Norino grieve There is one innate mistake for all – the belief that we were born for happiness.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Is a woman born for love? Because the limit of her dreams is that she'd be nice next to her, and you don't need anything else. It would seem that the naive words of an old hit, but they contain everyday wisdom. In fact, they are almost no different from the lines written a couple of centuries ago by George Sand. “There is only one happiness in life: to love and be loved.” But happiness is fleeting. It, in comparison with life, is only a moment, and in search of these sweet moments there are years full of severe, painful trials.
The fate of Nora Moran in this regard is no different from many others, except that the torment of the heroine is brought to the grotesque in order to dig deeper into the problem. The unfortunate girl was orphaned in early childhood, being adopted, lost her adoptive parents in a terrible accident. Long, fruitless attempts at employment against the background of a severe crisis were replaced by a short joy from the work finally found, which ended in a severe psychological trauma - the consequence of rape. And, as a result, a cruel punishment for an uncommitted crime, for someone else’s guilt and painful expectations of execution of punishment. But before that there was love - pure, sincere, long-awaited. Who doesn’t want a great but pure love? And Nora threw her head at her, and she swallowed her, because she was actually forbidden, unfree, vicious. The beloved is not only married, but also a major politician and, as usual, a puppet in the hands of his wife and her brother. Perhaps he seriously fell in love with a young pretty maid, but the tragic end of this relationship was predetermined. Once again, happiness turned into its opposite.
The role of Nora was the sixth – penultimate in the film career of Cita Johan, not counting the later cameo from Sherman. The actress had enough talent and appearance to push the then prima donnas off the pedestal, but soon became disillusioned with cinema and returned to the theater. However, in this film, she managed to show her dramatic abilities to the fullest, using stage techniques from the arsenal of Falconetti. Although, of course, the scale of the image is different, but the suffering is conveyed very reliably. The roles of other actors did not become breakthrough, but also far from failure, but directing is avant-garde for its time.
Phil Goldstone took as the basis of the script a play by Williss Maxwell Goodhue, by then successfully staged in the theater. The plot and some plot details are quite reminiscent of Edgar Selvin’s The Sin of Madelon Claudet, shot two years earlier. In both films, the narrative was conducted on behalf of the narrator, returning the viewer to the backstory that introduced him to the background that revealed the characters. The Sin of Nora Moran has even more in common with William K. Howard’s The Power and the Glory, from which he borrowed the NARRATAGE technique. This name was invented by the advertising service of the film company FOX specifically for the rental of the above tape. A feature of the technique was the widespread use of flashbacks, and scenes of the past were replaced by flash forwards. Thus, the plot was deprived of linearity, but acquired, due to the features of the installation, the dynamics, rhythm set by footages. Those, in turn, as if twisted in a spiral, symbolizing the unstoppable run of time. In addition, expressionist photographs and pages of pseudo-real newspapers were used. None of this had anything to do with plagiarism, as Phil Goldstone developed the methodology creatively. And already his film, along with Gordon Wiles' "Prison Train", was inspired by Orson Welles, bringing to almost perfection the previously tested technique in "Citizen Kane". Goldstone's film can be attributed to indie, as it was shot for a small amount of money in an independent studio that could afford to experiment. Perhaps that is why he was much ahead of his time, pointing to the cinema one of the vectors of further development. But, as often happens, the avant-garde coolly received the viewer. The picture was undeservedly forgotten and the more pleasant the surprise from the first acquaintance with her. Unlike the film, a completely different fate awaited his poster, drawn by the famous pin-up artist Alberto Vargas, who caught the hidden sexuality of the image of Nora, by the way, never during the film appeared in such a revealing outfit. This distinguishes the genius from the artisan - he sees what is hidden from the layman, and therefore his creation is forever inscribed in the top of the best film posters of all times and peoples. At the same time, do not detract from the merits of the creative team of the film, and especially the director, since it is very difficult to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if it is not there.
Phil Goldstone brought a bit of surrealism to the finale, justified by Nora's psychedelic dreams caused by opium shots administered to her for humane reasons. He seems to agree with the idea, repeatedly expressed by various wise minds, and therefore left without authorship, that the dream is a continuation, or in another version, the reverse side of reality. Levitating on a black background, the heads separated from the bodies resembled the masks of the mime theater. Sur suggests ambiguity and has a multivariate interpretation of the finale of the existential drama. Incorporating fantasy and having faith, it is easy to find here an implicit reference to Shakespeare’s tragedy about the love of two eternally young souls deprived of the opportunity to find earthly love? Or maybe everything is much simpler, more mundane, and old Flaubert is right?
Happiness is a fiction, the search for it is the cause of all disasters in life.