ters in turn, and the ambiguous quality of his people, especially his heroines, grew out of his clarity—the mysterious nature of personality brought more clearly into focus. In Peter Bogdanovich’s film (which follows James’s story rigorously) there is no mystery to clarify. Cybill Shepherd’s Daisy Miller is a painfully simpleminded performance—all twitter and run-on sentences—and it’s a relief when she’s silent. The only thing I liked in the film (besides Cloris Leachman) was the offhand treatment, which is certainly not stodgy and has some affinity to James. But the story had weight, a moral weight; the film is substanceless. It breezes through as a series of vaudeville turns and blackout sketches and it all seems quite negligible and silly—so much so, in fact, that Daisy’s death seems (inadvertently) funny. The solemnity of death doesn’t fit this chatterbox. It’s like killing off a cartoon.
The story was fascinating because of Winterbourne’s (and James’s) ambivalence toward Daisy. She’s a charming creature but her flirtations are dangerous just because they’re so indiscriminate. Winterbourne, who is emotionally more complex than Daisy and more possessive, becomes her fall-guy. And yet, knowing this, he still half idealizes her (the other half feigns indifference), and at her grave he starts to shift the blame for her death onto himself. (I’ve often wondered why James bothered to kill her off. Parental disapproval, perhaps?)
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