Thursday, January 31, 2019

590 - The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, France, 1964. Dir. Jacques Demy.

Thursday, January 31, 2019

590 - The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, France, 1964.  Dir. Jacques Demy.

Why is absence so heavy to bear?

Genevieve Emery is asking the question, as the weight of time lies heavily upon her heart.

And the whole film, the entire direction of their lives, will turn upon that question.

Genevieve is waiting for her beloved, Guy Foucher, the man who worked at the local garage, whose baby she is carrying, who is away on military duty, serving in Algeria, doing his time.

They write.  He describes his experience.  He tells her loves her, that he misses her, and that he will be home as soon as he can.  Even if his stay is extended.

Genevieve's mother Madame Emery is putting pressure on her.  Mme. Emery never liked Guy.  He worked at the local garage.  The Emerys own a store, an umbrella stored, named The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.  The shop around the corner.

And as far as Madame is concerned, Genevieve is too young and too impulsive to make important life decisions.  What can she possibly know about love?

Mme. remembers when she was young and a man wooed her, before she later met Genevieve's father and married him.  This is somehow presented as evidence that a girl should marry her second love.

Genevieve says her mother should have married the first man.

Despite the fact that she herself would have never been born.  Implying that her mother probably truly loved the first one.  And settled.  A tough thing to suggest about one's own dead father.  But they are in the heat of the moment.  A battle of wills.  Over Genevieve's future.

The Emerys are in financial trouble.  Their debtor has called their debt.  If they do not pay by a certain date, they will be foreclosed upon.  And lose everything.

Mme. Emery humiliates herself to go to the jewelry store to pawn her prized necklace.  The jeweler is a business man.  He buys low.  He sells high.  He pays below market.  He refrains from allowing emotion to cloud his judgment.

So when she reveals her dire straits and her hope that he will be her savior, he lowballs even more.  Offers her consignment.  No cash up front.  Take a cut of what the public offers.

What will Mme. do?

Roland Cassard steps in.  He is a travelling jewelry merchant selling wholesale.  Here to show the jeweler the rubies, sapphires, and emeralds of Ali Baba's cave, the jewels of Sleeping Beauty.  Himself a shrewd businessman.

So when the Emerys come in to seek Mr. Dubourg's financial assistance, Roland Cassard is standing there with him.  And for some reason no one requests privacy.  So the visiting vendor listens in on a personal customer's private affairs.

A deus ex machina in the First Act.

For Mme. Emery anyway.  Cassard will be her savior.  He will buy the necklace.  Rescue them from ruin.  And perhaps provide a suitable suitor for her daughter in the exchange.

Everything that Genevieve does not want.

They have him over for dinner.

And sure enough, he invites her to the country.  And begins to woo her.

But Genevieve does not give in.  She has her love.  Guy Foucher.  The beautiful boy at the Garage du Port Aubin.  The boy who loves the theater.  And rides a bicycle.  And who dreams with her of a future together.  Either selling umbrellas or owning their own garage.  Either naming their baby Francois or Francoise.  Living in everlasting bliss.

If only Guy did not have his military service.  For two years.  In the Algerian War.

If only her mother were not pressuring her so hard.

If only Roland Cassard were not bearing down upon her with money and his own promises of future happiness.

Cassard leaves their lives for a time.  Just as Guy has.  But Guy has been taken away by the military.  A choice he has not made.  And Cassard, not yet in the throes of love for Genevieve, has a life to live and jewelry to sell.

He goes to America.  Genevieve forgets about him.  Her mother does not.

But when Guy goes off to war, Genevieve worries.

Fear.

Vain imagination.

An idle mind.  The devil's workshop.

Genevieve worries:

Guy left two months ago, and he has only written me once.  If I knew where he was, I could write him.  They have sent him, I am sure, to a dangerous place where he is risking his life.

Mother compounds it:

He has forgotten you.  He does not think about you.  If he did, he would write.  One can write, however far away one is.

Mother has her motives.

Genevieve faints.

I suddenly saw Guy laughing with another woman.

Cassard returns and Madame invites him over for dinner.

The first test comes when the ladies reveal to Cassard that she is pregnant.  With another man's baby.  A man whom she truly loves.  And Cassard does not flinch.  He eagerly says they will raise it together.

Cassard's absence is nowhere near the same absence as Guy's absence.

And his presence fills the void that Genevieve's heart can hardly endure.

Why is absence so heavy to bear?

She gives in.

A man on hand is worth two at the front.

And their lives take their permanent turn.


Jacques Demy has divided his film into three acts.

Part One - The Departure
Part Two - The Absence
Part Three - The Return

And each act gauges the status of the heart, of Genevieve's and Guy's heart.  The first act focuses on them as a couple.  The second act focuses on her without him.  (He is away in Algeria.)  The third act focuses on him without her.  (She is away in Paris.)

If you are paying attention, then you will remember that we watched this film together last year.  As a one-off.  A stand-alone.

But now we are working through a Jacques Demy box set.  So why not watch it again?

I chose not to go back and read what I wrote last time.  I think I said something about La La Land, but other than that, I do not really remember what I wrote.  So we are starting fresh again.

To add a new element, I watched it this time around with the sound turned off, so that I would see it in a different way.  A musical that is all musical, seen without any music.  Or, heard without any music.  Or, not heard at all.

My apologies to Michel Legrand, the grand composer of the film.

But let us see how watching it silently might change things for us.

We shall be reading the subtitles.

When watching this film this way, immediately one notices the colors.  Not just the umbrellas, but the water on the wharf, the sky, the brick, the clothing, the wallpaper, the paint, the furniture.

The colors.

The pink walls.  Her pink suit.  His blue suit.  The red garage.  The black windows and drawers.  The red gas pumps with orange sides.  His brown jacket.  Her khaki coat.  The yellow raincoats.  The red drapes.  Vertically striped wallpaper in many rooms--dark and light green, dark and light blue, blue and green, all blue.  His yellow lampshade.  The exterior wall painted like a 1980s music video in hot purple.  Mme. in the pink and white bathroom.  Genevieve in the blue cardigan with the lighter blue patterned shirt over a blue skirt.  The brown cabinet.  The white porcelain.  Mom's red hair.  Genevieve's blonde hair with the black bow.  Her room with blue wallpaper with pink flowers and green leaves.  The orange oranges and yellow bananas.  Aunt Elise in the boxed bed with the crimson curtains.  Madeleine in pink.  Aunt Elise in a purple sweater.  His blue shirt, brown tie, and brown jacket.  The green stairwell with white chipped paint.  The silver briefcase.  The hunter green train.  The pale red and white train.  The psychedelic walls with pink and purple and floral vines.  The coral sweater with the great skirt.  Mom in a red jacket and skirt.  Her in a sleeveless salmon dress.  Mom in a black dress.  Roland in a white shirt, blue tie, and blue suit.  The pink and green stripes above the chair rail.  The gray panels below the chair rail.  The crystal chandelier.  The brown antique tables, clocks, and lamps.  The brown grandfather clock.  The golden crown.  The gray maternity dress.  The yellow sweater.  The blue dress with floral prints and the cream coat.  Black and white at the wedding.  The white dress in the black car.  The empty red table.  The white walls.  Earth tones at the funeral.  The brown suit with a white shirt and black tie.  His Mr. Rogers tan sweater over a white casual shirt.

Etc.

If we were to watch the film again, we could be more precise with the specific shades of color.  Today I was able to fit in hunter and coral and crimson and salmon.  And maybe tan and khaki for brown.  But otherwise, I have given you primary and secondary and tertiary colors for a world that goes far beyond.

The background.

The dockworkers.

The pedestrians.

The customers.

The bartender washing the glasses and putting them away.  T

The sailor sitting at a table.  The other sailors standing oddly facing the wall.

Perspective at the train station.

All the lines--the tracks, the train, the edges of the buildings and sidewalks--leading off to a single vanishing point.

The faces.

Catherine Deneuve stepping into frame as fresh as life itself.  She seems so young and alive and innocent, one can hardly believe it is her ninth film.  She was about twenty when this film was made.

I noticed the make-up more.  And I thought about the difference a face looks from the master shot to the close-up.  And how ideally one would want to adjust the make-up down as the camera pushes in.

Here in the master she is heavily made up with bright pink rouge that makes her face to shine.  But in the close-ups one notices it.  And imagines what if we were to back it off a little bit.  Particularly in the umbrella store on a particular day.

She is beautiful either way.  It is a technical thought.

Genegvieve enters looking like Sandy in Grease.  And there are even scenes where she wears her hair up with a cardigan over a blouse and skirt.

The film begins with the two of them already in love.  And it is sweet.

Another thing one notices in watching the film silently is the language.

Of course the words are not written as song lyrics but as actual speech, so that the music has to fit the dialogue.

Love is on parade.

My love.
Oh, my love.
Genevieve, my little Genevieve.
Guy, I love you.  You smell of gasoline.
It's just another perfume.
Guy, I love you.  Oh, Guy, I love you.

And--

Don't go.  I will die.
I will hide you.  And I will have you.
But my love, do not leave me.
You know it is not possible.  I will not leave you.

And--

I will love you until the end of my life.
Guy, I love you.  Do not leave me.  My love, don't leave me.
Come, my love.  O, my love!

Then there is this:

In The Princess Bride (1987), the phrase "As you wish" means "I love you."

Here the phrase "If you wish" means "I love you."  At least as it is presented in English.

Guy only ever says it to Genevieve.  This Genevieve.

See you at 8:00 in front of the theater.
I've thought of you all day!
Would you like to go dancing later?
If you wish.

When the other Genevieve, the prostitute, speaks to him, she says "If you want."

"Come with me, if you want."

And--

"You can call me Genevieve, if you want."

Then when Guy speaks to his own wife, Madeleine, during Christmas of 1963, he says, "If you want."

Your hands are cold.
I will go out now.
If you want.

Yes, I am referring to the English subtitles and not the original French script.  And since I was not listening, I did not hear what they actually said.  So I do not know if they used tu veux or vous voulez, or tu voudras or vous voudrez, or tu souhaites or vous souhaitez, or tu souhaiteras or vous souhaiterez.  But I am speaking of my experience watching this movie on this day with these English subtitles.

There is a moment when they are moving forward as if gliding above the street.  One remembers Belle gliding down the hallway in La Belle et le Bete (1946).  As we pull back we see him with his bicycle.  Were they coasting by standing on the side of it?

Here is another thought:  The mother is the one in love.  What if she marries Cassard.

When watching the film the first time (last time was my second time; today is my third), one imagines this film is about two people who are in love but who are unable to marry due to circumstances beyond their control--such as her mother, and his having to go to war, and the other man stepping in.

But watching it today, it feels more as if Demy was showing her as having made a decision.  Choosing to give in to an immediate certainty over a preferred unknown.  He puts the onus on her.

And we feel it this time in the final scene.  Genevieve tells Guy that she took a detour on her way back to Paris to swing by Cherbourg.  She says she never thought she would meet him here.  It is pure chance.  But she went out of her way to come here.  And she pulled up to the garage on the highway.  One believes she came hoping to see him, to see how he is doing.

But he does not share the same desire to revisit an old thing.  He has his wife now, and his son.  And this wife stayed with him.  She never left.  She was there all the time, even when he could not see her, even when she blended into the striped wallpaper.  And he has moved on.

So people remember the movie as a sad story, because we see it through the eyes of Genevieve.

But what if we were to see the movie through the eyes of Madeleine?  She has found the love of her life.

Or what if we were to see the movie through the eyes of Roland?  He has found the love of his life.  He lost Lola but found Genevieve.

Through everything Guy was faithful to Genevieve, until she went and married another man.

One imagines him asking her the question Billy Joel asks, "What will it take till you believe in me / The way that I believe in you?"

But she did not.  She flinched.

So yes, it is sad.  These two people do not end up together.  But maybe what they each have with other people is also OK.  And loving.  And stable.  And good.

She gets back into her snow covered car and drives away.  With her daughter Francoise.  Who reminds her of Guy.

He kisses his wife and plays with his boy Francois.

This time around you see it differently.


*                                        *                                        *                                        *


I'm not alone.  I have my books.

Happiness makes me sad.

Oh, my love.  You haven't told your mother?

You think you're in love, but love is different.  You don't just fall in love with some face you see on the street.

I'm flabbergasted.

Wonderful!  You lied to me.

You're just a little girl.  You know nothing.

The young lady has become a beautiful young woman.

Roland Cassard, diamond merchant.

I suddenly saw Guy laughing with another woman.

I'm pregnant, mother.

We have to welcome him and put on a good front.

Go upstairs and lie down.
I feel just fine.
Don't argue.  Obey me.

Virgin with Child I saw in Antwerp.

My cheeks are burning.

Genevieve is still a child in my eyes.

She's only spoken of you in friendly terms.

I wouldn't want to pressure her in any way.

Her name was Lola.  Long ago.  I was disappointed and tried to forget her.  I left France traveled the ends of the earth.  I had no more taste for life.  Then by chance our paths crossed.  As soon as I saw Genevieve, I knew that I had been waiting for her.  Since I met her, life has a new meaning.  All the time she is in front of my eyes.  I live only for her.

Roland Cassard asked for your hand.
You didn't tell him I was pregnant?
I didn't dare.

I'd be a little more pleased if the child had a father and you had a husband

It's all I have left of him.

You mustn't smoke.  Be responsible.

A man comes along who's rich.  He's not a womanizer or smooth talker on the prowl, but a man who has lived and suffered.
I know mother, but don't give me a sales talk.  You praise him as you praise your umbrellas.

I was wooed once by a young man who was not your father.
You'd have done better to marry him.
You are right, but understand that I want you to be happy and not to ruin your life as I ruined mine.
Don't worry, Mother.  I have no intention whatsoever of wasting my life.

Do you think Cassard will want to marry me when he sees that I have been knocked up?
Watch your language!

If he refuses me as I am, it means he doesn't love me.

We will raise the child together.  He will be our child.

The last few months her letters weren't the same.  She did not answer my questions.  She wrote without conviction.  But to marry another man!

Nothing's changed here.
I have.

Does your leg hurt?
I limp a bit now.  It's like having a barometer in my leg.

And Madeleine?
She's coming.  She's been very good to me.
She's not married yet?
You know how sensible she is.

Are you happy?
Very.
And I owe it all to you.
If you wanted to share my life, if I weren't too much of  burden . . . Did I say the wrong thing?
Not at all.  It makes me so happy.  And at the same time, it scares me.
You're scared of me?
No.  Well, a little.  Have you given up thinking about Genevieve?  Are you sure you really love me?  I am not scared, but I wonder if you are acting out of despair.
I don't want to think of Genevieve anymore. . . . I want to be happy with you. . . . I do not have much ambition, but if I could make my dream come true of being happy with a woman in a life we've chosen together. . . .

Francoise, stop that.  The horn is not a toy

It's cold.
Come in the office.

It's better in here.
This is my first time back in Cherbourg since I got married

On my way back to Paris I decided to take a detour.

Super or regular?
It doesn't matter. . . . It's a pretty tree.  Did you decorate it?
No, my wife did.
Mother died last autumn.

She's so much like you.  Do you want to see her?
I think you can go.
Are you doing well?
Yes, very well.

Wednesday, January 30, 2019

589 - Bay of Angels, France, 1963. Dir. Jacquey Demy.

Wednesday, January 30, 2019

589 - Bay of Angels, France, 1963.  Dir. Jacques Demy.

I swear, this is the last time I'll gamble.

That is what he, Jean, says to her, Jacqueline.

Do you believe him?

Neither do we.

But if this new disease has begun to take root in him, after haven finally given in to his workmate Caron's prodding, just imagine how much more deeply it lies in her.

After all, she has been doing this a little bit longer than he has.

And she has already given up so much more.

Jean is new to the gaming game.

But Jacqueline is, shall we say, experienced..

She did after all leave not only her husband but also her only child in order to pursue this life.  This more-than roller coaster ride.  This rocket-high, submarine-low extreme extremes existence.

He falls for her.  She is played by Jeanne Moreau.  In the 1960s in France, men fell for Jeanne Moreau.  And in other parts of the world.  And beyond the 1960s.

In that dress.  And the bodice.  And that heavy eye make-up.

She is beyond love.

And beyond money.

She says it is not for the money.  Or even for the hope of the money.  It is for the emotion that it induces in her.

There are days when they are rich.  Filthy rich.  And they spend money like a hydrant blowing water.

And there are days when they are poor.  Filthy poor.  And they scramble for a few sous to buy one more scotch.

Yet she does not care which it is.  She is fine when she is rich.  She is fine when she is poor.

As long as she can hold a chip between her fingers.

And do it again.

And again.

Jean is an upright man.  He works at a bank.  Which implies that he is bonded.  And squeaky clean.  So what would make him fall so far?  And so hard?

He reveals that he was once engaged, but he broke it off at the prospect of living a habitual, sedentary life.  The seeds of his desire had lain dormant already within him.

So he abandons a life for its being too predictable, and then desperately attempts to find predictability in gaming.

He writes down numbers as they play.  Apparently, on the French Riviera in the 1960s, they did not only let you count cards, or Roulette results as it were, but they also allowed you to take written notes and calculate percentages.

Which of course is ludicrous with a game of pure chance.  If it were Blackjack, we might understand.  He could keep track of cards that have been played and cards remaining in the deck.  But for the randomness of the spin of a wheel and the landing of ball?

He tries anyway.  He seems to think he can crack the code.

Demy plays the gambling scenes with a wink.  We see the ball spinning but not landing.  Instead, we see their faces when the results are called.  Euphoria.  Or despair.  Which for Jacqueline is its own euphoria.

Jean is risking his heart to be hooking up with her.  She wants him not for love but for luck.

She openly confesses that she drags him around like a dog.  As her own lucky horseshoe.

If he is the horseshoe, then she is the mare.  She steps on the sap.  She clops on the clod.

Their lives run not merely moment to moment but second to second.  They never know whether they will ever see one another again or be together.  Or go to Paris or to Monte Carlo or to Cannes.  Or to stay here in Nice.  Or if she will run off with that man she just met or if he will go back to his father.  Or if they will be rich or broke.  Or both.  In the same day.  They are the quintessence of dysfunction and instability.

So when you see her casually place all the money she has left in the world on a single number, and then see him walking out the casino door, and then dash off to catch him without waiting to learn the results of the spin, well . . .

Being broke means nothing to her.

She has been there many times.

And will be there many more.

And will be rich again.  And again.

And never care one way or the other.

It is the thing she seeks.  Life on a slingshot.

And he has come to need it too.  Along with her.

These people were made for each other.


*                                  *                                  *                                  *


You like this luxury?
What luxury?  Here?
What you call the high life.
Yes and no.  It amuses me sometimes.  But I don't mind not having it.
Yet you gamble to make money.
Not at all.  I don't like money.  You see what I do with it when I have it.  If I loved money, I wouldn't squander it.  What I love about gambling is this idiotic life of luxury and poverty.  And also the mystery--the mystery of numbers and chance.  I've often wondered whether God rules over numbers.  Perhaps you don't believe in God.
No.
So you've never wondered that.
Never.
The first time I walked into a casino I felt like I was in church.  I felt the same emotion.  Don't laugh.  Try to understand.
I'm not laughing.
I'm explaining how gambling is my religion, and you snigger.  Money means nothing to me.  Neither does this dress or this room.  But that's probably beyond you.  A single chip makes me happy.  And all the rest--
And the others?
Who?
Your husband?  Your friends?
I don't owe anyone anything.  Why deny myself this passion?  In whose name?  I'm free!  Let me go.  I don't need your pity.  I deserve nothing.
What am I to you?  Am I nothing more than an object to you?  Don't you have a heart?  Look at me!
Don't ever do that again.  You have no rights over me.  None.  We're partners in a game.  Let's leave it at that.
Forgive me.
I don't want there to be any misunderstandings.  We mustn't mix our feelings with a situation that's hard enough already, at least for me.
Then why are we in this room together?  Why are we staying together?  Well?
I don't want to hurt you.
A little late for that.
I thought you understood.
Well?  Answer me!
You're hurting me!
Well?
You want to know?  Why I drag you around with me like a dog?  You bring me luck.  Like a lucky horseshoe.
Forgive me.

Sure, we could live together and be happy for awhile, but what for?  I'd never stop gambling.  It would start all over.  So what's the use?  Let's part on good terms.  Let's spare ourselves pointless suffering, emotional scenes, harsh words, and a lot of grief.

I love you.

I know.

Do you love me?

Yes, Jean.  But not in the same way.

It's a lovely idea.  But it's impossible.  I know myself too well.

You're making me lose.  Go away.


Tuesday, January 29, 2019

588 - Lola, France, 1961. Dir. Jacques Demy.

Tuesday, January 29, 2019

588 - Lola, France, 1961.  Dir. Jacques Demy.

Pleure Qui Peut Rit Qui Veut. - Proverbe Chinois.
Cry who can; laugh who will. - Chinese Proverb.

Lola.  To Max Ophuls.

Images Raoul Coutard
Music Michel LeGrand

Anouk Aimee made this film between her work in two classic Federico Fellini films--8-1/2 (1963) and La Dolce Vita (1960).

Michel in a gorgeous car, right out of a dream.

Cecile fell in love on her 14th birthday.  It was love at first sight.  Coup de foudre.  We are getting used to the term.  You can hear her say it.

She is talking to Roland Cassard, her dear friend from childhood.  They have not seen each other in 15 years.  They ran into each other by accident earlier today.  Now they are having dinner.  He is taking her out.

She has a little boy, most likely from that memory she is sharing, only not from when she was 14 but older.

She also has an American sailor who is after her.  Frankie.  But he has to get back on a ship tomorrow and set sail.  He is kind to her, and kind to her son.  And he seems to be honest with her and about their situation.

But Frankie does not know her name is Cecile.  He knows her as Lola.  That is her stage name.  Cecile is a mother.  Lola is a dancer.

A mother and daughter, Madame Desnoyers and Cecile--another Cecile--are now interested in Roland Cassard.  Because he was nice to them.  They wanted a French-English dictionary for Cecile's schooling.  But the bookstore was out and would have to order it.  Roland overheard them at the bookstore.  So he offered to give this Cecil his French-English dictionary.  He came to their house to deliver it.  And this endeared him in their hearts.

So Frankie cares for Lola.  And Roland Cassard cares for adult Cecile.  And they are the same person--Lola and Cecile.

But she cares for someone else.  The love of her life.  She tells Roland, "I never stopped thinking about him."

His name is Michel.  The father of her son.  He has been gone for seven years.  But she does not give up home that he will come for her, for them, one day

Cecile / Lola could end up with no one.

Or she could end up with Frankie.

Or she could end up with Roland.

Or she could run into Michel in a gorgeous car, right out of a dream.


*                              *                              *                              *


My father used to say, "Punctuality is the mark of kings."

You have a major fault.  You're off in the clouds.

There's no dignity nor real life for a man who works 12 hours a day without knowing what he's working for.

It's true.  I don't know what I'm working for.
Come back when you've figured it out.

Cinema Katorza
Return to Paradise, Gary Cooper

Whiskey and cigarettes.  That's crazy!

Roland Cassard.

Matareva, a Pacific island near Tahiti.

It's always beautiful in the movies.

For me it's the only cure.

I may not be a great dancer but I'm a good mother.

Don't bother about me.  I'm just a silly girl boring you with her sob stories. . . . But I was so happy to see you.

Maybe he'll come back.  I'm sure he will.  One's first love is so intense.

It's ruined.  The sky ran into the sea.  Looks like a melted candle.

People look great this morning.
Love agrees with you.

I love you.  I have for ages.  I told you I liked you years ago.  Then I saw you again, and I don't know what happened.  I walked around all night.  I thought about our childhood and all sorts of memories came flooding back, with you at the center of them all.  I've lived on dreams until now.

You give me a reason to live.

Call it love at first sight. 

Michel.  He's the one I love.

I don't deserve this!  I thought you were a friend, but you're like all the other men.

I've never had a male friend.  Just guys chasing after me. 

But I'm nobody special.

No need to explain.  I'll get over you quickly, believe me.

I really liked you.
Farewell, Frankie.

Here's the key.  I left a few things in the room.  Do as you like with them.
And your great love?
All over.
Then it wasn't very serious.
It was, but it doesn't matter now.
You get over things quickly.
One does one's best.
It took me 25 years.
I know.  One's first love is so intense.

I didn't want to hurt you.  I thought you'd forgive me if there was someone else.

I see you're right.  It's great to be alive.

You think I should throw myself in your arms and thank you.
That'd be a miracle!
It may happen.

Monday, January 28, 2019

587 - Vanya on 42nd Street, United States, 1994. Dir. Louis Malle.

Monday, January 27, 2019

587 - Vanya on 42nd Street, United States, 1994.  Dir. Louis Malle.

Come and meet those dancing feet
On the avenue I'm taking you to--
42nd Street.

42nd Street was a 1933 Warner Bros. film directed by Lloyd Bacon and starring Dick Powell, Ginger Rogers, George Brent, Bebe Daniels, Lyle Talbot, Allen Jenkins, Una Merkel, Ruby Keeler, Warner Baxter, Guy Kibbee, and Charles Lane.

The theme song was written by Al Dubin and Harry Warren.

Busby Berkeley created the dances and ensembles.  Of course.

In 1980 42nd Street was made into a Broadway musical starring Jerry Orbach, Tammy Grimes, Wanda Richert, and Lee Roy Reams in the original cast.  It ran for nearly 9 years.

The musical opened in London's West End in 1984 and won the Olivier for Best Musical.  It famously launched the career of Catherine Zeta-Jones.

The musical was revived on Broadway in 2001 and won the Tony for Best Revival.

The actual street named 42nd Street is one of a few east-west streets that were designed to be not quite twice as wide as the others, and its history includes George Washington, John Jacob Astor, and Cornelius Vanderbilt.  It is the location of several significant buildings, including the Chrysler Building, the United Nations, and Grand Central Station, among others.

Broadway is a north-south street, except that it runs northwest, at a diagonal to all the numbered Avenues rather than parallel to them.  It crosses 7th Avenue at 45th Street to create the famous northern wedge known as Times Square, extending north to 46th and 47th Streets.  Times Square proper begins at 42nd Street, creating the southern wedge.  The Times Square Metro stop is on 7th Avenue near the 42nd Street and Broadway intersection.

This is the Great White Way.  The theater district.  The home of the American stage in New York.  Broadway.  And 42nd Street.  The great theaters are mostly on one of these two streets.  Or near them.

So just as one refers to Broadway as the world of the theatre in addition to the street itself, one might use the term 42nd Street in a similar fashion.  The phrase 42nd Street appears in more than a dozen film and television titles.

Just west of Broadway and 42nd, just west of 7th Avenue, on 42nd, is the New Amsterdam Theatre.  On the South side of the street facing North.  Today it is owned by Walt Disney.  And it houses Aladdin.  Before that it housed Mary Poppins.  Before that, The Lion King.

The New Amsterdam was finished in 1903.  Its first production was A Misdummer Night's Dream.  For fourteen years it was the home of The Ziegfeld Follies.

The number of great stars who performed at The New Amsterdam is myriad.  It includes Fanny Brice, Will Rogers, W. C. Fields, Eddie Canter, Basil Rathbone, Clifton Webb, Fay Templeton, and Bob Hope, among others.

But today in the film, in 1994, it is vacant.  Abandoned.  Dilapidated.  And crumbling.

But this does not stop Andre Gregory.

Andre Gregory is a man on a mission.  He is a theatre man in search of the truth of human behavior.

Gregory has been holding Uncle Vanya workshops for several years now.  He has gathered some fine actors, including his improv and film partner Wallace Shawn from My Dinner with Andre (1981) and a young Julianne Moore, to work on and perform Anton Chekhov's play Uncle Vanya in people's houses, apartments, rooms, and old theaters wherever he can find them.  Today they are in The New Amsterdam.  By now they have been working together, workshopping, on and off for several years.

Their old friend and colleague Louis Malle, who directed them in My Dinner with Andre, is here filming today.  As well as a few visitors who are here to watch.

Louis Malle begins with his characteristic documentary approach, starting with the street sign and then moving to life on the street.  When we watched his documentaries, such as Calcutta (1969) and Place de la Republique (1974) and God's Country (1985), we experienced Malle's way of getting a sense of a place through watching its people as they go about their lives.

So here he captures a place in time.  On this day.  In this place.  The shops of 42nd Street.  Not just the theatres but also the stores, and the restaurants, and the adult palaces of the Red Light District.  People walking.  People driving.  People stopping.

Wallace Shawn leans against a counter eating a knich.  Julianne Moore and Brooke Smith cross the street.  Andre Gregory comes up the sidewalk.  He turns to look at a girl with cut-off denim shorts.  He approaches his friend Wally.

Mrs. Chao and her friend Philip Innuno approach.  Wally introduces them to Andre.  They met last year in Berlin.  May they join us today?  Of course.  Andre would be delighted.  He loves to have people visit.

They go inside.

They cannot use the stage.  The rats ate through the ropes.  There are nets set up to catch the falling plaster.

Watch your step Phoebe.

You look tired.

I'm doing these two other little plays.  They have me doing extra rehearsals.  I was up at 6:00 this morning.  Over at the Hearts and Minds Cafe.

Never heard of that theatre.

No reason you should have.

The group talks as they set up.  Wallace Shawn lies down across a row of seats.  He seems to take a nap.

Larry Pine and Lynn Cohen begin talking.  As if they are Larry Pine and Lynn Cohen talking.  Until it is evident that they are Dr. Astrov and Nanny talking.  And the play has begun.

Anton Chekhov is one of the greatest writers in world history.  In both short stories and plays.  He lived in Russia, and his plays were staged at the Moscow Art Theatre.

This play, Uncle Vanya, was first directed by the father of modern acting, Constantin Stanislavsky.  The man himself.  The man who wrote My Life in Art, An Actor Prepares, Becoming a Character, and Creating a Role.  The man who taught the people who taught the world the system of acting.

David Mamet has translated Uncle Vanya into English.  In contemporary English.  Without slang.  Yet without excessive formality.  So that these Americans can speak these lines in a more natural way, in a way more in line with the way they really speak.

Andre Gregory encourages the actors to behave according to how they feel right now.  Rather than adapt yourself to the emotions of the character in the moment, live the life of the character within your life in this moment.  If the character is to be feeling depressed at this moment, but you are feeling content, then play this moment with contentment.  Do not try to trigger depression.

And show up with your lines memorized.

Some directors allow theatre actors to learn their lines concurrently with rehearsal, while in rehearsal, so that they are learning them alongside the blocking and the emotions that they are organically exploring.  But Gregory wants to get the memorization out of the way.  Now show up and live in the part.  And do it over and over and over, with the freedom to make it different every time, to make it who you are and what you are feeling right now, until it becomes a part of you.

One reviewer compares the results of this process to the naturalistic improvisational approach of Mike Leigh.

The goal is always authenticity.  Emotional truth.  And Andre Gregory is applying a specific approach to achieving it.

It appears that it would have been a joy to have participated in this process with these people.

Louis Malle's film.
Andre Gregory's staging.
David Mamet's translation.
Anton Chekhov's play.
Uncle Vanya.
Vanya on 42nd Street.

The film is as much a documentary of the process as it is a film of a play.  And since we are watching contemporary actors dressed in their own contemporary clothes, on the floor of an abandoned theatre, without props or set pieces or furniture, essentially living the life of the characters during an advance-stage rehearsal, this film might appeal more to actors and literary enthusiasts than it would to movie fans.  Its box office receipts certainly suggest as much.

But for those who are engaged in this process, it is a film worth watching.  And reviewing.  And studying.

And for actors, it is a process worth doing.


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What Chekhov is about is the nature of the quality of passing your life. - Andre Gregory.

What it feels like to be here as we travel across the ocean of life. - Andre Gregory.

Uncle Vanya was first and foremost the most important period of my acting life.  It was the time when everything about how I feel about acting, how I approach things, where everything developed. - Julianne Moore.

We never thought we would take that journey.

At this particular time this play screamed out at me.  Very much because I could picture how great Wally would be in the role. - Andre Gregory.

When he came to me I said I didn't want to do theatre. - Wallace Shawn.

He said, 'This won't really be theatre.  We're not gonna do the play.  We're just going to explore a piece of writing for a greater understanding.' - Wallace Shawn.

We were doing it for the love of it.  The financial rewards were nil. - George Gaynes.

We just gently, gently gently, let this play invade our souls. - Lynn Cohen.

There's a natural tendency when you begin rehearsal to begin with a stereotype.  We all have in our minds who Yelena is--anyone in the theatre--or Vanya.  So you start playing the stereotype.  Michelangelo said, I believe, that sculpture for him was that you take a huge piece of stone, or marble, and you chip at it, you chip at it, you chip at it, and suddenly one day what's left is the sculpture.  So this is a process not of adding, which you do mostly in the theatre when it's four weeks.  It's a process of subtracting, taking away, taking away, until finally what you're left with is years of subtext, years of the experience of being together. - Andre Gregory.


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You go see to the chickens and I'll tend to the tea.


Sunday, January 27, 2019

586 - My Dinner with Andre, United States, 1981. Dir. Louis Malle.

Sunday, January 27, 2019

586 - My Dinner with Andre, United States, 1981.  Dir. Louis Malle.

We can't be direct, so we end up saying the weirdest things.

Andre is agreeing with Wally, and is summing up what Wally has just said.

Wally has told a story about a time he played a cat in a play.  The catsuit got delivered the night of the play, so he would be wearing it for the first time live before an audience.  His fellow actors approached him and made thoughtless comments about his headgear.  One suggested he would not be able to hear what the other actors were saying.  The other suggested that he might feint on stage from having his inner ear disoriented.  Wally felt that their behavior was hostile, an act of aggression, as if they might be sabotaging his performance beforehand.  And yet they were people who liked him.  Theater friends.  So why would they say such things to him just before going on stage?

Andre asks him if he expressed his feelings to them.

Wally says, No, he did not even know how he felt about it until later.  Only then did he realize their words had had a hostile effect.

This moment of agreement occurs midway through the dinner.  As the two men, old friends from New York theater who have not seen each other in awhile, discuss the problem of human communication in the modern age.  Among other thing.

We began the film with Wallace Shawn, played by WALLACE SHAWN, walking to dinner while talking to us in voice-over.  We spend about ten minutes going with him.  Riding the subway.  Passing through neighborhoods where he grew up.  And he explains to us that he is apprehensive about having dinner with Andre, as he has been avoiding him for a few years.

Andre was a successful director.  But then he started travelling.  Leaving his wife and children, whom he loved, for months at a time.  Andre's wife is Chiquita.  His children are Nicolas and Marina.

Occasionally he would pop up at parties and regale people with stories of his travels.  But those stories also caused concern.  Not necessarily for their bohemian experimentation--his circle of friends would have tolerated that easily enough, at least the theater portions of it--but because of the unusual, excessive spiritual import he began to ascribe to mundane things.  And because he said he talked to trees.

Wallace's acquaintance George Grassfield ran into Andre last night.  George was walking his dog.  Andre was leaning against an old building sobbing, having just seen Ingmar Bergman's film Autumn Sonata (1978).  Twenty-five blocks away.

Autumn Sonata
https://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/08/227-autumn-sonata-1978-sweden-dir.html

Andre had walked twenty-five blocks thinking about this film about a woman who gave her life to her art at the expense of her daughters.  And perhaps, though we speculate, he thought about his wife and children, whom he suddenly left, to give his life for his art.

And wept.

Wallace has told us it was odd for him to leave "because he loved his wife and children."  He quotes Ingrid Bergman's character, Charlotte, who says, "I could always live in my art, but never in my life."

And immediately Andre appears and hugs Wally.

And we leave the theater thinking that we remember that Wallace said it about Andre himself rather than Charlotte.

Wallace tried to order a Club Soda, but the bar did not have it.  So he accepted a Source de Pavillion.

Andre orders a Spritzer.

The men are seated and order.

These are the options they consider:

The Galuska--dumpling with raisins and blanched almonds.

Cailles des Raisin--grape quail.

Terrine de Poissons--fish prepared ahead of time and cooled in its container

Bramborova Polievka--potato soup

The first one is Hungarian.  The next two are French.  The last one is Slovak.

The men pass on the Galuska.  They both order the grape quail as their entree. (Entree for Andre.)  Andre gets the Terrine de Poissons as an appetizer.  Wally gets the potato soup.

Then they jump right in to the conversation.

People sometimes talk about the film as if it is a movie exclusively about a conversation over dinner--as if it is carried exclusively by two men talking--but we are 10 minutes in before the men are seated and another several minutes to finish their order.

And when it does begin, you will notice that when the food comes, Andre does not eat.  Louis Malle knew that it would not work for him to talk and eat at the same time, so he had him talk.  Wallace also does not eat when he speaks, though he sometimes eats when he is listening.

Such as at the very moment Andre says--intending it to be a general statement of all people--"Are you really hungry or are you just stuffing your face?"  And Louis Malle shows Wallace Shawn stuffing his face.

There is plenty of humor here.

ANDRE GREGORY is a polished storyteller.  So Andre Gregory is a polished storyteller.  He talks briskly.  He knows what he is about to say.  He does not have to stop and think about his next phrase.  Listen for him to say uh or um.  He does not say it.  He says, "I mean" and "You know," and sometimes, "I mean, you know."  But he does not say uh or um.  Wallace, on the other hand, does.

The first story Andre tells is of his going to Poland with the Polish theater experimenter Jerzy Grotowski.  Who is the perfect companion for this stage of Andre's travels.  Grotowski wants Andre to teach.  Andre feels he is tapped out of teaching.  He feels like a failure.  He has no directing in him, no teaching in him, no workshops, no improv, no scene study.  So maybe this is what he needs.

He throws it out there, almost as a joke, that if Jerzy can find him 40 Jewish women who play the trumpet or harp, and hold the workshop in the woods, then Andre will come and teach the workshop.  Perhaps he believes Jerzy will not find them, and he will not go.

But Jerzy finds them.  40 woman.  Not all Jewish.  And some interesting men.  Who are all questioning the theater.  Ready to experiment.  And who all play some musical instrument, if not the trumpet or harp.  And they will work in a forest.  Which houses wild boar and a hermit.

None of them speak English.

Andre is satisfied.  He goes.  And this is when his life changes.

Andre discusses their theatrical experiments in the Polish woods.  Sleeping all day.  Working all night.  Singing and dancing.  Eating jam and bread.  And cheese and tea.  Sitting and waiting.  Unable to speak to each other.  Waiting for an impulse to strike someone.  As when improvising with Chekhov.

Stanislavski said the actor should always ask himself, Who am I?  Why am I here?  Where do I come from?  Where am I going?

But in this case, instead of applying those questions to a role, such as Sorin in The Seagull, you apply it to yourself.

As when a group of children come into a room without toys and begin to play.  Adults are learning to play.

A woman brings a Teddy bear.  Someone brings a sheet.  Someone brings a bowl of water.  We now have as many as 140 people present.  All waiting on instinct.  Andre gets the instinct.  He grabs the Teddy bear and throws it in the air and an explosion happens.

He compares it to a human Jackson Pollack painting.  As if all the people exploded onto the field like Pollack's paint on the canvas.  Dancing.  Singing.  In two concentric circles.  Moving in opposite directions.

There is an exhilarating aspect to Andre's description.  If you are an actor and you have done some of these things, then, as bizarre as they sound, you might be ready to sign up.

So far.

Wallace, for his part, is perplexed.

Andre compares it to an American Indian Dance, which is logical, but then he compares it to Hitler's Nuremberg rallies, which scares Wally.  His point being that everyone is wild and hypnotic.

Then he, as a man, starts "breastfeeding" the Teddy bear.  He throws it to Jerzy and Jerzy does it.  Jerzy throws the bear in the air and the group explodes into a human kaleidoscope.

When he uses this term we think of Busby Berkeley, the precision of which one can imagine these improvisations do not achieve, nor attempt.

He also compares it to a human cobweb.

They try touching the flame with their bare hands.  They feel no pain with their left hand but do feel pain with their right hand.  But by adjusting something in themselves, they are able to feel no pain with their right hands.

They sang Greek songs.  They sang Polish songs.  They sang songs of Saint Francis.  They gave Andre the name Yendrush.  They ate blueberries and chocolate and raspberry soup and rabbit stew.

Wallace is now fully skeptical.  Andre is fully confident.

In 1981 they had no idea that Burning Man was coming.

Andre acknowledges that at that time his friends in New York thought that something was wrong with him.  But he believes he has awakened something within him that has caused him to look directly at death.  And he compares it to the impulse that caused Walt Whitman to write Leaves of Grass.

He tells a story about his experience with Antoine de Saint-Exupery's book The Little Prince.  And a Japanese Buddhist priest named Kozan, who resembled Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream.  And their experience in the Sahara Desert.  And how Kozan came and lived in Andre's house for six months.  And walked on his wife's back.  And did tricks to entertain the children.

But then Andre tells of having a vision during Christmas Mass.  Of a 6'8" creature with blue skin approaching him.  With violets growing out of his eyelids.  And poppies growing out of his toenails.  Telling him to hang in there.  That he is doing all right.

Andre never mentions drugs.

Apparently he has these experiences while clean and sober.

Wallace awkwardly segues off blue skin and violets by asking Andre if he has seen the play The Violets Are Blue.  Andre says No.  Wallace says it is about people being strangled on a submarine.

Awkward pause.

The stories continue.

Andre goes to India.

Andre goes to Findhorn in Scotland.

People get the insects to leave the cabbages and cauliflowers alone by talking to them and making a deal with them.  They give names to the appliances.  They treat Helen the icebox with the same respect as Margaret their wife.

He finally does admit that he was hallucinating.  He says it was like being in William Blake world.

Andre goes to Belgrade.

Andre goes to Montauk.

And back on Long Island, Wally really gets scared.

Because of what happened on Halloween night.  It involves a group of people going off and preparing for the evening.  At midnight on All Hallows Eve, when it is Andre's turn, they blindfold him, take him across a field, take him into a shed, strip him of all his clothes, take pictures of him, lead him naked through the field to an open grave, eight feet deep, lay him down in it, place his accessories on top of him, cover him with wood, and bury him alive for 30 minutes.  From his description one gathers that they might have rigged a way for him to breathe; but otherwise, he is fully buried eight feet down in the dark.

When they do let him out, he is "resurrected."  They run through the field and and drink wine and dance till dawn.

Andre goes to New York.

He compares the calm that comes on him to a chapter in Moby Dick that describes the wind going out of the sails.

He compares himself to Rip Van Winkle coming back from a long sleep.

He compares himself to Albert Speer.  He is hard on himself.

When it is Wally's turn to respond, the two men debate different approaches to life and society and honesty an wakefulness.  And it is a good discussion.

Andre does not always sound crazy.  Not by any means.  In fact, as I was watching, I felt that he vacillated among discussions of exhilarating theater work and bohemian experimentation while occasionally verging on mental illness.

He is such a lively, engaging, energetic, confident storyteller, that it is more like hearing a series of great experiences punctuated at times by red flags.

And one realizes that he wanted so badly to seek the truth, to face death head on, to feel so fully alive, that he skirted to toward the edge and came close to falling off.

Wallace wants to look at life another way.  He wants to enjoy the details of daily existence.  Wake up.  Spend time with his companion Debby.  Read Charlton Heston's autobiography, which is what he is currently reading.  Earn a living.  Pay his bills.  Do his errands.  Cross them off his to-do list.  Write a play.  And enjoy a good cup of cold coffee at night.

"I just don't think I feel the need for anything more."

"Why not just lean back and enjoy these details?"

He makes a good rebuttal.

A delicious cup of coffee and a piece of coffeecake.

Wallace appeals to science and the scientific method.  He compares Andre's efforts to superstitions of the Dark Ages.

He uses the fortune cookie as an illustration of how none of these things have a mystical connection to one another.  They are just written by a fortune cookie writer and printed at the factory, and when he reads it, he takes a moment to imagine how it might apply to his life, as a game, but then he moves on and forgets about it, because it has no connection to his life and does not mean anything.  It is a well written and well delivered monologue.

There is another great discussion about electric blankets and technology.

They go back and forth for awhile, both of them making good arguments.  Both of them contributing ideas to how one might want to live and not want to live.

There is a beautiful moment when Andre gets a little loud, and we cut over to the Waiter, who is manning his post.  He gives the perfect look, right down the middle, which could mean that he is concerned or it could mean nothing more than he is checking on his customers.

When he walks over to clear plates from the table, he asks--

Is everything all right, Gentlemen?

With the perfect level of composure for it, again, to convey both meanings.  Perhaps he is checking on their volume and emotional status, but perhaps all he is doing is asking if they would like something else.  A beautifully acted and directed moment.

Instead of desert, they both get an espresso and Wallace adds an amaretto.

When dinner is over, Andre surprises Wallace by paying, so Wallace takes the money he had brought for dinner and splurges on a taxi.  As he rides, he points out to us locations that have significance in his memory.

The place where he bought a suit with his father.

The place where he had an ice cream soda after school.

Wallace is grounded in the details of life.  The little things.  Meaning.

He tells us that he goes home and tells Debby about his dinner with Andre.

Andre Gregory feels his life has been a failure.  So he goes on a quest to try to find meaning.

Wallace Shawn feels tremendous fear.  So he stays in his ordered space to live his life the best he can.


This film is an acting tour de force.  WALLACE SHAWN and ANDRE GREGORY play personalities that are not far apart from their own, even though their characters are fictional.

They spent six months, about three days a week, improvising the conversation while being taped in a room.  Then Wallace Shawn spent a year writing the script from hundreds of pages of transcriptions.

Then they memorized their lines.  Long passages of them.  And rehearsed over and over in order to make their physical movements seem natural and spontaneous.

They looked for a director, and they assumed the film was a personal work of art, and that only their family and friends would be interested in watching it.

They had a hard time finding a director, but through a serendipitous exchange, the script made its way into Louis Malle's hands.

We already know from films such as Zazie dans le Metro (1960) and Black Moon (1978) that Louis Malle had an affection for Alice in Wonderland, and it was through Alice in Wonderland that Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory met.  Gregory was directing a stage run of Alice in Wonderland, and Shawn thought it was so wonderful that he arranged to see it every performance.  Gregory was clearly impressed, and they met, and Gregory followed up with Shawn about a year later when Shawn, who wrote prolifically, was staying in a motel in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to write another play.  At that point, according to Gregory, Shawn said he had written a dozen plays but no one had produced them yet.  So Gregory did.  And the two have collaborated quite a bit since.


When I was watching the movie, my 11-year old walked into the room and said, "Hey!  That's the guy from The Princess Bride."  Later, my 12-year old walked into the room and said, "Hey!  That's the guy from The Princess Bride." 

Inconceivable.

And for the record, Wallace Shawn does use the word one time in this film, which came out six years before Rob Reiner's classic fairy tale.

He says, "I just don't think I feel the need for anything more than all this.  Whereas, you know, you seem to be saying that it's inconceivable that anybody could be having a meaningful life today."


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Hostility from people who like me.

ha ha ha hee hee hee ho ho ho
glance
Is everything all right, Gentlemen?
glare

Talking about the death of that girl in the car with Kennedy and people will be roaring with laughter.

I never understand what's going on at a party.  I'm always completely confused.

One of the reasons that we don't know what's going on is when we're there at a party, we're too busy performing.

Performance in a theater is sort of superfluous, and sort of obscene.

A doctor will live up to our expectations of how a doctor should look.  Terrorists always look like terrorists.

Privately, people are very mixed up about themselves.  They don't know what to do with their lives.

By performing these roles all the time . . .

Suppose you're going through some kind of hell in your own life . . .
We just don't dare ask each other.
We don't put any value at on all reality.

Emphasis on our careers makes perceiving reality . . .
You can really shut your mind off for years.

Our minds are just focused on these goals and plans, which are not reality.
Goals and plans are fantasy.  They're part of a dream life.
They live each moment by habit.  They're telling the same stories over and over again.

Do things with his left hand all day in order to break the habit of living.

Just to keep seeing, feeling, remembering.

Are you really hungry or are you just stuffing your face, because that's what you do out of habit?

It's like being lobotomized by watching television.

The seasons don't affect us.

I'm looking for more comfort, because the world is very abrasive.

Don't you see that comfort can be dangerous?

We're having a lovely, comfortable time, and meanwhile we're starving because we're not getting any substance.

Martin Buber, Hasidism
Prayer is the action of liberating these enchained spirits.
Every action of ours should be a prayer, a sacrament in the world.
the way we treat other people
Mr. Gregory, Jimmy
An act of murder is committed when I walk into that building.
He become a child and I'm an adult because I can buy my way into the building.

Eleanore Duse - a light, a mist

Bertoldt Brecht

The people today are so deeply asleep.
It's very hard to know what to do in the theater.
If you put on serious contemporary plays, you may only be helping to dim the audience in a different way.

If you show people that they cannot reach each other and they are isolated
They know their own lives and that relationships are difficult and painful.
a terrible universe of rapes and murders
The play tells them that their impression of the world is correct and there is nothing they can do.

ritual, love, surprise, denouement, beginning, middle, end
It didn't dim me.  It brought me to life.

No way to wake people up anymore except to involve them in some kind of strange christening in Poland.
Everybody can't be taken to Everest.
There must have been periods where in order to give people a strong experience
You could have written Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen and people would have had an experience.
Isn't it legitimate for writer to write a play so that people can see it?

Isn't New York real?
I think if you can become aware of what really existed in the cigar store next to this restaurant it would blow your brains out.
Reality is just as real in the cigar store as it is in Mount Everest.
7th avenue

I agree with you but people can't see the cigar store.

It may be that ten years from now people will pay ten thousand dollars in cash to be castrated just to feel something.

Are people bored spoiled children?

OK, yes.  We are bored.  We are bored now.  The process may be a self-perpetuating brain washing.
All of this is much more dangerous than one thinks.

Somebody who is bored is asleep, and somebody who is asleep will not say no.
Gustav Bjornstrand
Orwellian nightmare.  Everything you're haring now turns you in to a robot.

New York is the model for the new concentration camp where the camp has been built by the inmates themselves.

This is a pine tree.  Escape before it's too late.
The whole world is going in the same direction.
The 1960s was the last burst of creativity.
Now its robots thinking nothing and feeling nothing.
History and memory are being erased.
Nobody will remember that life happened on earth.
We're going back to a safe period.
Pocket of light springing up in different parts of the world.

Why not just lean back and enjoy these details?

I don't know what you're talking about.

People could believe anything.
With the development of science--
The universe has some shape and order.  Trees do not turn into people or goddesses.
The things you're talking about--you found the hand print in the book and there were three Andres and one Antoine, and that was coincidence.  You think it was put together 40 years ago and it was planned for you.

Saturday, January 26, 2019

585 - Black Moon, France, 1975. Dir. Louis Malle.

Saturday, January 26, 2019

585 - Black Moon, France, 1975.  Dir. Louis Malle.

Lily has gone down some kind of rabbit hole.

Only instead of following a rabbit down here, she seems to have arrived by having run over a badger in her car.

She seems to have entered a world where the battle of the sexes has taken on literal meaning.  All are dressed in fatigues--except those hiding in Resistance.  The men are fighting the women, and the women fighting the men.  And no one is winning.  Or maybe in her mind the women are losing.

She takes refuge in an old farmhouse on an old farm.

Where she meets a young man named Lily and a young woman named Lily.  Brother Lily and Sister Lily.  And the Old Lady.  And all those children.  Living as they were born.

Not to confuse you.  There just happen to be four protagonists in story, and three of them are named Lily.  This is not the Lily we know.  This is some other Lily.

Brother Lily communicates through tactile touch.  His fingertips kneading human muscle.  Reverse Braille of the skin.  Who needs English when you have chirapsia?

Lily understands him.

And speaks back.  She does need English.  Though she is French.

Sister Lily communicates with her eyes.  Through gaze.

The Old Lady talks.  Clearly sometimes.  At other times in gibberish.  Or in hushed tones.  It depends on to whom she is speaking.  Whether to Lily.  Or to Brother Lily or Sister Lily.  Or to someone on the other end of the ham radio.  The wireless, as they call it.  Or to her rat Humphrey.  Her closest companion.

Dear Animal Wranglers,

We shall require the following animals for our film.  Trained.

Ants, centipedes, grasshoppers, beetles, snakes, rats, hawks, eagles, turkeys, badgers, sheep, pigs, hogs, horses.

And a unicorn.

Thank you.

Lily is in search of the unicorn.  Which stays always just beyond her grasp.  Or what's a heaven for?

Until she steps on the flowers.  And it chastises her.  While eating the flowers.

But the unicorn reflects her quest.  Her super objective.

Dear Costume Designers,

We shall not be requiring your services for our children at this time, as they shall not be wearing costumes.  Except for the two who sing Wagner.  Tristan und Isolde.  But we shall take care of them.  You are free to pursue employment on another film.

Thank you.

One might take the time to attempt an explanation of the meaning of the film, but this might not prove to be a fruitful process.

Perhaps Brother Lily and Sister Lily are complementary altar-egos of Lily and a hopeful fusion of the male and female in the midst of an otherwise male and female warfare.

Etc.

But Louis Malle might not have put too much thought into that.  It is a visceral experience.

Dear Actresses,

Please begin lactating before arriving to set.  Your skills will be required.

Thank you.

John Steinbeck published his novel The Grapes of Wrath on April 14, 1939.  With its unforgettable final moment.

Louis Malle taps into that image here thirty-six years later.

So if Rose of Sharon, Rosasharn, provides life support in that story.

Perhaps Lily of the Valley provides it in this one.


*                              *                              *                              *


Alexandra Stewart plays Sister Lily.  She appeared in the original Les dangereuses (1959).  And Tarzan the Magnificent (1960).  And Exodus (1960).  And Jean-Luc Godard's Ro.Go.Pa.G. (1963).   We have seen her a few times before now.  In Malle's The Fire Within (1963), Truffaut's The Bride Wore Black (1968), and Truffaut's Day for Night (1973)

Cathryn Harrison plays Lily.  She is Rex Harrison's granddaughter.


*                              *                              *                              *


Who's Humphrey?

You mean the rat?

Did you ever fight?

I loved him, you understand?  My sweet thing.

Willy Boy, Willy Boy, where are you going?
I will go with you if I may
I'm going to the meadow to see them a mowing.
I'm going to help them make the hay.

Friday, January 25, 2019

584 - Lacombe, Lucien, France, 1974. Dir. Louis Malle.

Friday, January 25, 2019

584 - Lacombe, Lucien, France, 1974.  Dir. Louis Malle.

Lucien Lacombe lives in France under German occupation.  If there were no war going on, he would be a farmboy who prepares chickens for cooking.  With the coming of the war, he becomes a hospital orderly who shoots birds with slingshots.  But with the war progressing to where it is now, he turns into a self-interested officer of the German police.  The Gestapo.

Not because he cares which side he is on.  He tried to join the French Resistance first, but they turned him down for being too young.  So he went to the Germans and turned in the man who turned him down.

And even that action might have been motivated more by drink than by revenge.

Lucien does not think about the world or about the war or about Germany or France or about history or ethics.  He enjoys the importance he feels from being allowed to carry a gun and tell other people what to do.  Especially his elders.

It makes him feel good.

His father is missing, probably a POW in a German prison camp, and his mother has a boyfriend.  So he could stay at home and be a kid and take orders from a man who is neither his father nor step-father, or he can go off and be a man.  And feel important.

Lucien takes up residence in the home of a French tailor.

We discussed the quartering of soldiers when we watched Jean-Pierre Melville's film The Silence of the Sea (Le Silence de la Mer) (1949).

https://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/03/083-silence-of-sea-le-silence-de-la-mer.html

In that film it was 1942, and a German soldier took up residence in a French home.

In this film it is 1944, and a French citizen takes up residence in a French home, functioning as a German police officer.

The word for this type of person was collaborator.  Lucien is a Frenchman collaborating with the enemy.

The fact that it is 1944 matters, because by this time the Germans are on their way to losing.  So aside from the moral and ethical implications of betraying his country, Lucien has also made a tactical error by joining forces with an army that is about to lose and be individually prosecuted.

Meanwhile, the French tailor is Jewish.  And he has a daughter.  Named France.  And Lucien takes a liking to her.

So we have a French kid parading as a German police officer with orders to arrest Jews, who is living with a Jew and dating a Jew.

Lucien does not put a lot of thought into his choices.

Louis Malle takes his time with the story, and he takes the time to show off the beauty of the French countryside.  He focuses on a world that is away from the fighting but awash in bureaucracy.

Before he began making movies on his own, and before becoming Jacques Cousteau's favorite underwater cameraman, Malle assisted Robert Bresson, so he took with him a proclivity for using non-actors or first-time actors in some of his films.  He did it with Catherine Demongeot in Zazie dans le Metro (1960); he did it with Benoît Ferreux in Murmur of the Heart (1971); and he does it here with Pierre Blaise as Lucien Lacombe.

Lucien always gives his name in reverse, as Lacombe, Lucien, as if he is always speaking to a fellow bureaucrat, who is about to record it in an official file.

Louis Malle cowrote the screenplay with novelist Patrick Modiano, a man whose first book was published in 1968 and whose most recent book was published in 2017.  In 2014 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.  In 1974, Lacombe, Lucien was his first screenplay.

This is the story of a specific boy who made specific choices under specific circumstances.  And it shows the consequences of those choices.

It is also the story, by implication, of a group of people who may have buckled under pressure.

Thursday, January 24, 2019

583 - Murmur of the Heart, France, 1971. Dir. Louis Malle.

Thursday, January 24, 2019

583 - Murmur of the Heart, France, 1971.  Dir. Louis Malle.

Laurent Chevalier and his mother Clara love each other.

Laurent is the oldest of three boys.  Their father is a gynecologist.  The family lives in Dijon, on a grand estate, where the father's doctor's office is in the home.

Clara is Italian.  And she is younger than her husband.  She still has the zest of life in her.  And she shares it with her sons.

Clara is played by Lea Massari.  Whom we saw, as Anna, go missing in Michelangelo Antonioni's l'Avventura (1960).

https://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/06/165-lavventura-1960-italy-dir.html

Maybe this is where she turned up.

Laurent's older brothers, Thomas and Marc, are indulgent jackanapes who engage in impish escapades

Laurent, at 15, is a burgeoning scholar, who loves reading and listening to jazz music.  Charlie Parker.  Dizzie Gillespie.

Laurent confesses to his priest, Father Henri, played by the great, and young, Michael Lonsdale.

His brothers are intent on assisting in his human growth and development.  Despite the protestations of their maid Augusta.

Laurent watches his mother leave the house.  He sees where she goes.  And with whom.  He tries to tell his father, but his father is too busy to listen.  So he says.

Laurent has a heart murmur.

His doctor sends him to a sanatorium.

His mother takes him there.

He plays chess.  He plays tennis.  He makes friends.  He meets girls.

He meets Helene.  And Daphne.  And he gets to know his mother.


*                              *                              *                              *


Did you hear Jelly Roll on the radio yesterday.  There was a fantastic piano solo.

The music store has the new Charlie Parker.  It's a great record.  Charlie Parker solos with a rhythm section.

The loony bin made him better.

Nervous breakdown.  Lots of jazzmen have them.  And no wonder--alcohol, drugs, women.

War is too serious to leave to the military.


Wednesday, January 23, 2019

582 - The Fire Within, France, 1963. Dir. Louis Malle.

Wednesday, January 23, 2019

582 - The Fire Within, France, 1963.  Dir. Louis Malle.

Credo ut intelligam, my dear man.

Alain has just joined the others for dinner, as the gentlemen are having a philosophical debate.  One of them asserts one of the great concepts of the faith, as declared by St. Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109), as developed from Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430).

Credo ut intelligam.

I believe in order to understand.

Faith comes first.  Then understanding.

The other man rebuts him.  Asserts that that would contradict the first man's claim that St. Thomas separated philosophy from theology.  He believes that one can have only faith or only knowledge.  "Where knowledge is, faith is not."

He does not believe.  So he does not understand.

Alain is oblivious to their discussion.  He has something else on his mind.  And he is drowning in it.  So he does not take the lifeline when it passes by him.  To him, it is just another of many ideas that will pass by superficially as he staggers headlong to his chosen demise.

His mind seems to be a rattletrap of ideas gathered from a lifetime of reading without commitment.  Without belonging to anything.  Just shoving endless thoughts into his brain and allowing them to knock about in there.

Alain has just spent three days--three nights--with Lydia, and has now returned to the Maison de Santé, the health house, for healing.  Lydia wanted him to come to New York with her, to divorce his wife Dorothy, and to marry Lydia.  But Alain said that would only make her another Dorothy.

The health house, the clinic, is a place for cures de repos, rest cures.  Healing through rest.  Under medical supervision.  Alain has a room there, where he sits and reads.  And apparently joins the others for dinner where two of them engage in philosophical debate.

They go to play pool, on one of those pool tables without pockets that we have been seeing in these French movies.  He looks out the window and observes doctors in white coats moving in the courtyard.  He returns to his room.

Alain cuts newspapers clippings and tacks them to the mirror, next the place where he has written on the mirror, "July 23," a date which at first is mysterious, but over time we begin to discover this is the date he has set for his demise.

He is reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel Babylon Revisited.  You may make the connection.

Alain looks at pictures of Dorothy and of another woman, which fill the room.  As he paces.  As Erik Satie's piano score plays beneath the scene.  He restlessly messes with things.  He opens his briefcase and pulls out a gun.  No, not Travis Bickle.  Not that kind of anxiety.

The doctor enters but does not see the gun.  Alain quickly hides it.

Alain returned from America, where his wife still is, and checked himself into rehab for alcoholism as well as for his anxieties.  The doctor says he is cured and may leave at any time.  Alain says he will only begin drinking again and will spiral down.  But he agrees to try it.  To go out for a time.  And see what he can find.

Alain revisits his old friends.  From his bachelor days.  From the way they respond to him, we gather that he was the life of the party.  That they all loved him.  And still do.  But he is different now.  Unresponsive.  Unengaging.

His friends have settled down.  They have married and have had children, or they are pursuing a life's work.  One is an Egyptologist and has written a book on ancient Egypt.  Another is a painter and sculptor.  Each of them is kind to him.  They have missed him.  They offer him things.  Come stay at my place, where you can write.  And rest.

But he rejects them.  He is still living in the postured ennui of his pre-30s.  They have grown up.  Moved on.  Yet he refuses to.

He takes his first drink.

It makes him sick.

They are there for him.  Attending to him.  Caring for him.

Yet he rejects them still.

He returns to his room at the health house and pulls the trigger.


*                              *                              *                              *


I've done nothing but wait. all my life.  For something to happen.  For what, I don't know.

It's not feelings of anxiety, Doctor.  It's a single feeling of a constant anxiety.



Tuesday, January 22, 2019

581 - Zazie dans le Metro, France, 1960. Dir. Louis Malle.

Tuesday, January 22, 2019

581 - Zazie dans le Metro, France, 1960.  Dir. Louis Malle.

Zazie is in a reverie within a dream.

It looks like the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague) has collided with The Little Rascals by way of Looney Tunes, with a little Jacques Tati thrown in for good measure.  With Charlie Chaplin watching and cheering them on.

Zazie is zany.  She is a 10-year old girl who has come to Paris to stay with her Uncle Gabriel for a couple days while her mother gallivants around with her new squeeze.

Zazie is more than Uncle Gabriel can handle.  As well as all the other people who attempt to chase her through the streets of Paris.  Since she is not actually in the Metro.  Since it is closed due to a strike.

Zazie says the silliest things.

The bird knows.  "Yakety yak, yakety yak; all you do is yak," says the bird.

Sometimes what she says is a bit naughty.  And rude to adults.

Who keep stumbling and tumbling and bumbling as they try to chase her.

In this colorful, cheerful, joyful movie filled with special effects.  Including jump cuts in a film released the same year as Breathless.

Only this film is not without breath.

It is a breath of fresh air.



Monday, January 21, 2019

580 - The Lovers (Les Amants), France, 1958. Dir. Louis Malle.

Monday, January 21, 2019

580 - The Lovers (Les Amants), France, 1958.  Dir. Louis Malle.

The Night is a Woman.

Jeanne Tournier strolls in her white nightgown across her verdant lawn.

Her husband Henri has gone to bed.  Her lover Raoul Flores has gone to bed across the hall.  In the Green Room.

They live in a chateau in Dijon.  A large estate.  Henri owns the newspaper.

A third man, the architect Bernard Dubois-Lambert, stands waiting in the shadows around the corner of the mansion.

Jeanne talks to us, as she has been talking to us throughout the film, in voice-over.  "It was as if he'd been expecting her, yet did not seem to recognize her."

He approaches.  She turns.  She gasps.

It's you.

She walks.  In the moonlight.  He follows.  In the shadows.

He follows behind her.  Approaches her.  Arrives next to her.  They talk.

You must be happy living in such a lovely place.
If only it were not in the provinces.  I prefer Paris.
Paris.  It is the flavor of the day.  Is that what you like?
When I am tired, everyone bores me, and you are boring me now.
I do not mean to.
Can you not leave me alone?  I need to think.
Let's think together.
(I cannot stand you.)
I agree.  At times I can't stand myself.
Quite often, I imagine.  What do you do then?
I dream about beautiful things.

They mildly argue for a moment, and then she runs into the woods.  This is a large estate.  They have lots of woods.

She arrives at the water wheels.  The wheels are turning.  One hears the sound of the water flowing.  And the frogs.

He joins her.  Recites poetry.

The moon rising in cloudless skies suddenly bathed her in its silver beam.
She saw her image glowing in my eyes.  Her smile, like an angel's, did gleam.

She smiles.  Looks up at the sky.

The night is beautiful.

She goes to her drink.

The night is a woman.

He goes to his drink.

Where did these drinks comes from?

They set their glasses down at the same time.  Outside under the moonlight.  On the shelf next to the water wheels.

He clutches her hand with his.  Their fingers intertwine.  We tilt up from their fingers to their faces.  They come together.  Their noses nearly touch.  They move in to kiss one another.

Let me go!  You have no right!

She breaks from him and walks away.  He goes to her.  Embraces her.  Runs his large hand over her hair.

She speaks to us in voice-over.

Love can be born in a single glance.  In an instant, Jeanne felt all shame and restraint fall away.

Coup de foudre.  Shot of lightning.  We are getting used to it by now.

She smiles.  She slowly turns and faces him.  Looks into his eyes.  They walk together.

She speaks to us:  She couldn't hesitate.  There is no resisting happiness.

They hold hands.  They walk through the field in the moonlight.  They walk across the meadow.  The tall grass blades wave in the breeze.  Tall, meaning as tall as their heads.  They walk through the grass.  They walk down the lane.  They walk beneath the trees.

Is this a land you invented for me to lose myself in?

They cross a footbridge over a short waterfall.  A rapids.  She shows him the traps her husband sets.  They pull a trap out of the water.  He opens it.  He lets all the fish out.  Back into the water.  As if undoing her husband's work.  Setting free her husband's catch.  Setting Jeanne free.

Now they are free to kiss.  They stand.  They kiss.  On the footbridge over the waterfall.  His large hands stroke her hair.  She embraces him.  He holds her.  They caress each other's necks.  His white shirt and her white gown glow in the dark in the moonlight.

They are personally serenaded by the film's score.  Brahms'  Sextet in B-flat Major.  It plays plaintively beneath them as they walk to the water.

They get into the rowboat.  Push off from the dock.  Lie down.  Embrace.  Kiss.  Without rowing or steering.  Allowing the current to take them where it will.  As they are now doing with their lives.

The moonlight shining through the trees speckles their faces.  Dapples their skin.  A natural cucoloris.  Floating down the river like a Disney ride.  Jungle Cruise.

The boat touches shore.  They emerge.  Make their way to the house.  The dog barks.  A light turns on in the window upstairs.  Henri is awake.  He opens the shutters.  Sees nothing.  Closes them.

They enter the mansion through a back door.  Walk down a back corridor.  Walk up a back staircase.  Enter Catherine's room.

The light shines through the blinds in diagonal lines across her body.

He waits for her.  She tucks in her daughter.  Her little girl.  Sleep, my little Doll.

They walk down the hall locked in an embrace.  Unconcerned with the risk.  Her husband Henri could step out into the hall at any moment.  Her lover Raoul could step out into the hall at any moment.

They pass the painting on the wall with the woman's breast nearly fully spilling out of her falling clothing.  And enter Jeanne's room.

Then the night happens.  The night that made this film an international scandal upon its release.  Which is tame by today's standards.  Even restrained.

Louis Malle stated simply that he was tired of panning the camera away to the window, as all movies did back then.  So he let the camera stay upon the lovers a few seconds longer.

Then he panned it away to the window.

This film is quite romantic as long as you do not think about it too much.

Louis Malle was proud of it.  Because it made him a household name and made him a lot of money.  And he liked playing the bad boy.

Louis Malle was 25 when he made it.  Jeanne Moreau, his real-life lover, was 30.  He wanted to showcase her.  It was her 22nd film.

He says he wanted to treat the coup de foudre idea, the shot of lightning, in a film immediately after scoring success with Moreau in Elevetor to the Gallows (1958).  Thus, the films were released just eight months apart.

By now we are becoming familiar with the coup de foudre concept in French film, and there have been moments when we have found them to be deliriously delicious.  Love strikes like lightning.  And the people are never the same.

And here, she is beautiful, the romantic environment is beautiful, the moonlight is beautiful, and the Brahms music is beautiful.

In fact, it is every frame a Friedrich.  A Caspar Friedrich.

But how many people will go for the plot in a literal way?

For many it may be illogical.  Coup de foudre is by definition illogical.  But it has its own logic, and this story defies even that.  She just met the man a few hours ago in the midst of racing home to get to her lover before her lover meets her husband without her.  Now she is in the arms of a total stranger.

Maybe one could argue that her husband was so boring that she found herself in the affair with her lover without really loving him, and now she has finally met the man she really loves.  OK . . .

But the husband never really does anything wrong.  He does not cheat on her.  He is not cruel to her.  He is simply busy with his job and does not give her the level of attention she desires.  In other words, he is a man.

Then the moment of lightning strike does not come across convincingly in the acting.  Their arguing does not play as banter but as real arguing.  She seems genuinely annoyed by him.  And then all of the sudden they are kissing.  There is no build up.  No transition.  No moment of discovery.  No epiphany.  And no layers of sexual tension or heat beneath the arguing.  Just annoyance that turns instantly into romance.  It is a bit hard to swallow.

Then there is the fact that she has a daughter.  A young daughter.  Malle states in one of the interviews contained on the disc that many people criticized him for giving her a daughter.  Why not let her go cleanly?  He defends his choice.  He says otherwise she would have come home two weeks after realizing that she has made a mistake.  But by abandoning her daughter, she has to make a life choice.  An all-or-nothing.

But many viewers may believe she will come home in two weeks anyway.  If not sooner.  Because of her daughter.  And because she knows nothing about this man that she just met.  As they get to know each other, will they not discover that they have nothing in common?  If he annoys her now, how much more will he annoy her when the fantasy wears off?

Sorry, dude, but you were a kid when you made this movie, and you did not know what you were talking about.  This twelve-hour love affair would fall apart within days.

We enjoy coup de foudre.  And we enjoy seeing it in French films.  We are just not convinced we have seen it happening in this one.