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Chapter 13 - Lassie, Unfaithful To Dogs: Fred M. Wilcox's Lassie Come Home

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Nicole Brenez
Affiliation:
Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3
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Summary

In Lassie Come Home (1943), Fred McLeod Wilcox's film featuring Elizabeth Taylor and Elsa Lanchester (Frankenstein's fiancée), a male dog named Pal plays the female dog Lassie, who represents all at once a saint, a free spirit, a daughter, her mother, an angel and a goddess: a character as complicated on the side of Good and Beauty as Gelsomina (Giulietta Massina) in Federico Fellini's La Strada (1954).

When Pal bounds forward, he carries with him the elegance of nature. When Lassie looks at a landscape, Wilcox transforms it into an image. Lassie is lacking in animality, but the unimaginable finesse of Pal's mussel helps us believe in the world.

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Chapter
Information
On the Figure in General and the Body in Particular
Figurative Invention In Cinema
, pp. 113 - 114
Publisher: Anthem Press
Print publication year: 2023

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