The Sunday Intertitle: Somewhere

That’s right — we’re back to M. VERDOUX, and we’re about to meet him.

By Chaplin’s standards, showing up in scene 3 counts as a delayed entrance. The purpose of a delayed entrance, other than to set up the story in the most effective order, which sometimes forces a key character to come in late, is usually to build anticipation. Chaplin could rely on his audience to be anticipating his appearance anyway, but he helps them out — the titles speak of almost no one BUT Chaplin. Then he narrates the prologue in the cemetery. Then we have a scene with the awful Couvais family, who are talking of only two things — the absent Thelma Couvais, who we shall never meet, and the absent Verdoux, as yet unnamed.

Following the narrative style of the day, and of days before, Chaplin doesn’t go straight from his snapshot in scene 2 to the live action, as Welles might have done (KANE is full of associational transitions and omitted establishing shots. Chaplin gives us an exterior and a superimposed title, which again reads like a theatrical programme note. I like the “somewhere.” “A small villa in the South of France” would have done fine, but “somewhere” makes it mysterious. Verdoux is evidently up to no good if his location is “somewhere” rather than somewhere specific.

We meet our man cutting flowers — engaged in an act both romantic and murderous. Then the camera pans off him, all on its own accord, to observe the incinerator belching black smoke. Chabrol’s LANDRU makes a very dark running gag out of this smoke, which also has a Wellesian aspect — the penultimate image of KANE is rising smoke from the burning sled, which also has aspects of a cremation. (THE TRIAL also ends with a cloud of smoke.) Two neighbours, wheeled in for expositional duties, remark that the incinerator’s been going for three days.

Now Verdoux stops to avoid stepping on this critter. So we get the “wouldn’t hurt a fly” angle. David Bordwell, in his marvelous essay, notes that “Verdoux” translates as “sweet worm” or “gentle worm,” and the fuzzy specimen Verdoux rescues is the very embodiment of both those translations, even if it isn’t actually a worm by strict taxonomy. (What is it, cine-entomologists?)

Chaplin is admiring himself before the mirror (of course) when the doorbell rings. Of course, there’s a vanity, even a narcissism about Chaplin. The idea that confidence is attractive reaches, in certain celebrities, a grotesque point: if they love themselves so much, thinks the audience, maybe we should too? Is that the appeal of a certain preening former Prez?

Robert Parrish, future director and former child actor in CITY LIGHTS, tells a funny story about VERDOUX in his fun memoir Growing Up in Hollywood. Working as film editor by this time, he still associated with Chaplin via weekend tennis matches, and one day Chaplin asked him to look at five takes.

This story is dodgy, I think. Parrish describes the sequence consisting of Chaplin doing a little dance at the foot of some stairs, something that doesn’t happen in VERDOUX. It could be a deleted scene, but whenever Parrish describes a scene from a Chaplin film, as in his CITY LIGHTS reminiscences, it’s a scene that doesn’t exist, but has a generically Chaplinesque feel. I think it’s quite possible that Parrish was told a version of this tale, and assimilated it into his own stock of anecdotes. The gist of the story is too good not to be believed.

Anyway, Parrish says he watches the five takes and Chaplin asks him to pick the best. Parrish offers his opinion. Chaplin prefers another take. But what about the crewmember who wanders into shot in that take? asks Parrish.

“What are you looking at HIM for?”demands Chaplin.

The charity shops are open again

My favourite is St Columba’s Bookstore.

Kevin Brownlow’s book on Gance’s NAPOLEON is amazing — the wealth of stills, and detail. Breathtaking.

Maybe I’d see The Autobiography of British Cinema about in the past but hadn’t looked into it because I didn’t know what it was. It’s collected interviews in fact, with everyone from John Addison to Freddie Young. Lovely for dipping into. Here’s Wendy Hiller:

“Carol Reed was not an intellectual, he saw life entirely visually, through little squares, as did David Lean.”

Here’s Thora Hird, in her eighties (most of her stuff is grumbling about early mornings):

“I liked working with Larry [Olivier] because we got on well, but there were little things about him that annoyed me. For a start, if I had to do complimentaries (standing off-camera giving him my lines while the took his close-ups), I would have to be in at eight-thirty in the morning for make-up because Larry insisted everyone be in character, even if they weren’t on camera. I asked him about it, and he told me he couldn’t act to the character if he was looking at me — as me. I told him that everyone thought he could have done the scene without me even being there.”

Thora also says that she calls all her directors “Mr. De Grunwald,” “and they know I do it with respect.”

Glenn Mitchell’s A – Z of Silent Cinema is terrific. I had the feeling it might be useful sometime, also.

Charlton Heston’s memoir might also be useful for a potential upcoming project, but is interesting anyway. He seems like a dick, though.

Goddamn this War! is a WWI epic graphic novel by Jacques Tardi. Extremely grim and exhausting, but remarkable.

David Bordwell & Kristin Thompson’s Film History is sure to come in handy as well as being a readable and awe-inspiringly comprehensive work. I bought it because I’d never encountered the Sergio Leone quote where he calls Ennio Morricone “my scriptwriter.”

Three short stories by Shirley Jackson which I was almost certain I already owned in another collection, but the book was 50p and it turns out I was wrong. Read two last night and they’re excellent, of course.

Richard Schickel’s Conversations with Scorsese is fine and all, and covers stuff not in my copy of Scorsese on Scorsese. There are lots of bits where MS says something intriguing and I was rooting for RS to press him for more detail. No such luck.

Thurber’s Dogs. No explanation required, I assume.

Russell Hoban’s Turtle Diaries — I love Riddley Walker and liked several of his late books and am intrigued. Saw Ben Kingsley talk about making the film version once. Great talker, that man.

Irish Ghost Stories is tremendously fat, and has a very large amount of Sheridan LeFanu in it, which is no bad thing.

Movies: I hesitated about THE TRAIN on Blu-ray as I own a DVD but it’s a fine-looking film and the sterling array of extras provided by Arrow decided me. I didn’t hesitate on THE WILD BUNCH. I thought I owned THE ILLUSIONIST but didn’t, so now I do. TO THE SEA AND THE LAND BEYOND seems epic, and Penny Woolcock is revered among documentarists so I should check it out: the BFI provides quirky extras. THE WRONG BOX isn’t altogether satisfying but has great bits. I had an old DVD of LA DOLCE VITA in the wrong ratio so this is an upgrade.

Now I just have to find time to consume this stuff.

The Last Day

My selfies always turn out looking like someone else.

So, I finally get to the end of my Bologna report.

I knew it was likely that I wouldn’t see so much stuff on my last day, since Richard Lester was going to be in town and I wanted to hang with him as much as possible. I wasn’t sure how much that WOULD be possible, but I was certainly going to try to find out.

I crawled out of bed and made it in at 10.30 am, to see a program of shorts relating to Chaplin’s roots. The 1904 LIVING LONDON pulled together footage of the London of Chaplin’s youth, while films such as L’HOMME QUI MARCHE SUR LA TETE showed the kind of music hall attractions Charlie would have been surrounded by during his early career. This 1909 film documented an acrobat who fulfilled the title role by bouncing along a plank on his head, wearing a protective skull-cap but still presumably jarring his brains loose with every impact. Albert Capellani’s CENDRILLON OU LA PANTOUFLE MERVEILLEUSE was a kind of pantomime, mirroring the popular theatre of Chaplin’s youth, WORK MADE EASY  was a 1907 trick film, KOBELKOFF (1900) documents a limbless wonder, referencing the armless wonder who appears in a deleted scene from LIMELIGHT… the whole show was accompanied by Neil Brand at the piano.

Kim Hendrickson, producer of the Criterion Blu-ray of A HARD DAY’S NIGHT was throwing a dinner and Lester was guest og honour and I got her to invite Neil since he’d interviewed Lester for his magnificent Sounds of Cinema series and I thought it would be nice to have a familiar face.

WANDA’S TRICK from 1918 was a diverting little comedy, part of a sidebar I’d completely missed up until then, celebrating the unknown filmmaker Rosa Porten, sister of actor Henny Porten, who directed along with Franz Eckstein using the pseudonym Dr. R. Portegg.

Having fallen asleep at a Japanese double bill earlier in the week, it was with trepidation that I attempted Yasujiro Shimazu’s SHUNKINSHO: OKOTO TO SASUKE from 1935, an early talkie which proved diverting enough thanks to its sheer, horrifying perversity. A fable of true love and self-mutilation, it did share with the comedies I’d snoozed through a focus on the voice as subject. Most of the filmmaking was staid in the way everybody always expects early talkers to be, even though they often aren’t, but there was one remarkable shot simulating a blind man’s POV. Since it wasn’t just a black screen, but a hand-held movement filmed out of focus, you had to admire the imagination behind it.

At 4.30 pm Richard Lester appeared in conversation with Peter Von Bagh, the festival’s director. Lester was on fine form. When he referred to THE MOUSE ON THE MOON being shot on old sets from a Cornell Wilde picture, David Bordwell, sitting next to me, laughed. “Ahah, someone here is old enough to know how degrading that is.”

The event assumes a melancholic afterglow now that Peter Von Bagh has been taken from us before his time. His festival is just about the best I’ve ever been to. For location and buzz, Telluride is miraculous. Being an old movies guy, Bologna does it for me.

Photo stolen from David Bordwell’s site, where you can read more on the legendary PVB.

So then we had dinner, which meant missing Lubitsch’s THE MAN I KILLED, and Bimal Roy’s MADHUMATI, and Frank Tuttle’s THE MAGIC FACE — but it was dinner with Richard Lester! What’re you gonna do?

Unfortunately I wound up sat out of earshot, but got a recap at dessert: “I was telling them stories about Telluride,” said Richard, who filmed there for BUTCH AND SUNDANCE: THE EARLY DAYS, “where I believe you did rather well.” A reference not so much to my screening, but to my wedding, which was actually held in Glendale Bel Air, LA, but you could say brokered via Telluride.

And then we strolled to the Piazza Maggiore and watched A HARD DAY’S NIGHT. Lester introduced it, and had hinted that he might take off after the first ten minutes, but he stayed to the end. The applause, I trust, was worth it. And the impact of that opening chord, on the big screen, coming as it should after complete darkness, no logos, no anything, was pretty remarkable. The audience applauded that, too, though it took them several seconds to process the startling effect.

Beatles For Sale — I never noticed the signs to the right of the image, anticipating the title of a Beatles album yet to be recorded.