I will not insist on the plot which is so well-known that to ignore it is a proof of incompetent a-social behavior. I will insist here on the performance of Dustin Hoffman, hence on the particular rendition of this play that is kept as a play with real sound stages like in the old days of the thirties or forties. Dustin Hoffman makes this Willy Loman a lot worse than I was used to read it. He is shown, and as soon as his prime, at least, when his sons are in high school, some seventeen years before, he is shown was I saying as a completely paranoid and deranged person. Not deranged because of some kind of gene. But deranged because first of all he got and kept a job even when he was failing, though he was not done for that job. A salesman has to be a born hypocrite and has to be a conqueror: any argument is good provided it brings in the proper signature. So he is rather misplaced and his derangement comes from that misplacement. What's more he was discovered in his total hypocrisy, though in no way commercial and hence unacceptable from the salesmanship point of view since this woman was bringing him nothing but was costing him a lot, by his own son who was coming after him to get the help he needed, but a help that could only be effective if it were based on the truth, truthfulness, confidence, trust. And Willy Loman was lower than low at that moment. It threw his son into some totally absurd and paranoid a-social attitude, a derangement of its own due to the misplacement of his trust in his own father. When that trust was placed back where it belonged, that is to say in the trashcan, the son only had his eyes to cry, his fingers to steal, his flesh to suffer, in prison if necessary. This film pushes the character of Willy Loman slightly too far and his derangement explains then his suicide: he completely lost control of himself. But I would assert the idea that this is not true of that character who in fact commits suicide when he discovers and finally understands that he had not forgotten that silly episode of his son discovering him in the cradle of the revolution with another woman than his mother. I would like to believe that this last act in his life is not the result of his derangement but of his last flash of guilt for having failed and cheated so many people, in a word a suicide of divine justice coming from the last flash of consciousness of that man who might have been able to be anything but a loser. Even if I disagree with the vision of Schlondorff, I must say the rendering of the character, the acting of the actor and at times the overbearing-ness of the over-acting of the actor is absolutely remarkable and logical and of one piece from beginning to end. That man is not old. That man is not worn out. That man is not vain. That man is not a perambulating lie. That man is sick in his head, crazy, deranged to the extreme point of insanity and thus extremely dangerous since he projects his hatred of that unbearable situation onto everyone around him, even, and particularly, those who love him.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID