“One day, while taking a look at some vistas in Dad's stereopticon, it hit me that I was just this little girl, born in Texas, whose father was a sign painter, who only had just so many years to live. It sent a chill down my spine and I thought where would I be this very moment, if Kit had never met me? Or killed anybody...”
Much of the film is narrated in voice-over by Sissy Spacek as her character Holly. The opening lines (a few come before these) set the stage for how the narration works. Obvious, it is Holly speaking in retrospect as she mentions meeting Kit and the fact they kill. The film is based (loosely) on the real-life murder spree of Charles Starkweather and his girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate. To suggest, however, that Holly is merely a replica of Fugate is as ridiculous as believing that Sissy Spacek is from North Dakota. Even despite Spacek’s accent obviously being from a place thousands of miles, however, the effect is tremendous. Her narration really makes the movie pop.
“…of course, it’s too bad about your dad.”
“Yeah.”
“We're gonna' have to sit down and talk about that sometime.”
Normally, a conversation such as this would be of significance due to the bulk of the conversation—or, in other words, the words of Kit. In this instance, what is really significant is Holly’s reaction. Holly is an empty vessel she thought could be filled by Kit. She is a symbolic representative of the malaise—the ennui—of the Eisenhower era. She feels nothing, she is nothing. She does not act. She does not react. She is merely acted upon.
“I'll kiss your ass if he don't look like James Dean.”
James Dean is a legendary figure in American cinema. A rising young star who was nominated for Best Actor in two of the three movies he starred in before his tragically early death. More than that: Dean is perhaps aside from Elvis, “the” icon of youthful rebellion of the 1950’s. He never killed anyone; he never even played a killer. The constant referencing of Kit through dialogue and visual allusion to Dean symbolically connects the young psychopath to the actor not because of the parts he played, therefore, but direct to the actor. The metaphorical association suggests much about the spirit of rebellion which characterizes the Eisenhower era as much as the well-established conformity which dominated its social status. The intimacy of the male deputy discussing Kit’s similarity to James Dean (the comment is directed to his boss, the male sheriff) is also in and of itself significant commentary on the repression of the times.
“I made up my mind to never again tag around with a hell-bent type, no matter how in love with him I was.”
Don’t misunderstand: Holly does actually take part in conversation in the film. However, her conversational skills are nowhere near as developed and endowed with self-esteem as her retrospective narrative abilities. Many critics suggest that Holly is not the sharpest knife in the drawer because it takes nearly the very end of the story for her to reach this epiphany. The narration suggests differently. Holly, for sure, is no Helen Keller when it comes to intellect. She is, however, blind. But watch closely and Spacek reveals that audiences dismissing her character as a total moron are equally blind. There is something going on in that mind. She just can’t articulate it through conversation.
