in 1829, prior to his later fame as a novelist. However, the Gaillardet-Dumas story only takes various names and places from the historical account, concocting a wild hybrid story I'm tempted to call a "psycho-swashbuckler." I have not read any version of the prose source material. But I theorize that one of the authors borrowed a folklore-tale about Cleopatra, which asserted that the Egyptian queen had the habit of taking male lovers into her boudoir for one night of passion, only to have them executed afterward. 

TOWER, like the play on which it's based, spins out the idea that Queen Margaret-- who, according to the story's dynamics, ought to be in her middle thirties-- uses the deserted Tower of Nesle for a series of one-night stands with young Frenchmen, whether they are or aren't "virgins" like the title says . In fact, there are usually three such encounters each night, since Margaret (Teri Tordai) sets up liaisons for her two handmaidens as well. Then comes the "screaming," as Margaret's main henchman Orsini and various hooded thugs slay the male victims and toss them into the Seine River. I don't know why any of the henchmen, or Margaret and her ladies for that matter, affect any sort of masks, since they expect all to be killing off any and all visitors. The attempts at secrecy don't keep the locals from getting the sense that nasty things are happening at the "Tower of Sin," as they call it.

Like a lot of psycho-dramas, TOWER depends on a crapload of big revelations about things that happened prior to the film's diegesis. So for purpose of deeper analysis, I'm citing the actual events of the film in order that they are said to have happened, to get a handle on the psychological constructs the adapters used, which may or may not all be in the original play, or any book adaptation thereof.

1) Some time before Margaret of Burgundy becomes Queen of 14th-century France by marrying Louis X, she's just a young noblewoman living with her father. Margaret has some conflict with her father that will lead her to plot his murder. She then has intimate relations with two young pages, hypothetically when she's in her teens or twenties, though there's no testimony as to how old the pages were. One of the pages, Orsini, she gets to poison her father, which may help her rise to power in some way. But by the other page, who later goes by the name Bouridan, plants a bun in her oven. That bun results in two non-identical twin boys, and either Margaret or Orsini gives the order to have the incriminating children killed. This apparently happens without the knowledge of Bouridan, though it's not clear what he knew and when. But the henchman (or huntsman?) in charge of the killing leaves the two infants with a church, and they're raised to manhood. They both look about twenty when they arrive in Paris, which would make Margaret at least 35 by that time (though actress Teri Tordai was in her twenties). 

2) Bouridan presumably has various adventures before he becomes celebrated for military valor in the service of Louis X, and he too should be at least in his middle thirties, though the actor playing Bouridan was in his forties. He's first seen on his way to Paris, but he takes time to chat up Blanche, who's both implicitly in her innocent twenties and played by an actress of the same age.

3) Bouridan encounters the twins, Philippe and Gautier, in Paris. He thinks it's odd because they both have old scars on their forearms, which reminds of a similar scar on the arm of his former lover, though he does not say as much. Both Bouridan and Philippe get invited to party at The Tower, and though Bouridan seems to be familiar with the place's bad rep, he doesn't try to talk Philippe out of going.

4) Bouridan is set up to have sex with one of the Queen's handmaidens and then be killed, but he avoids both fates and escapes the Tower. Philippe has sex with the Queen, all the Oedipal innocent who doesn't know he's shagging his mom. Margaret, who's sacrificed numerous victims to her lust and that of her two handmaidens, feels a little tender about Philippe and almost spares him. But the enthralled young man tries to see the face under her mask, and Margaret has Orsini kill him and dispose of the body.

5) Around the same time, Orsini-- also played by an actor in his forties-- takes a fancy to Blanche when she arrives at court. He strongarms her into becoming a handmaiden to Margaret. Later he gets her alone and tries to rape her, but he's interrupted and Blanche gets away.

6) Bouridan seems to nurture an old rivalry with Orsini, since his main concern is to blackmail the Queen, threatening to reveal her ilicit activities to King Louis X, newly returned from a foreign campaign-- though later in the film it's implied that the King suspects Margaret's doing something not quite right. However, Bouridan gets a chance to question one of Orsini's henchmen, whom they both knew from their time as pages. The henchman reveals that he spared the lives of the twins and marked them with scars, though he doesn't say why. 

7) So now Bouridan knows that the two children he sired with Margaret lived, even though Philippe died after getting sexed up by his mother. The captain doesn't seem too broken up by this revelation, and he's still more interested in forcing Margaret into giving him a special position at court, even going to the extent of confronting her with the dead body of Philippe. Bouridan also doesn't seek out his surviving son Gautier, though Gautier tries to kill the older man, thanks to Orsini telling the young fellow that Bouridan killed Philippe. 

8) Bouridan does not reveal his filial relationship to Gautier, but somehow talks him into helping Bouridan assault on the Tower while the Queen intends to have one of her orgies. The end result is that Gautier is killed by the Queen's men, though she's belatedly horrified to see her other son slain (though apparently it was okay when they were infants). Bouridan duels Orsini but it's Margaret who stabs Orsini, her former favorite, to death. Then, since the Tower has conveniently caught on fire, she consigns herself to the flames. The King, summoned by Blanche's efforts, shows up mostly to give Bouridan the commission he wants, and the hero cleaves to his (much younger) beloved.

So none of these Freud-tropes are brought together in the service of either a didactic or mythopoeic discourse, only to exploit an array of emotional responses. The Oedipal drama of a son accidentally sleeping with his mother isn't even the main focus here, though. If anything, the main plot resembles Freud's scenario from TOTEM AND TABOO, in which a male tries to keep all the nubile women to himself. Obviously, in his youth Bouridan is not able to do this, because Margaret forms an alliance with his rival Orsini. Still, she later says that she felt a deeper relationship to Bouridan than anyone else, so there's a strong implication that he was such a good lover that for years Margaret's been trying to satisfy herself with lesser (read: younger) peccadillos. 

Bouridan, though, doesn't display any longing for Margaret; he doesn't even try to kiss her at any time. The implication I take from this series of tropes is that he was betrayed by her taking up with his rival Orsini. He doesn't really care about his two sons any more than he does about Margaret. He's dominated by a "will to power," and he prospers as a result of infiltrating Margaret's murderous operation. Also of Oedipal interest is that he ends up with a woman young enough to be his daughter, though to be sure actor Jean Piat did not look to be in his forties for this role. It's also interesting that both Bouridan and Orsini desire Blanche, just as they presumably both desired Margaret as well. I might even theorize that, to Bouridan's ego, both of his sons can be easily sacrificed in his quest for power, and for sex with a younger woman. I'd call it a double standard, but of course Margaret is still the greater sinner, since she kills for her thrills.

Interestingly, I did some additional writing on another film with strong age-inappropriate clansgression. In TUTELARY SPIRITS I mostly addressed the question as to which characters were the superordinate icons of the schlock-film MOTHER GOOSE A GO GO. There the writer showed little attentiveness to anything like emotional tenor. But he did succeed in using fairytales as a means of creating a mythic discourse around a quaternity of taboos concerning age and blood-- and no such discourse appeared in TOWER OF SCREAMING FREUDIANS.