Dealing with today's scene:
116 INT: FOYER COLLINWOOD - NIGHT 116
Mrs. Johnson has just finished cleaning up after the party. She is carrying the last tray of glasses from the drawing room. The door suddenly opens. Carolyn
CONTINUED
116 CONTD CONTD 116
walks in, but so slowly, so haltingly that Mrs. Johnson knows something is wrong.
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And that's when today's quote -
Page 47/Scene 116 - Mrs. Johnson (putting the tray of glasses down): 'Carolyn!'
- comes up, followed in the script by:
Carolyn looks at her, but she is too far gone to see her. With a terrible SIGH, Carolyn falls to the floor. Mrs. Johnson looks down at her, SCREAMS. CAMERA ZOOMS IN to CLOSE UP of Carolyn. SHE IS DEAD.
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But when it comes to the dialogue, the directions, and the descriptions, practically none of that is how the scene actually plays in the film. First off, Mrs. Johnson doesn't come from the direction of the drawing room because, strangely (given the kitchen, where one would presume the dirty glasses would be being taken, is in that end of the house), Mrs. Johnson carries a tray of glasses down the long hallway from the dining room -
- (but then we know how DC just loves his people coming down the long hallway shots
- and honestly, unless one is familiar with Lyndhurst, one wouldn't even be aware that Mrs. Johnson is walking away from the kitchen rather than to it), and suddenly comes to an abrupt stop -
- only to drop the entire tray onto the floor -
- as the glasses seemingly shatter into a million pieces and what liquid remained in them explodes into the air and onto the floor - and after the camera cuts to Mrs. Johnson in total shock -
- (with nary a word being said by her), the camera whip pans to show Carolyn -
- slumped on the floor and against the door - and as the camera does actually begin a slow zoom in on her, at a point we start to hear -
- a bell tolling - and the shot suddenly holds once it reaches a close-up of the obviously dead Carolyn -
- whereupon it eventually begins to dissolve into the next scene's opening shot -
- which we'll get into when we begin to deal with Scene 117...
And the reason why the beginning of Scene 116 doesn't align with the rest of the scene is because that beginning was typed on the same page as the end of the 4/27 revision, which apparently ended with Scene 114 because, as with Scene 115, the novelization of Scene 116 plays exactly as scripted in DC's script. Well, up to a point. But more on that later...