And he called her "sister".
Please, someone explain this to me. Thanks
i noticed it too. got nothin.
shareI've just watched it again and was reminded of this question. Only thing I can think of is they might be Quakers or some other quaint sect where that is the custom.
shareAhhh. I was totally thrown by that.
"I'll book you. I'll book you on something. I'll find something in the book to book you on."
It seemed like they mixed up "Adam's" role - at some points he's her father, and at other points he's her & Noah's older brother.
No father calls his daughter "sister". And in 1946, women didn't call their father's by their first names (especially upper class New England women who's fathers were Supreme Court Justices). There are 2 scenes where Mary calls her fathter "Adam", yet there are other scenes where she calls him "father" or refers to him as "father" or "my father".
And he calls her "sister" repeatedly. I think it is a Quaker thing, but I am not sure. In the John Wayne film "Angel and the Badman" the family members call each other "Adam" and "Sister" and in that film they explain it is Quaker custom.
shareShe kissed him on his lips, too.
shareI have to disagree with these suggestions that the family is Quaker. At one point the leads have a scene in a church, and it is a traditional tall, long, rectangular church with pews. The only Quakers I've ever known don't meet in buildings with architecture like that. And upper-class families from Connecticut during this period would far more likely be Episcopalian or Presbyterian than anything else. In any case, if the film was trying to convey the impression that these people were Quakers, it is very odd that there aren't other indications of that, other than the occasional peculiar calling of a father by his first name.
But the problem goes deeper than merely the impertinent calling one's father by his first name. Even allowing for that, there is no consistency. In one and the same scene, Loretta refers to Adam as her "brother" while Orson refers to him as her "father". If Orson knew that his bride always called her father "brother" for religious reasons, he would presumably fall in with her usage; but the two incompatible usages sit side by side, unresolved.
When I watched the film, I was really puzzled by the father/brother confusion. And the fact that several other people here are confused by it suggests that the screenwriters, continuity people, director, etc. simply exercised very bad judgment here. They should have known that, without further explanation, the "brother" language would have been confusing. This is an example of one of the many areas in which this film is less polished than many of Welles's other films. You wouldn't see that kind of imperfection in Kane. But then, he was on a tight leash for both time and budget, and probably couldn't be the perfectionist he was on Kane. Still, even that doesn't explain it, since Welles himself is in the scene delivering lines where the father/brother confusion occurs. He could have called "cut" and asked for the dialogue to be changed at that point. It wouldn't have taken long to correct four or five spots in the film. So did he want the father/brother ambiguity in there? At this point we'll never know; all that we can say is that, if there was a purpose here, rather than a continuity error, the purpose was not achieved; and Welles was a bright enough director to have known this.
Maybe he's here stepfather or uncle, and she called him Uncle Adam, shortened to Adam. He called her sister since Noah is his real son. Just another idea.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of Hollywood... (;-p)
Kissing parents and siblings on the lips was common though. It was a sign of affection before it got turned into a sign of lust.
shareIn The Long, Hot Summer Orson Welles' character also calls his daughter "sister." In both movies, the woman in question is a sister (to a brother character). I think it's just like how some married people refer to each other as "mom" and "dad" or other terms to that effect. They are speaking from their children's perspectives.
shareI was always confused by that, but I think this is a bit of 1946 that is lost on today.
It probably made sense in that era for some reason. My guess is that families, especially rich ones who would worry about unwanted observers, used "fake" terms in order to fool would be kidnapers and con artists.
Or it could be something about New England of that era.
Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time!
Surprised no one brought up Scout and Atticus
shareIt was pretty common for men to call their daughters "sister" in the American South during that time. You'll see it in a lot of books from the 1800's through the mid-1950s. I think they used the term because that's her role in the family, kind of like when parents start calling the grandparent "grandma" even thought it's their mother.
I don't know why she called her dad by his first name though.