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of the film), he goes to the library and takes out a gold-embossed book
bound in red leather — it’s not Rebecca — Then to the School of
Pharmacy where a brightly-painted red sprinkler marks the entrance to
the Chemistry Supplies. He’s about to trail a female student into the
supply room when the mise-en-scene pops again: two fire-engine red
valves to Bud’s right and in the rear of the frame rhyme with the red
book in his hand, Toxicology: Poisons and Their Antidotes. Levin
provides the chromatic link: “Each bottle had a white label with black
lettering. A few bore an additional label that glared POISON in red”
(27). Here, the color red, which is initially associated with Dorrie, is
transferred to Bud.
At the conclusion of the second bedroom scene Bud’s mother
refers to her son as a “genius,” and while Bud may not be Einstein, his
plan is ingenious, as is director Gerd Oswald’s staging of the first part of
his scheme.^’ The setting is a classroom and chalked on the blackboard is
a diagram of the philosophical antipodes of nineteenth-century American
literature:
Puritans
Rationalism
Predestination
Optimism
Edwards
Franklin
Mather
As the professor drones on about Jonathan Edwards (“a man trying to
reconcile predestination with free will and not succeeding”). Bud, who is
wearing a dark blue cardigan over a white shirt, passes a red-covered
book to Dorothy, who is dressed, tme to her patrimony, in a coppercolored skirt. Bud may have been “predestined” to become a failure like
his father, but he’s determined to make something of himself, even if it
means killing off his pregnant girlfi’iend in order to ingratiate himself
with his surrogate father, Leo Kingship.
Inside the book is a sheet of paper with a passage in Spanish Bud
wants her to translate: Querido, Espero que me perdonares par la
infelicidad que causare. No hay ninguna otra cosa que puedo hacer.
After Dorothy translates the passage (“Darling, I hope you will forgive
me for the unhappiness that I will cause. There is nothing else that I can
do”). Bud deposits the enveloped note into a mailbox that stands next to
a bright-red fire box. By the time Dorrie’s sister Ellen receives the letter.
Bud reasons, Dorrie will be dead from the poisoned “high-potency”
vitamins he’ll have persuaded her to take for the “baby.”
In the meantime. Bud happily goes about the business of his life.
A meticulous dresser, he is in his bedroom getting ready for class when
his mother brings him a glass of orange juice. He asks her to pick out a