THE RAGGEDY ANN FILES, CONTINUED...
Back in 2003, I posted the above stills, which had been sent in to me by Manuel from Spain. Each set shows a curiously large Raggedy Ann doll in a girl's bedroom, each placed prominently enough as to be no mistake in prop or set direction. The Sisters shots are interesting, as they show the feminist-figure Grace infantilized, back in her bedroom in her mother's house, answering a detective's questions with a programmed response that nobody can make any sense of. The shots from Raising Cain show the doll looming large over Amy's bedroom, perhaps foreshadowing the presence of Margot, looming as the guardian of the kidnapped children.
A couple of days ago, while looking through the set of screen shots from the upcoming Obsession Blu-Ray over at DVD Beaver, I noticed something in one of the shots that I had never noticed before: a small Raggedy Ann doll belonging to another girl named Amy, also kidnapped...
I quickly thought about other girls' bedrooms on display in De Palma's films, and set my DVD player in motion to check them out. I found no Raggedy Ann dolls in Gillian's bedroom in The Fury, nor in the girl's bedroom in Femme Fatale. In the comments below, JF says they spotted a Raggedy Ann in Carrie, so I double-checked, and spotted that one, as well. I also discovered another little Raggedy Ann doll, shown in two separate scenes, in The Untouchables...
So, taking the four films' diegetic timelines into account, we have Raggedy Ann dolls in four separate decades: the 1930s (The Untouchables), the 1950s (Obsession), the 1970s (Sisters), and the 1990s (Raising Cain). I'm not sure what these dolls mean, but they are a minor, yet intriguingly consistent, presence in De Palma's work.
Updated: Saturday, August 31, 2013 9:13 PM CDT
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