“Magic hour” lighting in Days of Heaven
A few years ago I went on an early 20th century American literature kick and read, in quick succession, novels by Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, Sinclair Lewis, Edith Wharton and Willa Cather, and was astonished to find myself forming the opinion that the first two decades of that century constitute what I believe to be the single richest era for American literature. (I say “astonished” because I had previously taken a 20th Century American Novel class in college that completely dismissed pre-“Jazz Age” authors and had predictably begun with Fitzgerald and Hemingway instead.) The last name on this illustrious list, Willa Cather, became my favorite of the bunch when I read her 1918 masterpiece My Antonia, a short and deceptively simple “memory piece” in which the narrator, a successful New York lawyer, reminisces about his childhood growing up on a Nebraska farm and the first stirrings of love he felt for his neighbor, an immigrant girl from Bohemia. What made a much bigger impression on me than the plot or the characters, however, was Cather’s very specific sense of place — her poetic descriptions of the tall red Nebraska grass blowing in the wind and the quality of the late afternoon sunlight. Such passages put me in the mind of Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven, which takes place on a Texas wheat farm (though it was shot in Canada) the same year that Cather’s novel was published and features similar “magic hour” images of farmers juxtaposed against tall wheat fields. While I knew that Malick had used F.W. Murnau’s penultimate film City Girl (1930) and Andrew Wyeth’s 1948 painting Christina’s World as visual reference points for his movie, I couldn’t help but wonder if he hadn’t also been inspired by Cather’s prose.
Andrew Wyeth’s evocative 1948 painting Christina’s World
I recently formed a “cigar and book club” with a couple of buddies (one of us chooses a book to read, then we get together a month later to discuss it over cigars and libations), and my first proposal was Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927). While I am still in the process of reading this beautiful western novel about Catholic missionaries from Europe establishing a diocese in mid-19th century New Mexico, I have already been blown away again by her ability to capture what one might think of as “painterly” or “cinematic” images in the language of prose. In the novel’s second paragraph, for instance, Cather describes the quality and color of sunlight during the last hour before the sun disappears from a dusky Roman sky. Check it out:
It was early when the Spanish Cardinal and his guests sat down to dinner. The sun was still good for an hour of supreme splendour, and across the shining folds of country the low profile of the city barely fretted the skyline — indistinct except for the dome of St. Peter’s, bluish grey like the flattened top of a great balloon, just a flash of copper light on its soft metallic surface. The Cardinal had an eccentric preference for beginning his dinner at this time in the late afternoon, when the vehemence of the sun suggested motion. The light was full of action and had a peculiar quality of climax — of splendid finish. It was both intense and soft, with a ruddiness as of much-multiplied candlelight, an aura of red in its flames. It bored into the ilex trees, illuminating their mahogany trunks and blurring their dark foliage; it warmed the bright green of the orange trees and the rose of the oleander blooms to gold; sent congested spiral patterns quivering over the damask and plate and crystal. The churchmen kept their rectangular clerical caps on their heads to protect them from the sun. The three Cardinals wore black cassocks with crimson pipings and crimson buttons, the Bishop a long black coat over his violet vest.
Neither My Antonia nor Death Comes for the Archbishop has ever been adapted for the big screen. Reading the above passage kind of makes you wonder why no one has attempted to bring such vivid images to cinematic life, no?
Willa Cather Memorial Prairie in Webster County, Nebraska
White City Cinema 
September 13th, 2013 at 7:55 am
I’m telling you man – Booth Tarkington. Magnificent Ambersons.
September 13th, 2013 at 5:19 pm
Thanks for the reminder, Adam. I’ve been meaning to read Tarkington forever!
September 13th, 2013 at 10:56 am
After you finish Death Comes to the Archbishop, pick up “The Professor’s House,” awkwardly constructed, but mind-blowing. Also fond of her first novel, Song of the Lark.
September 13th, 2013 at 5:22 pm
Thanks, Carrie. I’ll definitely check those out. (Thanks also for stopping by my blog. I’ve been an admirer of your criticism for a long time.)
September 13th, 2013 at 9:34 pm
Very insightful. If director Terrence Malick was not so reclusive, we would probably know If Willa Cather’s work inspired some of his ideas for “Days of Heaven” but who knows. Also noteworthy are some of your favorite writers that you talk about in this entry.
September 13th, 2013 at 9:39 pm
Also noteworthy are some of your favorite writers that you talk about in this entry. Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald are fantastic writers, but it is refreshing to see a different group taking center stage in your blog entry. P.S. I meant to say all this in my above comment but I posted what I previously wrote and there was no way to edit it. Simple mistake though:)
September 13th, 2013 at 10:22 pm
You’re right that Hemingway and Fitzgerald are great writers. But too often they, along with Faulkner (who’s probably my favorite American writer), are called upon to “represent” all of American literature in the early 20th century when, in reality, they had many equally fascinating contemporaries and predecessors.
September 13th, 2013 at 9:54 pm
I can’t wait to read it!!
September 13th, 2013 at 10:29 pm
I’m only 11 pages in but it should prove a nice contrast to the more character-oriented novels we’ve read so far.
September 14th, 2013 at 10:53 am
And, just for the hell of it, here’s Murnau’s famous “run through the wheat” scene from CITY GIRL. This is my favorite shot in film history — no other single shot conveys the feeling of being in love as well as this one. Brings tears to my eyes every time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPNg9iruqU0
September 15th, 2013 at 10:25 am
What synchronicity! I just started re-reading The Song Of The Lark a few days ago and now your post. I went through a Willa Cather lovefest about 25 years ago. Every book I read by her bowled me over. I am constantly stunned by the clarity of her prose. How does she do it? I find your comments about the writers from the earlier part of the century being neglected, especially in academia. I find that the ‘new’ and the ‘revolutionary’ often supplant what comes before it. Yes, Faulkner is brilliant, but he should be viewed as an alternative to Cather, Wharton and company, not as a replacement for them.
Wharton is as powerful a social critic as America has ever produced – a U.S. version of Jane Austen, but without Jane’s ultimate optimism. I am sure you have already ready House Of Mirth and Age Of Innocence, so let me lobby for The Custom Of The Country – chilling and oddly funny. And kudos to the above poster for remembering Booth Tarkington. Alas, nowadays he is only remembered as the guy who wrote the novel that Magnificent Ambersons is based on. But the novel is a masterpiece – as evidenced by the Pulitzer Prize it won (back when such prizes meant something). Also, Alice Adams, another Pulitzer Prize winner, is brilliant and profoundly sad. Forget about Katharine Hepburn and Fred MacMurray and read it
June 16th, 2014 at 6:48 am
[…] juxtaposition of two separate narratives taking place many decades apart. Last month, for my recently formed “cigar and book club,” I had the good fortune to read for the first time If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem, the celebrated novel […]