Interpreting Broderick's Poem in "The Freshman"

I think "A Doorway on Boylston Street" is a poem worth analyzing, a doorway worth entering.

Brando visiting Broderick in his college dorm room

In this touching scene in The Freshman, Clark Kellogg (Matthew Broderick) faithfully recites from memory the following lines after Don Sabatini (Marlon Brando) asks Clark to "tell" him one of his deceased father's poems:

A Doorway on Boylston Street

There's a certain doorway on Boylston Street
that I passed by on foot, suited and shod,
one of many each Tuesday,
toward lunch with a certain woman,
regarded each Tuesday by the perfect turning gaze of a white Persian,
regarding me, love-bound and sped by desire,
and returning to the certainty of his fur.

Since this poem was specifically composed by writer/director Andrew Bergman for this scene (hence no author credit appears), we can assume that it has deeper meaning within the film. With that in mind, I'd like to offer my interpretations of the symbolism of the animals featured here: the cat in this poem ("the white Persian"), the komodo dragon (a major character in the whole film), and the monkey Curious George (who also comes up in this scene).


The Cat = Brando
The cat in the poem is regal, self-assured, and a careful observer of human social interactions—just like Don Sabatini in The Freshman, not to mention Don Corleone in The Godfather. Don Sabatini has already proven himself an astute observer of Clark's feelings, he figures out that this oblique poem is about a cat, and exactly when Clark recites the line about the "perfect turning gaze of a white Persian," the camera zooms in on Don Sabatini, showing his eyes focusing intensely on Clark and his head turning to the side. So we see that the cat and Don Sabatini are one and the same.

Given that the cat stands symbolically for Sabatini, the poem creates a major turning point in the film: it gives Clark permission to accept Don Sabatini as his new father, since it shows that Clark's biological father would have admired and approved of Sabatini, just as the father admired the cat in this poem. This shift is smoothed over by Don Sabatini's respectful, tender approach. He frames this exchange as a bedtime story, and he tells Clark how glad he is that he remembers his father's poetry.

This exquisite scene lays bare the emotional core of The Freshman: the son's search for the emotionally missing father. The same core underlies The Godfather, notwithstanding its bloody horse head and lack of poetry recitals. In You've Got Mail, Meg Ryan asks Tom Hanks, "What is it with men and The Godfather?" The father-son poetry exchange in The Freshman answers that question as well as anyone ever has.


Speaking of The Godfather, there's another way to interpret the cat...


The Cat = the Cat in The Godfather, like the Komodo Dragon in The Freshman.
It's hard to think of Brando without thinking of this famous image of him holding a cat in the first scene of The Godfather:

(This image of Don Corleone and the cat appears on posters and movie boxes of The Godfather)

Even while he's besieged with requests on his daughter's wedding day, Don Corleone is so masterful and nurturing that he keeps this cat purring, like his clients. As many fans know—from reading Godfather trivia websites and books, even the movie's Wikipedia page—director Francis Ford Coppola found this stray cat wandering around the studio while shooting this scene and then put it in Marlon Brando's hands, knowing how much he loved both animals and theatrical improvising. Coppola says on the DVD "Director's Commentary" that Brando "immediately took to the cat and the cat took to him, and it just became part of the scene, not at all planned, just a random idea." This well-known fact— Brando delivered one of the greatest scenes in film history while effortlessly petting an untrained, stray cat—has only added to Don Corleone's luster and association with cats.


The cat in Clark's father's poem plays off this famous image, but the difference is that the Don's regal, masterful nature is symbolized in The Godfather by the way he toyed with a cat, as opposed to Don Sabatini's identification with the cat himself in The Freshman. But that's not really a major difference because, like the Don, the cat in the poem still maintains his regal sense of control. He's the one coolly observing these two infatuated humans rushing to their lunch meeting, "love-bound and sped by desire." And the cat doesn't need them; he can always return to the "certainty of his fur." Similarly, Don Sabatini tells Clark in this scene that it's OK if he wants to stop working for him (leaving the Don to return to his usual, certain business/"fur"). Highlighting the acceptability of this option, the one line out of the poem that Sabatini chooses to repeat and savor is "the certainty of his fur." So, no matter how you look at it, there is a clear association between cats and the Don in these two films.


That said, the more obvious and important counterpart to the cat in The Godfather is the komodo dragon in The Freshman. Just as the Don plays with the cat in the opening scene of The Godfather, he plays with and manipulates the komodo dragon throughout The Freshman. And the key human-animal symbolism underlying the latter film is Clark's identification with this reptile. In fact, the entire plot revolves around Don Sabatini's manipulation of both of them, from the choice of Clark Kellogg ("like the breakfast cereal") as a mark in this confidence game, right through the final scene in the Gourmet Club. Clark even says that Don Sabatini's risky escape plan "involved using me and the lizard as bait" at the Gourmet Club. Then, just before the lizard is supposed to be butchered by Chef Larry London, Clark adds, "The lizard looked even more nervous than I was. We were in the same boat." Like the komodo dragon here and the cat in The Godfather, Clark is played with by the Don in the course of a business that mixes love, family, profit, and deception.



Yet Clark is able to pull off this extremely daring deception in the Gourmet Club (his fake shooting of Don Sabatini while Chuck Greenwald points a gun at them) because his commitment has already been clinched by the resonant symbolism of one more animal: Curious George.


Curious George and the Man with the Yellow Hat

In this dorm scene, Sabatini also says his daughter Tina used to love hearing Curious George books at bedtime, and Clark says he thinks his father used to read him those stories, too.

There's deep symbolism at work here. With both the FBI and mafia out to get him and not knowing how to escape, Clark has just spent the afternoon trying to secretly follow Sabatini through the streets of Little Italy. So at this point Clark is just like Curious George: a monkey who starts off innocently, but quickly gets in over his head, tangled up in messes that spin out of control. 

Broderick following Brando through Little Italy

And Sabatini is the Man with the Yellow Hat: a kindly, powerful surrogate father, always forgiving of the little monkey's transgressions. In the dorm room, Sabatini gets Clark to confess he followed him in the streets, but then let's it go when Clark starts to apologize ("No, you don't have to explain," Sabatini says, as he pulls a chair toward the bed), the same way that Curious George's messes always get discovered and then quickly forgiven. Like the Man with the Yellow Hat, Sabatini is even wearing a wide-brimmed hat when Clark follows him through Little Italy, and he's alternately wearing and holding that hat throughout the entire dorm scene (see first photo). After recalling his "real father" reading him Curious George stories as a kid, Clark asks, "Who was the guy who used to take care of Curious George?" Sabatini raises his hands near his head to outline an imaginary, wide-brimmed hat, then answers, "Oh, you mean the Man in the Yellow Hat."

Don Sabatini outlining the large Yellow Hat

Clark is delighted and stunned by this answer ("the Man with the Yellow Hat?—Jesus!"). What he must be half consciously realizing is that The Man with the Yellow Hat is his own father on two levels: his biological father who used to read him these stories years ago, but also his new father, Sabatini, sitting right there at the foot of his bed, talking about Curious George, ready to forgive Clark and tuck him in for the night after he's gotten into a mess.

This little interchange about Curious George clinches the father-son union that the film has been driving toward all along. Clark can never turn back now. In the very next scene, after Professor Fleeber rhetorically asks his class, "In this world of duplicity and corruption, is there anything more important than loyalty?", Clark spontaneously answers under his breath, "No." He knows in his heart that loyalty and love are everything, and proceeds to put his life on the line for Don Sabatini at the Gourmet Club.

In fact, completing the father-son union, the cat in the poem could be both Broderick and Brando at the same time, in which case my two interpretations—the cat as Don Sabatini/Corleone, the cat as komodo dragon/Clark—would work together.


The Fleeber Factor

These twin interpretations make sense to me, but whenever I get this deeply immersed in analysis of a Hollywood comedy, I have to ask myself whether I'm turning into Professor Fleeber, who is so enthralled with mafia movies that he goes so far as to compare Karl Marx's Das Kapital, Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, and the Lake Tahoe scene from The Godfather, II. I take Professor Fleeber as a hilarious cautionary tale, a reminder not to get too carried away with my interpretations.

Professor Fleeber, unable to resist mouthing the dialogue to himself while his students watch The Godfather, II ("Senator, you can have my answer now if you like. My offer is this: nothing").

Nonetheless, if somebody wants to see my film interpretations as over-the-top in a Fleeberian way, that's fine. At least Fleeber tried to understand the social and emotional meaning of mafia movies without recycling cliches, and at least he actually loved the films he studied, which is more than you can say for some film critics and interpreters. So if anybody says that, like Fleeber, I'm losing myself within a mafia movie, I won't mind. I'm just glad that this one has Brando, Curious George, and a dragon in it.

Broderick and Brando walking the komodo dragon together, just before the final credits roll.

Related Posts:
My defense of Professor Fleeber, including comparison with Shakespeare.

Post about two songs ("I Wanna Be Around" and "Mona Lisa") in The Freshman.


All posts about The Freshman and The Godfather

Links about "The Freshman":
2010 Interview with Matthew Broderick and Director Andrew Bergman. Contains gems like this: Laurence Olivier wanted to play Larry London.

DVD of The Freshman. Doesn't contain any special features, but the Spanish voice-over for Brando is fantastic. This actor masterfully captures in Spanish the nuances of Brando's voice and speech patterns. If anyone knows his name or what other films he dubbed, please let me know.

Roger Ebert's 1990 Review. Even when other film critics didn't get "The Freshman," Ebert called it right, as usual, from the very start. He wrote, "He [Brando] is doing a reprise here of his most popular character, Don Vito Corleone of 'The Godfather,' and he does it with such wit, discipline and seriousness that it's not a ripoff and it's not a cheap shot, it's a brilliant comic masterstroke."