Cinema: Bewitching and Bewildering

SOPHIE'S CHOICE Directed and Written by Alan J. Pakula FRANCES Directed by Graeme Clifford; Screenplay by Eric Bergren, Christopher DeVore and Nicholas Kazan

She is the secret heroine of Hollywood movies: the divine masochist, the superior woman battered by fate, society, ham-fisted men and her own acute facility for self-destruction. Serious actresses, itching to play something more demanding than bimbettes and stand-by wives, love divine masochist roles. They get to run through huge emotions, from innocence through every sordid experience, often embracing rarefied forms of madness and an early, spectacular death. Playing the...

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