The early film, Forbidden
(1932), asks the viewers to sympathize with a married politician and his
mistress, who together have a “love child,” even though the politician, as a
governor, finally follows his conscience and admits to the decades-long affair.
Lulu, the mistress, selflessly remains alone and hidden from public view so Bob
can climb the political ladder without scandal. At one point, Bob offers to
leave his wife, Helen, and leave with Lulu for a shared life somewhere else,
but Lulu refuses for the sake of Bob’s career in politics. She places his
interests above her own. The film’s attitude toward the “cheater” and his
mistress ethically is complex, as is human nature itself. The film presents the
complexity that can go with some, but certainly not all, ethical controversies.
Because Lulu acts so
selflessly in putting Bob’s interests ahead of her own, the affair comes off as
ethical even though Bob’s wife is harmed by her husband’s infidelity. But is
she? Bob and Lulu are successful in keeping their affair a secret, so it can be
said that what Helen doesn’t know doesn’t hurt her. On the other hand, that Bob
is cheating sexually on her is in itself unethical, as it involves infidelity
both sexually and in lying to her.
Next to the affair, Lulu’s
contrived marriage to Holland, a newspaper editor as ambitious as Hildy Johnson
the later film, His Girl
Friday (1940), so Holland will not publish a front-page article on Bob’s
affair and love-child with Lulu, seems unethical on Lulu’s part. As in the
character Ralph Bellamy plays in His Girl Friday, Holland is duped by a woman
who loves someone else. In His Girl Friday, Hildy still loves Walter Burns,
played by Cary Grant; in Forbidden, Lulu still loves Bob. Holland discovers the
truth not only about the decades-long affair, but also why Lulu has just
married him. To stop him from exposing Bob, who is by then the governor, Lulu
shoots Holland. She is eventually pardoned by Bob, who “comes clean” to his
conscience by writing on his deathbed that he has loved Lulu and has a daughter
by her. Again selflessly, Lulu throws away the letter just after Bob’s death.
She is again acting on his behalf. She really does love him, which makes the
affair seem ethical, especially because Helen never learns of the affair, but
Lulu’s reason for using Holland by marrying him without loving him is clearly
shown to be unethical because she has hurt him greatly. Of course, murdering
him is unethical too. Lulu’s role as a mistress and even Bob’s cheating on his
wife come out as relatively ethical even though both Bob and Lulu are behaving
unethically in their affair.
Typically, characters in a
film who are having an affair are portrayed as bad people. Not only is the act portrayed
as unethical; the adulterer and the accomplice are viewed as not being virtuous
in character. Forbidden presents its audiences with a different take. To be
sure, the affair itself is not portrayed as ethical in itself; rather, Bob and
Lulu are presented as worthy of sympathy even though they go decades without
paying heed to conscience. Were cheating itself, whether on a boyfriend or girlfriend
or husband or a wife, approached in the film as not being unethical, the film
would (hopefully) suffer from not be credible, for infidelity (i.e., lying) in an
emotionally intimate relationship is indeed very unethical, even if the lies hold
up and thus are not revealed. Lying itself takes a toll on the victim
nonetheless, as the person lying can only be so intimate emotionally, and a
significant other deserves more.
Therefore, it is interesting
that Lulu’s selflessness is portrayed as virtuous even though she is enabling
Bob to cheat on his wife. Even Bob comes off as virtuous on his deathbed as he
finally bows to his conscience and writes to make public not only the affair,
but the existence of his daughter with Lulu. It would be quite different were
Bob and Helen to have agreed to have a sexually open relationship, assuming
mutual consent rather than Bob claiming to be “polyamorous” as an excuse to
have sex separately with emotional attachment or connection with other people outside
of the relationship. The film’s complex attitude toward Bob and Lulu ethically
does not excuse infidelity itself, which makes the film’s sympathetic portrayal
of Lulu and even the affair interesting; it is as if Helen were not hurt at all
because she never discovers Bob’s infidelity—though I suspect that on some
level she intuits it and so the marriage is harmed nonetheless in terms of
emotional intimacy.
A cheater cannot really “have his or her cake and eat it too.” At Bob’s deathbed, Lulu and Bod realize the toll that their ongoing arrangement has taken on both of them—that they were not able to have it both ways—Bob remaining married while he and Lulu continue their relationship on the side. Lulu finally realizes that she had been stubborn in refusing Bob’s offer to leave his wife, and Bob admits that he has been unhappy acting contrary to his conscience. In the end, both characters come off as ethical even though what they did for decades is itself highly unethical. Good people can act unethically.
