It doesn’t take long for the plot to thicken. Leo appears at Tom’s door very late one night because Verna is missing, as is the man who was supposed to keep an eye on her. From his desperation it is clear that Leo is smitten, but Tom sees Verna’s “angle”: she has seduced him for the sole purpose of gaining protection for her brother. Leo absorbs Tom’s chiding for being such a “sap” and then departs.
So where is Verna? As we quickly learn, she is in Tom’s bed, in the next room. He has also given in to her charms, in spite of (or perhaps because of) the transparency of her motives. “Did you put in a good word for my brother?” she asks, after hearing that Leo came and went without incident. “No,” Tom says; instead, “I told him you were a tramp and he should dump you.”
At this point, Tom’s foothold in the world of Caspar’s gangster/noir “ethics” is intact. He has used Verna for his own pleasure, knowing that he could manipulate her attempt to exploit a new angle for protecting her brother, namely himself; he is in the stronger position, so what is right has been dictated by his own advantage. Both have attempted to utilize each other as a means to a self-interested end, thus violating a basic prohibition within Immanuel Kant’s moral philosophy, but that is a different world.9
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The key at this stage in Miller’s Crossing is that Tom has been successful in his manipulation, which determines the value of his action, whereas Verna has not. It should not be forgotten that Tom has also violated the trust of his friend Leo, because he is even more relativistic than Johnny Caspar. Who is a friend and who is an enemy anyway? As Tom says in one of his more nihilistic moments, “Nobody knows anybody.”
Moral flexibility and unfeeling cynicism are markers of Tom’s noir heroism early in the film, but his outlook starts to shift after Rug Daniels (Salvatore H. Tornabene), the man trailing Verna for Leo, turns up dead in an alley—sans his hairpiece.10 In a meeting at his club, Leo quickly decides
that Caspar was responsible and orders a reprisal. Tom disagrees, this time angrily, and he urges that Leo give up Bernie to keep the peace. Once again, Leo’s attachment to Verna leads him to reject this proposal, and Tom storms out. Soon after this exchange, Tom barges into the ladies’ room in search of Verna. After some snappy verbal sparring, she comes clean to Tom: sure, she’s cozying up to Leo to protect her brother, so what of it? Tom claims that he is simply looking out for Leo, who is getting “twisted” around by Verna. Tom grabs her. “You’re a pathetic rumhead,” she says. He responds, “And I love you, Angel,” before giving her a rough kiss.
Verna answers by punching Tom in the mouth, but now it seems that “heart,” the marker of positive emotional attachment, has broken through Tom’s tough exterior. Soon after this episode, the two of them stop dancing around the issue. After getting beaten up by Caspar’s henchmen, Tom forces his way into Verna’s apartment and accuses her of killing Rug. Verna denies the charge and changes the subject: “That’s not why you came. . . . Admit you don’t like me seeing Leo because you’re jealous. Admit that you’ve got a heart—even if it’s small and feeble and you can’t remember the last time you used it.” Tom responds blithely, “If I’d known we were going to cast our feelings into words I’d have memorized the Song of Solomon.”11 Yet he once
more gives in to her (after she flings his hat across the room), despite the fact that there is no “angle” to getting involved with Verna; there is only further vulnerability to becoming one.
“Jesus, Tom”: Violent Interlude (1)
One of the most distinctive elements in the work of the Coen brothers is their staging of violence. Many of the most memorable scenes in their films depict violent struggles that oscillate between choreographed slapstick and
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grisly realism. Pacing is often slow and unnatural, and the gore is thick and gruesome, heightening the immediate, uncanny effect that violence has on us. At the same time, the sheer constructedness of these scenes makes us self-consciously aware that we are watching violence on film, that it is artifice meant to achieve some aesthetic purpose, even if that purpose is merely the impish delight of the directors themselves.
The violence in Miller’s Crossing fits into this pattern with precision. In the first stylized staging of violence in the film, for example, Tom is subject to a beating by Caspar’s henchmen. The doors of a warehouse close as Cas- par departs, and Tom is left with an “ape” of a man, Frankie (Mike Starr), who is supposed to work him over. The Coens film Frankie from below in a long, wide shot that places him at the far end of the warehouse interior. Shot from below, the man should look huge and imposing, and in some sense he does, but he is also diminished by the empty space of the warehouse, and he comes off as comical and pathetic as he marches forward, toward Tom (and the viewer). As soon as he draws near, Tom asks him to wait as he takes off his coat, and he picks up a chair and breaks the thug’s nose with it. Frankie looks like he is about to cry as he says, “Jesus, Tom.”
Frankie turns around and marches away, giving Tom a quick, hurt glance before he heads out the door. Tom stands like a statue, still poised with the chair in its follow-through. After a couple of beats, the door opens again, and Frankie’s much shorter partner, Tic-Tac (Al Mancini), strides right up to Tom, with the behemoth in tow. Tom again tries to use the chair, but Tic-Tac blocks the blow and subdues him. Now the two begin to beat Tom viciously—but they are stopped as one of the police raids instigated by Leo breaks down the warehouse doors, just in time.
Tom’s exchange with Frankie is comical: the “ape” strides up to Tom like Citizen Kane but is hurt like a child when hit with the chair. When he mutters, “Jesus, Tom,” he is saying, implicitly, “Aww, you didn’t have to do that,” suggesting that beatings like this are routine, businesslike, almost collegial in the film. In fact, Tom is never seriously hurt, though he is beaten down again and again. Yet this is a real, visceral pummeling that he absorbs and that we absorb with him. It is Tom taking punishment, in this case, because he adheres to Leo, to whatever moral force binds him to Leo’s side. It may be arbitrary, but this loyalty has consequences. Heartfelt attachments always do.
The hurt that comes as a result of this positive attachment needs com- fort and care, so Tom finds it and, in some sense, pays Leo back. He goes
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to Verna again, and they solidify their bond, as discussed above, with the Song of Solomon hanging in the air.