Imagine yearning for such an opportunity your whole life; growing up without and knowing that if you had even one half or one quarter the opportunity of someone better off you would take that and ride it as far as it would go. With say, that one thing, you would land the job that would make your name, or meet the person that would recognize your talent that would get you the book or record or whatever deal that would make your name, which would make you known, which could quite possibly make you one of the greats of your time. Does it happen without money and connections? Of course. It does happen, but let's face it, one has to work ten times (at least) harder for it. If your goal is to publish or work in that field, say, then it's a helluva lot easier if mummy and daddy know someone or you go off to the Ivy's and meet the "right" people. That alone is not enough, but combine it with talent and drive and you have at least a choice. A choice that Tom never had.

Shit, even being in Italy Tom cannot understand how Dickie can just live there and no bother site-seeing. Granted, that's a rather bourgeoisie thing to do in the mind of one who has the social status that Dickie has - one just doesn't go tromping through Rome or wherever with a busload of tourists in tubesocks and sandals with their maps and their cameras about their necks. Certainly not in that day and maybe not even now. If one goes to Europe, the last thing one of that class would do then is be a tourist. Being a tourist and to be identified as such by the locals would be considered contemptible. The goal is to fit in, or if you can't fit in or "pass" as they say, at least look like you live there or actually do move and live there. Otherwise, you look like as our friend Hannibal Lecter says in another film, "A well-scrubbed rube, but a rube nonetheless, with your good bag and your cheap shoes...." Hardly an appealing portrait.

Dickie Greenleaf is all settled in in his beautiful house on a cliff. Marg is rich enough to have a place of her own which has orange trees on the porch and is equally gorgeous, so clearly she comes from money too. If she didn't, it's doubtful she would be engaged to Dickie in the first place. His other major lover, Sylvana, is a local Italian girl who runs a little fruit and vegetable stand. No, she's not as pretty, I'd say, as Marg, but some would consider her darkly beautiful and no doubt she is likely a good person. Dickie can fuck her all he wants and he knows it (even though Sylvana herself is also engaged). But she seems to really care about Dickie; it's clear though, that he's using her. She's the whore to his perfect Madonna Marg. Remember too in the fifties, though I wonder really how much this has changed, that for a lot of men, seeing their wife as both sexual and pure were harder to reconcile. Wives were still called "Mommy" after they had a child and the husband was "Daddy." Now maybe that's sexy in a fetishistic kind of way, but it never really floated my boat. So Dickie has to separate his desire for a pure and perfect wife, and his other burning desire for his blazing loins that must fuck now now now. Sylvana seems the perfect repository, though he'll never marry her. He does, however, get her pregnant, and no matter that she tries to speak with him about it, no doubt to get an abortion (we can only guess because this would have socially ruined her in this day and age and in a small town), he blows her off repeatedly. Without the money for an abortion, which Dickie could easily have given, Sylvana sees her only choice as suicide. Her emergence after drowning herself is dramatic, and she rises during a town festival as the statue of the Madonna is being raised from the sea. It's eerie and terribly sad and is the one time Dickie seems to show some real emotion, or sorrow. But look deeper, and it seems more like anger. Anger at himself perhaps, but more likely, anger at the situation because this time, there was no way anyone but he could have cleaned it up. Maybe its' the first time Dickie has to face consequences and being an adult and it's a rough and tough lesson.