DAISY MILLER (1974)
Daisy Miller, a novella, written by Henry James, adapted into a movie by Peter Bogdanovich in 1974. In the adaptation, Daisy seems at first to be the protagonist may be because of the name of the film version, but she is not, Winterbourne is. We, as the audience, see the events or story from Winterbourne’s point of view and Daisy as an American is a victim in foreign countries because she has an independent character when it comes to deciding an affair whether it is shame or not in that place and time. She does everything freely; therefore, this situation comes weird or unusual in Europe and to the European people.
Winterbourne does not understand if she is a coquette or innocent in the film until the end because he lived in Europe too long; eventually, we understand he lost his cultural values and people of his culture. And at the very end, when he thinks that she is just an American coquette, the victim dies. The adaptation portrays a pretty girl’s flirtatious character ironically; with her sentences which are the exact opposites with her acts and by the ending (death of Daisy) which apparently gives us the tragic event of the story because of the misunderstandings of the girl by Winterbourne. So basically, the film relates the result of a dead person with a dead culture of a person.
At the beginning of the adaptation, Winterbourne at Grand Hotel in Vevey sees Randolph (Daisy’s naughty brother) and they have a conversation about “American things” as “best things”. Daisy comes and warns her brother and Winterbourne likes Daisy very much at first sight. After they meet each other, they make an appointment to go to Chillon Castle. When they go, Winterbourne talks about the historical background of the castle all the time but Daisy seems disinterested in such topics, and he starts wondering whether her character is that of a “coquette” or “innocent”.
Before he returns to Geneva, he promises to visit Daisy first, in Italy. He does not do so and Daisy is already flirting with someone else (Gionavelli, Italian guy). Winterbourne watches them and he starts to become jealous but does not do anything again and again because of his unsure thoughts about Daisy. However, Daisy always waits for an action from Winterbourne. Unfortunately, when Winterbourne decides that her character as a coquette, Daisy consciously victimizes herself to Roman fever and dies. And, we see culture differences or forgotten culture values engender tragic causes.
Firstly, there are some sentences by Daisy that creates suspense in us about her real character and demonstrates the irony with her actions in the film version. When Winterbourne says “I would much rather go to Chillon with you”, Daisy shyly asks “With me” and we see she is not flirtatious directly, she waits and decides to flirt from the answers (00:12:30). In Italy, Daisy complains to Winterbourne about his promise and says “You could have come to see me” (00:36:54). When he is not loyal to his promise, she is not loyal to him and flirts with someone else. She wants just to see actions from him and it is so clear in the adaptation because the adaptation time and the story time is very close. So, Bogdavonich reflects Daisy’s character easily understandable because he knows the period’s women.
Secondly, Daisy always acts simple but these actions come to people rude, especially to Winterbourne because they are not aware that she does things after she learns something about these things. For example, when they are in Chillon Castle, Winterbourne emphasizes that he has to go to Geneva the other day for a reason and he talks mysteriously about going there. Daisy becomes suspicious and wants to learn if there is a woman who waits for him or not, but he does not give certain answers. Therefore, she jealously attitudinizes and says “Well Mr. Winterbourne, I think you are horrible” and he does not even understand why she said such rude thing because he forgot about the meaningful language of American girls.
Lastly and most importantly, the ending of the film proves that cultural differences create tragic events because Daisy dies because of the misunderstandings of herself to the people and to Winterbourne. They talk about engagement pleasantly and Daisy takes a sounding in Winterbourne’s real feelings about herself and says “Since you have mentioned it, I am engaged” (01:11:34) and Winterbourne stops laughing and she adds “You don’t believe it” (01:11:40) but he replies “Yes, I believe it” (01:11:41) then she laughing ironically and talks back “If you possibly do, well I am not” (01:11:59). However, Winterbourne does not see the real point again and when he sees both Daisy and Giovanelli at Colosseum in late time, he decides she is a coquette and says “I believe that it makes very little difference whether you are engaged or not”(01:18:13) and she replies “I don’t care whether I have Roman fever or not”(01:18:39).
At this point, we see that she dies because she sacrifices herself but when we think in a detailed way, we can understand she dies because he does not get the point and it is so symbolic when we look at the representative names of both. She is Daisy, and he is Winterbourne. They cannot be together, and they cannot understand each other. When winter comes, the flower dies “whether or not” they have feelings for each other or even they are from the same land, because one of them has lived too long in foreign countries and differentiated from his land. Therefore, it created losses because of the lost feelings of cultural values.
So basically, this movie depicts a flirtatious girl’s real desire as not flirting but observing natural behavior and reflecting her culture which can be seen from her language, actions, and expectations from people as an American, independent, and natural girl. If Winterbourne did not misunderstand Daisy or forget his culture, we can say that she did not die or sacrifice herself to death. But Winterbourne misunderstands her reality because he really lived too long in foreign countries to get the real point of an American girl that belongs to his own culture. We can say that if a person lives too long in foreign countries, he or she forgets his own culture and that country’s people. Both the book and the film version gives the same message because their dates are close but the director and the film version reflects the last message directly to portray the irony of people’s differentiation from their cultures.
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