Summary
In an audacious subversion of early twentieth-century domesticity, Allen Holubar’s 'Man-Woman-Marriage' unfolds as a sprawling, multi-epochal psychodrama. Victoria, portrayed with a fierce, oscillating vulnerability by Dorothy Phillips, shatters the shackles of a preordained union with the aristocratic Schuyler to forge a path alongside David Courtney, an aspiring attorney. Their initial marital bliss, however, is merely a transient prelude to a descent into the murky waters of political venality and carnal infidelity. As David succumbs to the sybaritic temptations of power and the allure of other women, Victoria undergoes a metamorphosis from a scorned spouse to a formidable political adversary. The narrative reaches a fever pitch when she emerges as a dark-horse senatorial candidate, ultimately defeating her husband at the polls—a victory punctuated by his subsequent incarceration for bribery. Interwoven through this contemporary friction are five phantasmagoric dream sequences that trace the lineage of gendered conflict through the Stone Age, the medieval era of chivalry, a matriarchal Amazonian uprising, the decadent decay of Rome, and finally, a spiritual synthesis where David appears as Constantine and Victoria as the Christian slave who catalyzes his conversion. It is a cinematic tapestry that attempts to reconcile the atavistic impulses of the past with the burgeoning feminist consciousness of the 1920s.
Synopsis
Rebelling against a forced engagement to Schuyler, Victoria falls in love with young attorney David Courtney and marries him. At first they are happy, but when David is drawn into political corruption and accepts the attentions of other women, she tries to compete with them, then denounces him. When he runs for U.S. Senator, she is nominated as a dark-horse candidate against him and wins. He is indicted for bribery during the campaign and while in prison is redeemed through her visits. In each crisis Victoria dreams of the women of corresponding ages: the stone age, the age of chivalry, Amazons and their supremacy over men, the life of debauchery in the Roman era, and the dawn of Christianity in her dream of David as Constantine and herself as a Christian slave who converts the pagan world.
