Volker Schöndorff’s 1985 production of Death of a Salesman was a made-for-television adaptation of Arthur Miller’s 1949 play, receiving several Emmy and Golden Globe awards and nominations in the same year. Schöndorff is a German film director, screenwriter and producer, known for being a member of the New German Cinema movement in the 60s and 70s. The television production of Death of a Salesman was based closely off the 1984 Broadway production, where Dustin Hoffman also performed the role of the protagonist, Willy Loman. Another parallel between the stage and film productions was a repurposing of the stage-like construction in the film set, how their familial house morphed from a New York residence to a country house with a big yard — this was a notable narrative device in how it significantly creates a break in reality that mirrors the protagonist’s mental state. According to Hart, the enduring debate about Miller’s play, known to be based on “the tragedy of the common man,” is whether the ending is pathetic or tragic in nature (60). From reading the play in high school, I recall feeling the demise of Willy Loman’s character was quite pathetic, whereas in this television depiction the overall connotation is much more tragic. “The values of the tragedy, appear bound up with the historical milieu in which it is written” — the American northwest of the 1940s. Miller has said he’s “sorry the self-realization of the older son, Biff, is not a weightier counterbalance to Willy’s disaster in the audience’s mind, but … the tragedy of Willy Loman is that he gave his life, or sold it, in order to justify the waste of it” (60-61). What strikes me in this filmic interpretation is how the distance of time has conspired to more clearly denote Corporate America’s role in informing middle class choices and aspirations in the 1940s and beyond — arguably conveying an inciting message, making this work slightly more anti-establishment in sentiment.
The film begins and ends with a view of the front door in the entry hallway to their New York residence, with a translucent/ foggy rectangular window where Willy’s silhouette is seen as he enters (at the beginning) and leaves the house (at the end of the film), showing a circularity of the story through this focal point — the symbolism of doors and doorways throughout the film is notable (often depicted as entry to Ben’s speculative investment projects inaccessible to Willy, bathroom and hotel room doors in Boston, in addition to the restaurant bathroom door), all ultimately unable to hide his infidelities and later his diminishing mental state, as the narrative disentangles the doorways to historical and current rooms in Willy’s mind (Hart 60-61). These doors also serve as barriers to achieving the desired wealth that eludes him and his sons. The entrance hallway is seen in monochromatic tones, with light reflecting textures of the wall and ceiling tiles, a design further reinforced in the checkered floor tile. The lighting in the entrance hallway appears to emerge solely from windows around the main entrance. This high contrast, monochromatic colour palette softens the human colour palette set against it — Willy’s olive green well-tailored suit, his skin tone, etc. The film set/ stage centres around the kitchen (humble dinner table, four black chairs, refrigerator, etc), a staircase and living room off to one-side, and an easily swung door to the outside (a self-closing wood-framed mesh patio door). The kitchen is a 1940s off-white with old appliances, counters and sink that all look weathered with use, and paneling that runs halfway up the walls, reminiscent of the interior design aspirations of the era. The monochromatic colour palette of the hallway is carried through to the kitchen, except it is inverted, with black accents on white, enabling the human details to again feel softer. Walls of the kitchen do not meet at the corners, leaving gaps open to show the external environment (red brick walls of a New York cityscape), both punctuating the urban setting and evoking a stage environment, rather than a more strict realism of a period film set. The use of the stage is also a device connoting the staging in Willy’s mind, how he is fabricating his reality, how current reality continuously encroaches on his state of mind. Outside the patio door, a porch leads to a city street in the New York reality, and a yard of their former country home (Willy’s memories). The yard has two large-trunked trees against perimeter wood fencing, (enclosing a patio table and chairs, a homemade basketball net), a red pickup truck is off to the side. The fencing has weathered white paint that fades at the top, with the landscape beyond evoking an expressionist painting of leafy trees and a silhouette of the city in the background, a distance connoting they live in New Jersey or somewhere of similar proximity to Manhattan (it is likely a projected image). In “The Promised End: The Conclusion of Hoffman’s Death of a Salesman,” Hart describes how Schöndorff contrasts the realistic present with an expressionistic past, how “the past is given more colour and a dreamy movement, whereas the scenes in the house are more colourless and closed,” and how “set and lighting differentiate between the texture of the realistic and the expressionistic scenes,” mixing a colourless present with the colourful past, fading in and out of both (61-62). A haze or fog is pervasive throughout most scenes like the softened edges of an old memory (benefiting from a rose-coloured tint that comes with time), but also connoting Willy’s brain fog. Taken together with the pace of Willy’s dialogue, melding memory and reality the global effect subtly approximates a near dissociative experience for the viewing audience. As such, the absence of the overall lighting/ filter effects would significantly shift the poetics of the work, likely in a more realistic (less dream-like) expression, making Willy’s mental state more jarring for the audience.
The performance by Dustin Hoffman as Willy in the film, followed the same role in the same play performed on Broadway in 1984. This is seen by the ease of Hoffman’s performance in the film, how he rambles to himself in long monologues, sometimes mumbling, sometimes yelling, reliving the scenes from his family’s hey-day when Willy’s sons were teenagers. While the lines are delivered with a slight New York accent, vocally, the performance draws on the natural grain of Hoffman’s voice, pace of speech and ability to bring the character to life though a nuanced vocality. This became evident a few years later in his performance in Rain Man where he played an autistic savant. The global effect of Hoffman’s vocal performance of Willy Loman’s character, however, is a convincing depiction of a man lost in a world where he can no longer distinguish the boundaries between reality and historical memory.
Work Cited
Hart, Jonathan. “The Promised End: The Conclusion of Hoffman’s Death of a Salesman.” Literature/Film Quarterly, vol. 19, no. 1, 1991, pp. 60–65.
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