ACT ONE
The Doppelgangers.
Bill crosses town in a cab, looking right disturbed by the previous scene. He enters an apartment, where he is met by Marion, the shaky and tearful (not to mention kind of weird) daughter of one of his patients. This is a very important scene, especially after Bill's conversation with Alice. He walks into a room, where Lou Nathanson lays dead and still attached to his machines. It's a rather odd setting; instead of taking care of the body, Marion has simply let it lay in bed and rot, and it looks as though she's trying to preserve something. However, Lou doesn't even look dead, he just looks asleep, and that's even what Marion thought when she found him dead. This theme, seeming versus being, is prevalent throughout the movie (asleep vs. awake, asleep vs. dead, mask vs. true face, etc.) and is presented in another way in this scene. There's also a quick meditation on death that is remeniscent of the bayonet discussion in Paths of Glory: Marion says "I was more afraid of the way [Lou's death] was going to happen than death itself." Quite Joycean. Bill comforts her (beneath the glare of African masks. . .oooooh! We'll talk more about this later, too.) After chatting about her future with "Carl," Marion grabs Bill's head and starts kissing him passionately and intoning "I love you I love you I love you," and etc. "Come away with me," she says. Bill replies "Marion, we barely even know each other." This is actually rather ironic, especially in reflection of the previous scene: Alice has enlightened Bill to things he never knew about her, even though he professed to love her. Now he's showing his face. A liar (though he doesn't lie in any great amount), a man who has a really hard time coming to terms with his shortcomings. You'd think he would have learned something. . .
A moment later, Carl enters, and the housekeeper addresses him as "Doctor" Somethingoranother. He's actually a math professor, but he's a professional with a doctorate, just like Bill. He even resembles Bill enough for the situation to be strange. He enters the room, where there is a very uncomfortable vibe. This is when we realize that the entire setup is a sort of mockery of Bill and Alice's relationship, and of the entire movie. The characters could very well be interchanged (Marion's hairstyle is the same sort of spindly curl that Alice has, with long pieces hanging down, and blonde) and the whole "face" thing really begins to become a part of the film here, especially with the first appearance of a mask. Who's really in love here? Does it even matter? What does the dead man who witnesses all this symbolize? Is he the embodiment of love? Bill calls death "unreal." Who knows? Dead men tell no tales. . .
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