rich in an exotic land

Do you hear what you're saying?  It's crazy!  This Matty would've have to been one quick smart broad.

NED:  Oh -- Oscar, don't you understand?  That was her special gift.  She was relentless.  Matty was the kind of person who could do what was necessary.  Whatever was necessary.

INT.  FLORIDA PRISON CELL BLOCK - DAY

A man concentratedly pushes a wheely thing -- a cart -- down an aisle, past bars and bars.  The cart contains mail.  The wheels turn gently.  The  mail dispenser takes a package and hands it to Ned Racine through an opening in the bars, asking, "Is that what you've been waitin' for?"

In the cell, Ned quickly has the packet open; there's a letter from Wheaton High School in Wheaton, Illinois; beneath the letter is a 1968 yearbook.

He flicks through the book, forward, back, searching.  He comes to pages of individual photos -- the name Matty Tyler.  Tight Shot on the words...We read it with him.  Under the name, the student's nickname:  "Smoocher."  Then it reads, Home Ec.; Chorus; Y-Teens; Ambition -- "To graduate."

Camera then pans gently upwards to settle in and focus on the head-shot.  The laughing teen does not have Matty's face -- it's the face of the girl in the gazebo whom Ned met rather raucously, by accident.  ("Hey lady, you wanna [have intimate physical relations]?"  "Gee I don't know.  Maybe."  And this mischievous, flirtatious female -- that friend of Matty's -- capped it off with, "This sure is a friendly town.")

He turns some pages, fast, impatient, looking for the other one.  
Camera gazes in a tight shot at another student synopsis:  Mary Ann Simpson.  Nickname, "The Vamp."  English; Y-Teens; Homecoming Princess; Swimming.  Ambition -- "To be rich and live in an exotic land."

PAN up, creeping, climbing, until we see the face, and the Music comes up, and it is Matty's face, above the Mary Ann-name; her head is tilted back, she's looking across one shoulder at the photographer (a favorite pose in high school pictures of the Sixties).  Dimples in her cheeks; her eyes bright; her smile could not be any bigger.  

The Camera / Audience view then goes closer and closer to the face we're familiar with by now -- then we see right through the picture, to Matty Walker's present-day face.  She is reclining gracefully on a deck chair on a beach somewhere.  Mountains in the background, ocean.

Camera View pans -- moves in a circle -- around her, and around -- smoothly, smoothly, smoothly:  we see tropical vegetation -- green leaves and pink flowers all around.  A black dog on the beach lifts his head.

Matty (Mary Ann...) is wearing a black swimsuit -- you only see the side of one strap next to her left arm.  You see the arm, and her face in profile.  

Next to her a man -- barely ostensible at bottom of Camera's shot -- says something in French, in a very low-key, out-in-the-sun sort of way.  Sounds like "we - beh -- senchy"...

She barely answers him, with no interest, just laconic civility:  "What?"

He translates into English:  "It is hot."

("You can stand here with me if you want, but you'll have to agree not to talk about the heat"...)

Her countenance is beautiful, calm, relaxed, unsmiling, distant.  Gazing out toward the sea, she answers him -- "Yes."

And puts on sunglasses.  The Body Heat MUSIC UP -- beguiling, inviting, wheedling, seducing -- saxophone, sexophone -- Camera comes IN to CLOSE shot of Matty-Mary Ann's face, her profile, then PANS up, up, to the sky, Music soars and the credits appear at the bottom of the screen, rolling upward -- and that, my friend, is Film Noir!

------------------------
When my roommate and I saw that, when it was new, at the Coolidge Corner Theater in Brookline, Mass., we could not believe that was the end.  "No!"  "What?!"  "That's IT??!!"  We thought something else had to -- there had to be -- isn't it -- won't they -- WHAT????...lol  We'd had no experience with Noir.  

Body Heat
screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan
1981

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