James R. Elkins
"Adam's Rib"
(1949)
Beginning: Is this an appropriate film with which to begin a study of lawyers and film? What film would you use to begin such a study?
An Insider's Perspective: How is your "reading" of the film influenced (shaped) by the fact that you have set out to be a lawyer? How does your "insider" knowledge help you understand "Adam's Rib"?
Reading the Film: Does it make any sense to talk about "reading" a film? The term—reading—evokes an image of a text. In what sense is a film, a text?
A Film Presents a Story: What is the basic story premise encoded in "Adam's Rib"? Try to state the premise of the story in the most elemental terms possible.
Bill Johnson, points out that "[a]ny story . . . at its heart, must have some dramatic issue of consequence to its audience. . . ." [Bill Johnson, "Perceiving the Foundation of Storytelling," from A Story is a Promise]. The film's dramatic issue can be stated, according to Johnson, as the story's premise and its promise:
A story's core dramatic issue is the issue at the heart of a story's promise. Dramatic issues or ideas revolve around human needs. The need to be loved. To have control of one's fate. To feel needed. To be able to overcome obstacles. To be able to grow and heal from life's wounds. To understand and make sense of the events of life. To experience life in a deeply-felt way.
Johnson goes on to make a point of relevance to lawyers: "The important point is that storytellers be able to name the dramatic issue at the heart of the stories they are telling." Lawyers are storytellers (often enough the best a culture has to offer) and when they fail to understand Johnson's point about dramatic issues they often achieve poor results (witness the prosecution's inability to present a more coherent story in the O.J. Simpson case).
It is important to note, again, following Johnson, that the premise of the story is not the plot. The purpose of the plot "is to make visible and concrete the dramatic movement of a story. A plot serves to make the movement of a story dramatic and potent by taking character concerns and intertwining them with what's at stake in the story itself, then compelling characters to act to resolve what's at stake in the story while plot-generated events block their actions."
The plot unveils itself to us in a rather seamless fashion (unless the filmmaker is of Robert McKee's "antiplot" school of filmmaking)(Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting 44-46 (HarperCollins/ReganBooks, 1997); establishing the premise requires more active work on the part of the view. If we don't understand the premise, we are left with little but the surface features of the film, the plot and our sometimes rather shallow like/dislike of the film's characters.
Johnson links the story's premise to "every other element of storytelling," indeed, the premise is of sufficient importance for the screen writer that each element of the film—characters, plot, conflict, story movement, resolution—are each related back to the story premise. The premise, according to Johnson, is the "foundation" of storytelling. A premise could be compared to a house foundation. It supports a well-constructed story. It is not meant to be artistic or original so much as clear and direct about setting out a story's core dramatic issue and what manifests its movement toward fulfillment.
To visualize a premise, think of a community burned to the ground. If you looked at it before the fire, every house would be unique in some way. After the fire, when all that's left are bare foundations, the foundations all have a similar quality. They all tend to look alike.
A premise is like that. It's not meant to be different, artistic, or unique; unlike any other premise. It's meant to set out a foundation that supports the more visible aspects of a story, its characters and events, just like a house foundation supports the more visible aspects of a house, its walls, roof, windows, etc
If the story premise is foundational, as Johnson argues, then we might say that the premise points to the archetypal dimension of the story. (There is much more that can be said about archetypes, but that must wait for another day.)
Lawyer films invite us to think carefully about stories—the story in the film, the story we are living, and the possibility that there is a stock/conventional lawyer story that makes its way into our thinking/consciousness when we set out to be lawyers. We know that lawyers, especially trial lawyers, are expected to be storytellers, indeed lawyers are story aficionados who develop not only a love of stories but practice the skill of listening to stories story told in the language of everyday life and translating them into a new language that captures and recasts the client's story/drama/conflict/harm into legal language so that the story may be reenacted on a different stage. Lawyer films offer an opportunity to study stories—those told to lawyers and those the lawyers must live as they try to deal with the stories of their clients. Lawyer films make the drama of a life in law a subject of study.
Screenwriting teacher/consultant, Bill Johnson, in "Understanding What a Story Is," provides some helpful insights about film stories that we can apply to lawyer films.
Stories have been with us for a long time and for that reason alone we might want to understand them. As Johnson puts it, "[f]rom prehistoric times when our ancestors gathered around fires in caves, storytellers have been aware of how arranging events in a story-like way held the attention of an audience." And it's the attention of an audience we need to convey information of importance, to learn from others what we need to know. Watching and studying lawyer films is simply a new way to gather around the fire to listen to a story.
Johnson defines story as the use of words and images to create life-like characters and events that will capture an audience's attention. And how is this done? By presenting action that revolves around "resolving some human need: to feel loved, to be in control of one's life and fate, to be able to avenge wrongs, overcome obstacles, discover and understand the meaning and purpose of life."
Put rather bluntly and dramatically, we watch movies to save our lives. I stole this notion from Frank McConnell's Storytelling and Mythmaking: Images From Film and Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979). McConnell begins his book with these lines: "This book is about film and literature as kinds of sorry-telling. It argues that stories matter, and matter deeply, because they are the best way to save our lives." [Id. at 3]. Bill Johnson seems to lend support to McConnell's claim arguing that:
Through experiencing a story's arrangement of its events, a story's audience has experiences of "life" more potent and "true" than real life. "Life" with meaning and purpose. Where people get what they want if they really believe. Wherein true love exists. Where inexplicable events are resolved. Where even pain and chaos can be ascribed meaning.
I recommend that you read Johnson's essays: Essays on the Craft of Dramatic Writing
Film Stories Are Told By Way of the Film's Characters: In what sense (if any) do you come to care for the characters, Amanda and Adam Bonner? Does your "caring" for them require identification with them? Or something akin to empathy? Or something else? How is our ability and willingness to care for these film characters dependent upon who we are, and what we care about more generally?
A student in "Lawyers and Film" some years ago remarked that we become engaged with a film character when that character learns something herself during the course of the film. Is this observation borne out in your viewing of "Adam's Rib"? If lawyers in film have something to learn about themselves what are Amanda and Adam Bonner asked to learn in this film?
In lawyer films, we often learn something of where the lawyer comes from and where s/he is going. We might describe what we learn as the protagonist's journey. What kind of journey do Amanda and Adam Bonner take in "Adam's Rib"?
Law as Character: It may, in some films, be interesting to think about the law itself as a character in the film. What kind of character does Law play in "Adam's Rib"?
If Law is a character then we must describe how it acts and what it represents. (Heroes and villians come in different sizes and shapes.) One way we do this is by asking: How does Law speak? Who speaks for Law? These questions get complicated by the fact that Law rarely speaks in a single voice. So, we might reframe the questions and ask: In what ways does Law speak? And if different characters represent different ways for the Law to speak, how are we to "read" the Law we find in a film? How is this multiplicity of legal voices represented and worked out in "Adam's Rib"?
Conflict: In what sense is the conflict between Adam Bonner (Spencer Tracy) and Amanda Bonner (Katherine Hepburn) characters not only an expression of personal conflict but a conflict with significance beyond their personal quarrel? Would it be accurate to say that the argument between Amanda and Adam reflects an underlying fault-line in the legal profession, in a lawyer's psyche, in the Law?
Binary Oppositions (Characters and Social Forces): If life is shaped by the way we respond to the play of oppositions (most lives are not lived moving forward in a single direction), you may find it instructive to track the binary oppositions in lawyer films. [See generally, Will Wright, Sixguns & Society: A Structural Study of the Western 16-28 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975)]. Screenwriters and novelists know that drama depends on conflict; lawyer films are meant to be dramatic, otherwise they would not hold our attention. But to be good drama we need something that suggests real conflict, a conflict that we know first hand or we know to be possible or we know intellectually. Is it the struggle with fundamental conflict that makes the story's protagonist a character we want to observe closely, want to know more about, and come to accept (if only momentarily, as someone real and important to us)?
What conflict, tension, or oppositional forces do you find in "Adam's Rib"?
Is the conflict resolved: satisfactorily? adequately? creatively? stereotypically? Of what importance is the resolution of the conflict to your "feeling" about the film? In your understanding of the film?
Beyond Law and Lawyers: One reaction to "Adam's Rib" might be—"'Adam's Rib' portrays two lawyers who just happen to be married to each other and their marriage is central to the film. 'Adam's Rib' is really about marriage and marital discord." But then isn't something of a similar sort true of every film regardless of how much it might focus on law and lawyers; a lawyer film is always about something else. And in getting beyond law and lawyers, don't we find ourselves learning (indirectly) something about ourselves that law school does not (perhaps cannot) teach?
Ordinary and Special Worlds: Christopher Vogler, in The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers 15 (2nd ed., 1998) draws on Joseph Campbell's study of the hero archetype and hero journey to suggest that "the hero's story is always a journey. A hero leaves her comfortable, ordinary surroundings to venture into a challenging, unfamiliar world." [Vogler, at 13]
The protagonist/hero, in our case, the lawyer, must leave the "ordinary, mundane world" and deal with, confront, or conquer an alien or "Special World." How does "Adam's Rib" signal these two worlds? Where does law belong in these two worlds? How are the Ordinary and Special Worlds of Amanda and Adam Bonner connected? How do Adam and Amanda move between and deal with these two worlds?
In what ways have you found Law to present itself as a world apart, a Special World?
Lawyer films are often referred to as "courtroom dramas." Is this terminology suggestive of the fact that the Special World portrayed in these films constitutes the courtroom and what takes place there? In what sense is the courtroom a symbol of the Special World in "Adam's Rib"? What other aspects of the Special World do you find in the film?
Myth and the Journey of the Hero: Ordinary World, Special World, Law, and Ordinary Life can each, in its own way, can be viewed as mythic. By mythic, I mean it lies deep, beyond everyday thought, and that a World, a Life, serves as a reservoir of assumptions, scripts, cliches, metaphors, and images that get packaged in ways that involve conflict, drama, and character. The various bits and pieces of an ordinary life may add up to be the myth—Ordinary Life. The journeys and quest we undertake may be Journeys and Quests, they may take on a significance beyond the personal.
In what sense, if at all, do you find myth in "Adam's Rib"? Or, with regard to this film, are we better to argue that the film has nothing to do with myth?
In what sense (if at all) are the protagonists in "Adam's Rib" to be identified as heroes?
The hero's quest begins, according to Joseph Campbell, by a "call to adventure." This is the way Vogler puts it: "The hero is presented with a problem, challenge, or adventure to undertake. Once presented with a Call to Adventure, she can no longer remain indefinitely in the comfort of the Ordinary World." [Vogler, at 15]. Is there a "call to adventure" in "Adam's Rib"? How does focusing on the "call to adventure" help you understand Amanda and Adam Bonner's role in "Adam's Rib"? You might begin with a more simple question: Who do you find the more adventurous, more open to the "call," Adam or Amanda?
The "call to adventure" may be refused. Or it may be answered reluctantly. Some of us turn out to be "reluctant heroes." [Vogler, at 17)]. In what sense does Adam Bonner refuse the "call to adventure" initiated by his wife? Is Adam Bonner to be viewed as a "reluctant hero"? Vogler notes that the hero journey structure of a film/story "should not call attention to itself, nor should it be followed too precisely." [Vogler, at 26]. Is "Adam's Rib," on its surface, to be read as a hero journey film?
Or should we try to think about Adam Bonner (or even Amanda Bonner for that matter) as heroes at all? (Your response to these questions may depend upon whether you assume that we are all, in some sense, on a heroic quest. Or is the world divided into two camps, the heroes and the non-heroes? Do some of us simply say no to great adventures, to journeys, so we can stay close to home, refusing to contemplate the Special World(s) that beckon from beyond the Ordinary World in which we live our everyday lives?
The "two worlds" (however described) give us a sense of before (a call to adventure, fall from grace, catastrophic accident, departure of the loved one, death of the father, abandonment by the mother, personal failure) and after (whatever a character can do when confronted with a world for which there is no map, for which no teacher spoke or adequately prepared her. When we leave the comforts of home (a departure which awaits each of us) we are, following Campbell's archetypal myth of the hero, going to face great trials and enter periods of drought and darkness.
What "trial" do Adam and Amanda Bonner confront in "Adam's Rib"? How would you describe their descent into darkness? What are they asked to learn (in this case, not from clients, but from each other) as they attempt to restore harmony to the threats posed to their Ordinary World?
Robert McKee distinguishes stories that rely upon archetypes and those that resort to stereotypes. How does "Adam's Rib" deal with the distinction (if indeed, it does)? [ Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting 4 (New York: HarperCollins/ ReganBooks, 1997)]. McKee points out that "[s]tereotypical stories stay at home, archetypal stories travel." [Id.] Is "Adam's Rib" a stay-at-home story or a traveler?
"Adams Rib" Commentatary:
Adams Ribs: Get 'em While They're Hot
Genre: "Adam's Rib" is often identified as a "romantic comedy." What does this genre characterization tell you about the film? What new expectations and assumptions follow from characterizing "Adam's Rib" as a lawyer film? [On the lawyer film genre: see James R. Elkins, Reading/Teaching Lawyer Films, 29 Vt. L. Rev. 813, 868-876 (2004)]
Film Basics:
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Opening 10 Minutes of the Film: youTube |
Bibliography: David Ray Papke, "Genre, Gender, and Jurisprudence in Adam's Rib (1949)," in Rennard Strickland, Teree E. Foster & Taunya Lovell Banks (eds.), Screening Justice—The Cinema of Law: Significant Films of Law, Order and Social Justice 69-79 (Buffalo, New York: William S. Hein & Company, 2006)
